How well did I do on my 2017 goals?
1: Faces (always) but specifically noses and making sure my faces are not too long (been chipping at this in 2016 you may or may not have noticed).
How I did: I have been paying particular attention to shortening my nose lengths to a more… reasonable length. Hooray!
2: Mechanical objects… Shiny metal… Things with lots of sharp and perfect details (biomech? Maybe).
How I did: I did not do much of this at all. Maybe briefly in my Blade Runner picture but I can definitely do more of this in 2018. Thinking I might work on some armor.
3: Continuing to give my works breathing room, which means not calling it “complete” until I give it a few days to sit and come back to it. I did this with a LOT of works this year and it’s actually helped me strengthen them a lot. My most successful pieces this year I did that with.
How I did: I utilized this a lot this year and think I did well with it! Many works sat in photoshop for days, weeks, and in some instances a month or two at most before I called it complete. I’m going to continue doing it.
4: More lineart projects! I meant to do this in 2016 but everything that was supposed to have lineart ended up not (oopsie). People always say I have strong lineart so I should try to embrace that a little more.
How I did: I did a lot more lineart projects in 2017 particularly for Inktober, with a few completed pieces I even brought digital. I’d like to do more lineart pieces and have some sketches jotted down for ideas I have.
Personal art goals for 2018:
After setting goals for myself in 2017, I think I have a better idea of the goals I need to set and how detailed I need to get with them. Here are my goals for 2018.
1: Hone in on some face anatomy issues. I constantly struggle to draw noses and sometimes even mouths in a believable manner I am happy with. I am going to hone in and try doubling down on my noses — I’m going to collect reference photos and do a lot of practice on noses and drawing different noses on different characters.
2: Oh, art so white. Yes, I am cripplingly aware of this fact. My art is both oh so white and oh so male. This is not to say that I don’t want to draw women or people of color. It’s just that the majority of my illustrations have to do with Azra and his story arch and his emotional telling of that through these drawings. I’ve introduced a new POC character in 2017 that I’d like to do more illustrations of. I’d also like to do more general loose sketches of not necessarily original characters, but just women and people of color in general.
3: Finish up the series. I’ve sort of called this series “Trauma” in my head for a while now. It kind of came out of the blue and I kept finding myself using recurring themes from it where specific objects are either glowingly outlined or glowing themselves. These are representative of memories, and depending on how they look, can either be good or bad memories (or even bitter-sweet ones). So far the works Ghost, It’s Only, Windswept, Take Me Home, Cut, Past, and Wounded utilize these similar color palettes, styles, and themes… While in the same orbit is Hunted, Dolf, Smile, and Burned. I’ve got 2 actual concrete ideas for additional images centered around this “Trauma” theme that I want to finish up this “series”.
Here’s to 2018. I’m excited to do some more great works!