Creative Entry #5: Crossover Art

As I've already established (or hope that I have) I draw a lot. As in, a whole lot, and most of this art I upload to my online gallery on Deviantart: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/ Since discovering DeviantArt more than four years ago I felt like my art's improved in leaps and bounds, and I can spend hours just poring through the galleries of artists I like. Usually I'll drop them a comment, or "fave" a piece of their art if I especially like it. Since then I've developed my style mostly following people with similar art styles to mine. For instance, I love cartoons and animations, facial expressions, and crazy angles, but dislike anime/manga with a passion, and most "realistic" art doesn't strike my fancy as much as a little comic that makes me laugh. Some artists who greatly inspired me were http://enolianslave.deviantart.com/, http://shoomlah.deviantart.com/, and http://abigailryder.deviantart.com/. More recently names like http://tracyjb.deviantart.com/, http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/, and http://teonora.deviantart.com/ have been added to my "watch" list because their styles really appeal to me. That's not to say I don't watch artists who don't draw in comic-like styles (I watch over 200 people on DeviantArt all with various styles) but, most of the time, when I see something from these artists I spend time poring over the little details: how they drew the nose, positioned the eyes, the mouth, etc. so that I might improve in my own work later on.

This brings me to one of my other favorite aspects of DeviantArt: meeting new people. Since joining four years ago I've found myself in all sorts of "circles" of people, usually based around fanart. On my first account, "solarpoweredgeek", I drew a lot of fanart of the cartoon series 'Invader Zim' or the comic book 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac' by Jhonen Vasquez (every teenager had their angsty period, and I was no different, though I hate to admit it). During this time strange original characters such as rapist assassins, dinosaur internet personas, and vampires ran rampant in my art. Some of these people who I "watch" later "watch" me back, and sometimes DeviantArt becomes a bit of a chat site for me, where I talk with the people who comment a lot. I meet a lot of people who share similar interests to the content of my work. Sometimes these friendships result in crazy collaborations like the following:

Memes. Memes are a DeviantArt phenomenon, and are usually blank questionnaires for a whole SLEW of various topics (be it Disney movies, "Meet your Original Character" memes, or procrastination memes) that you then have to fill out with art. I've done a few memes already over the course of my stay on DeviantArt, although not usually too often because I tend to spend too much time adding details to something people will barely glance at (memes are meant to be filled out quickly). Some of my previous memes were the "Art Meme" (OLD): http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Art-Semen-66667612, the "Fanservice Meme" (OLD): http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Fanservice-meme-Colored-114838971, the "Disney Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Disney-Meme-145061823, the "Meet Your OC Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Meet-Your-OC-Meme-145661675, and the "2003-2009 Improvement Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/SAK-s-Improvement-Meme-152319693. These are all single-person Memes, that is to say, they're about me and I filled them out by myself.

More recently, however, I came across the "Doubles Meme", which becomes a collaborative effort: http://renny08.deviantart.com/art/Remie-s-Double-Meme-127549078. This time the Meme is divided into two, and two artists fill it out (each does their half seperately) then surprises each other with the final result. I asked a friend from DeviantArt, Aoixin http://aoixin.deviantart.com/ if she'd like to do it with me, and we did:
Most of the jokes are inside jokes relating to our OCs (Original Characters) and the MMORPG 'Aion', which we both play, and through which we found each other via searching Aion art. This was such a fun Meme to do, because I was chatting with Aoixin to the side throughout drawing it, not so that I'd give anything away, but it was still fun just chatting, and the end results were hilarious. In fact, I found a collaboration like this so much fun I decided to do it again ... with my sister! http://threevoices.deviantart.com/
I don't draw collaborations very often, but I found both of these to be very enjoyable to fill out. It even bolstered my confidence about drawing digitally straight into Photoshop with my tablet, so much so that I want to draw more stuff digitally, instead of drawing it traditionally with pencil and pen, scanning it, and coloring it on the computer.

--Sak