artistbettyanne | Slowly Getting Pencil to Paper (Reply)

Well, fux0r. It's been a month since I've updated pretty much anything. :/ It's no wonder I never get anything done.

I am (slowly) starting to get back to putting pencil to paper this week, and I'm supposed to be journaling/note-taking as I go so that I (theoretically) have less work to do when it comes to writing my supporting paper for my grad show. I figured, what better place to do so than on my online journals, y/y? XD

The posts I'll be doing to this end will be tagged with "grad show journaling," so if you want to skip a bunch of musings, technical discussion, WIPs, etc by an artist, these posts will be easy enough to spot when scrolling. (Conversely, if you're one of the ones who reads my journal for those things, you'll be able to easily access them via that tag.)

Now that's out of the way, on to today's topic: Appropriation in Art

The word "appropriation" has a negative connotation, due primarily to contemporary concerns with cultural appropriation. This is particularly true in fandom communities where any sort of meta posts or discussion are held. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult for many fanartists to reasonably discuss modern art, pop art, and the important role appropriation plays in them.

Appropriation in art goes back to the literal meaning of the word - from Late Latin "to make one's own." For an artist, appropriation means taking in an idea (either viewing another artwork, looking at things, listening to music or discourse, reading books or papers, etc.), mulling over what message is being conveyed, deconstructing the idea, reconstructing the idea, and finally representing (re-presenting) the idea in the artist's own way to convey the artist's own message.

At its core, this is what fanart in general is. Any given fanartist is simply re-presenting the ideas from their fandom.

I take my art a step beyond that. Much of the enjoyment I get out of any media I consume is in the messages I can take back from it. This is part of the reason I have an affinity for ridiculous stories (Excel Saga, FLCL), fantasy adventure (DBZ, Slayers, Saiyuki), supernatural stories (Ghost Hunt, Ghost Only, Hellsing) and gender/sexuality issues (Family Compo, Princess+Princess, FAKE, Until the Full Moon). These are all topics I find interesting, relevant and important to my sphere of being. (I'd love there to be more environment-themed stories, too, but that's why I fell in love with Captain Planet despite the heavy-handed cheese of the early environmental movement packed into every episode.)

When I deconstruct these ideas, I not only consider what the obvious message being given is, but what underlying messages might be able to be found. For example, in the case of Captain Planet, Gaia was crafted to be a mix of all the races/ethnicities on the planet, and Cap was designed to be a "typical" super-hero of the age, but colored with the various elements of the Earth, sun, and humanity. Gaia's name was taken from the ancient goddess of Earth, but she was not intended to be a literal representation of that specific goddess. However, over the course of the series and what little character development took place, I was also able to find vestiges of the goddess-god duo that pervaded much of the ancient world and has carried over into many Neo-Pagan groups. That alone gives an additional, richer layer of message and understanding to the media for those who also see it. I also frequently deconstruct any actual imagery given, including how the artist achieved it, and consider if I find any of the elements of it useful.

In reconstructing the ideas, I frequently infuse them not only with my own personal understanding but with additional aspects I pull from my educational experiences, my personal experiences and various research I've done. I'm intentionally layering new meaning into the ideas in order to encourage those who view the final work to think differently about something they're probably very familiar with already. It also gives an immediate unique perspective to those who pass by the art and aren't familiar with the original. (This is part of what authors like Anne Rice or producers like Nintendo [Pokemon franchise] are concerned about when they banhammer fanworks. Rice wants her presentation of her vampires - and only hers - to be available, and Nintendo is concerned that seeing pornographic art with their characters could badly influence a potential customer's understanding of the series. Whether these concerns are valid, and if they're valid whether they're overblown or not, is a different discussion.)

My final representation - the art I produce - conveys these newly reconstructed ideas in a style and manner I'm comfortable with. This does not mean every audience member who ever views the art is going to be comfortable with it, and in many case I would prefer they were not. Art can - and should, in many cases - be used to provoke a reaction from the viewer. Even better, it should provoke a new action, even if that action is simply creating another piece of art in response.

My current WIP is a (probably over-ambitious) multiple-character composition. I've played around with appropriating compositions in the past and have found it to be a very successful aspect of my work. (See examples in Under the Clocktower, The Saiyan Odalisque, Oath of the Sons, and The Paper Demon of Gotham City, among others.) For this work, I'll be pulling the composition from this image. It's gorgeous, it makes good use of multiple figures (though I'll be adding figures to the composition - this one has 22, and I need 30), and the composition will be immediately recognizable to anyone who is fairly well-versed in the Sailor Moon fandom, as it has continually been a popular image among Sailor Moon fans. Many of the poses will be identical or near-identical, but some will be tweaked or changed entirely. When I deconstructed the image, I found instances of poor proportions and sloppy figure placement (seriously, why cram Prince Endymion into the corner like that as an afterthought?), and I'll be adjusting those. Chibi-Chibi will be replaced with an adult/teen figure who is seated, because all of my figures will be teens/adults. Even though Naoko Takeuchi's work greatly influenced my own style, I also have a lot of differences in how I treat figures and proportions, and that will also be a noticeable difference. Additionally, the 30 figures I'm using are from 14 different series, rather than all being figures from one story. I'm at the thumbnailing stage at the moment, and it already seems to be coming together well. I'll definitely be uploading WIPs and discussion of those WIPs as I go!