Dear Andrew 2

[Tauhid]

I think it's awesome that you call your comics Scriblettes. I can't think of a a better name for something that manages to somehow display less artistic prowess than an actual scribble. They are like something that a scribble might poop out of its hastily scrawled buttocks. I might have called them shitletts but I can see that Scribblette is far more marketable. I guess that's why you are selling so fucking many of them. You should put together a book with Kris Straub and the guy from White Ninja and call it Crapthology.

Would that I could be in the room when that triple high five goes down.

[tynic]

Fun Fact: I actually have a short anthology of Straub's shitty 'ironic' comics. It came with some other stuff I got from his store. I know that this is the abuse forum and all, so I should compare Andrew's comics unfavourably with his or something, but I honestly don't think it's possible. They're terrible. They fail at being ironically terrible and just loop all the way around again into terrible.


PS oh god don't tell him I said that, it would crush his tiny soul.

[Andrew]

Cool, it's cool that you're a fan!

Also I will point out that there is a difference between someone who naturally sucks at art, and someone who is good at art but restrains his ability to create "high art". There are also many people who are good at art, but are so caught up in their pompous bullshit, they don't actually know how to be bad at art. Like, really bad, not just, "oh look, this is kind of messy, but you can still actually tell I'm good". I don't know for sure, but I suspect you are such an artist. I suspect you don't know how to suck.

As such, I challenge you to a suck-off any day of the week.

[Tauhid]

He does have an exceptionally tiny soul. The guy is smart as hell and has a great sense of humor (and like most funny cartoonists that sense never really makes it into the comics) but his level of insecurity makes even me feel like I'm made of steel and not just wrought iron.

I root for his irony comics though. I can totally relate to the desire to break into and excel at a given specific genre of comics. Didn't I used to draw picture of my avatar strangling people to death with my enormous penis? That seems like a lifetime ago.

[Tauhid]

Cool, it's cool that you're a fan!

Straub's comic is horrific, and White Ninja I used to like, but I don't think it's very good anymore. So no, my awesome comics will not be appearing with that crap. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Also I will point out that there is a difference between someone who naturally sucks at art, and someone who is good at art but restrains his ability to create "high art". There are also many people who are good at art, but are so caught up in their pompous bullshit, they don't actually know how to be bad at art. Like, really bad, not just, "oh look, this is kind of messy, but you can still actually tell I'm good". I don't know for sure, but I suspect you are such an artist. I suspect you don't know how to suck.

As such, I challenge you to a suck-off any day of the week.

I could out suck you with my mouth closed.

[Andrew]

Oh no you just didn't.

IT IS TIME FOR THE MAN ON MAN SUCK-OFF CHALLENGE

[Tauhid]

This was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

[Andrew]

Are you shitting me with this shit?

Look.

In the first panel, look how graceful the contour of the man's face is. A steady hand and keen eye was responsible for that kind of delicate touch.The eyes are well formed and were placed at a judiciously measured distance from each other. There is clear rationale dictating the break in the line between the top of the nose and the start of the hair. The penmanship is confident and bold. There is clearly formed agency behind a the stylization.

Nice try though!

[Andrew]

Now the game is officially...





AFOOT.

[tynic]

Maybe you guys should take this to the arena.

[Andrew]

Oh yeah I forgot, I was going to disable that again.

[Tauhid]

Clearly you've mistaken carefully engineered sucking for barely masked talent. In order to truly suck you can't just abandon all aspects of form, balance and perspective. You have to regress. You have to draw like you never knew them. You have to literally wipe your artistic slate so clean that you find yourself grasping your crayon in a tightly balled fist as you create. In fact create is the wrong word. What I've done here is destroy. I'm destroying art and the artist in myself. This comic was render by the id.

I had to forget my daughters face to produce this.

[Tauhid]

Maybe you guys should take this to the arena.

An excellent idea. Two men enter and two men leave. Only one of them is walking funny and being all quiet now.

[Andrew]

Oh great I guess I've got to respond to this shit now.

TauBo you don't even know what can of suckass you've opened.

[Andrew]

You want carefully engineered sucking you got it.

[Betelgeuse]

Yes, Gangbunch is BACK, BABY!!!

[Tauhid]

I think I may have accidentally made my best comic ever.

[Andrew]

I'm inclined to agree.

Or agtree.

[Andrew]

HERE'S WHAT I POSTED

Yeah, content has some say in the matter, but it shouldn't be overestimated. A well drawn comic can fail spectacularly in the concept department, while a horrifically drawn comic can be conceptually excellent, sometimes especially since it's been accented ironically with poor art.

This titanic suck-off is about the visual appeal of drawings as related to artistic skill, or the inhibition thereof. As you mentioned earlier, it's not merely about drawing the most brazenly incompetent jumble of lines possible. There actually can be a lot of inadvertent charm in that result, simply due to an uncompromising reduction of ego in the work. It's when someone is trying to be good, but doesn't have the gravitas to back it up when the drawing really suffers in the appeal department, and can cause one to blunder into the uncanny valley. This suck-off is about finding ways to creatively pull your style back to the echelons of an aspiring artist who is completely oblivious to the ways in which his art blows throbbing ape boner.

Observe with this simple cowboy drawing exercise.

[Betelgeuse]

I just came in here to say "oh snap!", but I'm not sure in whose favor. You guys figure it out.

[Tauhid]

This is not over.

[Michael]

Yeah this is not over until I ruin it.

[Tauhid]

I must admit that I'm beginning to see the appeal of this shit. It's less like a foul smelling pile of refuse and more like a recently discarded bearclaw sitting on top of the waste paper basket with only a nibble taken out of it.

[Betelgeuse]

Nice 1!!!

[Tauhid]

Thank you, Purse. But I am merely the vessel.

[Andrew]

The vessel, maybe, for the hard thrusting shaft of defeat-rape. Your comeuppance looms, T. Bo. It looms.

But srsly Tauhid I didn't even know you could make funny comics! I don't even really know what to think!

[Tauhid]

He's got him on the ropes and now he's working the body. In a totally not gay way though.

[Andrew]

Hey don't look so smug this isn't over.

Also I'm not sure I get that one. I guess he is crazy or something. (?)

Also, draw worse.

[Tauhid]

Yea I was on my bad joke game but it's difficult to suppress my artistic virility with such consistency success as you. The pen is like an extension of myself. And not my hand either.

[Andrew]

This whole affair seems a little imbalanced. Like a blackbelt Jujitsu tournament against toddlers. These kind of comics are basically all I do. So in order to abide by the limiting theme of the contest, I am faced with the challenge of drawing a comic that I would typically draw and post on my website on the order of hundreds or perhaps thousands. Why am I putting all this shit in italics.

[Andrew]

[Michael]

That is a really hideous penis you drew in the third last panel.

[Andrew]

Dirty secret: girls like horses so much because they remind them of huge muscular cocks.

[Tauhid]

I'm not sure I get this one. Is the horse crazy?

Also how come The Suck Off doesn't show up as a topic on the main page?

[Andrew]

The horse just has very strong principles.

It ain't on the main page cause I didn't put it there.

[Tauhid]

Both his parents are alive and well and he doesn't even give a fuck.

[Andrew]

I think your bad art is actually improving. As in sucking less. You've got to stop that.

[Tauhid]

[Andrew]

Naw dude it's too funny to be a shitty comic.

PS - lol again at "BIKE STUNTS"

hehehehehehehehehe

Man that was great.

[Tauhid]

I won this.

[Tauhid]

More shit please.

[Andrew]

But you can't intentionally ram your drawings down the uncanny valley just for the hell of it. Well you can, but it achieves a different effect.

It's like the difference between an art director who deliberately designs clowns to be scary in a horror film, versus an honest to God street performer who innocently dresses as a clown hoping for the best, but achieves a disturbing look. And latter instances, through incompetence and naivete, tend to produce imagery more disturbing than even a veteran hand at design.

The goal here is to produce a facsimile of that naivete, and the work it yields. This is done through careful modification and restraint of artistic instincts (if you have them in the first place). "Figure B" in my graph wasn't even a very good example. It was just something vaguely illustrative of "weird and ugly!"

In summary: it can't just be "whoa dude be making ugly shit on purpose!"

In truth, the blackest crevices of the uncanny valley are extremely difficult to plunder, and are mostly inaccessible even to my malleable pen.

[Tauhid]

I have to admit that when I first issued the challenge I just thought it would be you and me making stupid looking comics and talking shit. You took it to a whole 'nother level though and i did take me a minute to catch up to what you were doing. However, at the time I was not invested enough to put that much effort into sucking.

That last pic was an example of exactly what you describe if you'll examine it. All the classic amateur artist mistakes are represented. But the beauty is not that they are not mistakes from the perspective of the amateur. In fact many of them have been painstakingly crafted and practiced tirelessly as improvements to his/her artistic style.

-All texture is rendered in hard lines rather than implied with shadow.
-A lack of skill is compensated for by more detail which drags the piece further down as that detail is badly executed.
-Young artists popularly focus too much on the head and body as separate elements rather than as a whole resulting is a gross discrepancy in proportion.
-Limbs are also treated with the same disregard causing them be forced into to piece without proper consideration for position often at the further detriment to anatomy.
-Hair is often the last thing an artist masters choosing instead to draw hats or worse render each hair with a stoke of the pencil in the hopes of emulating the texture of actual hair. When this fails they will often draw a contour line around their scribbles to define head shape.
-Fingers are all the same length
-Lines that should appear to connect lose continuity when they pass behind objects in the foreground.
-Each individual tooth is drawn in a smile
-Eyes often set too closely together.
Ears often set too high on the head.
-Lines from the corners of the nose to the corners of the mouth and bridge of the nose to the upper lip are given far too much emphasis.
-Females are often distinguishable only by obvious (though misshapen) breast that protrude so, regardless of the garment they wear, obligatory jewelry, long hair, and eye lashes. They are devoid of any femininity otherwise.

The list goes on but you get the point.

[Andrew]

I see that you were mostly successful in capturing the things you describe, but on the whole when I look at that drawing I still see a skilled artist at its helm, deliberately downgrading through a series of calculated stylistic methods.

Can you honestly say you could craft a work of art like this? Or this? Or this? What is the worst Batman you can bring to the table?

The drawings I linked represent a heavy gauntlet, because they are to anyone's eye indisputably 100% earnest. There is no question they were drawn by someone with every intention of making them look as "awesome" as their ability could muster. That's precisely what makes them so dreadful, and what makes that artist such a Goliath in this arena of combat. As skilled artists, neither of us have a prayer against that dude.

[Gatsby]

He totally looks like a god damn chicken in that last one...

[Tauhid]

The worst thing about those images is the familiarity. I can tell you precisely where that guy is in his artistic development and it is a precarious place. I've been there. And you are right. I could never match that. I've taken a few mistakes that young artists make and implemented them. This guy is at a point where his artistic ability is clearly better than the average person who views it and has become convinced that it's time for him to practice more advanced techniques. He's moved onto toying with color and light without first mastering anatomy and proportion. He's diving into perspective with no attention to detail. He attempting to render detailed backgrounds without ever having drawn from nature. And all frankly because he feels, mistakenly, that he's overcome those hurdles. Once again, he's probably the best artist he knows. Can't you just hear his friends telling him how awesome these drawings are? He's deluded himself into thinking he is mere steps behind his favorite comic book artists and each hamfisted technique he adds to his repertoire convinces him further.

This guy thinks he's awesome and is not. That's something I cannot emulate but I'll be damned if I don't try. There goes my fucking weekend.

[Andrew]

You're right, we've all been where he is, and once you're past it, it's impossible to regress deliberately. I've been there too. (there are better [i.e. worse] examples than that, but that's all I have.)

In fact, I could copy one of his drawings line for line, and it still wouldn't be convincing somehow. Much like he could copy line for line something drawn by Jim Lee (and he probably has) and it would still look like shit.

Also, I bought one of that guy's paintings for $400.

[Wesley Foxx]

These last couple of comments and examples have forever convinced me that I should never, ever try to accomplish anywhere near that much detail in an image.

Each stroke of the ARTISTIC SUPPLIES drags the image deeper and deeper into the pit of failure. At least if it had been left less refined, it would be passable as a doodle or sketch or W.I.P.

[Tauhid]

You're right, we've all been where he is, and once you're past it, it's impossible to regress deliberately. I've been there too. (there are better [i.e. worse] examples than that, but that's all I have.)

In fact, I could copy one of his drawings line for line, and it still wouldn't be convincing somehow. Much like he could copy line for line something drawn by Jim Lee (and he probably has) and it would still look like shit.

Also, I bought one of that guy's paintings for $400.

Perhaps. Though, I don't think the strength of the parallel between us trying to draw like him and him trying to draw like Jim Lee is a coincidence. After all Jim Lee was once in the same place that this guy is. As you said we've all been there. so does it stand to reason that an artist could with great practice train themselves to sincerely suck that way again? It may be premature to say it's impossible. a more interesting question might be why the hell would someone do that? Imagine an artist with such mastery over his own talent that he or she can work from any stage in his or her own development at will. Couldn't such an artist also completely unshackle themselves from the confines of "style" that we as artists work so hard to yolk ourselves to? I can recognize your work from a mile away, Andrew as I'm sure you can recognize mine. But such an artist as I've describes would be an artisan confined only by the subject and context of a given piece. Such would be the extent of his mastery of his gift. I don't mean something as simple as an artistic chameleon. I mean an artist who adheres only to the basic principle of art able to render near if not actual perfection without the arrogance normal people inflict on their work when they take up the mantle "creator".

Like some kind of drawing machine.

[tynic]

yolk

heh.

[Tauhid]

Now I wish the word were spelled that way. It would no doubt have an interesting origin.

[tynic]

If this thread is closed, I think I'll archive it. Will also consider archiving others, if someone digs them up for me, or alternatively finds the Old Thread Treasure Stash thread (note: I'm not going to archive everything just because it's funny, only stuff that has been proven to be persistently popular).