Still enjoying cutting holes in things, and now I have proper black and white paper. Crow inspired by a woodcut of Holly Meade's, not the least bit original.
Still trying to figure out why papercutting is so much more satisfying than similar vector art, and seems to look better, at least in person. Medium shouldn't matter, but seems to. Hmmm.
What I said earlier I've reflected on a bit more, and I think it comes from my experience working with electronic music. I really think that it being three-dimensional and a little less perfect counts for a lot. Try tracing your picture exactly with a vector program and see if it still looks as good? I'll bet you won't be able to get it exactly, and that it won't look as good. Things need to be a little organic, or a little cartoony; in-between is sort of an uncanny valley of art. Like how perfect timing and perfect everything in music works fine if you're working in a genre that's really intricate and technical, but not so much for something people are going to appreciate other than intellectually.
I think my best music involves some imperfection, some untidiness, and that it's likely the same for your art.
Of course, tastes vary. It's like how your dad liked my oil painting of mountains more vocally, presumably because it was more orderly and so appealed to him more than the abstract, imperfect mountains you did, which I think were much more evocative and interesting and pleasant to look at.
I'm thinking something like what juli said. Papercutting is a physical activity, much more so than vector art: you hold the scissors in one hand and the paper in the other. You carefully squeeze the grips, continuously adjusting the relationship of the tool and the medium with input from at least three senses, sight, touch, and sound. Or maybe one hand holds the X-acto or other knife, guiding the tip of the blade along the imagined or faintly drawn line, or the straightedge held by the other hand. The result depends not just on your intentions - the start- and endpoints and curvature of the cut - but on the physical reality of the tool and the paper, and your actions in connecting them.
This is a much more physical craft than vector art, much more real to our flesh and blood, which after all are the source and substance of our minds. And no wonder that the product itself is more satisfying. Through all our m(b)illions of years, until the very latest tiniest fragment of one tick of evolution's clock, everything we have ever experienced has been shaped by such complex physical interactions, with nary a straight line to be seen except the occasional crystal cleavage in stone or sunbeam in cloudy sky.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 06:24 am (UTC)Still trying to figure out why papercutting is so much more satisfying than similar vector art, and seems to look better, at least in person. Medium shouldn't matter, but seems to. Hmmm.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 06:29 am (UTC)I think my best music involves some imperfection, some untidiness, and that it's likely the same for your art.
Of course, tastes vary. It's like how your dad liked my oil painting of mountains more vocally, presumably because it was more orderly and so appealed to him more than the abstract, imperfect mountains you did, which I think were much more evocative and interesting and pleasant to look at.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 08:36 pm (UTC)This is a much more physical craft than vector art, much more real to our flesh and blood, which after all are the source and substance of our minds. And no wonder that the product itself is more satisfying. Through all our m(b)illions of years, until the very latest tiniest fragment of one tick of evolution's clock, everything we have ever experienced has been shaped by such complex physical interactions, with nary a straight line to be seen except the occasional crystal cleavage in stone or sunbeam in cloudy sky.
And, of course, the perfect subject for "Corvi"!
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Date: 2014-05-26 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-26 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-19 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-26 10:12 pm (UTC)