Damn no wonder you've been away. WB. There's too many to comment on, but your skill has expoded. This one piece too is excellent. Your teacher isn't an art teacher if she can't appreciate this :).

some of it reminds me of the old wood-cuts of the 16 or 17th century, I see other styles of artists in here too. But I can't pin it down precisely

Although I do see some of MAD magazine in 'bones' as well

Great pieces of work!

- Shado

Aw, thank you very much! Yes, I've been very busy.

She and I butted heads a lot-- we had very different opinions on what made art and what didn't.

[chuckles] Best thing to do, is stay yourself. :) I'm sure Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo probably got into fist-fights at times over his skills. But that's Verrocchio's problem, Leonardo.

I even see some influences of Leonardo in your works too. Looking foward to more :)

I think it might be hard to get much more "unique"

Well, I hardly claim that my style is the most unique thing around! But it is mine and I haven't ever seen the exact equivalent anywhere else-- the teacher mostly just didn't think that 'realism' was unique. We had very different opinions.

I hope your art teacher meant 'subject matter' rather than 'style'. It's a very beautiful picture, but it's very hard to make any sense out of it. Maybe she meant 'unique' in the sense of 'don't copy other artists' symbolic razzmatazz, make something that means something to you'.

But hey, if she's ripping on illustrators, then what does her opinion matter?

No, she was definitely referring to style, haha! The assignment was simply to draw a collage of many images and make it personal-- all of the symbols, characters, concepts etc in the picture are mine, or are personal to me somehow. She was specifically referring to my style, which she called "magical realism" in the same earnest, concerned way that someone might warn a child about the dangers of gateway drugs. :)

But yes, she drew a definite line in the sand regarding art and placed "illustration" firmly on the "not art" side. She only liked my work when I did super profound things like splash paint on the canvas randomly! XD

Ha ha, I see. Glad you managed to survive that class!

IT WAS ROUGH, but I made it! :)

Man, I wanna save this to my cool art folder on my desktop, but everytime I try it says "Could not find specified file", even when I click download and try to save the single image

Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that! It probably has something to do with the technical difficulties that FA is experiencing right now. :(

Yeah, I moved over to Weasyl, as did a lot of artists, and I have to say that it's sooooo much easier and better looking.

I've thought about getting a Weasyl, but I have a hard enough time remembering to update the galleries I already have as it is, haha.

I might still look into it sometime though.