💋💫Crimson Lips 💫💋
A Lady never leaves a mark.
Unless she wants to ~
Edit: I found the original comment I had along with this piece!!! So under the cut it goes. Enjoy the reding, if you dare.
This piece is fanart for Monochromatic's "Crimson Lips"
I have a lot to say about this piece. Firstly, I have a hard time picking favourites most of the time. I don't have a favourite food. I don't have a favourite color. I don't have a favourite music genre. I don't have a football team. I do have a favourite number! I don't have a favourite author. But I believe that last part has been surely rectified by now. I guess I can say that I've dedicated so luch time to doing fanart for this one author, that they can, indeed, be considered my favourite author. Then we are taken to this piece. One more fanart. Of an ABSURDLY amazing story. It might be the bias that it is from my favourite author, and someone I have the honor to call friend even. (Mono, btw is the author of the books for my two AMVs, so I'm quite the fan) But really, it's an amazingly written story I urge you to read. Reminder that the fic is rated teen, but it deals with sensitive topics.
Now onto the piece: This piece took an ABSURD amount of time. Like. I think it officially topples any of my previous records. But I don't know exacly how long it took. If it were up to me (and it is), I'd say it took like, maybe 6 hours? (It didn't, it was a lot more) I really wonder what sort of trance this piece had over me. I finished it in about 5 days-ish? I made the rough thumbnail on day one; 40% of the frame on day two; finished the frame, sketched the characters and blocked in all of them in day three; Rendered 75% of the characters day four; Finished rendering and other details on the morning of day 5. Today! That might seem reasonable enough. But here's the thing. I worked day 3 and 4 all day solely on this piece. From 8am to 11pm. ALL DAY. AND I DIDNT NOTICE I SPENT ALL DAY WORKING ON THIS ONE PIECE. I didn't even open another drawing's file. If you're familiar with csp's time-lapse feature, know that a two character portrait usually amounts to a 2 minute video. A piece that I'd usually spend 4 hours on, amounts to 2 minutes. This piece has a ten minute time-lapse. So I'd wager that I spent… at least 20 hours on this piece. Which feels so wrong. It's a beautiful piece sure. I love it immensely. But it feels wrong. It doesn't feel like it would need that much time to be completed? It doesn't have a conplex background, it doesn't have challenging Lighting, the characters don't interact directly, there isn't so.e frame perspective going on. So I don't know what made this piece take this long.
Let's gather what could've made this such a long piece.
I didn't rush A SINGLE PART OF THIS PIECE. Which contributes to why It took so long. I ALWAYS rush some part of a piece. Not necessarily in big ways, but maybe a rushed element. In this piece, the only thing I settled for was the border/frame/background. And even then, I say "settled" for because I did put a lot of care in it, but it was okay with it not being perfect.
I'm not THAT used to drawing and consequently painting humans. Or humanoid creatures. The reason why I draw more antro than human is because I'm SO terribly horrible with faces. Now, you don't see all the thrown away sketches from years past. I think a lot of that stemed from me not knowing how I wanted to go about stylizing them. When I started drawing pony, I had a very small pool of inspirations, and I did a shit ton of tracing (much before I ever started posting on the internet), so I didn't have much - or any at all -pressure to find a style. Now it's different. I'm very proud of my art. I've convinced myself that I don't have time for self doubt. This is the one and only hobby I'll not ever allow myself to drop. I've dropped knitting, soap carving, reading, swimming (which I couldn't to much in the first place), but art has been the one consistent hobby I've had. My self doubt will have the rip my heart away before it gets rid of my love for my own art. But then humans. I love my art, but then again, I can dislike my work still. And because my horizons are so much broader than they were when I started, I have so many options… too many options. Humans are difficult to draw because they are so fundamentaly different from all the animals I've drawn. They are us. Humans, there is so much more nuance that you have to capture to make them feel real. It's a hard balance to achieve. There are so so so many ways to stylized humans, from more goofy, to more simple and concise, to graphic to hyper realistic (aka barely any stylization). And again, I' bad at picking favourites. So then come furries, anthros. The nice middle ground of humanoid, but still familiar with the animal bits. And with anthro, you can choose how humanoid they'll be, so they were a good way to ease myself into drawing humans! And it worked. But I fear it might've worked too fast. Or at least too pointedly. Too concentrated in this one piece.
It feels like someone else drew this piece.
I think the best way to analyse your art looking for ways to improve it is by imagining you didn't draw it. It's easier to pick out the weaknesses of something you don't have emotional connection with. After I'm done with analyzing, I can switch back to myself and love a piece for what it is. Again, I need to be proud of my art.
But this piece is almost foreign in quality.
It's supposed to be heavily inspired by the art nouveau movement. I think that is pretty clear, so naturally, it's a far reach from my usual style. I don't thing that the realism is the characters' proportions is a staple of that style, more so the rendering, shape language and background style are what clue you into that style. So I could've done any stylization for the characters and it's work. At least it would've been good enough for me. But then again. Humans are a pain to draw. And making them anywhere other than human would destroy the intent of the original text, so that wanst an option. So I started drawing. I honetsly don't remember most of my sketching process nor decisions. Only by looking at the time-lapse that I see what decisions I took. Again. Foreign. I think the only piece of human art I have similar in style tot his one is those humans portraits I drew of my OCs, Beau and Bishop. But even then, this feels… different. Not to count that the rendering technique is something I, again, have never done before! This was mostly a combination of hard pencils smoothened out my blender brushes. I usually just bland with the painting brushes themselves, so that was a new technique for me. Again foreign.
In conclusion. I don't know if it's a good thing that this piece feels that foreign. But I know I drew this and that I'm proud and completely in love with it, and I hope you all are too 💖