Cthulu? No, too symbolic and obvious for my taste. I'm inspired by the octopus, because they seem very smart, and they are so alien to us. Also, many of them can communicate visually through color-changing skin. If they evolved into civilizations, I think this would give them a great advantage. I am trying make them unique and dreamlike. I admire surrealism and "outsider" art. Alternative states of consciousness are definitely an influence. Not for years and years...
i can see that, but dream-like states don't have to be so "haunting" or depressing in a way. Dream-like states in art can be expressed with haze, displacement of objects, unnatural movements, but all this does not have to look erie...try to draw something that reflects both the dream and happiness.
I'm trying to make them eerie, unsettling, and macabre. I'm interested in the darker aspects of human nature, the absurdities we face daily, the horrors that become routine... I'm a big fan of Edward Gorey: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Edward Gorey
...because you might want to feel it and experience it, to be close to it. You want to express it in your art. The more people see it of what you want to express, the more they want it, the more you want to express it with bigger acuteness. In the end you realize that paper and art on it cannot show everything you wanted to express, so you try other means for people to see it...Take your avatar for example, you picked it because it shows that eerieness and awkwardness. The way he moves the head and the way the camera portrays it while closing in on his face...it works very well...in fact it works better than art on paper. So thats a step up for expressing the eeriness...and how far can it go? It can go as far as killing someone to show others the exposed body and the eeriness of the act.
It's a way of working through the nature of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It's like a catharsis. Actually, we cannot avoid becoming aware of the strangeness of our existence. It's an integral part of the depth of human experience. Certainly there are darker artists out there. I think my work has a cartoonish quality, as if to say, yes we are absurd, but it's kind of funny, too. I don't find most actual murders to have that same quality, it's often just brutal and mundane.
I'm not trying to craft an inspirational message with my art. I put the pen to paper, and whatever comes out is what comes out. It's a reflection of my subconscious mind as much as anything, and I'm troubled and somewhat amused by my experience with the world. It's not problematic, like a mental illness or anything, but I think many people feel the same way. Our ordinary state of mind is like a filter. We avoid thinking about things we don't need to think about. Pehaps my goal is to lift the veil a little bit.
As many artists through time have done. And the beat goes on...on..on...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
As much as I would like to, I have not seen any real happiness in pictures. Sometimes, I deliberately look at pictures that people have chosen as examples of depicting happiness. But so far, I have always found something disturbing in those pictures. Usually pictures of smiling people, happy children and such - there is always something disturbing there. In the eyes of most people who smile, I see fear. Or there is something about their face or posture that is unsettling. And if nothing else, the disturbing is in the context someone put the picture in.
I do have happier pictures, I have a wide variety of work, but I picked some of the more stranger ones to post here. I have done more traditional things too, but mere technical ability doesn't impress me too much.
The Gashlycrumb Tinies!!!!!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/stage/7535/gorey.html edit: scroll down for the A-Z of the tinies.
There was a longer post here ... I saw it and I was thinking about how to reply, and now it's gone ...