As some of you may have noticed I haven’t been active on DA for the past couple months or so. In case anyone’s been wondering why, I’ve decided to take some time off to really learn how to draw well. I’m tired of just whipping out one or two drawings a week, telling myself “I’m getting better with each one…if I just keep up drawing regularly I’ll eventually become really good.” I want to become a really great artist. I want to be at the same level as masters like Frank Frazetta or Dave Sim, and while I know I’ll never be quite that good I still want to strive to get there. “Reach for the stars and you might get the moon,” as they say. If I want to become that good at drawing than I need to be actually learning how to draw instead of just refining my current style through trial and error.

I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad approach to drawing. It does indeed work for some artists, Jhonen Vasquez being one of the better examples. His style is reminiscent of the doodles school kids do in their notebooks during class (that’s actually how JTHM started out.) But while most kids eventually stop drawing little robots and monsters between the margins of their schoolbooks, Vasquez kept it up and eventually turned it into a career. While the artwork looked incredibly crude in JTHM it gradually evolved throughout Squee. By “I Feel Sick” and “Fillerbunny #3” Vasquez was producing some great art, which still had that great childlike feel to it since he never really learned how to draw.

However, that’s not the route I want to take. I want to have something that I know I’m great at. It doesn’t even matter if I’m recognized for it, I just want know that I’m a great artist. It’d feel fantastic to know that I have something I can do better than other people, since I feel inferior in every other way. I’ve always been rather pessimistic about myself, I’m not sure why (except for the fact I’m a subhuman slime ball.) Maybe it started in childhood when I’d always tell myself that I wasn’t good enough at things I thought I was good at because I didn’t want to become egotistical. Or maybe it was the fact I had some mental issues and was bullied often, I don’t know. But all I do know is that I need to have something I’m great at and art’s what I’ve chosen, since I’ve always enjoyed drawing.

You don’t become a great artist by just trying your best on one picture after the other while experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. That’s part of it for sure, but if you want to be great you need to put more into it. You need to work your ass off studying anatomy, perspective, shading, composition, movement, expressions, and realism until you’ve mastered each one completely. That’s why I haven’t updated in a while, I’ve been learning how to draw real things, not cartoons. I’m nowhere near good enough to post something new yet and I probably won’t be for a while. I’m still going to do the odd drawing to post every now and then when I think I’ve made some real progress and I can want to show it off. But I’m not going to be putting stuff up regularly again until I can look at my art the same way I look at something by Wally Wood, Jack Davis or Graham Ingels. When I look at a comic by Jhonen Vasquez or Chester Brown I go “wow, that’s really cool.” When I look at something by one of the EC artists I go “they’re not human, they can’t be human, their gods, GODS!” (And then I promptly start praying for the Lord to forgive my blasphemy.) Before I start doing comic books or art that I plan to regularly upload I want to get the level where I’m blaspheming while looking at my own art, or I’m at least as close to it as I can be.