/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>7081511
A language is just a bunch of symbols that serve the purpose of communication. Modern written languages have words, the Egyptians for instance had the hieroglyphs. So symbol drawing is a visual language.

Just like there are many languages there are many types of symbol drawing. All of us have our own symbolic interpretation of reality. Picasso dedicated most of his life honing his vision. Manga as well has some peculiarities compared to western comics or even Korean. Tezuka took from Disney and influenced all the manga and anime made in the 70s and 80s. Eventually and naturally more authors added their own variations. Some more observational or others strictly symbolic. It took them decades to be able to convey the nose in 3D without losing its expressive power.

The problem arises when you lose that expression in the drawing and leave the viewer with ambiguity. On the other hand, the terrible stuff maybe have display some of its symbols (the large anime eyes for instance) but the drawing won’t be expressive or lack what we here call “gesture”.

So I believe here lays the main difference between painting and illustration. The former has the main goal of being appealing (if you take out contemporary and post modern shit) in some way while the latter it’s communication. The best comics don’t sacrifice much of the former though and with their expressive quality they achieve beauty while retaining clarity.