The "Essay"
My motivations aside, art in and of itself will create quality. Anywhere art is able to flourish, you will find quality products that require complex thinking. Something I believe when it comes to art, all art, is all it is is an understanding. Whether it be drawing, painting, flute playing, or dancing, everything you can classify as art is just a problem with a simple solution that can be difficult to understand. The human body as an example, is a very complex subject, and yet whether it be dance, music, or illustrations the human body is often used as a tool to further the understanding of art.
Drawing is an art form that requires repetition, it requires you to be flexible and understand not only your tools but your subject. In my experience, I have tried a lot of things and succeeded at very few but the thrill of succeeding is something that outweighs the disappointment of failure, knowing that the failure will help you improve. Years before I had a computer, access to YouTube, or played many video games, all I would do was sit and draw and I was happy. I would draw my anime characters in my sketchbook and I would feel my improvement. And while it may seem that my time only drawing was good, I was stagnant. I wasn’t going anywhere past where I felt I was happy. Once I started playing video games and accessing a computer my eyes were opened to the reality of my skill and it was that it was not as good as it could be.
My school sketchbook, a quarantine sketchbook, and my first real sketchbook were given to me by my Great Grandma before she died.
Being able to see that there were many floors and tastes in terms of what people were capable of is something I feel was incredibly important. Being able to watch people on YouTube explain things about art, follow my favorite artist on Twitter or Instagram, and be able to play games shaped my tastes as well as the things that guide my art style in terms of what I want to create. Once I had access to the information on the internet, I had all of the tools I just needed to get out there and do it. Whenever I feel like I am stagnant I try to picture how I would have reacted all those years ago seeing what I am capable of now.
A very common practice in the art world especially on the internet is art collaborations or art “collabs”. An art collab can take many forms but at a basic level, it is when 2 or more artists get together and decide to work on a project together. Of the few art collabs I have enjoyed doing all of them, even the ones that were less than enjoyable at the time I was working on them I enjoyed the things I took from it as well the status of my life while I was working on it. One of the projects I worked on was a couple of drawings where my friend Stan Aguas drew the sketch and then I would draw over it and color it.
Stan Aguas and Russell Palmer Collab 2 (Jan 31 2022)
When we first did this it wasn't meant to be a recurring thing. Stan was over at my house and had sketched on my computer. Later I saw it and wanted to finish it so I did some line art quickly and colored it but after this, I grew to appreciate Stan's art style a lot more. The way Stan draws eyes and hands were very distinct which at the time was something I had wanted to be present in my art. After I showed Stan the drawing we both thought it would be a cool idea to do it again. The next time Stan was over at my house Stan did the sketch and I did the line and color, but this time I wanted to make a more complete drawing so I tried to keep the distinctness of Stan's amazing style and refine it in a way more original to me than Stan. This was a very interesting way for me to look at what art was, how important collaboration was to art, and how important art was to understanding my friend in a way I hadn’t before.
Art being such an important part of understanding, as well as vice versa, community is something that would only naturally form. While of course in the grand scheme of things, artists and enjoyers of art can all enjoy art. This in and of itself would form a community, however when observing an art “community” it’s very important to understand that an art community cannot be as broad as art even if just referring to all visual arts. Grouping all artists and art enjoyers into one category is like putting together a group of living beings in a room. Even though they are all alive, they are all just different enough to where it's difficult to draw similarities that would bring them together right away. While even the more basic subcategories like drawing can be grouped, there are even more subcategories in drawing that could not be more different from one another.
Despite this when I was given the opportunity, I started an art club. As broad as you can get and as bare bones as possible in terms of a club a lot of the things I wanted to do didn't end up happening. I had plans for a large project like a comic book that all the members would work on, I wanted to have guests who were in the industry come in that I knew through connections but in the end, none of that happened mainly due to the size of the club but also from me just forgetting the things I wanted to do. It only consisted of 3 consistent members who weren’t already affiliated with me. I had 4 other friends who would come consistently. So the 8 of us would primarily draw, drawing games and sometimes I would help people with things that they were curious about in terms of art skills. Even though I wasn’t able to have the club I wanted, what ended up happening was a club that wasn’t about anything specific. It was a place where kids were welcome to come and enjoy their time drawing, talking, and enjoying the company of people who had similar interests, which is something I feel is almost more important than what I originally envisioned. We all enjoyed the tome that we had and that's mainly the reason I had forgotten about the other things I wanted to do.