I’m going to have a little art rant/vent. I’m still in a rut about my art, about the whole direction of my style and what I want to do. I’ve had a lot of time over this summer holiday to think about it all and probably too much.

I’ve drawn ‘manga’ style art for years of my life, after one fateful viewing of Daft Punk’s Digital Love music video while on holiday when I was about 11. Like most kids at that age I got drawn into the Pokemon craze when it aired on UK television for the first time, which further fuelled my inner otaku. After leaving secondary school and heading to college I was a fully blown Japanophile, anime and manga were my mantra and that was all that mattered. Coming to university has quelled my anime craze considerably, I still love it, love Japan and it’s culture, I just don’t shove my passion in everyone’s faces any more. 

Thus, anime was the only style I drew for a number of years, filled with dreams of creating and publishing my own manga. Like a lot of kids growing up drawing manga. Attending university and meeting different people, all with their own amazing skills and art styles has really opened up my artistic views, I find I’ve become much more broad in the range of styles I love and it’s great, loads of inspiration to learn from and many styles to study.

In college I wanted to become a concept artist and although I wanted to make my own manga I knew that it’s nearly impossible to publish a manga here through official channels, we only have one manga publisher to my knowledge, which is Sweatdrop studios and the pay would not support me, it was more of something you’d have to do on the side of another job, a concept artist seemed like the perfect answer. So I had my heart set.

I’m came to University with the intention of developing my digital art skills much further, developing them to a professional grade so I could graduate and start applying to game and movie studios for a job.

Then my second year of university happened.

My first real art breakdown, “What the fuck are you doing?” my brain would throw at me while trying to create a new piece or draw a new page of my manga. I have never been hit so hard by reality, I always ran forwards without much heed to what will come around the corner and now finally I turned a corner where I met a brick wall. Should have seen it coming really. So here I am, at home by myself, sat in my room trying desperately to think of something to draw, trying my hardest to shake off the negativity my brain keeps hurling at me.

Manga has been my art style for a long, long time but I no longer feel compelled to continue it, I want to evolve. Which therein lies my rut, I just have no idea what to do. I understand every artist goes through a stage like this where they don’t feel great about their work but with my third, final and most important year at university it just seems like it couldn’t have come at a worst time. Maybe this is a chance though, a chance to see how well I fare in (artistically) my darkest hour because I’ll be damned if I’m giving up this far in.

A lot of people, including my tutors have said they like this style which I draw in from time to time:

and it’s a lot of fun to do, combined with feedback from friends and family I think I should develop it more but not leave it as it is. This style is heavily influenced by Teo Skaffa one of my favourite artists (who I highly recommend you check out!), however I don’t want to become ‘that guy who draws like Skaffa’, I will try to evolve my style and attempt to combine the styles I love. Learn and grow.

I’m not entirely sure what the whole point of this post was or I was trying to make but I generally find it easier to sort my thoughts out when they’re written down, when you read these things back to yourself it puts it in perspective.

Back to it.