polerin

So, I'm really really really happy about my progress on art recently. I'm not where I want to be, but I'm starting to see some of the road of how to get into that vicinity. It's long, twisty, and ugly, but it is totally worth it :)

I know there are some artists (comic and not) who at least browse this, any crit that you can give would be appreciated. As nice as it is to hear "yay pretty" (and yes, I've got an ego to stroke just as much as anyone else ;) I really do want to improve my art, and one of the best ways to do that is to talk with people who are better than I and have them tell me where I fucked up.

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I disagree with your assessment that the art in question is vile, but I'll put that aside for what I think is your actual intent with the post. You've stated that the problem with the art is that it is political and ugly. I take it that you are mixing political and social commentary into one from your wording. I'll use political in that way to keep the terms similar.

I am not sure what to do with the ugly comment, I consider much art I find very moving to be at least slightly ugly, or at least slightly painful to look at. I do not intend to mean that beauty has no place in art, or that asking art to inspire hope is not a worthy thing.

Hope itself implies change though, that there can be a better world than the one that exists now. This is political in it's very nature, as to get a better world, we have to change what we've got. To do this honestly though, hope must be grounded in reality. For things to become better, we must address what is wrong.

As a World, we need to talk about it, to understand it's dimensions and it's meaning. We discuss our hopes and our dreams, but integral to that conversation is a discussion about our fears and our disappointments.

Bloggers do this all the time, talking about what they see wrong, or right, how they hope, how they love. Sometimes they even talk about how they hate, or how their anger affects them. We only have one world, and there are a whole bunch of different people who want to live in it, and want to have a good life for them and their families. All of these interests and ideals matter very much to the people who hold them, and they search for ways to express them.

Artists are no different. They express their view of beauty, hopes and fears, they document the world around them or the world as it could be, and ask if this is how we want it to be.