foervraengd:

luvlymilk:

This will be one of the times where I write about something I care about. As all of you who follow me should know, art is a huge part of my life, so I think about it a lot and it is easy for me to over-think things that people say…especially when it is against my entirely favorite genre of art.  Soo I want to say something really important that I have been thinking about lately. 

I am very bothered by something and I’ll tell you flat out why; I have been reading some of the stuff said on artist-confessions’ tumblr… and, while it is totally valid to critique an artists’ work or a style or complain about it, all I can really say is that I really just don’t understand some things people say there, and in the art world in general.

When I got into High-school. In my first year, I found out that “fine” artists really hated anime. When reviewing my freshman-year highschool portfolio, my teacher told me “you are really imaginative. you seem like you are the kind of person who can turn a table-lamp into a creature and that’s really amazing. but, you should really drop the whole anime thing.” This, mixed with my hatred for most people who liked anime (I blame my horrible anime club experiences…) led me to quickly take her advice and swerve into a semi-western-cartoon semi-realism style. I was pretty proud of it and my teachers seemed to like it and its application.  But slowly, I started losing interest in drawing. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I just didn’t think I could make it, etc, because the fine-arts world was just way over my head. I think at that point, I just didn’t understand what the art world wanted from me, so I didn’t know what I wanted from art. I sometimes still drew on the side, I never really stopped, but I was harshly critical of everything I drew and everything everyone else drew, especially if it wasn’t “fine art” or “meaningful/deep” art, I barred myself from liking anything that wasn’t within that realm.

In the last few years however, I have learned a LOT about myself, and for this I can thank a certain friend, who draws anime art. He was really really amazing to me, and completely changed my outlook on anime art and comprehension and my ENTIRE DIRECTION With my life. He did this by showing me his art, and by simply diversifying the style with all the ASTOUNDING anime artists there are out there. When I met him, I started drawing anime art again, because I WANTED to do it despite what people hated about it, and you know what? It just makes me happy. Plain and simple. That is why I do it. It makes me happy and it is how I like to express myself, and what I like looking at because it inspires me. I am excited to draw again, I am excited to show people my ideas again in a medium that I enjoy, and enjoying and exploring anime style has made me appreciate many other art styles too, because they really add to my ability to show what anime can really be. I am no longer afraid to say that I am an anime artist. I am not filled with DREAD anymore to tell people that I am, and I am not afraid anymore to tell art teachers that it is my main focus. Why? Because I know people just don’t understand how GOOD it can be.

That is why I am writing this and defending it. Because it is a colorful, varied, beautiful art style that I absolutely adore above all others, and I hate that people only see the horrible thick top coating of BAD anime art.

I realize it doesn’t make everyone happy. I realize some people just PLAIN do not like the style either and that’s totally fine! There are a few reasons I think people hate it so much, though- It is because it is very popular and easy to laugh at. It is because a LOT of anime artists are very annoying, Japan-idolizing, CRAZY anime fans who can’t appreciate other mediums, especially ones from their own culture. It is because the things people see are not very diverse, and the good anime artists are hidden out of plain sight, due to the fact that many of them draw things that MOST anime lovers don’t like as much. It is because many people use it as a way to draw fan-arts of almost EVERYTHING and makes EVERYTHING look like the “same thing/pose/style”, even though the original was unique. I think it is because MANY anime artists don’t learn basics and don’t develop their own sense of style or subject, and draw copies of things they “learn” in American how-to-draw-manga books.

…But I really don’t think people should be so harsh on anime as a genre of art, and shouldn’t group all anime artists together. I simply think people just haven’t seen enough of it or have an idea of it that is based on popular American anime artists on deviant-ART, or on Bleach / Naruto / Sailor Moon. 

Honestly. NO style of art is a limited style, and what you see on the surface is NEVER what should be considered the depths of the style. People, especially within the art community need to stop hating each others art that is different from their own,  and putting each other down for things they probably don’t understand. I mean, I don’t understand abstract art that looks like paint splattered on a wall by a small child, or the hundreds of sepia-tone photography of naked girls with a deer skull held in front of their face, or church pews rearranged to look like a sail-boat with movie screens peeking out of the broken parts, or anything else that can be considered “fine” art… but I still appreciate it for what it is and don’t put people down for their adoration or creation of it, in fact I applaud them for having a difference of style from me- because artists need to learn how to LEARN from each other, outside of their stylistic “boundaries”. There needs to stop being furry versus anime versus realism versus painting versus digital art versus ANYTHING ELSE war— it’s ALL ART, celebrate it because it is all beautiful! see the beauty in it, or try to look deeper into it instead of complaining and despising the things you don’t understand!

WHY DOESN’T THIS POST HAVE ANY NOTES!? THIS IS THE BEST RANT I’VE READ TODAY. I LOVE YOU DEAR PERSON ON THE INTERNET.