TJAnderson Art

not to mention how i adore your art from an aesthetic and skill pov. your beautiful use of color, scene composition, and symbolism often strike me in particular. your work has been massively inspirational to me in so many ways.

all that to say: from one traumatized and mentally ill transmasc artist to another, thank you. please keep going, keep creating, keep fighting, and keep living. i hear you and understand much of your pain. thank you.

Thank you very much for your message - and for your patience with my response, I was mulling over how I wanted to respond...

It means a lot to hear that I've made work that's really resonated with you, I'm glad that connecting with it has helped you over the years; and your continued interest and support is appreciated.

Your work is gay

This anon is gay

You are gay

My question for you is, what are your primary techniques when drawing? I'm trying to learn new ways to improve, and your art is my main inspo when it comes to shading and coloring.

Hello! Thank you so much for the message, I’m sorry it took me a while to respond - I was thinking about how I wanted to answer. I’m not the best at explaining my art making especially technical aspects, but I’ll try my best to answer and hopefully it will be helpful for you!

So for colouring and shading - I honestly spend a lot of time drawing by just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks - lots of pieces turn out muddy or not quite right and it helps me become more familiar with what colours I have available, what I might be missing and how they’re all gonna interact. I suppose I always start having a clear idea in mind of what sort of emotion I want the piece to have, and from there try to narrow down my colour palette to the essentials. So if I know I want a piece to be primarily red and purple, I focus on those - any other colour I add is used to compliment or accentuate what overall colour tone I want focused on. the more complex the colour palette the more important I find it is to have colours carry throughout the piece and help guide the eye around so nothing stands out awkwardly where I don’t want it to be…

I also try to have a good repertoire of different mark making for colouring and shading. I personally don’t like pieces that look highly rendered and incredibly smooth, I like being able to see the mark making. So adding in different strokes, textures, strikes, swirls etc. creates more interesting effects and I’ll use those to layer up colours, create shadows, highlights n depth etc. I also just like playing with dramatic shapes for shadows or colour blocks that draw the eye to certain points of the figure or composition. even if the lighting doesn’t make sense in a realistic sense, its drawing focus. I guess I kinda treat it all like dramatic stage lighting and makeup - too bold to make sense in an every day context but with the right combination it works within the piece if that makes sense…

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