RatCreature's Journal

27 – Where is your favorite place to create art, and do you use traditional media, or digital ones, or both?

For scribbling ideas my favorite place is actually my bed, because it also functions as my couch, so that's were I sit/lie with my laptop when I read fanfic or watch tv. My initial sketches are always pencil, so that is no problem doing in a comfortable spot (for a while I stuck with a resolution to try to do more life sketches, and drew people on the bus and such but I feel always self-conscious and awkward -- I probably should do more of that, exercise being good for you and all that, but the public is not a favorite place). However it gets rather unergonomic when I do digital inking like that (it probably is unergonomic with paper too, but a sketchbook or pad is easily held, rearranged and not very heavy compared to a laptop/tablet setup), though I still do it for quicker pictures even though neither my back nor my right hand thank me for it, not least because my actual desk tends to be often buried under all kinds of crap. For traditional painting I use said desk with an improvised drawing board put up.

28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether a shared art project, or illustrations for story, or having a writer work on a piece based on your art?

I've never collaborated closely. In the ST Reverse Bang a writer wrote a story based on my art, I've got a drabble for a picture once, and I've done ten illustrations for fanfic stories, but I don't ask permission or talk to the authors before I draw something. I show them the illustration afterwards and most authors seem happy to get fanart. Only once did I have an author not react at all when I linked my fanart in a comment. I suppose she could have not gotten the LJ comment notification, though the LJ was still active and in use when I commented, or she could have disliked it and not said anything, but either way, that was somewhat disheartening, especially since it was a fairly elaborate painting.

Anyway, the way I've done illustrations so far hasn't been really a collaboration. I sometimes think it might be fun to do work more closely with a writer, maybe on a comic or something like that, where there would be a back and forth, but comics are a lot of work, and I'm lazy.

23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? DeviantArt? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

I post to my personal site (since 1999), my art-only wordpress blog (which I use because category sorting there is easier with just art specific labels, than in a journal with everything mixed), my journals (DW/LJ/IJ), and I try to post to communities if I find one that fits. The last two years I've also posted to deviantArt. I would use the AO3 for my fanart (I have an account there for reading locked stuff, commenting and bookmarking) if it already had fanart functionality, but I don't see much sense to archive when I can't even archive the work itself, or have good browsing functionality for pictures. I mean, if I was killed by a falling toilet seat tomorrow and my webspace expired three months later, the archive would be left with a bunch of broken images if I just embedded.

24 – Betaing – Do you use art betas? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?

Yes, for more elaborate pieces I like to have art betas, usually to check over the pencils for glaring errors or get help on perspective and such. I didn't use to, because for a while I didn't even know that kind of thing was done for art too, probably because thanks to art betas in art headers are rarer than to fic betas in story headers, and also I didn't seek out more art-centric forums even after I started doing fanart, because all my early media fandom engagement (on mailing lists and such) was fic-and-meta-only.

I don't have any horror stories, or any dream stories either. My experiences with betas so far have been pretty much what you expect. I sent a scan of my pencils, sometimes pointing out an area I have trouble with, I then got feedback, either written or scribbled over the image (I rather like the latter method), and mostly heeded the advice.

Bundling the "bunny" question set.

18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your art (aka "bunnies") from?

From stories or from prompts, sometimes art also happens because I want to try a technique I've seen. Sometimes discussions and non-fiction posts inspire me, though that happens more for my icons which I use in discussions.

19 – When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start making art right away, or do you write/sketch down the idea for further use?

It depends. If the bunny is for something quick and cracky that is very context and time dependent, like comment art, I just do a scribble. That doesn't happen all that often, but when it does I end up with things like Tim turned into a lesbian centaur, John and Rodney in Woody Allen sperm costumes, or Batman getting a time out. For most fanart however it doesn't go like that, because the impetus to make something is less immediate. So I have a file for fanart ideas, write down my idea and most just land there to rot. I usually think about an idea for quite some time, and just imagine it in my head, and only start drawing if the idea is compelling enough and I keep liking it for some time.

20 – Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?

Yes, definitely. (Though bunny should not become a verb.) I like illustrating stories. Other fanart inspires me more in the sense that I sometimes want to try techniques.

15 – Warnings – Do you put warnings on your art, and if yes, what do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for?

I don't warn on my own website, but in part that is because I so rarely post anything that would need warnings in the first place. In my journal I use headers with a warning field because some of the newsletters and communities ask for that for linking, and overall I've come to see that kind of header field mostly as "content labels" rather than the more negative "warning". And with art that you see all at once there isn't even the issue of spoiling any twists.

What I think is most important to warn for would be anything that has sex/sexual nudity with underage characters, because in some locations such art can count as "childporn" even if drawn, and even if it is teenagers and not young children, so you don't want to download it accidentally. Also labeled IMO should be the fannish equivalent to shock images, and I think if there are preview pictures for such art they should not show that part of the picture but instead use text warnings. So I'd warn for extreme violence and gore, violent sexual imagery, and animal harm in pictures, and probably be specific about what is disturbing so people can avoid specific squicks, e.g. I'd label for "gory medical instrument torture" or "explicit eye injury" rather than just "gore".

Obviously I'd also warn for serious spoilers for the canon, especially if something is still new, as a fannish courtesy.

On the next level of importance I'd put labels for explicit sex, sexual nudity and such that's merely NSFW but not disturbing, and character death. Anything else I'd probably put more under useful, but optional, detailed content labels (anyone who has seen my delicious account will guess that I have a strong preference for detailed labels) to help fans find what they like and avoid what they don't like.

As far as warnings that I have actually used myself go, there haven't been many, and nothing unusual. My art is overwhelmingly harmless. I've warned for drug use once for regular fanart, and for animal harm twice I think in drawbles, and I tend to indicate nudity or sexual activity even when mild, e.g. "PG for clothed, sexual kissing". Really it's all very tame.

13 – Are you inspired more by canon or by other fanworks when you create art? Has creating art for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I'm more often inspired by fanworks than by canon, especially if the canon is already visual like live action or comics. Unfortunately I only rarely get a real urge to draw (hello sloth, old friend), and then it is mostly because I wish to illustrate a scene that was vividly described and put an image in my head. So if canon is already visual that doesn't happen all that often. I'm not good at imagining scenarios or stories myself, so if the visuals are already there more often than not I don't feel like doing more. Most verbal stories don't provoke that visual urge either, but some do.

I don't think making fanart changes my view of the source much, except that I pay closer attention to detail.

Bundling the pairings questions...

9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to depict in your art?

Pairings aren't really that central for me, and I haven't even done that many pairing pieces. In DC it's probably Bruce/Dick and Dick/Roy. For HP I enjoyed the Snape/Kingsley art I did, but it's not exactly a pairing favorite, I just liked the specific story by Beth a lot, otherwise I wouldn't have done two illustrations for it. The pairings I read most all involve Harry, but so far I haven't drawn any of those.

In SGA I like the team dynamic, and Sheppard with any number of people (John/Teyla, John/Rodney, John/Ronon, John/Lorne, John/Cameron... you get the idea) but that the only specific pairing in one of my SGA pictures is John/Rodney was mostly due to that being asked for my a recipient in a fest, not because I feel more inspired by that pairing, though I read a lot of it.

10 - Pairings – Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and made art for a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't draw/paint/..., or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?

Not really. I'm not that hung up on pairings. So far I haven't done any art for a pairing that I dislike. The couple of times I've worked from fest prompts and such I could always find an angle that worked okay for me and with the offered prompts, so I never had to leave my comfort zone. I have a general RPF squick so I don't think I could do actor pairing art of any kind on request, certainly not explicit. I could probably work around my incest squick if pressed, at least for sibling incest, though probably not parent/child unless I was trying for an abuse-themed picture, which I don't count as "pairing". I've done some drawbles for prompts that aren't my thing, so I think I could go beyond my comfort zone in some directions but not in others.

7 – Have you ever had a piece of fanart change your opinion of a character?

Not that I can think of, at least not one of mine. I've probably come across character design choices by others that changed how I visualized previously non-visual canon or even made more sense than visual canon, but I can't think of an example there either. Overall my views of characters are rather malleable, so I can accept a variety of versions both in art and fic, but they usually only last while I engage with that work, rather than causing me to shift my views.

The influence of fanworks and fanon on me are more subtle and cumulative. I mean, I have gone for example from Harry/Snape? no way that works! after reading the books, to seeing how it can be made work after a bunch of enjoyable fic in so far that it doesn't ping me as completely improbable anymore, because I've seen the dots connected so often, but there was no single fanwork changing my mind.

5 – If you have ever had a character try to push their way into your art, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?

I don't think I work in a way that would make something like this likely. Usually the people in an artwork don't change from the first concept thumbnail to the final version, they just get rearranged and such. Sometimes I have ideas for epic crowd scenes and similarly difficult things that I back away from in horror at the effort that would be involved, but otherwise if an idea evolves to include another character, I just add them.

3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to draw/paint/depict/...?

Answering just for the fandoms where I created a couple of planned things: For DC that would be Dick Grayson followed by Tim Drake, for SGA John Sheppard followed by Teyla, for HP I really enjoy doing magical creatures most rather than characters, but numerically as far as characters go Snape is ahead in my fanart, even though he is actually not my favorite character, which is Harry. Whom I oddly enough have only drawn as platypus animagus outside of drawbles. (It was an animagus challenge, so not as odd as it seems, and really platypuses are awesome.) For Temeraire he is my favorite dragon, but Iskierka was fun to paint.

I've seen this meme around on my network, most recently from penknife, and because I don't write fanfic I adapted the questions for fanart. Some of the phrasing is a bit awkward, because due to all the different kinds of fanart I didn't just want to replace "write" with "draw".

1 – How did you first get into creating fanart, and what was the first fandom you made art for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

This depends a bit on how narrow you see what's "fanart". I've been in (non-superhero) comic fandom and drew comics as a kid, but those were more or less original, i.e. I did not use existing characters or copied comics except for style.

Even then I was much better at worldbuilding than plot, so for my first real comic project (that was back in fourth or fifth grade), I wanted to do a comic about these fluffy creatures I imagined (called Wuschels, kind of like tribbles, but with eyes, noses, feet and antenna and not as fertile), but what I ended up with was a sort of background treatise with illustrations detailing how they lived and their society and biology and such. I only managed two pages of an actual comic, then ran out of plot, and strangely enough did another illustrated thing about their version of football. IDEK. I mean, I've never been a sports fan, this just shows how pervasive football is. I did share these with my family and subjected my long suffering best friend to my efforts as well. I was never one much for drawer projects. I still have the drawings and texts from that project in a binder, but I lost the ones I made from yarn. From then on I drew comics all through high school. Some of them are posted on my website.

It took me much longer to try creating fanart in a narrow sense. The first media fandoms I got into online weren't good places for fanart. My first major online fandom was The Sentinel in the late 90s, and there was very little fanart online, and mostly just collage type photomanips that often weren't all that good. Zines were expensive, so I only ever ordered a couple, and even those often did not have any illustrations, and the few that did were all aiming for a very photo-realist style. I know now that even at the time there had been other fanart styles around for tv fandoms, but I didn't know that then. I thought to be accepted as fanart in live action fandoms art had to try for photorealism. So at that time I didn't even realize that anyone might be interested in the kind of fanart I could do.

Eventually there was a Sentinel fanfic for which I couldn't resist drawing an illustration, but the result was really quite bad. I was too embarrassed to attach my internet identity to that, and incidentally was also for a story I did not want to admit to have liked under my regular pseud either. These days I'm much less embarrassed about my kinks, and the author managed to push all my buttons really well, despite that the story was an unfinished WIP, not even spellchecked and OOC. But I still wanted to give the author the drawing her story had inspired (like I said above, I never saw much sense to produce for a drawer rather than public, not even if it's somewhat cringeworthy, I mean it still took time and effort after all), so that led to the only time I ever created a sockpuppet account in fandom. So I actually posted my first piece of fanart as a sockpuppet. I guess it is similar to venturing forth into anon kink memes first these days. Luckily afaik the yahoogroup where I posted the picture in the file section has vanished by now, so I don't think it is even on the internet anymore... Which is really better for everyone. I don't recall even the author responding with anything after getting the art.

The first fanart I posted properly was after I got drawn into DC fandom. I was inspired by cereta's story Secrets, and unlike the live action fandoms I was in, it seemed less daunting to draw comic characters than to have to try for a realist style, and Cereta and some others on my flist were encouraging me to try, so I took the plunge. Also at that point LJ was replacing mailing lists as platform, so not only seemed comic fandom easier to draw for and more receptive and open to art than the live action fandoms I knew previously, posting it was also easier.

( The rest of the meme questions, slightly adapted to fit fanart )