![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Five random questions asked by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistressrenet.
1. What's the first great art experience you remember-- like 'holy cow, this is fun'?
Um, er. Hard to say, since I've been drawing as long as I can remember. There was a still life that included a glass bottle in a highschool art class, which was hell to draw, but when I finsihed it ... it looked like a glass bottle. That was pretty damn neat. And the times when I'm in a life drawing class and drop into the zone where almost everything that comes out onto the paper just feels /right/ are pretty much what makes it worth it. This picture was produced during one such session. WARNING NEKKID BOY BITS FRONT AND CENTER!
2. What's your favorite medium to work in?
Depends - if I'm at a big easel, then something like charcoal or Conte crayon where I can get really messy - it's not going right unless your hands are filthy. :) At a smaller canvas, plain old pencil, because I like laying in the shading. I don't do near enough of that. If I could find someone to do my inking and toning, I could just do elaborate pencils for my manga stuff, and it'd probably be better all around, but haven't found anyone to do that yet.
3. What was the last great book you read?
I just finished Malcolm Gladwell's Blink at lunch today - it's about snap decisions made within a few seconds, and why they're very often correct, with inquiries into how we do it, why we do it, and what happens to make it go wrong. That doesn't sound very good, does it? It's fascinating. It's pop psychology (in the good sense, of putting scientific research into a form the average layperson can understand) rather than self-help. Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point, which examines fands in the light of epidemiological theory, and is also fascinating.
I also recently finished Timothy Taylor's The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death. He's an archaeologist who wrote The Prehistory of Sex a few years back, which is a wonderful book about human sexual evolution and biology. This current one looks at, obviously, death and how different cultures treat it, the similarities and differences. He also goes deep into the cultural and psychological potential reasons behind the bog bodies foudn all over Europe, and into the Viking chieftain's funeral ritual reported by the Arab traveler ibn ... er, I've forgotten his name, but it wasn't ibn Battuta, but another medieval Arab who left a written record of his travels. (ibn Falud?) Anyway, if you've seen The 13th Warrior or read the Crichton book it was base don, you're familiar with the ritual, because Crichton lifted it wholesale.
4. What's harder, fanart or original stuff? Why?
They both have their own difficulties. With fanart, you need to try to conform the figure itself, and the pose and setting to something that fits the character it's based on. With original stuff, you have to come up with all of that yourself - and to make an effective image, you have to know more about the character/scene than you put into it. It's just like writing, in that respect - you want the viewer to get the feeling that there's more to the story than jsut this, that it has an independent existence.
An interesting thing about fanart is that I always fall a little in love with whatever character I'm drawing. If I'm commissioned to do someone I don't give a damn about either way, I'll end up with a partiality to whoever it is during and after the picture. :)
5. How do you think Death Note will end? (Remember I haven't read the 59 spoilers yet, kthks.)
Erg. I really don't know how the /story/ will end. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the /manga/ will end suddenly, with the publisher deciding that its popularity has dropped enough tha it'd make more financial sense to put another serial in its place, and the story will be rushed and wrapped up in just a few episodes, leaving all of us fans unsatisfied and resorting to fanfic and doujinshi to try to console ourselves. :)
And I'm not going to make the same offer in return because I R LAME.
mistressrenet.1. What's the first great art experience you remember-- like 'holy cow, this is fun'?
Um, er. Hard to say, since I've been drawing as long as I can remember. There was a still life that included a glass bottle in a highschool art class, which was hell to draw, but when I finsihed it ... it looked like a glass bottle. That was pretty damn neat. And the times when I'm in a life drawing class and drop into the zone where almost everything that comes out onto the paper just feels /right/ are pretty much what makes it worth it. This picture was produced during one such session. WARNING NEKKID BOY BITS FRONT AND CENTER!
2. What's your favorite medium to work in?
Depends - if I'm at a big easel, then something like charcoal or Conte crayon where I can get really messy - it's not going right unless your hands are filthy. :) At a smaller canvas, plain old pencil, because I like laying in the shading. I don't do near enough of that. If I could find someone to do my inking and toning, I could just do elaborate pencils for my manga stuff, and it'd probably be better all around, but haven't found anyone to do that yet.
3. What was the last great book you read?
I just finished Malcolm Gladwell's Blink at lunch today - it's about snap decisions made within a few seconds, and why they're very often correct, with inquiries into how we do it, why we do it, and what happens to make it go wrong. That doesn't sound very good, does it? It's fascinating. It's pop psychology (in the good sense, of putting scientific research into a form the average layperson can understand) rather than self-help. Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point, which examines fands in the light of epidemiological theory, and is also fascinating.
I also recently finished Timothy Taylor's The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death. He's an archaeologist who wrote The Prehistory of Sex a few years back, which is a wonderful book about human sexual evolution and biology. This current one looks at, obviously, death and how different cultures treat it, the similarities and differences. He also goes deep into the cultural and psychological potential reasons behind the bog bodies foudn all over Europe, and into the Viking chieftain's funeral ritual reported by the Arab traveler ibn ... er, I've forgotten his name, but it wasn't ibn Battuta, but another medieval Arab who left a written record of his travels. (ibn Falud?) Anyway, if you've seen The 13th Warrior or read the Crichton book it was base don, you're familiar with the ritual, because Crichton lifted it wholesale.
4. What's harder, fanart or original stuff? Why?
They both have their own difficulties. With fanart, you need to try to conform the figure itself, and the pose and setting to something that fits the character it's based on. With original stuff, you have to come up with all of that yourself - and to make an effective image, you have to know more about the character/scene than you put into it. It's just like writing, in that respect - you want the viewer to get the feeling that there's more to the story than jsut this, that it has an independent existence.
An interesting thing about fanart is that I always fall a little in love with whatever character I'm drawing. If I'm commissioned to do someone I don't give a damn about either way, I'll end up with a partiality to whoever it is during and after the picture. :)
5. How do you think Death Note will end? (Remember I haven't read the 59 spoilers yet, kthks.)
Erg. I really don't know how the /story/ will end. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the /manga/ will end suddenly, with the publisher deciding that its popularity has dropped enough tha it'd make more financial sense to put another serial in its place, and the story will be rushed and wrapped up in just a few episodes, leaving all of us fans unsatisfied and resorting to fanfic and doujinshi to try to console ourselves. :)
And I'm not going to make the same offer in return because I R LAME.