Insomnia

In the process of digging through files to throw this thing together, it became clear very quickly how... sporadic my art process is in general. Some months have a dozen finished paintings, others have literal hundreds of sketches I never posted for one reason or another. A lot of concept art, comic thumbnails, and lore writing that isn't quite done cooking (my files are such a mess. there are at least five physical notebooks. i fear my own wip pile.)

Aside from a month of travel and college finals, this whole year has been a constant process of improvement, the way I see it. Trying out new techniques at every opportunity, designing and redesigning to figure out what works, tackling the things that always intimidated me in the past (visual storytelling in general! it's hard!!), and practicing animation whenever I can. Taking a comic design class on a whim helped with sparking all that, way back in april, and it's just spiraled more and more from there.

Art Fight was its own beast this time around, with uh... 54 total attacks. I don't know how that happened either. flow state I guess. couldn't pick a favorite, though, so I just counted the whole pile.

Honestly, it's the first I've been able to look back on the year and feel really really proud. All this would've seemed so out of reach a few years ago, but here we are with a whole book being planned out. Seeing other artists take on their own projects was a huge inspiration too, and I wish everyone luck with whatever stories or characters or anything they have rotating. keep making things.

I have genuinely no clue what next year will look like, but I'll still be drawing no matter what. Things will change, get redrawn, get thrown way off course, but when have I ever stuck to a plan, anyway?

I learn best by trying, so I'll just keep trying, and we'll see what happens.

Happy new year :>