Love your art, was drawn in by a slug cat zeroranger piece you made a while back and have stayed ever since :] (although I've still yet to finish rain world, haha)
I was mostly wondering if you have any specific artists/games/things (other than rain world and zeroranger) that inspired your art style or if it was more the result of self-expression and continuous experimentation?
try 2 because chrome crashed and deleted this entire thing on me the last time I wrote it all out (whoops!) Forgive me for the essay that I'm about to drop on you because this is a VERY fun topic hahaha!! There's bucketloads of artists and inspirations I've had over the years so bear with me…
I first started drawing with my dad as my inspiration. He was a very good traditional artist before he stopped doing art, and so I wanted to learn how to draw, too. Like all kids in the late 2000s, I did not have access to a computer on a regular basis, so most of my artwork was done traditionally. I LOOOVED HTTYD when it released, and so dragons became a big big big thing I drew. I remember drawing toothless on the top of my plastic drawers inside my closet out of crayon. In particular, using the cerulean crayola (my beloved color and prized treasure) to color in the background of the sky. But of course, this era was also the crazy late 2000s early 2010's warrior cats MAPs and furry art and xenofiction era. My art style was influenced HEAVILY by the likes of finchwing, bluekyokitty, splashkittyartist, banithekitty, akreon, kique7, mizu-no-akira, deercliff, rabid-lycan, etc. However, one artist stuck out in particular to me during this time ! I LOVED ArualMeow's artwork soo much way back when… to the point that to this day, I still draw characters with lines above their noses because I loved how she did it when I was a kid. It's probably the oldest inspiration that's stuck with me :D
Most of the work I did from 2013/2014 was just me as a kid fiddling around figuring how art worked, and is also lost to the sands of time... In 2015/16 is when I really started to get into artwork as more of a serious thing. At this time we had one single dingy laptop to share between all of us, so I really didn't use it all too often and did primarily traditional art. During this time, I was into everything every other 2015 era tumblr user was into- Undertale, AOT, TOP, Hetalia, FNAF, Hamilton… the works. I was also very into the Instagram furry rings during this time. It's a bit difficult to remember names considering its been ah.. 10 years now LOL, but I do remember siviosanei, itsprobablymars, soyyemilk, gekkozilla, sjin, and a couple of others being very big inspirations for me during this time ! Alongside some friends who I met whos art styles were very influential at the time- peluchecarne, babeygansta, and graveyardterror, just to name a few :D
Then… come 2018… everything Changed. I got into the My Hero Academia fandom and stopped drawing much for favor of chatting with cool new people and reading fanfiction. And also I had lost my tablet pen in a move and was stuck doing traditional artwork for a hot minute. But, for whatever reason, not having access to ditial artwork sparked my brain and made my art style make MASSIVE leaps. I was fortunate enough that some family was willing to purchase me a new tablet pen (which was for a discontinued model and frankly egregious in price) and I was able to get back into the swing of things. Then. Another amazing thing happened. I uncovered Art Fight !!!!! Suddenly I was being beamed by all the AMAZING artists ever ! Then. another amazing thing happened. My father gifted me Ori and the Blind Forest. 14 year old me was absolutely FLOORED. ASTONISHED. I loooved Moon Studio's artwork and style I knew immediately that I had to steal it. This started my painting style that I still use to this day- painting primarily on one layer ! (However for whatever reason in 2018 I didn't have the hang of painting characters on one layer yet. For some god forsaken reason instead I would split up every single aspect of a character into its own layer, down to pawpads and claws and fingers, and apply a shading/lighting layer to each. individual. body. part. no idea why i thought that was the best route)
2019 followed the same trends as 2018. Ori still being an inspiration, and getting into roleplay and such ! During this time I met a good many friends and was inspired by their art, too… mangopaws, peachbeep, cranberrycore… SO MUCH super cool art :D
Then came 2020. tricky, tricky 2020. and 2021! I fell a bit out of roleplay in these years and rediscovered HTTYD. I LOOOOVED IT!!!!!!!! I got a lot more comfortable with my artstyle and started to get into painting backgrounds over static fullbodies/headshots that I had been doing over the past 3 or so years. I finally quit doing that horrendous split-up-body-part method I had been sticking with since 2018 and started getting into painting big sweeping nature scenes. And dragons, of course… The dragons and cloud scenes I wanted to draw really influenced the changes in my artstyle. These two years really solidified my art style and were also the years I finally changed my name to bewilderbark ! It's been 4 years now…
Late 2021/2022 is when I uncovered Rain World again. I drew primarily RW during this time! The familiar names began to enter my inspiration circle- Joar, miimows, JamesBBarrow, kelocitta, mehri, darthzz, turtle toad, etc… In late 2022 is when I really began to get into ZeroRanger, and that's when eebrozgi and Tregalia and co entered the fray! Suddenly everything started turning out green and orange…. 2022 I also began to work, so my art really slowed down, and my painted big pieces are really what I posted most of. I don't have tooo much to say about the later years of artwork, because these trends and changes in art are all posted on my tumblr after this point in time !
But of course, with work and life I fell a bit out of both Rain World and ZR and the works. While I'm not as active in making fanart for them, or for any fandom for that matter nowadays, I've been turning my eyes back to other artists and their works nowadays as my own style continues to develop! I'm getting into more "generic" furry artwork, drawing my own personal pieces, exploring OCs and story writing as my own thing instead of writing fanfiction or creating as much fanart anymore. Artists like copepods, ohmanit, sabanahsmiles, HOWL OUT/Isananika, NAHYON, mochiri, storiel, plive, fivel, etc. art my major inspirations today ! Alongside dozens of friends, too many to list, that all keep me drawing and experimenting! I am very happy with the direction my art has taken over the years, and how it looks today :D
But all of this aside, there is one (1) artist that really takes the cake for inspiration and keeping me drawing. My very old friend Rosepuff/Rosepuff-Art, who unfortunately does not post much nowadays. We met all the way back in 2013, me drawing in MS Paint, and her drawing in Gimp, and we decided to make a Warrior Cats comic that unfortunately did not reach completion. Over the years she kept me drawing and chasing after every improvement in her own style. To this day I still look up to her amazing works and suggest people peek at her art !!! I definitely can cite her as the reason I'm still drawing to this day :)
Thank you for the kind words and ask !!! Sorry for the essay again, hahaha
