For Polyvios

by Aunt Herbert, March 19th 2024 © 2024 Aunt Herbert

These are approximately the lines that I guess you were aiming for?

Polyvios Animations

Hey, Herbert! You make a much better clean-up animation artist than me!! Great job on pushing the guts of my chaotic ruff sketch. Please push yourself forward as far as you can and will go.

Aunt Herbert

Thing is, I really wish I could push you that tiny bit further.

You have so much passion for the art, you have acquired so much technical ability and understanding of forms and shapes and values, yet you seem incapable of separating figure from background, noise from signal, design from accident.

I don't know at what stage in your drawing process this happens,

-whether you either first cover the page in searching motions, and find your lines via trial and error, leaving all that residue on the page and your final lines not confident enough to establish clear dominance over that background noise,

-or whether you start with clear lines, and then can't stop yourself from drawing over them, until they vanish in the cloud,

-or whether it's something in between.

However the end result leaves the task of figuring out your artistic vision to the viewer, possibly helped around with an explanation from you and some familiarity with your work.

It just definitely is a barrier between your art and a casual viewer, who won't take their time to consider an explanation or get familiar with your specific work. They will look at your results for 2 seconds, fail to pick up your intention, say "I don't get it" and be done with it.