My Year in Art and Writing

A lot has changed this year, even just art-wise for me.

In the spirit of reflection, I thought I’d compare some of the stuff I made early in the year to the stuff I made later. Hopefully I’ve improved a little bit.

The top row is drawn in ink, and the bottom row is drawn digitally.

Doesn’t seem that my color scheme has changed much, and neither has the kind of thing I draw:. still mostly necromancers with a little fan art thrown in. What has changed, I think, is my line confidence. My lines have gotten cleaner and the figures have gotten more…solid, I guess is a good word for it.

Also, this year I was able to purchase the full version of Clip Studio, which definitely improved the quality of my digital stuff.

My ink drawings, however, didn’t improve all that much. But then again, I’d been focused mainly on digital art this year so it’s kind of a “cake and eat it too” situation. I just want to improve in all ways in all media.

As far as writing, the kind of thing I write now versus then has changed a lot. In January, I was writing a lot of poetry. It was some of the best writing I’ve ever done, I feel like. I even sent some of my poems out for publication (they were rejected, but still. It’s the first time I sent something out to be published like that).

These days, I’ve been doing a lot of writing, but it’s been a trifecta of chapters for Necromantic, blog posts for my job, and blog posts for my personal blogs. Right now, I’m focusing more on producing consistent, quality writing and less on creating the next big dazzling thing.

I’ve also gotten more serious and quiet about my writing, I think. I used to talk a lot about what I was writing but didn’t actually do much writing. These days I don’t talk as much about my writing, but I write more.

Maybe I’m getting impatient because I just want to get my babies published already. Or maybe I’m finally growing up and caring less about people thinking I’m a writer and caring more about just writing.

Or maybe I’ve just gotten more reclusive. Haha, who knows. Probably a little bit of all three.

I hope you all have had an artistically prosperous year. May next year bring you many new manuscripts and even more finished ones.