was wondering what people think when fanart draws idol's bodies when they have no reference point? Example that prompted this being someone drawing a male idol shirtless with a bit of a tummy when 1. this idol has never shown their body before and 2. I'm aware this idol had expressed something akin to body dysmorphia about being on the bigger side. the artist clearly just found "fluffier" bodies hot and thus wanted to draw him as appreciation/encouragement(he'd mentioned dieting recently), though in practice it seemed uncomfortably invasive to me since he's outright skinshy. I'm wondering if this was me being weird abt weight on my part, but also he just, like, doesn't look like that. He isn't all abs and he has some muscular squish, but in no way does he have a dad figure. Then I thought, well, why draw people you've never seen halfdressed halfdressed. Is this a consent issue? Fantasizing what this person looks like under there in a bit of an invasive way? THEN I wondered if it was strange for fanart of real people to exist at all and immediately realized I was lowkey pitching "is it problematic to portray other people because noticing details like moles from photos makes you a freak" which is a nothingburger. I'm aware this is all stupid. I do draw, but I do fictional characters. I take inspiration from real bodies for my character art, but I've never specifically tried to portray real people that wasn't fully referenced, so I feel like I'm overthinking it in general. Caricature art is a touchstone of portraiture, and obviously many historical depictions of humans are stylized in ways where we point and laugh at what medieval painters did when painting babies, so I'm sure I'm just being overly touchy with art. There's a lot of fanart I find beautiful and "respectful", so I'm not sure what the thing specifically that makes me uncomfortable. I guess my original feelings fall into the general ongoing question in "objectifying" idols + what does it mean to do that actually. I think it's easy to identify when people write out strange fantasies abt real people in posts, but I feel like I'm not as adept at recognizing intent in visual mediums, nor where the line is drawn(lol). I guess this also presumes that artists have a responsibility with their art to portray the people they draw "well" or "accurately"(for some loaded terms) vs freedom of expression, which I feel is dangerous to assert and I don't want to do that, but well, that doesn't stop me from feeling weird about what some artists' expression. Sorry for the ramble train of thought, if you can pick out a coherent idea to address be my guest (Also in a similar vein, when people do genderbend art of idols, what does it imply about their conception of gender+why are they even doing that+how come with male idols, from the same artist, some of their girl versions are flat and some got lumps the size of mountains. What are they basing this off of😭) submitted by /u/SomeRaceHorseName [link] [comments]
