Aside from cartooning, what else that you do is also art related?
Aside from cartooning and the occasional venture with portraiture sketching I do fine woodworking using a band saw, table saw, wood lathe, and whatever else normally found inside a small carpentry shop. I normally work with exotic hardwoods and turn out custom picture frames, jewelry boxes, and whatever captures my fancy from a design standpoint. Although I have built furniture and cabinets I find large items like that to be a pain in the arse to work with. For this past month I have been crafting picture frames to hold 11" by 14" paintings that my wife produces using oil pastels on press board.
She paints them and I frame them and then get custom cut glass for them from a little shop just down the street from where I live. We have been giving them to her high school senior students as graduation gifts.
It's been months since I've done any wood carving. When I do I sometimes produce 'in the round' funny caricature pieces or classic decorative acanthus leaf works. Sometimes I will do some chip carving design work and sometimes just let myself go with an abstract 'in the round' piece.
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What else is art related?
Well, besides my comic….
I, once in a great while like to draw realism. Things from real life, ya know? I'm not too good at it yet, but I'd like to get into it.
I also like to write poems, and stories. Short stories, that is.
And uh, I like to write and play music. Even though I'm terrible.
That's basically about it.
Does music count? :D
It's not art in the sense as in comic art or painted art, but it's certainly an art form.
If it does count, then I made about 500 tracks in over ten years… and never released anything, haha. Once I can afford some better speakers and a second hd to mix it all, I'll be working on a boxset of all that music :D
I occasionally write. I'd love to do music, but I can't really play anything. Sometimes I do animations, mixing sounds for that is fun.
Actually everything I do is art related really, since that's mostly what I know how to do having done it at university for so many years- My graphic design work, web design etc. There there's paintings and things I used to do, small sculptures, armour making (which was an off-shoot of sculpture), building and making various things like small bits of furniture, sewing as well- like the busby and barrel sash I made a while ago.
Hahaha, even some case modding on one of my old computers.
I can make and modify most things. I never really learnt to weld though and I don't have the equipment… I've always regretted that. But then I don't think that sort of equipment is safe for my home anyway.
I personaly like to consider fine dining an art form.
I am a chef and i know the amount of work that goes into building a dish, considering all the different colours, flavours and how it eventully looks on the plate.
Me and the Head Chef where i work spent two/three hours on one dessert i made. Taking the basic idea and adding changing colours picking the right plate.
And at the end of it the great feel of 'holy crap thats awesome'.
Actually people, I consider everything each of you listed to be an art form. I'm easy like that.
I spent over thirty years trying to turn myself into a novelist before I discovered that no matter how much technique I learned and mastered there was some element of the art that I just could not get a handle on. My younger sister, on the other hand, did become a novelist. I became an essayist of sort under a different name instead, and managed to get some satisfaction from writing . . . but I will always regret never having become a novelist.
A few years ago my wife and I agreed that I had more time for cooking chores than she did and we eventually decided that we like Asian cuisine more than others and so that's what I concentrated on. It took a while of course, but I am both good and fast as a cook at this point. I definitely consider Asian cuisine production an art form.
I took a welding course once and did consider trying to make a living at the work as well as use it to produce art as a sideline, but life itself threw enough curves at me that I never did do anything with the skill set. It would probably take me weeks to relearn how to weld at different angles again. It was fascinating stuff however. I love what the process of melting and binding iron and steel does to light values during the process. Cutting steel with oxy-acetylene is simply awesome to watch close up.
Damn near anything from computer usage to building a tool shed can be an art form. It's all in the mind and heart of the particular artist.
I've written about 20 unfinished novels and add to them from time to time. I once had an agent tell me he'd get me published if only I ever finished anything. Still haven't finished anything.
A glance at my comic highlights another one of my hobbies as I've built some of the props and custom painted some of the faces. Add to that I've built models for thirty years; done dioramas, museum displays, miniature figures, for competion, commissioned wargame models and just for fun. Getting it the level of art takes a lot of time and dedication and occasionally becomes work. That's why lately I've just been building out of the box; doing a nicely painted clean build and usually the kits I didn't get around to building when I was a kid. Model bulding has come so far since then and the kits now are extremely detailed with tiny photoetched brass pieces and look more like the real thing every day with every little bit represented. (200+ pieces is the norm as is a $40-$140 price tag) I build the re-issued 25 year old kits that go for half that price and don't have all the photoetched and without super detailed resin after market pieces. ;)
Once upon a time I used to act on stage but time was a killer there and memorizing lines got progressively harder.
I sometimes draw out handouts for the ESL kids that I teach (I actually put a lot of friggin effort into these things!) because the textbooks a lot of times don't have what I'm specifically looking for.
I also have had experience making little adds to put on newletters etc, so whenever someone I know here mentions that they need one I'll do it for them (all job related I guess).
In highschool I was a theatre technician, but I stopped right before Junior year. I've thought about going back and picking it up again, but never did. I still don't regret the decision.
I also spend a lot of time creating gallery work. Primarily I work with stencils and spray paint, and I'm currently working on a mural commission that's been in the works for a couple months now. I do a lot on recycled wood, and other stuff.
Other than that I do some industrial and toy design for my own amusement. I've created one toy in particular that because of it's ease of building, cheap materials and durability, when I put the plans under creative commons turned into a street art phenomenon and pops up all over town.
I have a degree in Fine Art, majoring in digital art (in my case it was experimental narrative video)
I've played drums in a few different punk rock bands, as well as having competed and performed internationally in Pipebands (you know, bagpipes, kilts, drums and all that stuff) in front of pretty damn big audiences.
I also chef for a living so creatingfood that looks great and tastes great is a passion of mine.
I tell terrifically long winded and fantastic lies and like to string people along for as long as humanly possible.
But my absolute FAVOURITE artmaking passtime is collaborative drawing and sculpture with my 4 year old daughter… to me that is true artistic expression.
All I do is write. Short stories, novels, random bits of nonsense that come into my head, I just put it down on paper. One of those short stories became TTG, my webcomic, but for the most part most of my writings don't have a common theme to them.
I'm not picky, really… I've dabbled in every form of writing I could think of. Present tense was a pain to attempt, but once I got the hang of it, it made for some really interesting journal-type stories.
I find writing ADULT oriented stuff the hardest to write, mostly because I'm a BIG fan of the fade-to-black effect. I prefer letting the action happen in the reader's mind moreso than detailing out every, ah… minute detail.
I used to write a lot of poetry, especially in high school… there, mainly because I found out that girls liked it when I wrote poems for them. :p Ah hormones.
>Net
I find writing ADULT oriented stuff the hardest to write, mostly because I'm a BIG fan of the fade-to-black effect. I prefer letting the action happen in the reader's mind moreso than detailing out every, ah… minute detail.
Actually a fairly erotic effect can be created if you simply state what specific sex act occurred without bothering to deliver prose on every thrust and grunt and moan. You have to experiment a bit but you may be surprised at what effect CAN be achieved with very little in the way of detailed description.
That aside, writing has been a big part of my life for decades now. The only form that I bounced on – aside from producing novels, that is – was poetry. I can write poetry, but I don't have the patience to compose good poetry.
Ok, other things I tried in the past (which I kinda forgot to mention in my first post)…
1. I messed around a little with collage art. I called it "xero art" since the idea was to paste a bunch of images together and then photocopy that to create the final piece… in crappy looking b&w :)
Well, I ended up doing four or five pieces that way and then got tired with constantly cutting thngs out and thus ruining good magazines and books :P
2. I used to write short stories. Started several cycles, some up to ten or twenty unfinished tales (I either ran out of ideas during writing or fell into the "endless rewrite mode" and thus never finished anything). And in the end I dismissed all of it with "would make better comics I think".
3. I tried to write a novel. My super hyper epic thing ended up being 100 pages long, haha. I'll redo it as a graphic novel at some point. A 666 page long graphic novel :D
4. There were some attempts at "programming" and coding… nothing really worked out to be honest. My only program written in Amos (a variant of Amiga Basic) crashed when you tried to compile it (worked from under the editor though). MY games never went beyond a stack of random notes and the only thing that I somewhat grasped was html, but that was years ago and now I don't really remember much of it.
5. I tried to design weird costumes, but I have no sewing skills so it all went under :P
6. I tried to do short weird animated movies (more along the lines of short looped animations + static images and some effects and text) and so on…
As for music making… you don't need an instrument. All you need is a pc, some software, a bunch of sounds and a good ear for melody/rhythm. Or you could make experimental noise (had couple of phases like that when I suddenly discovered there are no genre limitations at all and you can do anything and call it music).
I tell terrifically long winded and fantastic lies and like to string people along for as long as humanly possible.
Munchausen's Syndrome Anonymous welcomes you it's newest member.
Seriously though, I love doing that. The longest one I've got going so far is I've kept someone believing for about 6 months that I worked for the Marine Corp. at age 15 and used to be a "specialties contractor". I still can't believe that this person hasn't figured it out even after I've told her about the time my squad took on an entire battalion in training and we only defeated them by pretending we were part of their formation. Everyone else I know knew I was joking the moment I said it, just because I'd never put up with the Marine Corp., but she still thinks it's true.
Then again, this girl also believed that 9/11 was just the result of an bad map for about 2 weeks even after seeing the press stuff and it being 2003 with enough time to figure it out.
Yeah, I definitely consider programming an art form. I learned a bit of Assembly language [which is impossible to work with] and then basic and then Quick Basic for DOS, and just when I was getting good with that Microsoft stopped supporting the program. Well, naturally. They ARE Microsoft!
Anyway I then tried my hand at a basic style programming language developed for making computer games called DarkBasic and flopped so badly with it that I never accomplished anything worthy while with it at all.
I, on the other hand, actually got pretty good with the fundamentals of creating 3d artwork using the Blender program, but then burned out on that stuff because it requires a great deal of time and effort to produce results that . . . well, they just sit there looking like cheap imitations of the real thing on your computer monitor. Sigh!
Yeah, I definitely consider programming an art form. I learned a bit of Assembly language [which is impossible to work with] and then basic and then Quick Basic for DOS, and just when I was getting good with that Microsoft stopped supporting the program. Well, naturally. They ARE Microsoft!
Anyway I then tried my hand at a basic style programming language developed for making computer games called DarkBasic and flopped so badly with it that I never accomplished anything worthy while with it at all.
I, on the other hand, actually got pretty good with the fundamentals of creating 3d artwork using the Blender program, but then burned out on that stuff because it requires a great deal of time and effort to produce results that . . . well, they just sit there looking like cheap imitations of the real thing on your computer monitor. Sigh!
Oh yeah, I messed around in 3d too. Thanks for reminding me :D
And basically yeah… took me three days to make a desk, a wall and the floor to form one decent image (well, the wall and floor were easy, haha). Then I embarked on a second scene, where I set up two chairs, a table a large cupboard and a door in a brickwalled room… that took me COUPLE OF WEEKS to assemble, argh. So then I just gave up on 3d :P
I could've added "pixel art" too I guess… if that counts as separate from simply "drawing". Ohhh, and ASCII art (making weird logos and all), I also made some icons for my Amiga… I mean, hell, if I could do it cheaply using whatever tools I had already, I probably tried it (other than sculpting, I got no patience for that or proper painting other than some random stuff at school)…
I followed a tutorial program for the 3d program I used and created a good looking rendition of the original star ship Enterprise and several of the houses that I stayed in during my life. I also created the Beatle's Yellow Submarine and activated it so that it entered the screen area turned away and vanished into the distance, its prop or screw still threshing. I also created a shark and animated it in a somewhat similar way.
Anyhow, just as I was beginning to get good with the program my motivation vanished and I stopped working in 3d. I mean it helps if you have some use for the stuff you are creating, and I really had none when you get right down to it.
What I would LIKE to do is – aside from cartooning – is return to wood carving. It's a matter of motivation again, however. I just haven't felt like breaking out my chisels and gouges and getting to work.
I do sketches all the time but that's what my comics about.
I do, however, make animations on this fantastic program Pivot(it's free… which is pretty much why it is fantastic). And I'm kinda new so i'm not sure if it's allowed to post a link to said animation, cause that might be spamming or whatever.
As many others have said, writing is my side job from arts. Well actually they tend to go hand in hand. I have been writing novels for the past 6 or so years and finished several. While working on them I find myself illustrating parts of the story and in the case of my newest manga it started out as a novel and is being converted into a manga. Writer seems to be more my thing as of late, but I also love manga and enjoy telling stories either way.
I graduated with a major in landscape painting and murals, which I tend to enjoy still to this date. If I had the space I would create more large works, but shipping them around is always a pain, nevermind finding a gallery again after so many years away from gallery presentations would be difficult.
I also do some photography, film story boarding, create board games (is that really an art thing…), design logos and am into arts and crafts. The only thing I would really like to do is build a miniature Victorian house with all the furnishings. Now that would be fun to toy with every now and then.
There never seems to be a moment when I'm not doing something art related it would seem. LOL
Kat
Aside from my comics I
-draw more "traditional" fantasy art. I wouldn't call it professional, but it's something else than my comics.
-Sew plushies when I feel like I have the time. At the moment I'm trying to restart a project where I wanted to sew a spine.
-needlefelt now and then. It's been a while, but I was pretty good at it I'm told.
-occasinally write things, mostly silly poetry and the like.
-make badges (I have a badgemaker and I experiment with it).
-I've been working on a few original costumes over the years too.
-have modified little plastic creatures. Mostly frogs.
-knitted some obscure things like chains. They were machine-felted afterwards.
…I sound pretty girly now. Erh. It's really more a list of some of the things I've been doing the last few years. None of it is very impressive really, I just have trouble staying with one thing, so I keep going back and forth between projects.
I've created a few card games and board games over the years. I was once an avid wargamer back when everything was printed (not virtual) and I used to create custom versions of the games with new counters. When teaching I came up with a card game on Medieval Feudalism.
My 3D renderings were World War II tanks. To do them I copied built model kits. I found out a lot of rendering is done by copying a built or sculpted model and since I already built models I cut out the middleman and went back to the plastic/resin/metal. It has the added satisfaction of being able to touch it when I'm done and I don't need a computer to display it. Just lots of shelf space. :)
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