“何処へだって飛んで行ける” by No Sugar or 無糖

What is up peeps? I hope you have been well. Apologies for yet another somewhat unprompted hiatus, but hopefully it will not have been for nothing. Over the months without content, I’ve been spending time working on my own artwork, regaining my footing after making a big move in my life, and probably most of all, analyzing the way I go about approaching content creation. While I wanna dedicate the article to this wonderful piece we have before us, I do wanna briefly say a few things about what I’ve taken away from my break. Likely the biggest revelation that I’ve had is that while my primary goal is to make the best content that I can, I am going to be striking an odd balance between making content that I believe is up to snuff, and making content that is “effective.” In this context quality content is content that is technically or mechanically sound, in addition to being personally satisfying, while effective content, is content that has outreach and that people react to in a particular way. While I will probably continue to lean towards the first goal, I will be tailoring my choice of projects more towards establishing brand and bringing people to the work that I do a little bit more. This will not mean anything depressing, in fact I think this will lead my content to be more interesting and organized in a way that is more refreshing for my audience in general. All of that said, let’s jump into the real point of this piece.

For today we have on review “何処へだって飛んで行ける” by No Sugar or 無糖, an artist that I reached out to some time ago now whose unique style and energetic presence stuck out to me. I often love to ask artists what some of their favorite or most important pieces are when discussing art reviews and this was the piece that No Sugar picked. As I recall, their reasoning was that this piece was made to represent them stepping out as an artist and really getting to a point where they could create pieces freely in a professional capacity. Just glancing at this one, the strength of the symbolism hits the viewer fairly cleanly as we can really feel a distinct energy expressed by the representation of elements. From the crosses in the background, to the crumbling structure below, and finally to the slightly wounded character nonchalantly perched, wings ready for flight, the word that immediately came to mind was “resilience.”

To say a little more about why I’m drawn to this artist’s style I wanna first bring attention to the linework and the “lineprint” concept that I invoked in the last piece. As I mentioned briefly before, the energetic quality of the lines is very potent in this piece and I would say generally in No Sugar’s work. It’s as if each stroke conveys force and has a distinct intent that can be felt when looking at the piece. The hair and the wings are both great examples of this. A sense of wind and again the dynamic of the setting that the character is experiencing is something that this artist communicates extremely well. Additionally, I love that No Sugar is not afraid to express their own interpretation of things and commands a unique style that works beautifully within its own context. Another way in which energy and vibrancy is shown in this work is through the particular use of color here. With potent, highly saturated and bright colors being nicely positioned, they really help to elevate the piece without overpowering or distracting from any of the central themes.

Speaking of positioning, that brings me to the final element that I wanna touch on for this one. Although it could be argued that the placement of elements is a matter of basics, a very clean, and excellent execution of the fundamentals I think is what really gives this painting the impact that it has. Things such as the character being offset somewhat to the left, and the perspective giving both a sense of depth but also a kind of epic feeling coming from the viewpoint of looking down and off to the side. Then you add in the movement with the clothing straps, hair and feathers floating in the wind, and then the crumbling pillar beneath, everything works together to create a really powerful message. Arguably, although it enhances the piece even further, the background elements are more of an icing on the cake, giving that impression of leaving chaos behind and having the freedom to go anywhere really consolidating the central idea.

In other words, if you like this one I encourage you to take flight and explore more of this brilliant artist’s work.