A Year in Art for 2009!
Okay, so it's January 4th of the New Year, but like I said, I've been away so the art thing is happening now. glockgal had a nice meme format going on, so I've decided to use that for this entry instead of the large picture spam from 2008.
So here we go: My Year in Art - 2009 Edition
Fanart Drawn: All art is below the cut, reproduced in nice little thumbnails so you're not attacked by it all. I've also organized it all by fandom, so go on and have a look. There are twenty-seven pieces of art beneath the cut!
Harry Potter (3)
Marvel Comics (3)
Star Trek (13)
The Beatles (6)
Crossovers/Misc. (2)
So that gives us a grand total of 27 pieces of art this year. Not bad, I suppose, and most of the pieces are all completed. That said, I didn't get around to finishing the few pieces I wanted to from 2008 which is no real surprise to me because... well... that's who I am. My fandoms were pretty constant, I think, though Star Trek ate a good portion of my brain, and continued to leak in there for a while despite the shift into Beatles artwork, lol.
My art still varies and changes sporadically in how good I think it is, though I have once again come a long way in a year. And more often than not I can sit down and produce something I'm satisfied with (a lot of drawing attemps from 2008 were axed early on). I attribute this mostly to my job which is not very exciting or busy at times, which has afforded me a lot of time (especially over the summer) to doodle absently. A lot of those sort of pen sketches end up going wrong, but it's given me quite a bit of practice.
High Points of the Year: Managing to get through three Big Bang fests in 2009 (I seriously doubt that will happen again this year) which were a lot of fun and the fics I drew for were absolutely fantastic! The people I worked with were great, and I just think that all-around the fans and artists I spent time interacting with over the year were awesome. Fandom's a pretty sticky place and not at all pleasant a good deal of the time, but the people I've gotten to know (particularly in the smaller circles of Star Trek and Beatles fandom) have been so loveable.
Low Points: As I said, fandom isn't always pleasant and 2009 was a bit of a nasty year. Fortunately, I wasn't personally involved in most happenings, but that doesn't make sitting on the sidelines shaking your head at people any better. I remember the whole Avatar fandom debaucle and race fail that was so bad it became my topic for my final paper back in April. My increasing disappointment and frustration at Marvel's trashy excuses for comics was another one.
What I'm looking forward to in 2010: I'm looking forward to more Beatles awesomesauce! That fandom is so venomous most of the time, but I seem to have found a very nice and cool place on LJ to hang out and the fans there are offbeat and wonderful. I'm also looking forward to a resurgence of Holmesian fandom as it seems to have captured the attention of quite a few people so far. I am also looking forward to no longer having to say “two thousand and something” when describing the date! Though as Lok-kin pointed out yesterday, now we can't wear funky two thousand and something glasses on New Year's.
What I missed in 2009: I MISSED AZKATRAZ. And by the looks of things, I'll probably be missing this summer's convention as well. :(
Best Art for the Year: That is a tough one! Probably either my piece from the Star Trek Big Bang of Kirk and McCoy under the stars or Not Quite Ravi Shankar. For the former, as I read the scene I just saw a simple image so clearly in my mind that I sat down with Photoshop and it came so easily which never EVER happens! And despite having to mess around with the lighting and colouring it didn't give me a whole lot of trouble and I really liked it and am quite proud of it. With the latter, it was a fun drawing to do and is just so delightfully colourful.
Worst Art: Oh geez, probably my second piece of the Big Bang Blackout which is made all the more disappointing to me because I loved that fic SO DAMN MUCH and there was so much I wanted to draw. But it was my first real Big Bang and I was still trying to get the hang of things so I decided to try and draw a scene that the author had selected as important or what they wanted to see. The problem is, none of those moments clicked for me... I had other scenes I wanted to see but I felt obliged to follow the guidelines (a lesson learned by the time the Star Trek Big Bang came around). And Regulus came out terrible. Hell, the reason I never posted that art here was because I am just so ashamed of it.
Art Resolution for 2010: Going forward, I think I'd like to get back into a more... I dunno... cartoony style and continue to develop that. My last few pieces of the year (and the first one for 2010 which you haven't seen yet) emphasizes realism which is all well and great for recreating existing images (something I did a lot of in school) but I'd like to go back to making my own scenes. Having said that, beginning with the portraits and all that has given me further practice on unique facial features. And so while I often fill in the margins of my notebooks and scraps of paper with eyes, noses, blank heads, etc., when trying to translate a real person into an illustration (like my Beatles artwork), taking the time to sketch out a real photo allows me to see how I actually go about creating said unique features and putting them all together.
I would also like to be able to draw facial hair apart from sideburns. I forsee a lot of messing around with Sgt. Pepper Era (and later days) Beatles as well as Watson in 2010. Drawing faces has improved over the past couple years, and my noses have gotten better as well. So moustaches and facial hair are next.
Finally, I need to make proper use of my Dreamwidth account. It's there for the sole purpose of posting art in a public space (in case there are people who happen by who only want to see my art) but I never end up posting there. So that needs to change.
So here we go: My Year in Art - 2009 Edition
Fanart Drawn: All art is below the cut, reproduced in nice little thumbnails so you're not attacked by it all. I've also organized it all by fandom, so go on and have a look. There are twenty-seven pieces of art beneath the cut!
Harry Potter (3)
Marvel Comics (3)
Star Trek (13)
The Beatles (6)
Crossovers/Misc. (2)
So that gives us a grand total of 27 pieces of art this year. Not bad, I suppose, and most of the pieces are all completed. That said, I didn't get around to finishing the few pieces I wanted to from 2008 which is no real surprise to me because... well... that's who I am. My fandoms were pretty constant, I think, though Star Trek ate a good portion of my brain, and continued to leak in there for a while despite the shift into Beatles artwork, lol.
My art still varies and changes sporadically in how good I think it is, though I have once again come a long way in a year. And more often than not I can sit down and produce something I'm satisfied with (a lot of drawing attemps from 2008 were axed early on). I attribute this mostly to my job which is not very exciting or busy at times, which has afforded me a lot of time (especially over the summer) to doodle absently. A lot of those sort of pen sketches end up going wrong, but it's given me quite a bit of practice.
High Points of the Year: Managing to get through three Big Bang fests in 2009 (I seriously doubt that will happen again this year) which were a lot of fun and the fics I drew for were absolutely fantastic! The people I worked with were great, and I just think that all-around the fans and artists I spent time interacting with over the year were awesome. Fandom's a pretty sticky place and not at all pleasant a good deal of the time, but the people I've gotten to know (particularly in the smaller circles of Star Trek and Beatles fandom) have been so loveable.
Low Points: As I said, fandom isn't always pleasant and 2009 was a bit of a nasty year. Fortunately, I wasn't personally involved in most happenings, but that doesn't make sitting on the sidelines shaking your head at people any better. I remember the whole Avatar fandom debaucle and race fail that was so bad it became my topic for my final paper back in April. My increasing disappointment and frustration at Marvel's trashy excuses for comics was another one.
What I'm looking forward to in 2010: I'm looking forward to more Beatles awesomesauce! That fandom is so venomous most of the time, but I seem to have found a very nice and cool place on LJ to hang out and the fans there are offbeat and wonderful. I'm also looking forward to a resurgence of Holmesian fandom as it seems to have captured the attention of quite a few people so far. I am also looking forward to no longer having to say “two thousand and something” when describing the date! Though as Lok-kin pointed out yesterday, now we can't wear funky two thousand and something glasses on New Year's.
What I missed in 2009: I MISSED AZKATRAZ. And by the looks of things, I'll probably be missing this summer's convention as well. :(
Best Art for the Year: That is a tough one! Probably either my piece from the Star Trek Big Bang of Kirk and McCoy under the stars or Not Quite Ravi Shankar. For the former, as I read the scene I just saw a simple image so clearly in my mind that I sat down with Photoshop and it came so easily which never EVER happens! And despite having to mess around with the lighting and colouring it didn't give me a whole lot of trouble and I really liked it and am quite proud of it. With the latter, it was a fun drawing to do and is just so delightfully colourful.
Worst Art: Oh geez, probably my second piece of the Big Bang Blackout which is made all the more disappointing to me because I loved that fic SO DAMN MUCH and there was so much I wanted to draw. But it was my first real Big Bang and I was still trying to get the hang of things so I decided to try and draw a scene that the author had selected as important or what they wanted to see. The problem is, none of those moments clicked for me... I had other scenes I wanted to see but I felt obliged to follow the guidelines (a lesson learned by the time the Star Trek Big Bang came around). And Regulus came out terrible. Hell, the reason I never posted that art here was because I am just so ashamed of it.
Art Resolution for 2010: Going forward, I think I'd like to get back into a more... I dunno... cartoony style and continue to develop that. My last few pieces of the year (and the first one for 2010 which you haven't seen yet) emphasizes realism which is all well and great for recreating existing images (something I did a lot of in school) but I'd like to go back to making my own scenes. Having said that, beginning with the portraits and all that has given me further practice on unique facial features. And so while I often fill in the margins of my notebooks and scraps of paper with eyes, noses, blank heads, etc., when trying to translate a real person into an illustration (like my Beatles artwork), taking the time to sketch out a real photo allows me to see how I actually go about creating said unique features and putting them all together.
I would also like to be able to draw facial hair apart from sideburns. I forsee a lot of messing around with Sgt. Pepper Era (and later days) Beatles as well as Watson in 2010. Drawing faces has improved over the past couple years, and my noses have gotten better as well. So moustaches and facial hair are next.
Finally, I need to make proper use of my Dreamwidth account. It's there for the sole purpose of posting art in a public space (in case there are people who happen by who only want to see my art) but I never end up posting there. So that needs to change.