2013 Fanart Meme
Shamelessly borrowed and modified from mugenmine. Yearly fannish retrospectives are fun and useful for looking at where we've been and where we're going, and this past year saw a huge shift in my arting that was beyond my wildest imagination. I hope 2013 is just as surprising and interesting. I also really want to improve.
All Most of My Arts in 2012
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Total number of completed pieces: Based on the table above 19. The only things missing are my sshg_exchange piece and two pieces of lineart I drew for the slashy colouring book, which I don't think I ever uploaded to my LJ. But if I count each of my Fangirl's Guide to London/ Flying as separate pieces (which I do) then 51!
Looking back, did you draw more art than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? A lot more because of all the Fangirl comics, which didn't require the same degree of detail or coloring but which did require a lot of symbolic silliness. And I love to be silly.
What’s your own favorite piece of the year? I love The Fall because it was something really different and hard and I wasn't sure if I could pull it off. But I did.
What’s your least favorite piece of the year? Unfortunately, it would have to be my holmestice piece, A Friend To But Not a Friend Of in which Sherlock really didn't look like himself and the overall mood was just not what I pictured in my head when I read this story. It's just not a very dynamic picture and I regret that something I created for someone else was just not up to what I know I'm capable of. The good news is that my frustration with this piece stems in part from the fact that I now have a Sherlock. All year I've been struggling with settling on a consistent look for Sherlock and John (like how I have a clear Snape), and other pictures I drew around this time such as Christmas Crossover and De principibus start to reflect a more consistent Sherlock.
Did you take any art risks this year? Boy did I ever! I First I started drawing characters from a non-book based canon - Sherlock BBC. This first happened with The Baker Street Boys in which I stayed very close to promo images of Freeman and Cumberbatch in character. I found it very intimidating to draw characters based on people we see all the time and I am still trying to find my John. For the first time, I tried doing a night image in A Cure , which was a lot of work. I documented the process here which was helped by a lot of feedback from different people. I also started drawing an original character (The Fangirl and Skully) in my Fangirl's Guide. And finally, The Fall and More than Transport saw me using ink in very different ways.
Do you have any fanart or proart goals for the New Year? To improve. To settle into a consistent look for both John and Sherlock. To not join any fests or exchanges this year. To complete A Fangirl's Guide to Flying with art for all Cabin Pressure epsiodes, including the new season 4, to do the 30-day OTP challenge with John and Sherlock. And I would really like to draw an illustration for all of the fics I have bookmarked on Ao3. I think I'm being way over-ambitious. Maybe if I resort to stick art?
I started writing that I have no professional art goals for this year, but this might not be true. I just don't think of myself in terms of a professional. However, making money from art does cross the line into professionalism and that could happen. I don't have a clear goal yet, but it's worth thinking on especially as regard the Fangirl's Guide. I really think that could be turned into an honest to god illustrated guidebook.
My best art of this year: The Fall.
My most popular art of this year: If I go by comments on Ao3, it would be The Cure, but that's only because it's linked up to emmagrant01' s A Cure for Boredom.
Art of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I don't like this question. I may have something that I thought was amazing and took a lot of work and didn't receive a lot of comments or kudos, but it may have received one or two really glowing comments that showed that this work really, really moved someone. I have also posted stuff that disappointed me this year, so I'm kind of glad it didn't get a lot of attention because I'm not very proud of it.
Most fun piece to create: A Fangirl's Guide to London: Sherlock Edition. Oh my god guys, you have no idea how much these little sketches made me laugh and laugh. Plus it meant I had to rewatch the episodes over and over again for research. And then it gave me an excuse to go to London to experiment with the Fangirl's shenanigans.
Art with the single sexiest moment: The Hermione/Pansy femmeslash piece that I drew for the lubricus coloring book and which you can see a part of here in the second picture. Probably NSFW. Although Release, (definitely NSFW) which is a quick and dirty sketch of Sherlock blowing John that I did on the back of my work timetable is also pretty hot.
Most “Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” art: Maybe Not Just a Kiss , but I don't know. Also sort of NSFW but you really can't see anything but John's red pants. Otherwise, I really had none of these this year. Maybe if I get around to drawing some Omegaverse tentacle porn to meet one of my 2013 fandom goals, I'll have something to put here next year.
Art that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: De principibus. This was driven in great part by drinkingcocoa' s work on Machiavelli and her suppliance of quotes for these two characters. I found myself puzzling over the quotes as I paired them in the background and really thought on a more substantial level about what Sherlock and Snape might have in common.
Hardest piece to draw: I am having a really hard time with A Fangirl's Guide to Flying: Cabin Pressure Edition because it's so hard to be funny when something is already hilarious.
Biggest Disappointment: I finally linked to the piece I drew for the sherlockbigbang that never really posted, More than Transport. It was another experiment, but the more I look at it, the more upset I get with how crooked the TARDIS is. I think the scanning only exacerbated the crookedness and I'm really disappointed in myself for not taking more care. This was clearly a case of me focusing too much on the details (all those awesome dots) and missing the big picture.
Biggest Surprise: Maybe the time I found myself writing fic for the first time in 6 years to accompany a piece of art. Also, this is the piece with the best damn title: More Interesting than a Mild Case of Vomiting.The art is not spectacular, but that I actually wrote fic and that people enjoyed brought me such surprise joy.
Most Unintentionally Telling Story: That a new fandom consumed me this year. You can really see this in the art table above where the amount of Snape art really dropped off to be replaced by Sherlock-themed art. The HP fandom has been my first real fandom experience, and I'd been in it for so long, that I didn't know that I would ever take on a new fandom to the same degree. But it's happened as shown here. I blame Benedict Cumberbatch!