art summary charts.

2024's end reminded me how many of these yearly art summary charts i had accumulated over the years. i figured i could dump them all here, it'd be fun to maybe talk abt how my art's taken shape. this is just gonna be a lot of unedited rambling

i was particularly compelled to share these because of below's 2015's art example which made me chuckle. it is SO quirky-instagram-art-core. leftmost character in that block is tonyvtoons btw lOL

the jump between 2018 and 2019 is SOO VIOLENT. digging around old folders to find pieces around those years was so surprising. 2018 was the year i first started doing digital art and also started using social media seriously for the first time. i guess that motivated me a lot. SO much of 2019's art is still really charming to me because halfway thru the year i started doing this thick-lined, super saturated pop-art style which i still think is kinda sick. par0llel was a huuuuuuge inspo for me back then. u can really see that style developing while looking thru by the month.

it's so bittersweet looking at 2019's chart and seeing half of the artwork is either danplan-related or OCT related. the only good social media experiences i would ever have were in those communities, it's sad looking back lol. much growth in 2019 thanks to that

pfft... the rim light phase in the early months.... oh and this was my voidbit and danganronpa era, bless. i think this was when i quit actively being a "person" on social media, i was strictly posting artwork only and not interacting/engaging w users, and i would continue this for the following years. anyhow, 2020 was the most cohesive year by out of all of these, i think. i was alot more confident in my abilities with the downside of falling back onto these pink/purple/blue palettes. i think literally all of these have a purple overlay filter. some of it's still charming, but most art at this time had such tiny faces and huge eyes that it rly bothers me to look at. the arts chosen for this don't show it very well but believe me it was prevalent *-*

MSPAINT. YEEESSSSSSSS. OH YEAH BABY YEAH THATS WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT YES OH YEAH OH YEAH. getting confident in 2020 meant it was time to experiment again n get out of my comfort zone. after finishing 7398472831 default-pose, flat-color reference sheets for DR:SE, i remember being very eager to focus on rendering full illustrations again, starting with june. august was when the pivot to mspaint started. the very limited tools with mspaint was my springboard into learning color theory bc blending modes weren't a thing now. from there, i adopted a signature dramatic warm against harsh shadows trope in a lotta my character portraits. hell yea, new style. a far-cry from 2019's super-saturation & thick lines

and then 2022 hits and the momentum continues till august. i think i became too reliant on the techniques i learned in 2021 that my art began to look same-y at the beginning of the year. so then i slowly began the process of tinkering w/ different de-saturated or brighter palettes. everything continued steady until the new academic year started up and. it is. so funny u can tell the exact month the depressive episode hit bc the art quality took such an ABRUPT nose-dive LOL. things get abruptly messier and i went back into drawing flats with very basic shading lasting from august through the rest of the year. i also nuked all my social media around here and adopted a new pen name. it is what it is x-x

2023 feels like an identity crisis, it was the year i was trying to get back on my footing after how 2022 left off. march was the month i stopped using mspaint bc my damn laptop broke. my desire for drawing was pretty low, but i was simultaneously missing social media and itching for a somewhere to see all of my art in once place. i made sachersketchbook this year and unironically it snapped me out of my trance. much of the art this year is experimental, inconsistent, and a far cry from my older work - but i remember enjoying drawing a lot more than i did a few months ago, and that's what really matters. downside is i 100% unlearned all of the color theory and technique i learned from my mspaint era the SECOND i got my hands on blending modes again LOLLL.

2024 was still SUPER experimental, but i feel like i really got an idea of what direction i wanted to go in art-wise. also my art started getting good again, which is a plus.

i feel like in the entire year of 2023, i was trying to find a balance between messy and polished, and i think i FINALLy was able to strike a balance between that. only good things from here i think ❤️