[This is kinda a long one, so feel free to scroll all the way down for my 2019 goals!]
The first half of the year was honestly nerve-wracking, stressful, yet exciting. In short, I was still in nursing school (ooooOooh noooOoO) - which pretty much killed any motivation and effort I could put into my hobby. I can't say the semester hard. In retrospect, I don't remember struggling in any class - it was more of staying on top of a truckload of work week after week, then spending time in clinical rotation, activities and projects that required me to be outside for several hours a week, then being thrown into clinical immersion. I had no time to draw really, so finding art in the first four-five months of this year was scarce to none. At most, they were doodles to release some stress or I had time to stream and do whatever I wanted for a day. The only art piece I really had spent time on was the March one (with Justice and Ezekiel)- which I'm pretty sure landed on spring break.
May /should've/ been chockful of art, but I was busy with graduation stuff and simply just trying to GRADUATE. The right after that was constant preparation for the NCLEX. I'm genuinely surprised I didn't draw as much in this month (not even for my birthday //tear), but I guess I was too caught up in other things for that.
Then I disappear for almost a month to the Philippines. Come back in June with all the inspiration and love for my family, experiences, culture, and country - aiming to concentrate that inspiration and energy into creating a love letter project in the form of a webcomic. Of course, I head straight into making character designs and grandeur, but since then, I've focused my time in simply writing the general gist of chapters for the story (which is still going, I swear). I'm around?? 16 chapter now and it's pretty much the half way point, so that's pretty nice progress considering I haven't written anything in ages.
Now, if you look at the pictures lined up with a single glance, you'll notice that the top six months are all cool colors while the latter six months have warm tones. I didn't realize it until I picked and chosen all my art and was ready to post it on twitter. It was a nice surprise! I started out with strong purples, moved on to messing and experimenting with blues because of the Philippine seas. THEN LOTS OF RED. RED AND PINK, AND ORANGE EVERYWHERE. I... didn't realize how hard I went on the reds and warm colors but it's interesting.
I like to chalk it up as me trying to stay cool, calm and collected in the early part of the year because I was deprived of drawing and wanted to keep my stress at bay. But once I was out, oh baby, FIERY HOT PASSION AND LOVE FOR DRAWING. And also maybe that I just have a lot of red oriented characters (cough Paprika) ...and my favorite color is orange.... and I like sunsets...
It's amazing to compare what art I coughed up in the beginning of year in comparison to what I was able to belt out towards the end. During November alone, I chugged out some really nice art pieces and it was tough to pick and choose. Simply goes to show that given the (free) time, I really got to spend time with myself and hone my skills once more to create something more than the simple doodle and truly invest and enjoy my work.
The biggest change with me this year is that.... yeah, I look at my art and nitpick all the details and where I could've improved and picked up the slack (b/c I'm lazy), but more than that- I don't hate what I'm producing anymore. The mindset where you work so hard to make something and say you'll hate it by tomorrow? It's really not there for me anymore. I'm really proud of what I'm making, and sometimes I look back and still am proud of what I made. It's far from my perfect vision, but it's still a finished product that has a healthy investment and enjoyment put into it.
On top of that, I opened commissions again this year and have been overwhelmed by the support I've received from friends and even those outside of my circle. It's been so cool to draw for people in my friend's fighting game community and even going so far to create personal things for them. It's given me so much confidence in communicating with commissioners, myself as an artist providing them a service, and working to improve in my workflow, my professionalism, and presentation of myself. I still need to work on the whole confidence thing, but I definitely want to create the best of my abilities for others.
Along that note, I've also given myself the goal to meet at least 20 opportunities, achieved or not. I'm gonna try reaching out to zines I'm interested in, participate in contests, etc. ! Anything outside my usual comfort zone to see what unknowns I can achieve - regardless of failure. So far, i've only met with one "failure" since I've started this mindset, but I wasn't really expecting anything out of it too. It was a good experience and I hope to experience more.
This is getting horrendously long though. SO it's time to state what I want to focus on in 2019. This time, a little more tighter knit because I feel like I'm constantly repeating the same old goals and I need something I can visually account for.
Here's the things I want to improve on:
- Dynamic Poses strikes again. But specifically, I need more interesting poses. I guess this would go hand-in-hand with perspective, but I want to view characters from below, above, more than just your average portrait. I need their posture to make the eye flow and feel less static. And I want to draw them fluidly- without feeling like I'm drawing a stiff figure.
- Coloring Backgrounds. I spent the entirety of Inktober drawing backgrounds. It was also the first Inktober I finished after all these years. I CAN DRAW BACKGROUNDS. But I don't really know how to color them. Perspective is always a works in progress, but at this point, I'm just free hand and roll with it. I'm just proud I drew one and the characters actually look like they're in some background.
- Getting comfortable with details. I'm great at keeping things simple, but for full blown illustrations, it always feels a bit ... boring. I not only want to add details, but make the designs cohesive as well.
- Shading. I need more interesting shades. I don't want them to feel like they're in a studio anymore!!!
- Get ready to launch my webcomic in summer. (HEAVILY TENTATIVE. PLEASE DON'T TRUST ME.)
- Take part in some sort of project, be it a game, zine, or short story.
- Finish creating my d&d campaign. (//eyes)
- Join at least two contests/events. (//sweats)
I'm keeping my improvements short because I KNOW I'll just keep listing a plethora of all my weaknesses, and I won't meet them all!!!! But let's review what I did meet from the things I listed last year as a final send off!!!
- Backgrounds: Met!
- I SPENT ALL INKTOBER FOR YOU. I don't have any of it uploaded online because I'm lazy, but it's there and I'm very proud I stuck to it till the end even if it was suffering at times. I also made the effort of at least adding something in the background - a simple color tone with some decor, very blurry bgs, something more of a design - ANYTHING except keeping it white and blank. I did that. Now you know, just keep doing that because you can.
- Characters in the Moment: Uh... Met??
- So this is kinda hard to say, but I think I half-met this goal. Just not enough. The Justice and Ezekiel one is a good example, as well as the water one from June, but outside of simple one-off doodles I've made, the "in the moment" drawings are far and few in between. I honestly forgot I wanted this, but I guess my subconscious was screaming at me to not have characters constantly looking at the "camera" with some art I've chugged out. I'll now make an effort to keep this in mind.
- Work in Animation: Met!
- I spent a short time in November animating a few doodles, and prior to that, I animated splash screens for my stream. It's fun!! Especially now that CLIP EX supports these camera features and key frames, it's really interesting playing around with it. I posted a handful of what I made on twitter. I still think I'd mess with these on and off.
- Short comic: Coming Soon?
- I SWEAR I'M WORKING ON IT. I just.. need time...
And that about wraps up this year's art summary! Great job, me! Thank you for graduating and being free to do all the things and love yourself and your hobby. To my future self, I hope that 2019 gives you lots of inspiration and joy in drawing as well. See you again next year~