My art - pretty self explanatory, you can find my drawings here
One of my fun posts - some good things I have made
Welcome to my twisted mind - some not good things I have made
Series I made/got going on
Lucas needs a hand - where a man keeps losing the same arm
Stressed demons series - children giving demons a headache
Promised Sims - TPN but it’s in the sims 2 and terrible
Lewis regrets everything - demons giving each other a headache
I think it's because I see videogames as immersive experiences (every time I play one, I try to immerse myself in the world and role I'm playing, if I'm a leader, a hero, just some guy, etc.) and art, and "speedrunning" to me is the same as playing a movie too fast. Yes, there's a technical challenge on it all but to me there's little of interest.
It's interesting that pointed ears were not mentioned in the Lord of the Rings (and when Tolkien mentioned it in hobbits, he was probably thinking of a more mundane description), but they then became a feature of elves in fiction, then perhaps THE main feature to the point that they are. How should I say it. Fetishized (or so I've heard)
What is strange to me is that pointy ears do seem to be a very common motif to say "this being is magical/non human" but I have no idea where they came from.
While I cannot find direct originator of the idea of pointy ears, it is definitely something that was feature of magical beings in vintage illustrations and storybooks that predate Tolkien and were produced around the same time as his own works, so it is possible that then-contemporary children's fantasy art cross-pollinated with and influenced following epic fantasy.
Idea of strange ears might be hold-over from earlier folkloric traditions that signified supernatural aspects of inhuman beings by giving them some exaggerated body parts; Scottish bean-nighe is recorded in some parts to have giant breasts, and so is Latvian Lauma; various household spirits, from Scottish Maggy Moulach, a female variant of brownie, to Slavic domovoi are portrayed as being very hirsute; Three Spinners, a popular folkloric fairy tale through Europe, features three magical crones distinguished by grotesquely big foot, thumb and lips.
It is interesting to me to note that most examples of pointy ears I can find in illustrations follow from creatures that are more impish, semi-animalistic, or fitting ''little people'' archetype than later Tolkinean elf. From what I have read, in time of Tolkien's youth word ''elf'' was more closely applied to aesthetic we are familiar with Santa Claus elves, and dwarf was more akin to garden gnome; I cannot support myself with direct sources, but I think I recall reading that Tolkien was frustrated by these being most popular portrayals of elves and dwarves, and sought to restore their older dignity.
Folklore and folkloric writings that portray more ''statuesque'' and ''inhumanly beautiful'' type of elves and fairies do exist, and their influence on Tolkien in my opinion is palpable, in how their descriptions hint at some physical difference between fey folk and humans, but are more subtle than today's portrayals. Common descriptors include being taller and more idealized looking compared to mundane humans, having Snow White-esque appearance of fair skin, black hair and red lips, or bright golden hair, wearing all white or all gold, and seemingly shining eyes. This is for example how Howard Pyle (1853-1911) describes Lady of the Lake in his books The Story of Champions of the Round Table and The Story of The King Arthur:
Now whiles the hermit was about this business the door opened of sudden and there came into that place a very strange lady clad all in green and bedight around the arms with armlets of emeralds and opal stones inset into gold. And her hair, which was very soft, was entirely black and was tied about with a cord of crimson ribbon. And the hermit beheld that her face was like to ivory for whiteness and that her eyes were bright, like unto jewels set into ivory, wherefore he knew that she was no ordinary mortal.
All this Queen Helen beheld; and she likewise beheld that the lady was of a very extraordinary appearance, being clad altogether in green that glistered and shone with a wonderful brightness. And she beheld that around the neck of the lady was a necklace of gold, inset with opal stones and emeralds; and she perceived that the lady's face was like ivory--very white and clear--and that her eyes, which were very bright, shone like jewels set into ivory. And she saw that the lady was very wonderfully beautiful, so that the beholder, looking upon her, felt a manner of fear--for that lady was Fay.
Below are some examples of the illustrations, that I will put under read more so that they don't bloat random people's dash:
Illustration of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, from Robin Goodfellow: His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests (1629)
Engraving by Thomas Corlidge (1700-1766), supposedly a portrayal of a satyr on Florentine cornelian
Illustration of goblin by John Dickson Batten (1860-1932) in English Fairy Tales (1918) of Flora Annie Steel (1847-1929)
Illustration of elves by Richard Doyle (1824-1883) in In Fairyland: A Series of Pictures from the Elf World (1870) by William Allingham (1824-1889). Note how ears aren't necessarily pointed but more exaggerated.
Sorry for hijacking your post! I hope I haven't intruded too much.
No, don't be sorry, thank YOU so much for giving me this info! I was tracking down the idea too by myself and I arrived at some of the same information, but I had trouble articulating it. Thank you, I did learn a lot today!
I'm SO excited to finally share these pieces I created for D&D's Ravenloft: The Horrors Within.
This project was such a huge honor to work on. I remember as a kid looking through the players manuals & doing little studies of the artwork in there, so this feels a bit full-circle.
You can get a peek at higher-res versions of them on my insta!
”I have this artistic idea but not the skills to achieve it to the standard I want.”
congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!
Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?
Don’t let the fear of it not being perfect on the first try stop you from being Weird About It!
Please view Hokusai's gradual working towards The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, over a period of 39 years.
An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.
A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.
This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.
And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!
Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.
And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.
It's all there; Mt Fuji, the ocean, the wave. The boats are gone, but replaced with birds, flying with the wave instead of fighting against it. It's not as famous as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but that's not what motifs are for -- each successive work does not have to surpass the previous in terms of success, especially in terms of external success. They're there for you to keep playing with, keep remixing and re-experiencing, for as long as you think you have something to say.
During a high speed car chase pursuit, the FOX 11 Los Angeles helicopter had an unexpected moment when they spotted a rooster and a chicken casually walking down the sidewalk right in the middle of the pursuit.
fear not: you can also “attack” your friends even outside of art fight, so if you miss the chance to before august 2nd you can always get them after with no repercussions. No crime will be committed either way and its actually fine to draw art for others at any other time of the year
Re: That post I reblogged about being a hater, some of the notes in that were some variation of "It's hard not to feel insulted when you see someone say the thing you love sucks because it implies you have bad taste" and like. idk. I just can't relate the idea of only being able to maintain confidence in your own good taste and the quality of the art you enjoy in an environment where the lack of negative opinions on it allows you to pretend it's universally liked.
Idk. I think this becomes a non-issue if you have the perspective that the best art is never art that appeals (or even seeks to appeal) to everybody. Good art is particular, has priorities, has a specific perspective. Art that does interesting things will never be universally liked because every interesting thing a piece of art does will inevitably alienate a chunk of the audience. There being someone out there who thinks the thing you love sucks is just an inevitable result of the thing you love having things that appeal to a particular niche at the cost of alienating others, and if it didn't do anything that alienates anyone it probably wouldn't be a very interesting or worthwhile piece of art.
So like. Of course there are people who think my favorite albums suck. They are my favorite albums *because* they're not for everybody, and if they were for everybody they would probably be very boring to me. Same with my favorite movies, and my favorite books, and my favorite TV shows, and my favorite videogames. Encountering people who think the things you love suck is an inevitable result of developing any kind of discerning, particular taste, and I find it to be kind of a validating experience: If nobody thinks the things you love suck ass, you probably have extremely boring tastes.
Idk I learned this lesson at like. 12 or 13 years old because I was a huge fan of power metal and even the small group of like 2-3 metalhead friends I had at school thought power metal was stupid and cheesy and not heavy enough. It didn't take me long to get that the things I loved were things that not everyone was going to like or understand, and that I simply didn't need the people around me to love the same things as me for me to be confident in my taste.
There's an attitude I've been seeing more and more of where having any kind of artistic opinion that isn't praise is seen as some kind of faux pas designed to yuck people's yum or whatever, and while I understand the kneejerk response behind it I do have to wonder like. How sustainable do you think it is to foster an environment where even the most casual criticism is met with hoards of defensive with Whoa Mama Mia Cunt Let People Enjoy Things style comments
OK so yes feedback is necessary specifically in art but I have seen people just be full on mean or unnecessarily harsh. There's creative criticism and then there's just being a dick for the sake of it.
Okay. And I'm saying people are allowed to, when they want to, on their blogs, be a dick about things for the sake of it if they feel like doing it. I'm wildly skeptical of the idea that constructive critique is the only kind of feedback one is "allowed" to make in their own siloed corner of the internet, or that insistence on this will somehow create a healthier space for expressing opinions.
Once again. I can understand the kneejerk impulse here, I do. It sucks to imagine, say, a creator scrolling online coming across some needlessly vitriolic post about something they worked on. But anyone is allowed to go "That's dickish" and move on, or people can engage with "I think this is oversimplified blah blah" if they want to but at the end of the day it isn't some kind of crime against the hobby or a fandom or even a singular person if someone just shoots off "This sucked I wasted my night" in their own accounts.
Like. A lot of people are trending towards thinking I'm talking about the importance of constructive criticism and like, sure, I think that is probably a more interesting avenue of analyzing something's flaws, but once again if you're not like, addressing an artist or interested in doing a deep dive that doesn't mean you're Not Allowed to be flippant or quick to judge. It's kind of startling how many times I've seen someone be like, "I can't stand this album" on their blogs, untagged, had that shit shared, only for it to come across someone's feed and for them to respond with "Why? What's wrong with it? People are allowed to like it, why are you being so negative, why are you tearing people down for no reason, this isn't even real critique," as though the intention in the first place ever was or ought to have been substantive critique in the first place.
It's difficult to articulate my feelings on this, but I do increasingly feel that the insistence upon there being a correct form of disliking something that precludes the possibility of making anyone feel insecure or hurt because they like it is significantly more stultifying than an atmosphere where people can shoot off "Fuck this" and be blocked or ignored for it
Having been through art school with a BA as a result let me just stop you there.
OK sometimes you don't like a certain art style. That's fine. Doesn't mean the art is bad, it's just not to your tastes.
That doesn't give you the right nor even a reason to be a dick on the Internet because you don't like something. If you want to be a dick, do it to someone who has time and energy to give it back. Because at that point you deserve shit in return.
If someone is outright asking for constructive criticism, that still doesn't give you the chance to be a dick. It means they want help learning something they're putting time and effort into.
By all means, be a dick, just do it to people who have earned it.
I feel like you're misunderstanding the entire thrust of this conversation.
Why do I need a "right" or "reason" to post anything online? Why is it that my enjoyment of something is intrinsically justifiable, but my lack of enjoyment requires justification? And based on whose standards? If I can thoughtlessly tweet out a "This album rocks," without expecting people who hate it to demand a longform review from me to explain my enjoyment, I'm not sure I understand why I can't say "This album sucks" without having to go into the trenches about its positive qualities and negative ones. Why do I need to formulate every opinion I have in the form of an art school critique addressing nobody at all?
Why can praise be thoughtless but criticism must, at all costs, be formulated in art school constructive form in case the creator happens to see it and get their feelings hurt or a fan finds it harmful? Particularly when someone could very well have their feelings hurt by thoughtless praise of something as well! I'm not even trying to claim a more substantive form of criticism isn't more interesting or more valuable for one's interpretive abilities. I just think this notion that there is a moral obligation in all online spaces-- no matter how siloed-- to tiptoe around the potential hurt feelings of a hypothetical audience that may or may not even be courted, is at best stultifying for any real plurality of opinion and at worst enabling people whose insecurities about their own hobbies lead them to confidently dictate what people say in whatever passes for privacy in an online space nowadays.
I dunno, I've read works of brutal polemic that I've found immensely creatively engaging, thoughtful, and substantial in its knowledge of a particular form or medium. I've read works of praise I've found miserably trite. Why is the former not allowed to exist because of its dickishness? Why is the latter beyond critique itself?
A lot of people seem to be laboring under the idea that this is describing a situation where someone is literally walking up to someone and going "Your shit sucks" and walking off, but I clearly indicated in that first reblog that that's not even what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about how to talk to people who solicit criticism. I'm not even talking about how to talk to creators at all. I'm talking about this ongoing, deeply insecure assumption held by a number of people in a number of spaces where any kind of negative opinion, regardless of who said it, whether no one was tagged, whether they intended this for a massive audience or for two mutuals, is treated as a personal attack on one's identity rather than a (perhaps douchey!) articulation of one's own tastes. I personally would deeply prefer an environment where people can feel comfortable just saying whatever shit they feel like on their blogs/accounts and just getting blocked if someone's feelings are hurt over it than this constant assumption that there's a morally acceptable formatting one must adhere to for fear of reducing some hypothetical reader to tears, IN CASE they were to, by whatever means, encounter that opinion in the wild
You can be a dick, and you can expect people to listen to your opinions. You can't do both.
Constructive criticism is the art of walking that line. Good critics aren't good because of their good taste. Good critics are good because they can appropriately contextualize and dose dickish opinions so artists can build the art they want to build.
I think you, too, are misunderstanding the primary thrust of this conversation.
Why do you think someone being a dick is "expecting" someone to listen to your opinions? Why do you think that person is "expecting" any sort of audience at all? I am critiquing the inherent assumption that people who are "rude," however this is defined (and I believe it is ill-defined specifically because so much of this is conflated with whose feelings are hurt rather than the actual substance of whatever hypothetical comment is centered here), are by necessity addressing a creator or their fans, and have repeatedly emphasized in multiple places that there is a difference between approaching someone and insulting their tastes and creations versus airing an opinion in the (admittedly, increasingly decreasing) privacy of an online space.
I don't disagree with your definitions of constructive criticism or what makes a good critic, I disagree fundamentally with the notion that online users are morally obligated to be critics at all, that the standards of what constitutes criticism needs be imposed to the average user who has any kind of negativity to opine, and the double-standard of not applying such lofty standards to praise.
OP: Expressing a negative opinion in a dickish way on your own blog is not equivalent to expressing that same opinion in the same way directly to the author's face, and expecting everyone to walk on eggshells about expressing negative opinions at all times even in your own online spaces on the off chance that the author might hypothetically stumble across it and get their feelings hurt is silly an unproductive
Someone: OP you're failing to consider that tracking down an author's address and breaking into their room in the middle of and yelling "YOUR ART SUCKS AND YOU'RE A BAD PERSON FOR MAKING IT" into their ear while they're sleeping is not a nice thing to do and you can't expect them to take your criticism into account if you do that :/ Have you considered that?
