Friday, March 30, 2012

What a Bloody Mess: Demon's Den, A Crying Jupiter, and a Lady with a Hat

What a bloody mess
More ridiculous art courtesy of yours truly. Before you go 'ooh' and 'ahh', or swoon in a fit of visually induced ecstasy, be warned that it only looks nice because I got lucky. That's just how it is with my art- either it's a pathetic mess, or it's an "ohmigawdareyoualatterdaymichelangelothatssoawesomeman" moment, with 'man' pronounced Jamaican style 'mahn'.
I drew this one back in college, but only managed to feed it to the internet thanks to my new monster of a printer, which conveniently has a flat scanner attached to it. I didn't neglect my classes- instead I neglected everything and everyone else between classes by putting pen to paper and scribbling away.

It distracted me well enough that it managed to cause a brief suspension of cognition when a passing classmate exclaimed 'oh it's so pretty' or something in that vein, and I took a few precious moments to realize what she was talking about, by which time she was long gone.

There was absolutely no motif to this piece- I drew a few lines at the top of the page and thought it looked vaguely like a mountain, so I decided to add the rest of it. I drew a circle with lines choking it- and decided that it looked like Jupiter, so I added the Great Red Spot, and gave it a tear, for reasons I no longer remember. Jupiter needed a planetary partner, so I added ringed Saturn, though why it has a sword below it I have no idea.

I drew a chess piece or a hat on the far right, thought that it looked rather dumb, and so added a skinny frame to it. I drew a ridiculous looking hat, and decided that since it looked rather nice (and surprisingly wearable), it needed a head to sit on, and a head naturally needs a body. The words, of course, serve no purpose other than being vaguely ominous placeholders.

Meanwhile time passed and a contest came along, one that could win me a Blackberry (not the edible type, but pricey nonetheless). I needed some art, and being too lazy to come up with something new, used this piece, and came up with this:
Commercialized
Sadly I didn't get shortlisted, despite my overwhelming non-effort. Oh well. I didn't have high hopes anyway, thinking that I'd be up against a bunch of digital graphics artists who'd serve up a smorgasbord of vivid, colorful prettiness, inspired by stuffing cocaine up their nostrils and setting it on fire. I'm simply not capable of that, so I figured I'd just sulk in a corner instead.

Then today arrived, and along with it, the news that 9 pieces had been shortlisted, and mine wasn't among them (what the hell, I thought). However I did find the whole process rather hilarious (fishy, really)- the site admins do the shortlisting, and only after that do they start the voting. I was going to say 'well, that's democracy for you' in a sarcastic tone, but then I realized that, hey, 'that is democracy', so what the hell. Which is fine, really, and aptly poetic, since 'what the hell', I'm sure, was how I must have felt when I drew the thing in the first place.

Here's the link to the voting page where you can see the shortlisted entries- some of the comments are rather funny, though I can't tell whether they're by fellow disgruntled artists. I'm not going to vote, for obvious reasons- I have a vested interest in the proceedings (had, really), and I'm totally biased in favor of myself.

That's democracy for you again. You should have the right to abstain from voting without being egged on by everyone else that you're not fulfilling your civic duty. For the record, I've gone to the post office twice to register as a voter to get them off my back- but walked away without registering both times because they didn't have any forms, and just couldn't be bothered to restock.

Well, are you thinking what I'm thinking? I think you are, and you're absolutely right. What the hell.

2 comments:

  1. The storm on Jupiter has gotten bigger!!
    Blackberry just announced their withdrawal from the non business consumer market.

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    1. In my pic or in reality? I haven't been paying much attention to space news recently:)
      I thought they've always focused on the business end of the market- do you mean they're outright forgoing sales to private buyers?

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