I said in the WriYe year in review I would do a post for art. Not very creatively titling but I think it actually proves a point – the art is important to me.

I didn’t write a post about art plans specifically until the end of October. It’s been an ‘impossible year’ with moving and not really knowing what I was doing. I had sort of mentally thought “oh a drawing a month” as a general goal as I have done for the past several years, but hadn’t gone much beyond that. I had the Coloured Pencil Academy course to complete and then this past summer I did get a bunch more courses on Udemy which I haven’t done.

So end of October and I had plans. I basically said that I wanted to ‘get serious’ and commit 3 hours 6 days a week to working through the courses. I had benched art during October as I had a lot of writing courses to comb through in addition to prepping for NaNo. However, I had this idea that I could draft for NaNo in the morning and do art in the afternoons.

It didn’t happen once. Not once. I didn’t do any art during November at all.

Then December and I decided to use some new supplies I got during Black Friday to make a couple of christmas presents. I had to practice using them first of course, and so December I spent totally on art – no writing at all. Not one single word.

Which really is a problem. I’ve been thinking about that, musing on it really, over the past week and I’ve sort of come round to the conclusion that I want to treat writing as a job. I want writing to be my job. Yes it’s a dream at this point but if I put in the work then maybe, just maybe, it could be reality. However, the art has increased in importance to me. In the beginning I wanted to illustrate my stories. Then I thought about making my own book covers. Then I got mega-depressed because of AI in art (hence the Black Friday art supplies), as I thought maybe if I went traditional then that might escape AI for a little longer.

I just want to be good at things. I want to be good enough. I don’t feel like I ever will be, with writing or with art, and so it’s a constant crisis of faith everyday. I try and persist even as I ask why. I have dreams, of art supplementing writing – two careers in a sense. Which is perhaps why I am struggling to balance them as I want to work both of them full time, but I am incapable of doing anything full time due to my disability.

Anyway this is what I did this year:

The top three are exercises from the Coloured Pencil Academy.

The next two are colouring pages that served as practice with markers, and watercolour pencils, respectively. The stargate art was a total mixed media project. The cars was a christmas present done in markers and coloured pencil. The landscape was a christmas present done with watercolour pencils and coloured pencil. Finally there is a digital drawing of Seven and Raffi from Star Trek: Picard.

I did the three exercises and the digital drawing in April. Everything else I did this month in December. So consistency was not really a thing this year.

I think about the best thing I can say is that I tried. I didn’t forget that I wanted to do art, I just struggled and didn’t do it most of the time. I’m still a very long way from where I would like to be.

Anyway I am going to end this post with the same thing I put at the end of the WriYe retrospective – now I just need to work out how to build on this and move forward in 2023.