Defending Your Life

This is a long one, I apologize.

The past two years I've had the liberty to dedicate all of my free time to drawing. The progress has been noticeable, but in December my pieces became more and more ambitious. Perspective, backgrounds, multiple characters, new shading styles [including dedicating several pieces to a single style to study it closely]. I'm proud of my work, but I needed to turn off my brain - I can't keep dedicating two weeks per piece. So, I drew a woman with massive boobs. Arguably one of the most accessible and popular drawing topics predating written history, and I've done it maybe two or three times. Normally while drawing I'm making side sketches, digging for references, and writing out the concept for the piece, but with the Four drawing in the Gallery [which is what this blog post is about] the focus solely laid on her figure. Part of why I like doing commissions is not having to do the legwork for the idea for a piece. So if I enjoyed Four, why don't I draw porn?

I'm asexual. You might be asking, 'So what?' - there's lots of comics on Twitter about how NSFW artists are just normal people. I've spoken with many and heard their valid reasons for doing it. One of which is that it's the easiest thing to commission. And maybe I should consider it - the only commission that I've been offered this past year has been rewarded with a copy of One Shot and Signalis on sale. On the other hand, I have way too many ideas to draw (for each drawing I do, I have 10 more in a little green book by my desk which I need to replace soon). And I have my savings and a steady day job that I like, so figuring out something that sells isn't really a priority right now. I used to draw for my friends' birthdays all the time. I liked to design a NPC based on them in my fantasy worlds. If I have extra time I do doodle for my friends as little gifts, but I rarely get asked these days. I also feel incredibly uncomfortable taking money, especially with how hard things are right now. And a lot of my friends don't live in the U.S. so their ducats get trashed being translated to USD.

Would I be hurting my artistic integrity by making NSFW, even if it's just on commission? I think with the advent of A.I. art the needle has moved a lot - I remember when I was starting out there was a lot of debate if references were cheating, and those people have been awfully quiet since. But is it me? I feel like I change my art between pieces way more than other artists I speak to. I've frequently gone from hatching black and white linework to painted landscape scenes to pixel art headshots to animations back to back. So is there even a me, to not be? There's zero fans to yell at me for not being the Old Kanye - I'M NOT COMPLAINING!!! I have friends who are incredibly supportive and I love them, but they loved me before they saw my art. I have no brand, and that's OK I would probably be upset if I felt beholden to not change based on my fans' expectations. I really hate it when on Twitter an obscure artist blows up from a piece, and they just spam that style over and over. I understand why. Most artists are trying to make this their full time job, and they found what sells. And I'm hardly the King of experimental art - I'm always bashing myself for not making my pieces more unique. But I still strive for it - making the same thing over and over is not me.

And I'm not a shaolin Monk. I like attention. One of my favourite ways to share my art is on obscure subreddits - I drew Leslie from Season 5 of Master Chef because I really liked him, and that season aired ten years ago. But when I posted it there was a lot of positive comments! Nobody makes Master Chef fanart, much less of Leslie. My Slay the Spire fanart got reshared to other sites and received 900 upvotes, which is insane for me to think about. Jerma talked a lot about the insanity of having 15,000+ people watch him, but shy of a thousand people liking my art is just as crazy for me. When I posted my art to Twitter it got served to maximum 7 people. And that's OK! I love my art, one of my favourite pieces is called 'Some of my Favourite Things' and it's a pixel art piece of my favourite video games and their characters. I spent 40 to 50 hours on it - I'm so immensely proud of it that I can't really express here how happy it is that I made that. Four doesn't bring me that same satisfaction, but my degen friends loved it. Which meant a lot - I was scared to post it because I just... feel so scared that people are going to hate me for it. I didn't die. My bus didn't crash into the Pacific ocean. My laptop didn't get stolen. I didn't lose my wallet. I had a place to sleep that night.

I'm a loser in the end, and I belong.