3.5 years of art progress

[serpentinemalign]

this is primarily a post to celebrate the year of art. it has been an extremely hard year personally, but i made a lot of art and i am so proud of what i made this year. so. i want to talk about it to kind of... stop and take a step back and figure out where i want to go next and what i have actually learnt about process from taking art 'seriously'. i think that in the depths of practicing technique it can be easy to hit your head off a brick wall many times under the pretense of perfecting your swing, while you are actively doing stuff that is hurting you.

my relationship with art has always been pretty tortured but, to be frank, that is my relationship with every medium. i fall in and out of love with mediums over and over and over again while making incremental progress until doing it is pulling teeth and i have to do something else. so, i go through long periods with almost all my artistic mediums where i don't make anything at all but ideas are percolating, until they get too big and then there will be huge bursts of productivity that then again result in burnout and hatred of that medium.

art has been to some extent the 'smoothest ride' emotionally, despite still having these same ebbs and flows, because i never expected to need to make perfect art or be the best or turn it into a living or make my magnum opus in a visual medium. i was shot down for the perceived quality of my art by teachers as early as second grade - which i could NOT recommend any less, but it very quickly gave me the resolution to only make art for myself and just not give a shit about anyone elses opinions. in my early teens this caused me to dig my heels into a 'style' and tracing photos to do portraits while my friends who were 'serious' about art were beginning to explore things like digital painting and 3d modelling and drawing from real life. but damn i was TREMENDOUSLY productive for a couple of years there, and there was improvement in presentation even minus the technical prowess that studying would have given me. the point was i was communicating what i wanted. and then i stopped, because i had nothing to draw, because i experienced my first bout of depression! woo!

so im in this position where i guess technically i have been making visual art for soooo long and it may even be my most prolific medium if you also count margin doodles. but i never considered it as a career (i still don't really even though i get ever closer to opening commissions every month), i never studied for an art qualification in my life, and so IN SPITE OF having possibly the most positive relationship to art of any medium because there isn't the same emotional baggage of expectation and 'potential' or whatever... i feel especially self-conscious about my position as a 26-year-old with many art concepts still to learn and hours of technical study to complete to feel 'accomplished' enough (i know this is not really ever something that an artist 'completes'. but it still feels that way in my head).

anyway. at the start of the pandemic, with the additional time at home, i actually tried to take this art thing seriously.

it was hugo strange's fault, because of course it was. trying to actually learn art fundamentals had been an idea in my head for a while, but the extra time at home and my obsession with my blorbo gave me the opportunity to carry it out. i tried drawing in a sketchbook, then i moved to medibang and used my decade-old drawing tablet that, at the time, i assured my parents was 'for art' (it was for osu! lol). then moved to clip studio paint when it went on sale that year, which i adored for the time i used it. the primary thing was i just wanted to try a bunch of styles i didnt feel capable of. and then just muddle along and do them and watch youtube tutorials and vibe. things were pretty disorganised, i still had a long way to go, and i still wasnt really doing like... studies or anything? or i was doing studies but they werent very good for actually retaining the knowledge. i was told by a friend at the time to start with gesture, which i did, but didnt really form a habit of it. so i made a lot of stuff but probably could have learnt more 'efficiently'. but i think i was just, like, burnt out on years of trying to optimise absolutely everything in my life only to have it all fail because lockdown happened. ahahahhahahahah. so just getting to the computer and sitting down at the art program was good enough for me.

2021 was really the point i was figuring out what i actually wanted to do with art. i think i was getting to a point with all my artistic medium where i was thinking, ok but why does it have to be in THAT medium specifically. so i started with just a lot of people standing and posing and i ended with a desire to tell stories visually, because i like pieces that are eye candy but what i love aesthetically (and what i have always found more rewarding to draw) is illustration, ship art, and ofc fetish porn.

i also figured out what handholds i needed to make creation easier. because i was working in my room and then doing art in my room, i felt very cooped up. i realised i needed to be able to draw digitally in other places. so i invested in an ipad so i could use procreate to draw (it is now my main drawing program!) in the living room. i made a lot of sketches for exchanges this year, too. this levelled me up more than anything else, probably because of the time limit and needing to reference lots and lots and lots of complicated poses in porn videos, because the exchange was mostly nsfw. simultaneously, i started doing daily gesture sketches and kept it up for a couple of months. i can't exactly say which was more helpful, but i think both helped. i would recommend both practices to anyone so long as you do not overcommit, and so long as there is a Finite End to it so you don't burn out.

2022 was rough. the biggest change was the drain on my time and energy of working a full-time job. when i had time to do art i often just did studies because thats all i had energy to do. later in the year i realised fuck it, i might as well just draw shit that sparks joy. this resulted in drawing a lot of fetish art. technically i could have done this earlier but this is the point i felt 'competent' enough as an artist to do the concepts i wanted justice.

2023 was one of the worst years of my life. but it fucked hard for art. art was often the only escape i had and it also became something i used as a therapeutic tool. i wrote a reflective diary in procreate for my therapist to read and it helped me reach a self-understanding i don't think i could have managed with words alone. and, again, at the lowest points, i did studies, because making my own stuff felt too hard or too ill-fitting the punishment i thought i deserved. but perhaps i just had the hope of a future of making better and more pleasing art, which could only exist if i remained alive.

most finished pieces this year originate from my creation of hugo/mat as a selfship. i had previously never thought to put the two together, instead favouring to just ship hugo directly with various versions of myself (usually, the depressed and repressed grad student i was in 2020). but i realised mat and hugo fit together quite perfectly, and they have since given me brain worms from which i cannot escape.

quite a few pieces this year are unreleased, as they contribute to larger projects. but the fact that the larger projects exist is wild to me. im making. comics????????????? and i didnt think that would happen. that is wonderful. that is enough.

anyway, based on this very informal learning process, here are some things that were Good and here are some things i would Not Repeat when doing learning in any field: 1) having at least a vague, structured sense of what to learn next, even if i didn't follow it exactly in the same order. i used the 'curriculum for the solo artist'. there's a free version online, but there is also an ebook of Version 2 which has much more extensive lists of curated free materials. honestly, i still haven't gone past the first few modules chronologically... but when i need to know something specific and i know where i am falling flat, i can look at where that topic falls on the module list and immediately get some curated video tutorials to get me out of the rut.

2) challenges like kinktober etc are fine but need to have a short-term, finite end. this year i did quite a few challenges from the solo artist curriculum which were very helpful, like daily gesture and head drawing. but crucially they finish in less than a month, and the kinds of studies seen as feasible in one day are MUCH quicker to finish than full inked pieces (sketch 10 heads, do gesture drawing for 30 minutes, vs... a potentially infinite inked work?). i've tried lengthier challenges over the years like getyourwordsout and (most recently) the alphabet superset, and all those made me feel were pain. not just for the tall order, but because i flit between mediums. it's never going to work for me to have to stick with one for that amount of time, and especially if the amount or 'finish' of art required to complete the challenge is unrealistic (as it is for challenges like inktober).

3) it is a DIFFICULT balance between drawing lots of low-quality stuff to get better at specific aspects i'm trying to target one at a time, vs drawing a few high-quality pieces that became trees-for-woods ordeals by the end of them. this is still something i am trying to figure out. i'm not sure what the ideal looks like. drawing freely and loosely is good, drawing with a lot of attention to detail is good. i dont want to reject either. i just want to find a better balance between them for future.

4) shortcuts and having the right hardware and software for you does matter. many very good artists will recommend simplifying your process at first and saying 'okay draw with the photoshop circle brush and nothing else', as opposed to hoping that a good brush will fix a 'bad' drawing. but the thing is... i dont know how i am meant to simplify my process joyfully when it makes the process tedious and self-punishing. the shortcuts exist for a reason. new brushes make me motivated to draw (new vsts and synth presets and samples motivate me to make music, new stationery and software and themes motivate me to write). something i will never tire of is finding a gnarly pen texture and playing around with it, figuring out how the shape of it will affect how i finish the piece. that is actually its own creative 'limitation' for me that i think actually improves my work. (utility brushes like stipples and small brushstrokes also save me an infinite amount of wrist pain, but thats more of a tangent.)

5) the 'just draw your fave over and over again' thing is REAL. (what is drawing a comic if not drawing the same characters over and over and over again out of love.) hugo was the first character i wanted to draw and who led me down this path. and obviously this year i had my selfship, which was deeply soothing to me, pretty much steadfast in its comforts. one challenge i tried early this year was to draw hugo strange every day until i forgot (i nearly made it to a month). drawing him daily DID help me to solidify aspects of his design, how different hugos might differ from one another, and also what parts of my style i wanted to leave behind for the rest of the year. but i think again, it would have benefited from following the above challenge rules of thumb, to reduce the scope.

6) art trades and exchanges are tremendous if you can get over the fear of not being good enough to do them. this is still something i wrestle with and actually i owe a bunch of trades right now so. i am gonna get onto those before new year's. :') but either way, it is wonderful and stretching to have other stuff to draw where your motivation is... doing something nice for a friend or a mutual, so you will cover subject matter you wouldn't normally. i think this is a gentle, social way to draw a wider variety of subjects, and personally i always enjoy the process of getting to know people's ocs/fave characters and interests in greater depth than i'd manage just by lurking on their pages.

7) making original art and stories from scratch (and without important planning and details established from the get-go) is... not for me. just like with fandom, i go hard for years for just a handful of characters and dynamics and that is absolutely fine. my novel is going to wind up being a many years effort, and so are the original comics i have planned. i knew this already, but i am happy to have done some smaller and looser original work this year to see if i could make it work. you will note that none of this has actually ended up on my art summary. lol.

anyway. 2024 should be fun. i am in a much better place to enjoy it and to actually enjoy what i make instead of it being like. a desperate lifeline. i also just have doubt that it could be any worse than this year.

i will probably do snowflake challenge again? idk if the challenge changes in content every year or not. but it would be cool to make it a habit and see what has changed.

see you there :)

Comments

[tropicsbear]

I feel you on how some challenges that are meant to be motivating can actually feel pretty daunting instead. I remember considering GYWO earlier this year and then quickly noping out after reading through the guides/rules.

It's not really that it's not helpful; it's just not a fit for me, I guess.

Best of luck with your art in 2024!

[serpentinemalign]

Yeah!! I think for the right person it is probably amazing but it requires that you can be, like, actually realistic about the number of words you can write in a year lol.

Thank you! <3