Mango Art Jam

Ruskin explains Manga

2011-03-24T13:29:00.007Z

I'm reading John Ruskin's "The Nature of gothic" at the moment.
I noticed he describes exactly what Manga is, (or any artistic label, that's the point) better than almost anyone. I've edited his text here, replacing various words and examples- and repeatedly the word "Gothic" with "Manga". Take a look.

(cross posted from my own blog, so that you don't have to read it in white text on a black background...)

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We know already what the early Disney art style is from which the transition to Manga was made, but we ought to know something of the modern Manga style into which it led. I shall endeavour therefore to give the reader in this chapter an idea, at once broad and definite, of the true nature of Manga style, properly so called; not of that of Japan only, but of universal Manga.

The principal difficulty in doing this arises from the fact that every book in the Manga style differs in some important respect from every other; and many include features which, if they occurred in other books, would not be considered Manga at all; so that all we have to reason upon is merely, if I may be allowed so to express it, a greater or less degree of Manganess in each image we examine. And it is this Manganess the character which according as it is found more or less in a book makes it more or less Manga--of which I want to define the nature; and I feel the same kind of difficulty in doing so which would be encountered by anyone who undertook to explain for instance, the Nature of Redness, without any actually red thing to point to, but only orange and purple things. Suppose he had only a piece of heather and a dead oak-leaf to do it with. He might say "the colour which is mixed with the yellow in this oak-leaf, and with the blue in this heather, would be red, if you had it separate; but it would be difficult, nevertheless, to make the abstraction perfectly intelligible; and it is so in a far greatest degree to make the abstraction of the Manga style intelligible because that character itself is made up of many mingled ideas and can consist only in their union. That is to say, giant eyes do not constitute Manga--nor tiny mouths--nor speedlines, nor screen-tones; but all or some of these things--amid many other things with them--when they come together so as to have life.

Observe also that in the definition proposed I shall only endeavor to analyze the idea which I suppose already to exist in the readers mind. We all have some notion, most of us a very determined one, of the meaning of the term Manga; but I know that many persons have this idea in their minds without being able to define it: that is to say understanding generally that Naruto is Manga and Spiderman is not, that Love Hina is Manga, and Watchmen is not, they are nevertheless, no clear notion of what It IS that they recognize In the one or miss in the other such as would enable them to say how far the work by Kodansha or Marvel is good and pure of its kind; still less to say of any nondescript art, like Adam Warren or Jiro Taniguchi how much right Manga element there is in and how much wanting. And I believe this inquiry to be a pleasant and profitable one; and that there will be found something more than usually interesting in tracing out this grey shadow many-pinnacled image of the Manga spirit in us; and discerning what fellowship there is between it and our Western hearts. And if, at any point of the inquiry, I should interfere with any of the reader's previously formed conceptions, and use the term Manga in any sense which he would not willingly attach to it, I do not ask to accept, but only to examine and understand, my interpretation, as necessary to the intelligibility of what follows in the rest of the work.

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Now go and read The Nature of Gothic, by John Ruskin (From The Stones of Venice, Vol.II)

~John~

Daily Chicken Scratchings

2011-02-03T13:31:00.002Z

This collective blog is so dead isn't it? I really should get around to cleaning up my own blog and setting things up, but until then, have some art and some vaguely philosophical writings on your screen.

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Part of my challenge this year is to spend less time thinking about drawing and more time actually drawing. Life drawing, tonal study, pr0n drawing, crappy doodles... anything to get my hand-eye coordination going.

It actually feels pretty good to draw on crappy cheap paper with no expectations whatsoever other than some (feeble) attempt at thinking and studying the shape etc etc.... less pressure to put down a masterpiece in my precious sketchbook. :D

This is the January 2011 batch (starting from the 18th), a doodle or more every day with the exception of weekends when I'm usually AFS (away from sketchbook).

It's actually a lot harder than I thought, to have to consciously make time in my day to just "draw" for no purpose whatsoever. But feels good, like exercise. XD

(click for larger pic)

After some painterly advice...

2011-01-14T11:03:00.000Z

Having not touched my tablet for way too many months, Steve was making puppy eyes for some fanart for his novel. As it involves lovely ladies in minimal clothing and dragons with cities growing on their backs, I couldn't really resist. In this scene the main character Natalie is running from her home in a massive city to the dragon city which has landed in the fields surrounding it.

Being from the ameteur school of "draw some lines and colour in the gaps" I'm really trying this time to make something a bit more painterly. I want to go for an old school scifi book cover look, a bit kitsch and fun. I've got to this point and I'm liking the colours and the rough shadows, but I'm now a bit stuck on how to progress. If I draw in all the lines (my usual approach...) I think i'll loose some of the atmosphere and goodness. Also the landscape looks more like sand dunes and is kind of featureless, which I need to work on...

Anyway, thought I'd ask some advice before I screw it up!And yes, i've done the orange and blue thing...

ooh ooh, check out these so bad they're good fantasy book covers.... http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/

New way of working

2010-09-28T10:59:00.006+01:00

Just a few days ago, I actually got an idea for a comic that for once, didn't feel like a fluffy/stereotype rom-com, and didn't feel like me forcing myself to be deep and meaningfully philosophical. :D

It feels like a really challenging short story to do, as there really is "nothing" going on inside it, but I have to convey the something in that nothing, dialogue has to be natural and nondescript, yet pack the meaning of my story... Which is why I'm trying Fehed's advice of actually putting more thought into the scripting of my dialogue.

In the past when working on my own projects, I'd do that usual artist-cum-writer thing of plotting out a general sequence of events, approximate dialogue like "Rai makes fun of Mary's klutziness", and generally make dialogue up when it came to pencilling in the speech bubbles, and "edit" dialogue when the speech bubbles get too big and full of words.... Really not a good way I guess. It's just me being lazy and wanting to get the comic DRAWN and done already, which results in pretty artwork but dialogue that sounds fake, stilted, formulaic, stereotypical... like lines from a bad cheesy movie.

In this case, though the comic will rely heavily on the visuals, it will also be relying heavily on the dialogue. No chibis, no crazy funny faces, no comedy, no bish, no pretty shoujo hair and tone doilies to help ease the way. So less room for laziness or error.

I have to say, I'm finding this "planning my script and dialogue properly" feels very daunting. I think it harks back to the knee jerk reaction that writing something down in proper format, editing it, re-editing it, cutting out bits that I thought was pretty but actually is pointless, reminds us of the boring non-arty days of school/ office when you had to write mind numbing essays about history or something boring like that. The weeaboo in me is just whining about "I JUST WANNA DRAW MANGAAAAAA". It is an interesting experience (and slightly scary facing that page and trying to think intelligently of lines and speech), which hopefully will pay off when it comes to actually drawing the comic. :D

ps> Also since I cringe at the idea of sullying my sketchbook with my chicken scratching handwriting (possibly containing a lot of bullshit), I have hijacked one of Fehed's many abandoned writer notebooks to write my notes in (pictured above). LOL I R SRS WRITER NAO. XD

Doodle: Murphy's Law

2010-09-07T20:09:00.001+01:00

Well, I certainly wrote the comic book on it, didn't I?

When ideas go stale

2010-09-07T13:40:00.010+01:00

Holy moly, I had an idea for a proper long comic in the shower today (I swear that's where I get all of my good ideas). This NEVER happens!
Possibilities kept popping up so I jotted them down quickly. All of a sudden I had an interesting premise to build on and 10 characters on my hands, all in the matter of an hour or so. Now I just hope that this will continue to seem like a good story. Usually my story ideas tend to lose their sparkle when they lose their freshness, and in the end I'm convinced that it was a bad idea to begin with. And that's as far as it goes.

This is not really an art post but it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has had this experience and what you do about it.

Hair Rambling 3

2010-09-05T09:06:00.003+01:00

I finally got round to finishing this. Actually forced myself to keep polishing selective bits after the point where I usually go "GARRGH it's DONE", and I'm pretty happy with how the overall look came out. I feel I've managed to take one step closer to finding out that technique (or eye) for making stuff look rough and dynamic, but still looking polished enough that it's not scruffy.

Lighting and colour wise... also a level up I think. Happy with how this turned out, as I kept away from the usual multiply, colour dodge, overlay etc etc layer effects, so no mess of over-exposure abuse. I'm a lot happier with the lighting on this than any of my previous paintings and doodles, as it feels more alive and glowy to me, and less fake muddy midtones. Skin is really hard to paint, and despite my improvement here I still have yet to achieve the skill of painting skin that glows and looks luminously beautiful and alive.

Anyway, happy with this pic, LEVEL UP! :D

Hair rambling 2

2010-08-03T09:26:00.002+01:00

One more progress shot of lady with the big hair. I could leave it at that, but I still think it could do with a lot more refining in terms of lighting and polish. I'm quite happy with the nose though... those are hard to paint. :D

Trying for a more asian look this time.........

Colour Study

2010-07-25T18:07:00.004+01:00

A colour study I did, referencing a gorgeous photo taken from isayx3's flickr album (photography & post processing eyecandy!).

Feel very rusty after not having been painting for a long long time, and I feel I'm still only scratching the surface of colour.

My biggest issue that I'm noticing with my paintings is that I'm having problems "finishing" my paintings. It's probably down to a lack of patience and a lack of practice and experimentation, but I find I just don't know where to start or stop. My paintings always look sort of rough and unfinished, or I just go over the edge and everything looks over-done and over-refined. I'm aiming for that finish where the paintings look nicely sharp and polished, but when you look closer you notice a lot of the rough, dynamic lively brushwork is still there....

Any crit or advice on how to achieve that finished balance would be much appreciated... ;__;

Hair rambling

2010-07-23T17:57:00.004+01:00

Haven't touched painting in awhile, so after finishing work early today I sat at my workstation just sort of painting aimlessly. This is what's come out so far... (about 45 minutes of noodling).

Not sure where I'm going with this, or what colour scheme I want to.... it was kind of relaxing to just sit there painting with no purpose or no goal in mind. I think this is the first time I've done that, so it is quite refreshing to just paint blobs of colours and shapes, and repaint over it when I changed my mind.

This is unflipped and unchecked, so excuse any wonk. :D

Leftenstar and the spade

2010-07-08T01:42:00.000+01:00

Wow! I've really enjoyed having some fun with photoshop today after a long dry spell ^^ This is some fanart for a friend's story. I just love this scene! http://neelachips.deviantart.com/#/d2r6k1c

I was having fun messing around with a more painterly approach, as well as my usual cel shading attempts. I wanted to give the impression of a slightly dream-like space, with a mad swarm of toothed creatures. It was also an exercise in dynamic poses and folds... it's not dead on but I had fun :D

Signal page 1&2

2010-05-27T19:26:00.000+01:00

I just finished the first two pages of signal! :D Since I haven't posted much here yet, I thought I'd put them up here first. They're a double page spread. Thought I'd post them up for thoughts + opinions. Obviously I don't want to go back into the page and make giant edits to pose or composition, but small tweaks to colour, tone and shape are fine :) I'm excited to get this finished! Should be done in a month or two *fingers crossed*

For anyone who doesn't know about this project, you can read about it + see some progress shots on my blog.

Self-distortion: The art of balance (Rambly first post)

2010-05-22T13:53:00.009+01:00

Let me dip my toes in this mango art blog.
Just wanted to post this up as this is the first drawing I've done in almost a year (if not more) maybe where it is just purely for fun. Not for a project. Not for a client. Just for fun.

I think my problem as an artist is that I tend to "think" too much. Not in a good way. I think about the projects I want to do, the pictures I want to draw. I obsess about them. I think of the flaws that can crop up. I think about my shortcomings that could prevent me executing this masterpiece perfectly. I think about the style I could do it in.

Do you see my problem? I do. I think too much, and don't do enough. Somewhere along the way I've fallen into the hamster wheel of obsessing with doing it PERFECT rather than just enjoying doing it. I've turned into some art fascist where I keep thinking "If I can't get it perfect, I might as well not do it at all!!!" It is something that I really need to kick myself to get over.

Anyway, this is a really simple picture where I was experimenting more with the idea of balance. (I was inspired to DRAW something after seeing John's lovely inky sketches) A few years back I was very driven by the idea of details. DETAILS! The more elaborate and detailed and intricately perfect I could make my colours, inks, linework etc, the better. It's only lately in the past year or so that I've started to realise how short-sighted I am being.

Everything requires balance. The balance of black and white, the balance of rough sketchy artwork and clean perfectionism, the balance of having just enough detail to bring out the life/joy in my artwork without being too sparse or weighed down with detail. I think John's comment mentioning "they become all tight and lifeless" put the issue I've been having with my line art into a more solid concept.

I'm not dissing intricate artwork. I just think that that is no longer the goal of my journey, and I still have a long road ahead in seeking this (almost) perfect balance in my art.

Its a novel thing though, for once looking at my little drawing and feeling a sense of completion. I am actually happy with how the simple inks and colours came out.

Sketchbook

2010-05-21T13:17:00.008+01:00

I finally got around to scanning some of my crowded sketchbook pages. Most of these were drawn straight into ink, on public transport. They're really a personal reference library for me, and I've found them invaluable lately with my inking. I'd recommend everyone do the same- using their sketchbook not just as a doodle-pad, but a resource for thinks that you like, or suck at drawing.
~John~

Gesture

2010-05-04T11:47:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I did figure drawing and it shows... My plan is to go back to basics again, starting with gesture and eventually moving onto form and anatomy.

Gesture looks deceptively simple but is probably the hardest and most important part to grasp. If the gesture is right then everything else just seems to fall into place.

Warm-up

2010-04-26T15:47:00.002+01:00

I keep forgetting how great music can be for inspiration. When I work on stuff that requires less concentration I put on a podcast to keep me company. As I was doing some warm-up sketches this morning I put a podcast on by habit. This one was an interview with an artist representative. It took me a while to realise that the voices talking about the nitty gritties of the field was actually making me quite tense. I guess some times we just have to switch off the real world for a bit.

I'm loving Ludovico Einaudi at the moment. You can really let your mind drift away on his scores...

Centari illustration (Warning- sketchy man parts)

2010-04-17T00:13:00.000+01:00

So I had the excellent horse-drawing Kat to collaborate with on this illustration for Steve's story! It's still fairly loose but I quite like the feel of it! I think the character on the centaur character's back has some dodgy anatomy... but anyway. Yes. Crits welcome!

War, Huh!

2010-04-10T00:53:00.004+01:00

Here are some drawings of a half developed character I did at great speed to try and lively up a pitch i'm working on at the last minute. Feel free to crit them into oblivion. One thing I would mention, however, is that in the closest image there's supposed to be rubble and a trench that I didn't draw, which is why his pose is like that. Invisible defensive line!

Also for the benefit of readers (as I'm pretty sure the contributors already know this) drawings that lack a "purpose" are almost always worse than drawings that have one. For example, these aren't "character drawings", nor are they designed to show an animated sequence or...well, anything, really. I just drew them and tried to make them look vaguely purposeful after the fact. This is very rarely the best way to draw! (there are exceptions, but that's another post for another day)

Try and find the purpose in all the work you do. Every panel is "for" something, or "doing" something. If you think first about what the hell it is you're trying to show, your drawing will be vastly improved. Even if the "purpose" is to show off your bukkake drawing abilities, you're going to compose, light, ink etc that image to best show off the shine on the...yeah, I'll stop that there. You get the idea.
~John~

Elizabethan-Japanese Crit

2010-04-05T14:09:00.001+01:00

Hey :) Sorry for putting up a whole new post for this, but it was really hard to arrange in the comment section. I like the image, but I think the problem that struck me first was actually the breasts! They don't look affected by the corset (or gravity) at all.

I think the arm looks too short not because it's the wrong length, but because the upper body and head is pulling back in an unusually tense manner, meaning that the pose doesn't let her left arm seem like it's pushing away from the body as it tugs the hair.
I've tried to demonstrate what I mean by going over the pose, revealing the underlying anatomy (ignoring the breasts to show the ribcage). I think her left thigh also seems a little too short.

The right is a redraw with a few attempted corrections, and the middle shows how the pose shifts to pull the opposing shoulder, neck and head away from the stretched out hand. I've made the corset cinch the waist more, since it didn't seem to be affecting her body-shape in the original, and given her right calf more shape, since it would be squashed against the thigh. With legs bent like that, the garter straps wouldn't be straight either (otherwise the clasp would just be pulled off when she straightened up), and the curvature of the stockings needed to support the shape of the legs a little better to help the foreshortening.

EDIT: Whoops, it was Elizabethan, not Victorian, title edited. And I guess she's not actually ninja either.

Pedipulator: take 2

2010-04-03T17:52:00.000+01:00

My second attempt. Plus sea! It's good to be drawing again :D

I tried to get the perspective thing working. Not sure it's quite right, but I think it looks more dynamic now. Any crits?

Here's what I was working from:

"Tethered to a stone pier jutting out into the ocean, it bore the appearance of a four-legged animal, long spindly legs jutting up far beyond the main body of the craft. Kaliss supposed that they were long so that it could easily cross the ocean. One leg was frozen in the act of stepping, the wide 'foot' ready to plunge into the shallows.
The main body of the ship was more than a hundred feet long; it was mainly brass, pipework that seemed organic, almost completely covering the outer shell, as if a pipe-organ had exploded in a boat factory. They curved up from the underbelly, and a smouldering boiler was visible through the pipes, at the heart of the beast. The front of the ship was black, a rounded cockpit jutting out between the front two legs. Meanwhile the upper portion of the craft had an open deck with a brass railing running around it; the two largest funnels curved up and around the entire deck before rising over the front of the craft, as if horns on a bull. Smoke was pouring out of the funnels, and steam was venting from various safety valves; evidently the Captain had expected them, and primed his engines."

Elizabethan-Japanese-RPG-character?

2010-04-03T03:03:00.002+01:00

I was so surprised to find this under a stack of old sketches. I actually can't remember when or what prompted me to draw it... it must've been a late night zombie state sketch.
The arms might be a bit short... I already moved them once but I'm wondering if it might not have been enough, especially the arm that's outstretched. I had foreshortening in mind but it might not have worked... Opinions? :)

Slurp.

2010-04-02T01:39:00.004+01:00

Anyone think "Manchan" looks a little GaGa?

Just me then.
~John~

Sleep in Mangoes

2010-04-01T19:42:00.001+01:00

Just had this image in my head. I think mangoes might not actually be so comfortable, but she liked them so much in Nana's drawing...

Pedipulator!

2010-03-31T16:06:00.001+01:00

Pedipulator! :D

Everyone loves a bit of steampunk. This is an concept for Steve's ongoing novel "The King's thief". I kinda like all the steampunk gnarlyness but it somehow looks too flat to me. Any ideas on how I could make this composition more dynamic without losing too much of the detail of the thing? It's wading through water, and is supposed to be about 100m long. It would be great to get some characters in there as well perhaps. Any thoughts?

Mmm...mango

2010-03-31T14:55:00.001+01:00

Development sketches

2010-03-30T15:53:00.002+01:00

These are some thumbnails and discarded ideas for a commission that I'm working on. I wanted to incorporate the Yin Yang symbol into the design but in the end it wasn't clear enough and didn't serve the purpose of the artwork.

In the beginning...

2010-03-30T15:35:00.003+01:00

... there was mango.

Welcome to the Mango Art Jam! A collective blog centred around process and progress.
Post sketches, WIPs, exercises and finished work, whatever is on your drawing board. For specific feedback, state what aspect of the work you'd like critique on. :)
Also, please tag posts with your name.