Project Icarus Journal #3

            Upon entering Art 1, and being back in the art field after about three years without an art class, I was somewhat decent at drawing and constructing a human form or sketching, but I had lost some of my former touch.  Soon after the Sophomore year began, I began to watch animation and drawing guides on Youtube, as well as view art on an Art Community sharing website called DeviantArt.

            Getting back to drawing was akin to getting used to an entirely new and different style of doing something, as I had not touched upon realism or artistic skill for a while.  The idea of returning to drawing was built around my favorite hobby to sketch and use my father’s printing paper to practice my skill of drawing planets, space scenes, ships, and surrealistic images.  Although everyone was impressed by my work, I strove to do better than the last picture in detail and style, improvising as I went about drafting and redoing works.  I turned to books to fuel my imagination of images in which I could base upon and create, but soon I turned to scenery.

            As I went along, I had looked at Manga, comics Japanese in origin, as well as Anime, which is animation from Japan, with high interest.  The style and originality was so unique, so different, and extremely expressive, in stark contrast to what we westerners had developed over here, in our media.  Never before did I actually attempt to draw these amazing strips of art, because I had assumed I could not do it – even drawing American comics were a challenge to me, as I was accustomed to drawing photorealistic “Goth” sketches – detailed pictures made of short lines that gave definition to the piece.

            Alongside Project Icarus, the Physics Comic was assigned, giving us the challenge of constructing a comic strip that addressed an audience and worked like the Sunday Funnies in the newspaper.  From that point, I added a new style of art to my skill: Anime and Manga – where I had only been observant of the arts, I had called upon it to myself to try something different, as our options were to rip from the internet characters to use, or to create them from scratch.  Inspired by an Anime series I had watched, the Melancholy of Haurhi Suzumiya, and many others, I began to seek books on how to draw Manga, as well as actual manga screenshots and fanmade art from DeviantArt, so that I could begin to try out this new technique of illustrating and creating my drawings.                Soon, I was carried away by the fire of passion that drew me (pun intended) closer to becoming a Mangaka: an artist who draws Manga, as well as people who draw Manga-styled works.  Even when the comic was finished, I spent free time in class doodling out characters, or practicing difficult aesthetics of a Manga character such as the hair, eyes, or body frame overall.  I also began to use my previous “Goth” style, combined with my realism and Manga style to make and conceive out of my mind, characters, art pieces, digital paintings, and even landscapes, that I was unable to blueprint before.  I had a DeviantArt account from a year earlier, that I had only used for prototype digital artwork and paintings, but now, with my comic and some other work from this brief period of drawing, I colored it and uploaded it onto the web.  Soon, I may even make videos and tutorials for my artwork, and post it in the near future.  I have a newfound passion for a work that I used to do, and now, it is resurfacing and reconstructing itself in my hobbies faster than it had when I had first begun.