From this thing!

• 5: Who/what inspires you?

I’m sure it’s cliche to say song lyrics, but that’s definitely a thing. We’ll move that to the music section.

As far as Who:

Yoshitaka Amano, particularly for his Final Fantasy artwork, since that’s where I first found him and his style at that point in his career influenced me a lot when I was ten. Final Fantasy 6 in particular featured women that were a little unsettling looking and men with black lips, along with ridiculous amounts of fiddly details and lines that weren’t really anything but were somehow a hand or a foot.  

Marjane Satrapi for Persepolis in particular.  Not so much for how her work looks, but what she did with it, her story, and how powerful and compelling and beautifully human everything is. 

Sayaka, who had a show at my favorite gallery in Portland several years ago, and watercolors elegantly surreal, slightly suggestive and usually lesbian young women. I’ve got an autographed print on my wall.  I love her letting her colors bleed but still showing so much control, I love her beautiful lines, her strange compositions, her contrast, her subjects, just all the things.  

Ippei Gyoubu, who was featured in that same show, and who I also own a few prints from.  He makes these really great women.  Sometimes terrifying, sometimes sexy, sometimes fighting, always in these really bold graphic shapes and colors.  

And more, of course, but those people come immediately to mind.  Jhonen Vasquez should get a mention as well. 

Things that are not individual people and are thus the What include: depictions of Hindu deities, Ancient Egyptian art, mythology in general, Monster High dolls, Little Apple Dolls, these gorgeously terrifying ball jointed dolls, angry feminist rants, sci fi, strange fashion, watching ‘Face Off’, 'conflicting’ depictions of beauty and terror…. Mostly the stuff you see here, honestly! 

• 11: Do you listen to music when you draw? Favorites?

I am very music.  It’s on almost all the time.  As for what’s on when I draw, it definitely depends on whether what I’m painting is inspired by a song in particular, because in that case, I tend to have that specific song on for the hours it takes me to do the painting.  That way it’s sort of inspiring but also becomes background after a while.  

Overall, as far as inspiring the most art, that credit goes to The Birthday Massacre, who make music a lot like the images I like to look at and make - at the corner of beautiful and terrifying, and not afraid to let their female vocal rasp and get throaty and growly and scary.  She doesn’t always have to be haunting beauty, even though she frequently is and I really dig that. (She also has a Sailor Saturn tattoo and, well.)  It’s creepy electronic stuff that mixes a lot of beauty with terror and aggression, so it is my jam.  I can’t recommend any one of their songs, because as soon as I start a list, it eventually becomes all of them.  'Video Kid’ is one of their oldest, but is one I adore.  'Pale’ has some g/b associations SUPER HARD if you’re into that,  

Right along with Vanilla Ninja, whose ’Kingdom Burning Down’ I’ve named most of my websites after and was Banshee’s eventual big important theme music.  I got through a lot of things listening to these ladies, and even though the lyrics are sometimes a little off (they’re Estonian), it’s fantastic aggressive stuff, good for yelling and conquering things but still with a melody. 

I can’t talk about music and not talk about Ruslana. Just look at this badass.  Awards everywhere, involved in Ukrainian government, raises awareness and money for shit left and right, and makes some really punch the air stomp the ground and yell dance music based on the music from the Carpathian mountains.  I’m a bit in love with Ruslana.  Her Wild Dances stuff in particular, though I haven’t been able to get a hold of her latest stuff.  I want it all, though, let me tell you.  Everything she touches, I want.

In a non-creepy way.

Shiny Toy Guns also do slightly surreal and beautiful combined with angry and aggressive.  They have a male and female vocal who both do front duty, they occasionally use slightly grating sounds and then follow them with really beautiful things. I definitely admire that from song to song, thanks to their dual vocals, they can sound totally different, but overall, there’s a clear unified feeling.  Their first and third (most recent) albums are the best, but nearly everything is something I really love and appreciate.  'Le Disko’ is fuck awesome (look at the youtube video for that, there’s androgynous beautiful people and a woman exploding into having a ton of spider legs), I love 'Somewhere To Hide’, 'Photograph’ shocked me when I’d only heard their female vocal,  and they recently covered Peter Schilling, a German artist who does a lot of electronic stuff about computers taking over human kind, people drifting off dead in space, and the heat death of the universe, and who I have been obsessed with since I was nine. 

And Ke$ha, who you don’t need me to link you to, because you’ve probably heard her.  She gets called trash so often, but fuck if I don’t think she does some fantastic shit.  I like the kinds of things she does, even if I don’t often like the result, if that makes sense.  I love that sings some songs about aggressive sexuality even if that is not my bag at all. I don’t really love 'Gold Trans Am’ but I love that she made it.   I love that she’s aggressive, period.  I love that she’s swearing and telling everyone to fuck off, she’s doing this shit, like it or not. I love 'Cannibal’, I love 'Warrior’, I love 'Crazy Kids’, I love 'Tik Tok,’ I love 'Blow,’ I just love this shit, it is my candy and I have painted to all of those and more. 

Also involved in me arting is video game soundtracks, Conjure One, showtunes, Disney, everything from Eurovision, They Might Be Giants, Pure Moods compilations, Alizee, Disney, Jem, old j-pop tracks from when I was 14, and generally just stuff collected from around the world.  I heavily favor female performers, 

From this thing

• 3: Show a thing you last drew, no matter how small or a “doodle” it is.

The last actual thing I drew is part of my secret Companion Project, and the thing before that was the Braid!Garak and Scruff!Bashir, so the thing before THAT, was this sketching for something of Banshee: 

• 7: Draw a same pic with your dominant and non-dominant hand.

I discovered in art school that I have a reasonable degree of ambidextrousness at larger sizes, which I suppose makes sense as it doesn’t require the finest of motor control, but it was still fun to work on an easel with both hands and confuse some of my instructors. (Some of them did not find out I was left handed until the end of the semester, haha)  So I did it in photoshop, too.  The first two Banshee’s were done at the same size, something like 16%, the third one that looks not totally terrifying was done at 100%. 

Obviously, this is not great for producing the stuff I do most often, but it’s great for charcoal, graphite, pastel, loose ink, that sort of thing.  Stuff that’s a bit softer than inked lines. I can generally trust that both hands can get a job done when it comes to things like that.  

I spent a lot of time doing drawings on oekaki boards when I was a teenager, and they were always with a mouse, which I learned to use right handed, so maybe that’s a factor, I don’t know. Maybe this is actually really common and no one else found it as fun as I did. 

• 15. Any weird artist behaviour you admit doing?

I cannot walk into an art store without buying something, and it’s usually a pen, marker, or paint that I already have.  And then I’ll come home and see that I have four of them and remember that this happens every god damn time.

I definitely make the face of the subject I’m trying to depict if it’s a strange expression or an exaggerated one.  It helps me to really feel what’s moving on my face, and thus translate it to what to emphasize on the drawn face. 

I hoard paper and ‘reference material’ (old magazines, photos of nude people at strange angles, pictures of clothing I want, catalogs, textbooks), for sure. I struggle to throw things away because I’m always convinced I will need the things for my next project the moment I throw them out. 

I also tend to get violently distracted by people with extraordinary proportions (Sid~~), comparative anatomy, sudden juxtapositions of color (I am helpless against dusk reflecting off of tall buildings, coming through trees, or creating strong shadows), and poor compositional decisions. These things have been known to physically yank me away from conversation. I once spent an hour just at the bat exhibit at a zoo, and get really excited at prehistoric cat skeletons.  I also get really angry if stuck in a place with poorly realized murals, ugly or lazily rendered mascot characters, nasty merchandising decisions, or anything in Papyrus font.   I will fume and point out all of it to everyone with me, artist or not.