remember when i said i wasn't dead? well, maybe that was a bit untrue...i think the last several months have really been taking a toll on me. i was getting more used to work, but issues with medication and just general emotional stuff have made it hard to keep on track. i'm still trying to figure out my schedule for what i'm gonna do this upcoming year. i really have hope to make some changes, but it's always a bit of a toss up as to whether these things will actually happen (i mean just look at the goals section, i've been changing them and forgetting about them for so long now...) so i don't wanna set myself up for failure by saying "yes, these things will certainly happen" just yet.
currently, i'm on vacation, but i've been using this time to go outside and interact with people more. most of my days for the past few months have been kinda just going to work and coming home to play video games/draw before falling asleep and doing it all over tomorrow. i'm kinda impressed i've been able to keep up drawing for this time too. a lot of times, i've just felt really discouraged by drawing and wanted to just mindlessly play games that don't require any thought. i tried to play games that were more interactive, but i had trouble keeping my attention on them because i was so tired.
before i knew it, it's nearing the end of the year and i had to pull together some time to write at least one more post for the year...i wanted to do my art review! and some general contemplation as to what's going on for 2025.
and without further ado, there's this year's art in review! i think this year has been very exploratory for me. i don't think i was particularly focused on anything specific, but there were definitely some things i think were big steps this year. i got a lot better at contrast; prior to this year, i didn't know what contrast was to be honest, which sounds a little silly, but i never got into the technical parts of art and kinda just went with whatever my heart wanted. learning about the importance of contrast from youtube tutorials as well as from friends, really helped me think of my drawings differently. i don't think i'm that great at contrast yet, but now that it's in the back of my mind, i do think it'll help influence my drawings more going forward.
another huge milestone this year was drawing all my ocs in one work! it was a super late halloween piece that i intended to actually post about, but by the time i finished it, it was mid november, and i felt kinda out of steam from the whole ordeal. it was a really cool experience drawing all of my ocs in one piece like that. thinking of how i wanted to express what their personalities are like alongside just noticing how i tend to draw certain ocs more easily than others was a really cool exercise.
my favourites from this year's summary were definitely april, july, and october! i actually look back at the april one and have no idea how i even did that lol...something in me snapped when i did that one, i fear. i need to reclaim that kind of feel somehow. i liked july and october's a lot because it was more experimenting with backgrounds, something i'm definitely lacking in regards to, and it was cool to see how they turned out! but april was really just my favourite for the whole year. seeing an innocent, wide eyed angel ren that is barely aware of the horrors within her really gave me a cool kind of feeling in my chest.
i think for next year, my art goals are as follows:
i've been really meaning to crack down on some goal stuff too...there's a few things i definitely want to aim for in regards to this site related to goals. for one, i really need to start writing again. i have a kinda sour relationship with writing due to some negative formative experiences, but i really want to produce more short stories as well as write my feelings out in the blog section. i have been using this blog section a lot less than i would've liked to.
to fight back against my laziness and tendency to tunnel vision, i created a list of monthly subjects for 2025 to blog about! i have a lot of thoughts i would like to get out and just put into word format, if not just for me to understand my own thought process better. it'll be a mix of oc related content and personal life blabbing. i left two months as a "free space" in case anything in particular comes up, but i also do have backup "free space" ideas to write about in case nothing captures my attention. so please look forward to january's monthly blog, which will be some rambling about my feelings surrounding exposure/popularity in art and ocs.
furthermore, i'm going to try to stick to a schedule a bit more. i want to do at least 30 minutes of writing a day. that way, i can chip away at stories/lore i've been meaning to lay out, or at least just keep my writing muscles primed. i want to get back to writing my uneventful actaera stuff, which is hopefully going to be the first finished writing piece i'll post for the year! i've had it in the works for a while, but it'll feature ren, aidan, halvatt, and eleanor in a little excursion! i'm half considering making my short stories alternating between ren and halvatt's povs, but that's still something i haven't ironed out yet logistically. more on that in the future, hopefully!
final few things i wanted to talk about to tie up any loose ends before 2025 hits:
i'm seriously considering just throwing together a lore section on this site, because i really love to worldbuild and make lore that's not necessarily useful for anything. it's very entertaining for me, and i want to share that joy. that being said, formating it is something that kinda scares me, as i am not really a coder of any sort (i've actually been kinda fighting for my life with this site's base code for a bit now: maybe there will be a total overhaul at some point, but that's a distant concern of mine).
but besides that, i am working on a project i'm very excited for at the moment! it's still in the works, but if you guys didn't know, i'm a huge vocaloid fan...and an english vocaloid fan at that. i love vocaloid english dubs, english vocaloid originals, all that stuff that i feel embarrassed to tell a lot of people because the common reaction i get is that it's 'cringe' and 'bad'. i will probably make a blog post celebrating the culmination of the project when it does come around, and i do hope it bears fruit because this is a passion project i've had in mind for so so long.
with that, we are heading full speed ahead to 2025! i hope this is a good year for everybody, i think my life will be on the upwards track for sure. i'll see you all again soon, cheers!
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