Does art need to tell a story in order to be considered art?

[Anonymous No.4606484]

Or in other words can only fanart be considered art?

Something that dawned on me. Every browse through deviantart or instagram and check through the original art sections? Like say go browse through fantasy art and find a really well done illustration of a dragon. No particular dragon from any story, just a fantasy dragon. It's by all counts technically sound, but you don't really CARE about it? Like you would if you knew the dragon from some story.

I'm making this thread because I've been struggling to find any motivation to make original art, because I may come up with a really cool idea for a piece, but without any sort of story to attach me to the subjects I don't really care about them. It's the reason why fanart is so popular compared to original art. People know the characters so they find emotional resonance with the piece. But even as an artist, I find I can't really draw anything but fanart anymore. It's not just that, but when making original fantasy art, you're drawing characters in a world that hasn't been realized at all. Say I wanna draw a bunch of dwarves fighting a cave troll. Who are these dwarves? What is their culture like? Why are they fighting this troll? Where'd the troll come from? Etc., without a fully realized world to back up the subjects I'm drawing I find it so much harder to draw anything because all these questions race through my head. It has no CONTEXT I guess is what I mean.

It bothers me because I really don't think art should have to rely on having a story one is already familiar with to back it up, because then I'm saying art can't stand on it's own and literally only fucking fanart has any value.

Pic related. Really good piece of art skillwise, but I don't really feel any care for it. Maybe it's just me.

[Anonymous No.4606498]

>>4606484
Art needs to tell, sell or invoke an idea
generic fantasy dragon portrait is just not that interesting of an idea
ideas/art consists of
>design
>intent
>composition
>execution
It's why artbooks for games are cool, it's all part of a bigger idea, like pottery and why chinese/korean artists usually have these really well executed pieces that just say nothing
Compare this piece to something like a digimon design; if you just took a single digimon, it's like some cringy OC pokemon, but the entire world around it and knowing there is more to it carries it a lot.
Regardless whether or not they are good or the backstory is cringe or not, they have more thought put into it.
Comic/manga artists in general are really good at this since what they lack in execution skill, they excell at selling and telling ideas

[Anonymous No.4606508]

>>4606484
check some of the answers in this thread: >>4578352 a lot of people are saying that art is a means to communicate

[Anonymous No.4606510]

>>4606498
>Compare this piece to something like a digimon design; if you just took a single digimon, it's like some cringy OC pokemon, but the entire world around it and knowing there is more to it carries it a lot.

When there ISN'T anything, no actual world, to back it up, what then? Pic in OP is just an elf holding a fairy. Who are they? What's their relationship? Why does the elf dress like that? Etc.. Without any world to ground the piece I don't know why I should care about these subjects. Rather than set my mind alight about the countless possibilities, what kind of amazing and magical world could surround these subjects, all I imagine is a black void of nothing outside of the illustration.

But is that just a failing on the artist? Think MTG, I remember not knowing jackshit about the story behind the pieces (outside of the little infodumps/character quotes on the bottom of the cards), but they sparked my passion for fantasy and filled me with all sorts of wonder about the world behind the subjects in the cards. But there actually WAS a fully realized world behind the art even though I didn't actually know what it was. I still cared and was captivated anyway and it actually led me to seek out and learn about MTG lore.

So what does an artist need to do to properly convey the idea of a living, breathing, interesting world behind their original art, even when they actually haven't come up with one? How does an artist give at least the ILLUSION of that in their original art?

[Anonymous No.4606536]

>>4606510
>But is that just a failing on the artist? Think MTG
Yes and no

The piece you posted in the OP is just that; execution and a guy holding a fairy. The background has nothing showing any kind of story either.

It is an elf, in a blurry (what I make of it) forest with a gaudy gown staring blank into the fairy.
The fairy is bowing and is maybe courting or introducing himself. It is the vocal point of this piece yet the composition does enhance that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAQbTEz4PDM
MTG has actual world builders behind the scenes. It's not that they just hire artists that make good pictures, it's that they give artists a surplus of designs build upon hundreds of previous works and you cannot seperate MTG art from illustrations.
They are designed with purpose: there is a (game) world that has factions and the card represents a piece of that world. Regardless of what the new card art is, it is build upon previous work and designs.
It's why people are usually thought to "kill your darlings" or to never go with the first concept. You have to build and give yourself time to think and develop the idea and concept in your head, visualize not just the illustration but the story/concept. what does the elf do? what do elves do? what does the fairy want? is he malicious? is he friendly?

Developing card art gives the art a purpose besides the original idea. It is going to be used and part of a larger whole.
The elf holding fairy is just literally that; a rendering of an elf holding a fairy. It's a fairy we've seen a thousand times before and an elf we've seen a thousand times before. Even the elves of stuff like Tolkien have this vast degree of design put into them behind the scenes that make them feel alive. (This is not just visual library).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jRmyRoLQWU
James Gurney does this really well as a sole artist/illustrator, he goes through great lengths to explore the subject in different ways before portraying it...

[Anonymous No.4606554]

>>4606536
cont.
>So what does an artist need to do to properly convey the idea of a living, breathing, interesting world behind their original art, even when they actually haven't come up with one? How does an artist give at least the ILLUSION of that in their original art?
You can't create that illusion since it's something that is not inherently a skill but more of layers of work before (in this case a single illustration) a piece.

There are 2 factors to art but a lot of the people that people look up to, they look up to for the wrong reasons; a specific anime style or perhaps mechanical skill, but not for the subject matter.
It's by far the most ghastly thing to grasp in the art and something that can actually be called somewhat of a talent. You can train it but it's mostly allowing yourself to make mistakes, own them and push forward your own ideas AND develop those ideas. Don't doodle, think. "What are dragons? What would this/my fantasy world be like? Are dragons even dragons? How would they defend against dragons? who defends against dragons? are there factions? is there a faction that willingly sides with dragons? are dragons evil? are they even sentient? are they more like slumbering crocodiles? do they hide in humanoid forms? can they shift between them? how many legs? what about Egyptian dragons?"
It's not so much to just question but test these designs, after a while, you'll have an actual complete dragon concept in mind and once you've exhausted all of the questions and all the standard designs, then you reach the point of being inspired by the layers gathered and you get some truly unique stuff.
This is probably just one aspect of it though and mostly anecdotal in my case but yea good shit takes a long time and more than just drawing an elf with a fairy, there's enough of those. we need more links and triforces.

[Anonymous No.4606560]

also posted the wrong gurney video but w/e it's all good shit
https://youtu.be/6f4O8M_WG6Y?t=74
see how he takes the time to understand it in his own way what he wants to put down aside from just rendering with the clips n sculpting n shit

[Anonymous No.4606562]

>>4606536
>>4606554

So then we can conclude art without any context (story, world, characters) is art without any real value? You can't make original art without something to ground it and give context to what's being depicted.

I'm familiar with Gurney actually, he posed this question before with one piece involving a sea turtle he was working on. At first, his idea was to just show a reptilian dinosaur swimming. Then he realized he didn't care at all about the idea. So he came up with context to support it, changing the idea to having the dinosaur chasing a sea turtle. Giving drama, something to empathize with.

Quote:

>"The take-away point is that design alone isn’t enough (at least for me) to drive a picture. The story is just as important. If anything, the story should drive the design. And sometimes it takes sketch after sketch to nail down the story."

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/10/chasing-story.html

But then that's interesting because art like that, wildlife art, doesn't have familiar characters, but it does have a familiar world since it depicts life in ours so maybe that's why it can work?

[Anonymous No.4606575]

>>4606562
>So then we can conclude art without any context (story, world, characters) is art without any real value?
Look at the cat pic in this >>4606510 reply. It's the perfect example, it doesn't hint to a world around it, it's just the cat sitting there, yet it's so effective at fulfilling its purpose.
I think you wanting to have a world around it is merely a habit that you picked up from the fantasy genre. Art isn't always a storytelling tool.

[Anonymous No.4606587]

>>4606562
You don't need familiar characters.
A good world won't instantly make good art, but it will give it purpose and fuel said world more.

It's like a book, every page you write, whether trashed, occluded, included or cover art is part of the book.
He did not like the sketch because it was not his intent or idea, or he felt it lacking. Instead of polishing a turd you yourself have no conviction in (something that happens all too often) that would lead to no increase in the depth of said world (either personal or for a product) he decided to use what he had learned into creating a new piece.
The repeated process of doing this is what generates soul in my opinion, and the ability to generate these ideas, iteration and build personal understanding in rapid succession is a skill on its own that is overlooked.
You don't really need it, you can always build upon other peoples works.
Artists hired to draw for MTG cards are kind of like fan-artists in a sense being commissioned to draw an already thought out world.
Starting such a world from scratch or starting a painting without such a world creates rather boring pieces. Gurney uses the real world as a base to build dinotopia on. Dinotopia I think is generally pretty well regarded and cool regardless of the subject or execution. It fits and it's a theme and it's unique.
Do note though that you can only start such work being aware of this and to start a world, a boring piece must be made as the stepping stone.

I have grown to call my sketchbook my "shitbook" instead. A lot of the stuff in it is sub-par quality sketches compared to people that draw in their sketchbooks like they're commissioned to draw something. I try to train it myself by making notes, story boards, stories. It is the thing that is most far away from the usual "The worst piece on your portfolio site is your best piece" but funny enough I got hired on the sole reason of my shitbook because it was developing ideas instead of just sketching/doodling.

[Anonymous No.4606602]

>>4606575
But we all have probably looked at multiple cats. There are a lot of cats and a lot of cat footage, a lot of information on cats, a lot of cat owners. The experience, context, intent helps sell that funny fat cat.
Even the execution of a badly taken phone photo builds this. It adds up (there are diminishing returns), but starting from scratch with nothing but "elf" and "fairy" is in op's case a bit boring, even though we've all seen elves and faeries, wedding gowns, forests.

OP's piece is probably not for the purpose of selling a concept though but just a display of personal skill which is completely fine. I highly doubt he went into this thinking "man I am going to create a world today". This stuff will get you hired because it's still just well rendered work, although it is quite low quality in comparison to other korean artists.
The competition in terms of this kind of soft-rendered work is really steep.

[Anonymous No.4606611]

bob ross

[Anonymous No.4606744]

Not always. It tells the story if yur life I think though.
>>4606484

[Anonymous No.4606750]

>>4606744
Wow can I read

[Anonymous No.4606803]

The stories you can tell with art depend entirely on your audience's context. The same way you can pack a single paragraph of text with dense meaning and a fifth grader will be unable to comprehend it because they literally don't know the words.

This means you've got to use subjects that have a solid meaning (either public knowledge or context you create yourself) and put them together so the intended meaning "clicks". If you have a reputation for doing this, like Gene Wolfe, you can do even more fun, subtle, and intricate things because people trust that you are doing thins intentionally and will puzzle out your hints and nudges.

Or you could take the coward's way out and stuff your image full of potent symbols so it looks profound, but in reality there is no coherent story behind them. This makes you a hack fraud and only fart sniffers will speak your name henceforth.

[Anonymous No.4607567]

>>4606484
Art needs to evoke an emotion from the viewer. Simple as that.
Not just positive emotions, but sadness, anger, disgust, etc are all valuable.
I've struggled with this shit for years, but now I'm coming closer to understanding.

[Anonymous No.4609870]

>>4606587
>to start a world, a boring piece must be made as the stepping stone
this

[Anonymous No.4610617]

What about this then? This is similar to the OP's in that it tells no story, hints at no world behind it, and yet there's something about it that I like. It's interesting despite saying nothing.

I get this is clearly surrealism where as OP's isn't and maybe they can't be compared, but still.

[Anonymous No.4610621]

>>4610617

Actually, wait, this is Ghost in the Shell art, but even without knowing the character I can still appreciate it. It stands on it's own, it doesn't even depict some scene from the anime it's just a surrealist take on the protag. It wouldn't really matter if the OP's pic was actually from some story, it fails as a standalone piece. But why does this one work where the other fails?

[Anonymous No.4610625]

>>4606484
all art tells a story regardless of if it's intentional or not

[Anonymous No.4610637]

>>4610617
are you an absolute brainlet?

[Anonymous No.4610724]

>>4610621
Anon, youre getting it the wrong way
Its not about you, as the viewer, that a piece looks cool
Its about the artist being inspired and being able to build on the shoulders of giants or previous material.
OP pic is literally just elf holding a faerie. Thats where his inspiration ended. Thats where that world, the story and the characters ended for the artist and instead of building on it with his next piece he probably scraped his mind, board and that world clean because he probably knows its boring a boring piece, but this continues the cycle.
Thats why some pieces lack soul

[Anonymous No.4610728]

>>4610724
Thats why so many artists lack "SOUL"
Every painting you make in a "world", project or series is like adding paint on a pallette. Instead of adding more art to the world to fuel the soul (adding different colors to the pallette), they wash the palette completely clean and try again starting from 0.

[Anonymous No.4610730]

>>4606484
>can only fanart be considered art?
What kind of a retarded question is this? That's just immature fanboyism on your part

[Anonymous No.4610733]

>>4606484
>art can't stand on it's own and literally only fucking fanart has any value.
That's because you are just fuckign immature. Art is not for you. Go back to playing video games and read Harry Potter stories.

[Anonymous No.4610762]

>>4610728
So tradition?

[Anonymous No.4610766]

>>4606484
There really do be niggas on /ic/ who think a single piece can't be a self-contained story. Huh. OP if you still associate a good story with the emotional investment you have in it, you don't just not understand visual art, you don't understand literature either. You have a 15 year old girls understanding of what a good story is.

[Anonymous No.4610768]

>>4610728
You just confound "soul" with blatant fanboyism. Grow up

[Anonymous No.4610770]

>>4606602
>But we all have probably looked at multiple cats. There are a lot of cats and a lot of cat footage, a lot of information on cats, a lot of cat owners. The experience, context, intent helps sell that funny fat cat.
Yes, same with every fucking thing a human will see. Now you're diving into retarded relativistic semantics just like every other idiot pseud.