2019 Summary of Art

It’s that time of year and therefore it’s time to post my feelings and what I think are my “best of” this year! With only two days left, and still one shift of retail hell, there’s no way I’ll get anything done before 2020-01-01 😛

Previous years: 2018

As a rule I admit I try not to use commissioned art in my “best of” because I don’t want people who commissioned me to think I preferred one commission over another, but some months I might have only worked on commissioned work or it’s genuinely my best piece that month in my opinion. I just want to make it clear that I do not think any of the commissions were bad, if I thought so I wouldn’t have done them! This is Just Artist Worries talking and I think I chewed myself out about it last year too.

2019 has been a roller-coaster of a year, not just art-wise but in general. This is a summary of art post so I won’t focus on external factors unless they genuinely were impacting my art more than just LIFE.

The first half of the year I was trying to shift my art away from those really thick lines I use while also drawing on bigger and bigger canvases and I think my art suffered for it. I genuinely like what I did but I think my better work came with using those thicker lines and I think certainly that inktober piece showed that the best. But that’s the thing about art, it’s always a gradual improvement and playing around to try and see what works and what doesn’t.

That said one thing I was quite proud about was the rendering in Jan and Aug’s images. Trying to do more translucent materials like the goo with bubbles in and gem with the lighting refractions and various rendering was something different :3c

The limitations in July’s image is certainly something I’d like to revisit too, they’re kind of similar to older small binary brush things I did back in 2013. I’ve improved plenty since then so it would absolutely something fun to revisit more.

(From 2013, not 2019)

Unfortunately in 2019 I personally don’t think I left room for myself to experiment more, and honestly I think that’s pretty well represented in that only a couple of picks were genuinely inspired by trying something different. While I personally think September’s image is the best this year it’s also very “safe” for me as it’s just pooltoy DO with no frills. Frankly this is because of what honestly can be seen as a couple of bouts of depression dragging me down again plus at least three instances of burnout this year.

Next year I need to try and work on things to prevent burnout and attempt to combat those external factors in ways I’ve not done before. I also need to try and focus more on doing things I’d enjoy on top of my commissions more regularly than once every other month it feels like, even if it’s just sketches but while avoiding repeating the 2018 problem where 365/Art-A-Day was dragging my mood down because I had to do something. Here’s hoping for 2020 at least.

Below are links to the art gallery sites these have been uploaded to so you can see the full images. Usual warnings that some links may be NSFW of nature.

January – Simon Forces (Red Goo): SFW: ¦ NSFW: