whitespace is not love

[egypturnash]

Epilogue bounced the tentacle piece: "Image needs cropping."

I'm starting to feel like I'm just not welcome there. The picture of Fernblossom I hacked out in two and a half hours was approved, but "Numbers Station": "composition needs work"; "Everything Merges With The Night", "composition needs work", and now this.

Whatever. I think it's pretty plain that the directions I'm moving in right now don't fit with their criteria for "good composition and presentation". The "image needs cropping" explanation reads like the polite rejection for "you didn't crop out the binding of your sketchbook, moron" to me. Which has me pissed off, because the space around that image is very carefully considered.

I don't know what my next piece will be, but if they bounce another piece in the next three or four I do because not every square inch has crap in it, I'm writing a politely grumpy note (with my tongue firmly bitten while doing it) on their board, and will stop bothering to upload my stuff there.

There was a rant here but I decided to take it out. I just need to take my estrogen because it's morning and go to sleep because I'm tired.

Next morning thought: There is the fact that I'd forgotten to pick the right medium in the dropdown menu - I accidentally submitted it as an acrylic piece. If you neglect to set genre and medium there, everything's going to be anime crap in acrylic, thanks to alphabetizing. So maybe they really did think it was a shitty crop. Maaaybe. I fixed that which means it goes back into the approval queue. But I'd also uploaded a tighter crop last night, just for giggles, with a line in the description saying "Epilogue crop; the intended composition is visible here." So there's two versions of it waiting there that might get tossed past the same eyes. Well, if both or neither are approved, I'll nuke the "epilogue crop" version; if the "epilogue crop" version is approved, I'll leave the real one in the "submitted but unapproved" part of the gallery management. I like to casually remind myself how much of my stuff they're starting to dislike.

I haven't gotten anything but grumpiness out of being on that gallery lately, so I'm really ready to stop hassling with it. Which reminds me, I need to mention I've quit hassling with GfxArtist in the artist page there. Too much work to upload there.

Later today. They kindly deleted the original cropping for me. Bah.

Comments

[mercurypale.livejournal.com]

apparantly they're a fan of traditional compositions, then....? like, figures centralized on the page, nice, safe compositions that don't interest or challenge the eye at all!

just slap a fanciful unicorn in the negative space--you'll be fine

[gealflings.livejournal.com]

Bah. I finally found the tentacle post, and the negative space in there is fantastic.

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

*goes to look at picture*

What the... haven't those idiots ever heard of 'negative space'? I'd have to say, from what I've seen of your work, that the problem is that your compositions are good - very good - and the people at Epilogue are apes.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

I get this unsettling impression they want more Thomas Kincade and less Picasso. The closer it looks to their Peter Jackson fueled notion of fantastic realism, the better the art. The whole point of fantastic art is to make it look like just like reality, isn't it? How the hell else are we going to suspend our disbelief? :p

[minimalismo.livejournal.com]

Epilogue is a bunch of elitise poo-heads. :|

[jenwolf.livejournal.com]

I think Epilogue just doesn't want any art that makes them have to think.

[maui.livejournal.com]

Actually, well said. That's the most concise way of putting it, for me. Thank you. You saved me a lengthy, rambling rant. :D

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

gee.

[artonis.livejournal.com]

Oh boy.
I think Epilogue's mission is to breed little Michael Whelan clones and conquer the art world...

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

Heck, I never bother to upload there anymore.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

These must be the same people that would rather screw up the movie than see "those distracting black bars" on their video screen.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

DeviantArt is more fun anyway. ;-)

[lapdragon.livejournal.com]

Except for their page layout. It makes me want to punch things.

[reading the rest of the Reject Reasons FAQ]

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Ooo, and dontcha love how comic-book-style art is acceptable... as long as it's not contaminated by those feeelthy deeesgusting SPEECH BUBBLES!!!

[radd.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a gallery run by fanboys of pop-art instead of a gallery run by artists or those that appreciate art. All of their comments about your artwork has struck me as very unprofessional, not the sort of comments one artist would make to another. Like trying to get a good critique from someone with an untrained eye. They can't grasp the pebble from your hand, so they blame you.

In short, their Kung-Fu is weak.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is, though, if you poke around the place and find the 'staff' page, the art of the people who're listed as doing the approval is pretty good. Just conservative. They're all Dragon cover/Magic card mindsets. I am not.

And either they've been getting much pissier in what's "good enough" (like how Yerf's applied admission standards rise and fall) and have been super-picky, or the sparse, Asian composition I've been doing lately just doesn't work for them. I don't know where I'm going with my composition, but it's not a place they seem to appreciate.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what the folks running Epilogue are smoking, but my own opinion of the piece is up on my LJ...

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I've looked at this piece a few times, Peggy, and honestly, I can see their point a bit. While I don't mind the negative space on the top, bottom and side, the fact that there isn't any on the right side makes the image look cut off to me. Though it's only my opinion, I'd really like to see a strip, even a narrow one on the right hand side. It would help reinforce the idea of a tunnel, a sharpened focus, and that the figure was indeed surrounded on all sides. The bleed on the right interrupts that idea to me. Take this for what you will.

As far as experimentation goes, I don't think you're likely to find an online gallery that has "standards," or a any sort of review process that really encourages pushing boundaries all that much. Wild experimentation and a review process don't seem to fit together. Experimentation usually goes hand in hand with freedom to express, and for that, you're more likely to find acceptance or at least a lack of rejection in places like deviantart and VCL.

Also, if what you're trying to do IS push boundaries, do what's beyond the norm, it seems to me that you'd want to engender some sort of uproar and huffing as that means you're challenging the audience. It doesn't mean that you're "right" or they're "wrong," but it illustrates a poke at the perceived aesthetic and that's almost always a good thing, yes?

-T'

[radd.livejournal.com]

While I won't challenge your opinion (such an idea is foolish, afterall), allow me to present my interpretation of the piece. The central figure, the subject, of this piece is the tentacle that the person sillouetted in the doorway is staring at. The negative space implies that this tunnel or cavern goes on well past the person's sight (the lighter part of the image actually being the darkness for the most part, though even that's not entirely true). The negative space on the left and the bottom is required to give off this impression. Without the negative space, it's a smallish room with a tentacle in the middle.

I know you don't disagree with the negative space, but let's move our attention to the right. Actually, let's not. The person in the doorway is not looking that way, they are looking at the tentacle. Should Peggy include the right side and add negative space there, the tentacle is no longer the subject of the image, the person in the doorway (or alternately, the room as a whole, with no specific subject drawing the eye) then becomes the subject of the image.

Because the image is clipped on the right, as it is, we see things more as the person looking into the room sees it, despite looking inward at them.

At least, that's how I view the image. The impression that I get. I wonder how accurate that is?

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

That's definitely an interesting interpretation and shows a lot of thought. I don't think we view the image the same way, but let me explain how I see it and perhaps we can at least agree to disagree.

For my eye, the large tentacle can't be the subject of the image for two reasons: 1) it directly points to the subject in the doorway and 2) that subject is being used in the same manner as a dot would be (meaning something small, but different from its surroundings so as to attract attention). The tentacle is a wonderful ramp into the center of the image, but as my eye follows it, it's not the destination, but an access to it which is the figure. Also, since the tentacle is merely one of many, I see the group together as an adversary of the single figure, the one different bit in the composition. So, not right or wrong, but that's how I see it and why.

Because I see it that way, the fact that the image is interrupted only on one side does two things to unbalance the composition for me. 1) it makes the image look incomplete, drawing my attention to the part that seems "cut away." 2) because it is different in a way that I can't visually comprehend (and it seems to me that Peggy is consciously playing with composition here) it acts like the dot, and draws my attention away from what seems to be the subject of the image. Because there's no "payoff" for drawing my eye off to the side, and because my eye lingers there, trying to "see around the corner," I get lost and the image loses impact.

As for accuracy to either of our views, only Peggy can say. :"D

-T'

[radd.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think I conveyed my thoughts entirely accurately. It's not so much that the tentacle is the subject, so much that the act of the person in the doorway eyeing it is. I'm finding it difficult to put to words, this idea that an act (scene, story, action, idea) is the subject of the illustration. The way Peggy composed the image it tells a story, should it be cropped differently, it would not tell the same story. Still, you seem to have got what I meant, and yeah it really is an individual sort of thing. I can only guess what Peggy's intention was, but I know this is the story I got out of the image. Also, since everyone's and individual, people are likely to see a different story, as the way it's told, much is left to how the viewer interprets it. Grok?

I sincerely won't be surprised when Peggy shows up to debunk my entire guess at what her intentions were.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think you pretty much read this image the same way I do, to be honest.

I don't always have a sequence of events in mind, but I sort of evolved one, visually at least, for this image while pencilling it out:

1. Black screen.
2. Sudden sliver of white that expands into the opening door, light ripples across the screen from this revealing all the tentacles.
3. Largest tentacle comes up into view, rushing towards the figure...

...what happens next? I don't know. The figure's pose is one of perfect unconcern; perhaps she's got some sort of control over all this stuff. She's just staring down this largest tentacle with no fear. And some of them are kinda recoiling from her. Is she going to just walk through all this because she smells right? Fuck them? Command the huge primal Lovecraftian tentaclehorde to go do something foul? I honestly don't know.

I thought of having the right edge be within the image instead of bleeding it, but didn't even try to draw it. My compositional instincts told me a bleed was the way to go. This new sparse composition I'm doing is really entirely on instinct; I haven't evolved any theories of how to balance blankness against nodules of imagery beyond "I know when it looks right".

A moment in time is the subject of a significant percentage of my stuff. Going back for years. I've done my share of "just posing for the camera" but a lot of my stuff clearly has a past and a future to it, probably due to my animation leanings... I'm as interested in showing a change of emotion as I am in showing an emotion.

And when I'm showing a change, there's tension, thus the weird compositions to create visual tension and incompleteness. Hmmm. It all fits together if I make it, you see...

[ repost to unbreak html ]