Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Year in Review

Since everyone else is doing it. I had to think for a while to come up with anything I accomplished, but maybe there actually is something there. Usually I don't feel as if I have done much.

Accomplishments

• Survived until my 30th birthday (today)
• Finished 12+ paintings for my first book from a major publisher: "Watercolour Made Easy: Fairies And Fantasy" which come out in February.

• Was a vendor at a good size craft show for the first time in years and did surprisingly well considering we had snow in May and no heating.

• Self published my webcomic in an actual professionally printed book form. 
• Finished around 65 paintings total 
• Reached 500 sales on Etsy. 
• Completely my first digital painting since 2003. 
• Learned offering commissions in Artist Alley isn't so bad. • Re-designed my website to the first original design since it's birth. 
• Received an award from an art show 
• Sold an original at Dragon Con 
• Was featured in Art Scene International 
• Fixed some bad licensing choices to the best of my ability. 
• Got a bike and actually used it a bit.

• Realized my art is not good enough if I want to accomplish the illustration goals I'd originally had years ago and future projects I would like to do and determined things I would like to improve. Somewhere I got stuck being a "fairy artist" because it was easier to do things that I knew I could sell rather than work on improving things which were not immediately marketable. I have finally reached a point where I can look at something not completely beautiful and think it might actually be fun to paint.

Goals

• Be more organized. 
• Draw more comics and improve them because I am horribly out of practice. 
• Sketch more often just for the purpose of improving, not only when planning a painting (I've made a good start at this because I filled as many pages in a month as I did all summer).

• Work on sketching expressions, animals, kids, movement, proportions, buildings etc. Remember to sketch from a basic skeleton rather than starting with the head. Try not to center compositions. 
• Paint some ideas from my long list of painting ideas 
• Try to start on one of the themed illustration lists 
• Complete another painting with water soluble oils. 
• Try to get more illustration jobs. 
• Go to Cartoonist Conspiracy meetings.

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