iippo's Lab

2012-03-05 [windowframe]: This divide between srs art and illustrative arts is really confusing me at the moment. Are we allowed to be both? Should I remove my old anime-style & fantasy illustrations from my DA art gallery, or move them to a separate account because they some how drag the fine-art stuff down? I mean, DA is more for illustrative art anyways. And sometimes I feel 'eh, this doesn't seem very professional, perhaps I should have separate galleries' and then I think 'but I'm NOT very professional, and the only thing I've ever consistently been is eclectic. So.. why the hell can't my gallery show that?" Especially since my ultimate goal in life is to be a polymath. <_< But then I was thinking "weeeell, do you see any other modern/contemporary artists doing this? THey have their formal body of work, and 'hey, here's a fantasy doodle Emin did!' and no, you don't. <_< Why not? Is their creativity really that restricted that they can now only think in fine art terms? Has art school bashed all other forms of creativity out of them?

2012-03-05 [iippo]: Yeah, isn't it awful? :/ It's almost like... "if it's a picture of anything done with any kind of skill, it's not cool enough to be art." But it's really weird because Fine Art, Illustration and Design are usually in the same building in art school, often you share lectures and what not, and everyone and their uncle these days are saying how awesome and important crossover between disciplines is (when I did the Impressionism evening gig with the music students everyone was like "yeah assum!" - but no one came from the art building over to the music building when it was actually on, except the artists involved -_-;;; ) - but then, you shouldn't do what the other ones are doing oh no. Especially "stepping down" from Fine Art to illustration is like a taboo. :/

The fact that a lot of artists are using craft techniques is a good step in the right direction. But heaven forbid if anyone in Car Design wanted to use oil paints or anything but 3D programmes or the clay stuff.

BAS will probably struggle with this quite a bit, people putting us into a box and thinking "oh no, not me..."

2012-03-05 [Aradon Templar]: I think I've stumbled across a few dA galleries that had a variety of art styles, as well as levels of seriousness. They aren't common, but I'll keep an eye out for them in the future.

I wonder if the divide is possibly related to art that is intellectually deep vs. emotionally deep. A lot of illustrative art, to me, captures some feelings, while serious art is a lot more intellectually intensive and can lead to mental discoveries instead. In other words, the purpose of illustrative art is to make you feel something, while the purpose of serious art is to make you think something (or realize something). I'm not sure if this is just my approach to art or something more widespread, though. If it is, does this suggest that it's simply rarer to see an artist capable of both methods of art? Perhaps srs artists forego emotional art to stay more focused on intellectual art. (As a disclaimer, I'm not trying to suggest that intellectual art can't elicit emotions. I would say that when they do deal with emotions, it's on a more intellectual scale than visceral scale. For instance, intellectual art that evokes certain emotions could do so with the intent to cause you to make a connection between that emotion and something in the picture.)

2012-03-06 [iippo]: Humm, I don't think the divide goes at intellect-vs-emotion. I'd say those are on one side - the side of Fine Art (since art throughout ages has been used to inspire for faith and goodness, to praise God or King, the beauty of art has had the power to move the viewer/listener/reader to tears or something, etc...), and on the other side of the divide are the kinds of art that have no such noble... anything. There definitely is a feeling of superiority in Fine Art against the "useful arts". Especially illustration, since its purpose is just to illustrate something else (a text/song/person), so the image is servant to that other thing. Design is servant to function and marketing so that's definitely "dirty" in comparison, and craft - well, they just make stuff to be used in everyday life so clearly they are the lowest of all -_-

Perhaps it's a time thing. In art you supposedly make something timeless and lasting, but design, illustration and craft are all going to get outdated or old or broken, need to be replaced.

Obviously all these divides are outdated too since contemporary art is no different - but the thinking is stuck.

I think it's incredibly fascinating though how there is very little difference between illustration - especially the most talented dA kind - and history painting, religious painting etc... of the old masters. Why is an illustration of a Greek myth fine art when it's done by someone famous long time ago on a canvas, but the same topic done nowadays on Photoshop is not fine art?

2012-03-06 [Aradon Templar]: Eh, I don't think I'm seeing the exact distinction you guys are making then about illustrative art. To pull an example I like from Silvie's gallery, would you consider this to be fine art or illustrative art? http://slayer-igraine.deviantart.com/gallery/35625845#/dy1wu6

2012-03-07 [iippo]: I think your stitching manages to hide the illustration-ness because it's "abstract" and because of the medium. If you were to make graphs of "this is what the Iliad would look like if every letter was replaced by this colour" in Photoshop then everyone would go "waitaminute! This is information graphics! I see what you did there!" It's a baffling mix where things are judged kind of on a gut feeling based on some really intricate invisible rules -_- So you develop this... almost shame about making the wrong kind of thing.

Basically it feels like making any kind of a "pretty picture" is shunned. Trying to make anything perfect is bad. And pretty much the only acceptable way of having those kind of images is if it's somehow subversive and oh so clever and might possibly upset stuffy people :/

And if you are not a Renaissance master, thou shalt not draw fantasy images. -_-

2012-04-15 [iippo]: Note to self. Today's lesson learnt: on off-white paper, after initial drawing, treat entire surface into three sections: light, shadow and neutral. On light, rub chalk everywhere on it (no matter what colour the light itself will be - this will also be an awesome idea if wanting really brilliant luminous colours). On shadow, rub a light layer of coal (again, even if the shadow itself shall be a different colour than black) - the black underneath will make an astonishing feel and look to the shadow, and helps understand "light with black" and "black as queen of the colours" stuff. Neutral leave untouched and work the colour right on top of it. Sometimes, if you want the colour of the paper, it is a good idea to colour the paper with a pencil the same colour as the paper itself very lightly, I don't know how but it just looks better than the untouched paper. Sometimes, not as a rule. The black and the white as a rule, though, save yourself alot of trouble.

(Painting with coloured pencils. Rules of painting apply: primer, thin, thick. For thick touches at the end, lick the end of the pencil, though effectiveness will depend on the quality of pencil.)

2012-04-16 [iippo]: But there aren't any ;_;
But while I have you, which episode of Sherlock had the fake painting that he pointed to a star and said "hah! that star wasn't there at the time of the painting of this painting!" - or rather, what painting was he talking about? This is relevant to my interests.

2012-04-16 [iippo]: Oooh wait, I remember now, it wasn't a copy of a real one, but a supposedly new find. Is less relevant nao.

2012-05-22 [iippo]: You need one too, then.

2012-05-22 [Viking]: You could make Silvie's Sweatshop =)

2012-06-25 [iippo]: b) With both the sciences and the other rigorous academic subjects (like philo/lings) the problem that I still see is this burrowing. Everyone knows their own thing in great depth, at the exclusion of everything else, they've drilled a deep and narrow hole of expertise. And I think it's largely the reason why they would ignore the criticism/argument that an artist would present with their work because it's not in the right kind of format according to their standards. They cant read it, it's a foreign language to them.

But it is an old argument, you're right about that, because it is a modernity thing. A lot of that altermodern thinking (for me) is about going back a bit, since pomo doesn't get us any further, we've come to a deadend.

2012-08-16 [iippo]: We may have to wait until the art historians and theorists of the future come along and tell us how pomo and altermo are different. We just have to make them different :P

2012-08-16 [iippo]: And make sure other people don't call it pomo >_>