The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
But tbf, I mostly trace instead of draw, otherwise they wouldn’t be nearly as good. I just find cool existing artworks online; place them in a Word document in the dimensions and positions I’d want; print it at the office; tape them in front of my window with a blank A4 sheet on top of it; trace it; and then color them in later on. Only small aspects of my drawings are drawn by hand instead of tracing, mostly if I can’t find Christmas-themed examples of the Pokémon online and add them myself.
Oh this is gonna be a juicy one and a real lore moment for me.
When I was a kid, I drew all the time. Stick figures and junk at first of course but the older I got the more I drew. I drew buildings, futuristic bases and planets, my own sport cars and copied Looney Tunes, Disney etc. I got better and better at it until like second year of high school.
In the second year of high school my arts teacher forced everybody to just replicate the same thing, the same thing he was asking his students for last 10 years. The same perspectives, the same landscapes, the same “do your own interpretation of Mondriaan” and “how would you do Starry Nights?”. He slammed all the fun of drawing out of my that year, that on the moment I had to decide what courses to take to graduation I completely dropped the art class. He was shocked that I did and pulled me aside saying I was so talented and it was a waste. He didn’t like it that I told him that he took all the joy out of creating for me.
A year later, when graduation came along I had to apply for college. I was turned down three times during applications and selections to join the art college. I was to technical, or to flat, to abstract, to dull.
I haven’t drawn a single real thing since. Yes, doodles while on the phone and like Quaador the Secret Santa thing but nothing really mine.
In the past five-ish years I’ve been pretty creative in a more supporting role, working in an elementary school where co-workers really struggle to set up an arts-and-crafts lesson, I pitched ideas. Or while out on the playground with the kids drawing the most crazy things on the ground with chalk or moulding bears with my bare hands out of chunks of ice. I tell every kid that is down about him/her being less arty than others and that their drawing sucks that “everything is art, and art can be everything” because that has been taken away from me by people forcing me to do stuff that didn’t give me joy and taking all joy away in the long run.
By coincidence, a few days ago I started experimenting on my tablet and trying to create some artwork of my own. These are the cards I made.
I took inspiration from the artistic freedom of Komiya and Kizuki, who is also my favorite artist.
Of course they’re absolute masters and I don’t have any artistic background at all, but it was really fun to give it a try.
I used to draw all the time in high school and take every art class, then I went to college, got a full time office job, and now I just don’t draw much. I’m tired. But this post did inspire me to doodle!
Only small aspects of my drawings are drawn by hand instead of tracing, mostly if I can’t find Christmas-themed examples of the Pokémon online and add them myself.
But this post did inspire me to doodle!
