Been wanting to share this for a while.

Once, someone had asked to see my work, and i sent them links to both my digital art (ie illustrations) and fine art portfolio. Now, this person worked at a gallery, but i had only sent him the work for personal viewing, as he was an acquaintance. to my dismay he showed his *boss* BOTH portfolios. he was like 'your paintings are nice but that other work..............um...... don't show that!'

i didn't say anything but certainly got a bit uppity about it, because of course i know fine art galleryists won't want anything to do with illustration or the anime-ish work i've churned out here. if i had known he wanted to show the work to the gallery, of course i wouldn't send it to him. sadly, i know very, very well that for the simple fact that they 'cannot unsee' the work that i didn't want them to see, it will colour their impression of me as a fine art artist.

it's like i have been maintaining two personas. one for doing fanart and illustrations and stuff, because frankly, i really enjoy doing that. The other for the more 'proper' fine art paintings. because, again, frankly, i enjoy that too. but there definitely is a dichotomy between Fine Art ART and commercial, illustrative work like cartooning and such. DeviantArt is like a guilty pleasure of mine. It's like with Fine Art, i'm going to the gym, toning up and such, and with Deviant, i'm sneaking into the restroom to have a bite of cadbury.

A lot of the 'fine art' people i deal with in real life don't know about me being on deviant. they don't know i do freelance commercial work on the side. and i myself hope they don't come across it. and in the same way, i don't think the bulk of the audience here will appreciate things like abstract art. (hint: kawaii anime girls)

the thing is, this can't go on forever.

any other artists who feel like this?

in other news, i bought a harmonica from namaste for Rs.115. been playing in secret coz i don't want my folks or the neighbours to know. they'll probably laugh at me