A mix of things. It started as huge sad vent art, and turned into an expression of my own feelings surrounding my love and hate of attention, as well as being very experimental.
Biiig ramble under the cut as well as a flipped ver of the NOIꓕNƎꓕꓕⱯ side.
I found myself crying and talking to my dad because of how much I realized I wanted attention. Not from them, necessarily, my parents give me a good amount of attention. Just from the world around me. I happily eat up any praise or compliments from anyone else. Every reaction on a discord message, every time someone likes or reblogs a post, any time someone pays any ounce of positive attention to me,
And every time I feel horrid about being ignored, every time I get 2 whole notes on what I consider one of the best creations I've ever made (one of them being mine), every time I attempt to make a joke no one gets.
All of it reminds me how much I crave attention, people looking at me and my work, people saying things about me. This is normal, humans generally crave such attention. Especially ones my age. But it still makes me feel so unusual.
But on the flip side, attention is scary. It can be harmful even. The way people may pay attention to each of your little flaws, people will pay attention to a sin you committed years ago, people will pay attention to every word you misspeak. You will be watched. And the things you'll do for any scrap of attention may be horrid as well.
I have mixed feelings on attention.
I crave perception, but I hate being perceived. I want you to watch me, I hate being watched. I want to be complimented and praised and laughed with, but I feel horribly guilty even saying a joke into a public conversation. I feel guilty giving my friends attention because I feel like I'm asking for attention back, and they might feel obligated to give it. I'm scared of attention, I want attention. I wish I didn't want it so much, because then I'd be happy with what I had. But oh well. I'll get what I want someday. I just have to be careful not to fall too far.
Onto the symbolism in the drawings themselves. I'll admit I probably added things I didn't fully understand were my own symbolism, or that I added by accident (Allow me to beg for attention by asking you guys to look for meaning in my art).
The Attention Creature (who i'm nicknaming Toby or Theo. I like both) didn't have a lot of thought put into it. The stained glass means nothing more to me than I thought it looked pretty on Toby. I like stained glass windows. That's honestly part of the experimental part, but I'll get into that. I knew how I wanted him to look in my head, and just went with the flow. The arms were initially supposed to be entirely opaque, but I didn't wanna cover up my good Levi drawing, and just decided to make it slightly transparent. And then decided that was a metaphor for Attention's see-through embrace. Or sonething.
The whispy tail doesn't mean anything to me. I just needed to fill space. Same with the water, I just wanted to do more experimental things. Such as the border! Sooooo proud of it and the stained glass. I made 15 different patters for 16 different colors of stained glass to use for the border. It turned out better than I expected!
I had a lot of fun rendering the gold and gems. Here's some closeups without the filters so you can see!
I worked very hard on these.
And lastly, the non flipped NOIꓕNƎꓕꓕⱯ image.
Perhaps it's a bit edgy, but Its messiness felt good to me.
