Post Any of Your Art
tl;dr - post some of your art!
Story time! A true story, with a little flare for the sake of giving the story a little extra color.
So. 1995. Me. Little Skitzo Control - Lil'CTRL, as I was known back then - is sitting at his desk in Mrs. Swenson's class at Polk Elementary. We were given water color paints and our little cup of water and a couple of paint brushes that weren't even good during the Eisenhower administration, let alone more than 40 years later. The water had turned to a brown slurry resembling Hormel Chili, but somewhat more enticing to consume. My little ravioli hand that had only been capable of mastering a typewriter and SEGA Genesis controllers up to that point was attempting to fumble some paint across a canvas of soaking wet construction paper. Mrs. Swenson is wandering up and down the aisles of the classroom, examining the work of each student between using the big guillotine paper cutter device and doling out another water color tray where all the blues, reds, and greens are just dried ovals in the crevices of each trough.
She pauses. Where? Why, at the desk of Lil'CTRL, me, of course! She stood there for a moment, head tilting this way and that like a curious Shiba Inu, and likely wondered what the little git that never had a coat and stunk of cigarettes and wore the same Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil shirt several days a week to school could possibly be trying to apply to what passes as canvas in a public school. She lingered, then leaned down and tapped me on the shoulder, and asked me to step out of the classroom. The class chimes in with the classic, "Oooooh," sounding like an off-key haunted choir.
We stepped into the hall, and Mrs. Swenson knelt to be face-to-face with me, and said, "Lil'CTRL (I was street, people knew me), you're so good at math and reading and science! You do so well on all your tests. I think you should focus entirely on all of the learning curriculum, and when the rest of the class is painting or otherwise, I want you to take one of the math text books, step into the hallway, and study there, or take one of the books that you have from the school library and read."
And thus, at 8-years-old, my potential at an illustrious career of being a starving artist ended, and I never really tried to put any effort in any type of visual art again. Sure, I dabbled poorly in poetry, with clunky metaphors and analogies (some things never change), but never tried drawing again.
And 30 years later, I still never once tried to do anything even remotely close to painting, drawing, or otherwise.
Then all the dorks at my, Skitzo Control's - normally just CTRL, now - workplace are utilizing AI to create atrocious images of Minions or cartoon avatars of themselves. In a fit of annoyance and spite, I bought a cheap Huion drawing tablet, downloaded a free application that likely infested my PC with a half dozen Trojans, and began drawing.
For the past year, I've been trying and trying and trying to draw a self-portrait. No guidance, no training, no "How to Draw the (insert medium, here) Way", not even a YouTube tutorial. Just me spending hours swiping on an electronic drawing tab, hitting undo, trying the line again, undo, hitting the line again, over and over, until I finally got something that looks okay-ish.
I know from firsthand experience that there are some incredibly talented people in our community, or, at least, were, and I'd love to see some of their work. And, sure, share my own.
It's not much, I definitely need a ton practice, and this is legitimately several months of late night goofing in Krita, but it's something, which is more than I have ever done before.
Story time! A true story, with a little flare for the sake of giving the story a little extra color.
So. 1995. Me. Little Skitzo Control - Lil'CTRL, as I was known back then - is sitting at his desk in Mrs. Swenson's class at Polk Elementary. We were given water color paints and our little cup of water and a couple of paint brushes that weren't even good during the Eisenhower administration, let alone more than 40 years later. The water had turned to a brown slurry resembling Hormel Chili, but somewhat more enticing to consume. My little ravioli hand that had only been capable of mastering a typewriter and SEGA Genesis controllers up to that point was attempting to fumble some paint across a canvas of soaking wet construction paper. Mrs. Swenson is wandering up and down the aisles of the classroom, examining the work of each student between using the big guillotine paper cutter device and doling out another water color tray where all the blues, reds, and greens are just dried ovals in the crevices of each trough.
She pauses. Where? Why, at the desk of Lil'CTRL, me, of course! She stood there for a moment, head tilting this way and that like a curious Shiba Inu, and likely wondered what the little git that never had a coat and stunk of cigarettes and wore the same Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil shirt several days a week to school could possibly be trying to apply to what passes as canvas in a public school. She lingered, then leaned down and tapped me on the shoulder, and asked me to step out of the classroom. The class chimes in with the classic, "Oooooh," sounding like an off-key haunted choir.
We stepped into the hall, and Mrs. Swenson knelt to be face-to-face with me, and said, "Lil'CTRL (I was street, people knew me), you're so good at math and reading and science! You do so well on all your tests. I think you should focus entirely on all of the learning curriculum, and when the rest of the class is painting or otherwise, I want you to take one of the math text books, step into the hallway, and study there, or take one of the books that you have from the school library and read."
And thus, at 8-years-old, my potential at an illustrious career of being a starving artist ended, and I never really tried to put any effort in any type of visual art again. Sure, I dabbled poorly in poetry, with clunky metaphors and analogies (some things never change), but never tried drawing again.
And 30 years later, I still never once tried to do anything even remotely close to painting, drawing, or otherwise.
Then all the dorks at my, Skitzo Control's - normally just CTRL, now - workplace are utilizing AI to create atrocious images of Minions or cartoon avatars of themselves. In a fit of annoyance and spite, I bought a cheap Huion drawing tablet, downloaded a free application that likely infested my PC with a half dozen Trojans, and began drawing.
For the past year, I've been trying and trying and trying to draw a self-portrait. No guidance, no training, no "How to Draw the (insert medium, here) Way", not even a YouTube tutorial. Just me spending hours swiping on an electronic drawing tab, hitting undo, trying the line again, undo, hitting the line again, over and over, until I finally got something that looks okay-ish.
I know from firsthand experience that there are some incredibly talented people in our community, or, at least, were, and I'd love to see some of their work. And, sure, share my own.
It's not much, I definitely need a ton practice, and this is legitimately several months of late night goofing in Krita, but it's something, which is more than I have ever done before.
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