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Out of context: Reply #76380

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  • Horp15

    I've started drawing again.

    I don't know what I'm doing, except that my experience of being a commercial illustrator for around five years (largely lived out at full volume here on QBN 15 years ago) lead me down a niche little path in terms of a kind of drawing that became the only thing I truly enjoyed doing.

    But at that time it constantly vexed and troubled me that stylistically I was not very good. Not graceful, not fluid ... not aesthetically perfect.

    At this point in life I am 55-and-a-half. I've learned, finally, that it's time for my career to end, for my sake. I had a couple of tries at retiring from it, but I always ended up agreeing to go back to it; then regretting that.

    Now the world has shifted so much that (a) literally nobody anywhere would consider an old, 20th century fuck like me for the new 21st century job descriptions and (b) at no point do I *ever* read a job spec now and think "oh that's exciting I'd love to be doing that".

    In fact 100% of job specs instantly make me recoil and shudder and think "Fuck no. I'm no masochist. I do NOT want that to be part of my life 5 days a week."

    So I'll dabble in a little freelance research when I could do with a top up, and otherwise, I'm just noodling about doing what I *want* to be doing.

    I might take my HGV license test and do some long distance (Britain's version of long distance, hehehe) truck driving too.

    But I've returned to my odd, not very appealing, not very attractive drawing style, and I love it. It's not actually even that I love it, it's more that it feels like the natural motor-cerebral thing I'm supposed to do.

    I used to do it with pencil, and I started off doing it with pencil again. But there are limitations to pencil. It always looks a bit washed out. It's always just that silvery grey color. The pencil indents the paper so that with heavy working you see the earlier lines as white ghost lines. Pencil is waxy so doing colour washes over it gets muddy and crabby.

    I wanted to go back to doing it at a really large scale again. I used to have a 1metre square easel. Just now I'm dabbling up to A2 size while I iron out the cranky uncertainty and retrain myself.

    So I'm now doing these things I do in charcoal at A2, and it's kind if working. I mean... it looks shit, but that's okay. Shitness is the road we all have to take if we dream of visiting greatness some day.

    I don't know. It just feels like this is what my default activity needs to be. No commercial ambition for it. I just need to make these shapes, and get better at it, and avoid turning it into social content along with 7billion other people who do more interesting things immeasurably better.

    I just need to do this, and have no objective but to master it quietly for nobody's evaluation but my own.

    Horp 15Permalink
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    • You should do the HGV thing, if only to have another skill you can use, if not 5 days a week.Nairn
    • Fuck, pressed submit too early there - "..and you've been going on about getting it for quite a while now! :)"Nairn
    • If nothing else, your drawings always had a very specifially-you style, and I suspect human art will be in demand in future, in defiance of the automated.Nairn
    • Thanks Nairn. Yeah HGV idea is probably 20yrs in gestation now :)Horp
    • And yes... in a way I think this rise in AI has fed into my decision to start drawing again. I've looked at a lot of what AI jas done over the last 2 years, ...Horp
    • And thought "well, I was kinda doing this with pencils" and somehow I decided "I enjoyed it, so do what you enjoy, and stop thinking about who/what...Horp
    • ... does what out there". I like being retired. I just need to not allow it to convert into destitution over time. So a little freelancing will suffice.Horp
    • The 'very specifically you style' is a very apt comment too. I came to realise that the marks we make, regardless of their quirks, are part of who we are.Horp
    • So there's something angsty and anxious about striving to draw another way. I've just accepted that this is what I do. It's a signature of my persona somehow.Horp
    • Good luck to you, Horp. It's nice to settle. I can't remember ur style, so plz post IG.bezoar
    • Thanks Bezoar. There's nothing to post. I shut my studio around 2008 and didn't keep anything. Also though there was the tacky photoshop shit I did for money...Horp
    • ... and then the clunky and odd drawings I did that never went anywhere other than on here. Those are long gone too. Hosting expired a long time back.Horp
    • And I was a neurotic PITA about it all back then. I have no desire to go back :DHorp
    • Understood. Keep on drawing, dude. It's therapeutic at the least, as I'm sure you know. Art trade?bezoar
    • HA! oops, sorry "master it quietly..." It's a wake n bake kind of morningbezoar
    • great news Horp!
      ...ffffffound this
      https://i.haasie.com…      uan
    • Holy fuck Uan. Where did you find that???
      That's my big old easel. Wish I still had that now.      Horp
    • I have returned to drawing in the same way you have.cannonball1978
    • found it buried deep in the structure of this machine...Desktop>De... searching for Horp.
      dated 12.6.2013      uan
    • Desktop / Desktop-Files / Old-Desktop / firstDesktop / ...
      resolution is 1000x665 which was probably high-res      uan
    • getting out of commercial illustration has been the best thing for me to enjoy creating stuff again too. S+bjladams
    • Commercial illustration market is brutal now... It kills the pleasure we feel creating. I draw way less than i want/need, busy at design and dev work...OBBTKN
    • but I'll get back to it soon!OBBTKN
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