It all started, I suppose, when I recieved a donation of some art from a person called Mr. Penguin. This picture is posted on the left of this little paragraph. I didn't know this person who was donating art to me. I hadn't asked for art from anyone at all... In fact this was the first time I ever even thought about avatar art pertaining to me. So here he was giving me this art, and he was a very nice guy it turned out. So we talked for a while and I guess you could say that put me on the path to where I am now.
A few months and three random art donations later, I decided to put up a quest for art thread. That thread still exists, but it's more of a reference for people who I might commission now (Not that I don't appretiate a donation here and there ^^). Not long after my quest had started I put up a user ad. I payed for one day, but, because of some glitch in the system (which I reported to dri and it was fixed) my ad stayed up for a week. It was suprising to say the least. I recieved a flood of art donations! Many pieces of quality works in a single day! If you look back in my journal you can see an entry I made where I show all the art I got from one day. It's a lot, and I wasn't used to it.
With all this new art flooding my system, I felt like I had to give back to the community in some way, so I did it the same way that people were doing it to me.... by donating art.
Now, my art may not be the best stuff on earth, but I took my time to draw and digitally touch up a piece of artwork for a random gaian. Her quest thread is also still up, although it's going much slower than mine did. You can see the art I did for here to the left of this paragraph. It's not exactly hot s**t, but it inspired me. It was a fun thing to do, that piece of art. After I had the pose thought up I knew it would be fun to do... and so I did it. Looking at it now I can almost not believe I did something so skillful... skillful for me anyway. sweatdrop
For the wings on the head, I looked up pictures of bats on the internet and their skelatal structure. I'm not very pleased with the way they came out in the end though. I've always had an affinity for tails on people (call me weird...) so I decided to make the tail somewhat prominant in this piece, or I tried to. I see now that I added a little extra tuff half way down the tail that I don't really like... That's ok though. I'm satisfied with the tail. For the guitaur I needed to try at least a dozen times to make it not too thin. I still think it ended up that way, but I do like the feathers on it. I looked up eagle wing structure and pictures to get it as right as I could. I also like what I did with the hands. Somehow, it's just so obvious to me that she's wearing gloves, that I can almost feel those extra extensions of the gloves on the tips of my fingers when I look at it.
My favorite part of the picture is the expression on her face though. It's rocking out loud, dude. Totally. whee
It didn't take long after I drew this pic for me to realize that this is what all artists go though when creating a piece of art. Soon I started looking at pictures I'd recieved and thinking about the shading used on them, and how the materials of the picture over-lapped. This feeling has increased and increased in scale for me over the last few months. I now see art in every element of my life. I look at the scroll bars near this post and think about what it must have been like to draw them. I see a clothes pin and think about how someone could even invent such an ingenious invention. I mean, it's literally just two pieces of wood with a bent piece of metal in them that gives it a purpose! Instead of looking at commertails now and thinking, "that's a stupid product." I think, "Wow. I wonder how they got that CG monster critter in there. Is she in front of a green screen? Oh wow, look at the monster's hair wave when it moves... that must've taken some time to do." I mean, my whole perspective on life has changed now really, in a way. That's how I look at everything these days.
I mean, I've been wanting to do a piece of art forever these days... but I just haven't been inspired lately. I want to practice my art... but I just feel like I don't know how (even though I have a pretty good idea of how). I don't know... I just feel really weird these days... And maybe if I hadn't have ever been on gaia I wouldn't feel this way? I mean I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's a change in my thought process, one of the two things that stays constant in ones life (the other being your basic body). Now I'm just so confused... does anyone have any thoughts or advice? sad
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