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Artwork (Traditional) / General Furry Art
Species Meerkat
Size 1020 x 800
File Size 131.6 kB
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More from RailRide
Listed in Folders
(the AAA folder)
First in a series of pics pulled from the dusty crates, this one is of Bastien, a meerkat character I designed in 1998 as the first non-feline character to join my roster of OC's. This image was done in pencil and inked with a Rapidiograph technical pen in 1999. I think I may have drawn him in this pose mostly to have him model a pair of Timberland fisherman-style sandals (a style I still own today) from that brief period in the late 1990's when mens' sandals could have massively heavy-looking soles without being called "platform" soles. The example shown here (style 61054) had soles 1 1/2" (3.75cm) thick at the ball of the foot, and 2" (5cm) at the heel. An updated version of this pic was done as part of this presentation, and a link to it will appear here once completed and posted. 2020 re-draw here
Background of this series:
I've been drawing stuff relevant to this fandom since the late 1980's when in high school I graduated to drawing my own OC's over doing Catillac Cats fanart. One of the distinguishing characteristics of my creations was that even though they had defined outfits, I was able to draw them in lots of different clothing (defying the 'limited wardrobe' trope of Western animation). To that end, I did a lot of artwork of my OC's, updating their outfits as "model sheets" every time fashions changed. There being no internet, there was no competition for 'recognition' and as such I rarely did more than ink most pics I did.
Fast-forward through the early era of personal websites, webrings (how I discovered furry) and online galleries such as VCL and Yerf. Once I found these as a means of sharing my works with like-minded others, my output dropped quite a bit. Now I could get greater 'recognition' of my works, but it 'needed' to be colored in order to get it noticed, and undue influence from Yerf gatekeepers only added to that in the form of including drawn backdrops in almost every piece (I never actually tried to get into YERF--it was notoriously hard to get accepted in, and requirements were constantly escalating--but I followed its newsgroups, and one bone of contention among the mods was people who didn't/couldn't do backdrops. I didn't have to do them--it was just held forth as a mark of quality, and I wanted to aspire to that.
Anyhoo, I still have a lot of un-posted material from "back in the day". And I have enough followers to have some who would be interested in them, but there is a dilemma. While I don't depend on commission income to make ends meet. I am aware of an issue some artists have with their older works--namely that allowing them to remain visible could have a negative impact on the perception of their current abilities by potential commissioners, and thus they'll remove older pieces from their galleries so that only their most recent abilities remain on showcase. Sometimes it's not even that--some artists are just 'meh with regard to them.
I don't see things that way, but there is a glimmer of a point in this. Since my current new artworks only appear roughly once a month, having old works appearing too often could affect perception of what I can do among those not familiar with my body of work, and may make a snap judgement based on one old piece they happened across without investigating further. So, in order to display these drawings, I had to come up with a means of presenting them that makes it glaringly obvious that they don't represent my current abilities. What I came up with is what you're looking at above--framing the artwork with an integrated title and information presenting them as old work posted for historical purposes. The overall idea had actually been defined for a couple of years now, but running across a pair of old pics (this 19 year-old drawing being one of them) right as I was looking for some 'me for me' stuff to do after completing a commission, prompted me to finally "do something".
These pieces will appear as occasional uploads into my main gallery, but will be segregated into their own folder, the "Ancient Art Archive" and will be numbered as a series as I re-discover and process them for inclusion in this folder. Depending on how many of these I run across, I may even link them comic-style, but that is still up in the air. Who knows, maybe this effort will prompt some artists to consider similar means of presenting their older works. FA has been around long enough that a fair number of creators are no longer alive and the only trace of their creative efforts lies on this site. While I plan on being around a good long time, it'd be nice to have a historical aspect to my gallery for interested folks to poke around in while I'm still around to answer questions about that stuff.
First in a series of pics pulled from the dusty crates, this one is of Bastien, a meerkat character I designed in 1998 as the first non-feline character to join my roster of OC's. This image was done in pencil and inked with a Rapidiograph technical pen in 1999. I think I may have drawn him in this pose mostly to have him model a pair of Timberland fisherman-style sandals (a style I still own today) from that brief period in the late 1990's when mens' sandals could have massively heavy-looking soles without being called "platform" soles. The example shown here (style 61054) had soles 1 1/2" (3.75cm) thick at the ball of the foot, and 2" (5cm) at the heel. An updated version of this pic was done as part of this presentation, and a link to it will appear here once completed and posted. 2020 re-draw here
Background of this series:
I've been drawing stuff relevant to this fandom since the late 1980's when in high school I graduated to drawing my own OC's over doing Catillac Cats fanart. One of the distinguishing characteristics of my creations was that even though they had defined outfits, I was able to draw them in lots of different clothing (defying the 'limited wardrobe' trope of Western animation). To that end, I did a lot of artwork of my OC's, updating their outfits as "model sheets" every time fashions changed. There being no internet, there was no competition for 'recognition' and as such I rarely did more than ink most pics I did.
Fast-forward through the early era of personal websites, webrings (how I discovered furry) and online galleries such as VCL and Yerf. Once I found these as a means of sharing my works with like-minded others, my output dropped quite a bit. Now I could get greater 'recognition' of my works, but it 'needed' to be colored in order to get it noticed, and undue influence from Yerf gatekeepers only added to that in the form of including drawn backdrops in almost every piece (I never actually tried to get into YERF--it was notoriously hard to get accepted in, and requirements were constantly escalating--but I followed its newsgroups, and one bone of contention among the mods was people who didn't/couldn't do backdrops. I didn't have to do them--it was just held forth as a mark of quality, and I wanted to aspire to that.
Anyhoo, I still have a lot of un-posted material from "back in the day". And I have enough followers to have some who would be interested in them, but there is a dilemma. While I don't depend on commission income to make ends meet. I am aware of an issue some artists have with their older works--namely that allowing them to remain visible could have a negative impact on the perception of their current abilities by potential commissioners, and thus they'll remove older pieces from their galleries so that only their most recent abilities remain on showcase. Sometimes it's not even that--some artists are just 'meh with regard to them.
I don't see things that way, but there is a glimmer of a point in this. Since my current new artworks only appear roughly once a month, having old works appearing too often could affect perception of what I can do among those not familiar with my body of work, and may make a snap judgement based on one old piece they happened across without investigating further. So, in order to display these drawings, I had to come up with a means of presenting them that makes it glaringly obvious that they don't represent my current abilities. What I came up with is what you're looking at above--framing the artwork with an integrated title and information presenting them as old work posted for historical purposes. The overall idea had actually been defined for a couple of years now, but running across a pair of old pics (this 19 year-old drawing being one of them) right as I was looking for some 'me for me' stuff to do after completing a commission, prompted me to finally "do something".
These pieces will appear as occasional uploads into my main gallery, but will be segregated into their own folder, the "Ancient Art Archive" and will be numbered as a series as I re-discover and process them for inclusion in this folder. Depending on how many of these I run across, I may even link them comic-style, but that is still up in the air. Who knows, maybe this effort will prompt some artists to consider similar means of presenting their older works. FA has been around long enough that a fair number of creators are no longer alive and the only trace of their creative efforts lies on this site. While I plan on being around a good long time, it'd be nice to have a historical aspect to my gallery for interested folks to poke around in while I'm still around to answer questions about that stuff.
Category Artwork (Traditional) / General Furry Art
Species Meerkat
Size 1020 x 800px
File Size 131.6 kB
Listed in Folders
He's been around for 20 years :D Though he's not made many appearances, he was in "What, me Furry?" around the time Nei'chelle was introduced. There is, however an updated pic of him in the same outfit. that I flatshaded last night. It'll probably be posted today.
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