Always wanted to do one of these, and now I have. :D 8 years of improvement, wow! I’m also really bad at picking things so I don’t know if I picked the ones that best represent my progress, but eh. I did some edits, but the original base for this can still be found here. Extended thoughts about each year below, it’s a lot! Here’s to bigger and better things in 2019 (please ;_;)
2010: I started drawing digitally in 2006, though regrettably I didn’t save any of the art I did back then. 2010 was when I joined DeviantART, and thus when I started uploading art online. I had frequented DA well before that though (from about 2007 I think), and influence from the artists I followed are pretty evident. A few notable ones were ShaloneSK, Fourth-Star (now SeaSaltShrimp), and thazumi, all primarily dragon artists. Though none of my traditional art is showcased here, this was still a time when I did it often, usually via doodles in class when I was bored. The digital art you see here was made with my first tablet, a Wacom Graphire 3, and Photoshop Elements 3 that came with it. I had little knowledge of file quality, layering, colouring, and other mainstays in using Photoshop properly. Humble beginnings are these! My art education at this point was limited at best, but art was always something I did in my spare time. And like all of the art years leading up to 2010, I drew almost entirely dragons. Aside from practicing foxes for a story I had at the time, I wasn’t interested in drawing much else. I didn’t draw people at all until college, but we’ll get to that.
2011: Christmas 2010 / New Year’s 2011 marked the time I got Photoshop CS5, a version of PS I still use today. For a while I was obsessed with the idea of PS’s Pen Tool, as I saw it could give me much cleaner line art than what I could achieve on my own. I was finally able to test that when getting CS5, and while it worked well for the time, I soon learned the tenets of line weight and tapering, something I would have to practice myself. Up to this point all of my lines were either shaky or fabricated via the Pen Tool, and it shows. This was also a year of trying to mimic Fourth-Star’s dynamic perspective...without any knowledge of how it actually worked. Not a lot of improvement happened here outside of that.
2012: This was the year I bought my Bamboo Create tablet, something I still use with my laptop nowadays. I remember trying it out at my friend’s house before I bought my own, and really loving how I was able to do the line tapering without the pen tool. It still took a lot more practice, but looking back now it was easy to see I was on the way to making line art one of my art’s strongest qualities; something that stays true today. I find it ironic that line art used to be one of the weakest aspects of my digital art, but I suppose that speaks to how far I’ve come. I did more fanart this year, oddly enough. I’d always done it before but I guess I felt shy about sharing it. Notable fandoms were Danny Phantom and Sonic. I didn’t grow up with either, but ended up liking them both a lot, and would doodle them as much as my dragons.
2013: I graduated high school and started my first year of art college, specifically Art Fundamentals at Sheridan College. At this point, everyone I knew pointed to that school (and only that school) for anything related to what I wanted to do; if it wasn’t fine art, go to Sheridan. So I went into college with a bit of tunnel vision at first, but I knew from the start that I would be gunning for animation. Not to animate specifically, but to do character design / concept art for animation. I would learn later on what having this tunnel vision would mean for me, but we’ll get to that later too. This is about the point where more expansion of design and subject matter occurs, albeit slowly. The art featured here doesn’t include my schoolwork, but the much needed increase of anatomy, structure drawing and other college level art courses started me on a path to better things. I still had a long way to go though, and Fundies could only do so much. Unlike most people I actually got decent practice from it given my limited art background, but I still can’t say it was at peak efficiency. This was the first year I actually started drawing people, and it certainly didn’t come without its growing pains.
2014: Surprising no one, I didn’t get into Sheridan after my first year, though that didn’t stop me from being disappointed at the time. I took what was effectively the second year of Fundies, called Visual and Creative Arts (VCA). This was the year that sparked my interest in graphic / logo design, an interesting turn of events all things considered, and that would stick with me a lot more than I expected. This year also featured a few smatterings of character designs, or more specifically design sheets with multiple views, costumes, etc. Character design was a required segment of the animation portfolio, so this is likely what spurred my practice in it, aside from my pre-existing interest. That does not mean I knew how to rotate a character though, yikes! At this point I’d gotten pretty good at clean line art in Photoshop with my current tablet, as well as the merits of high quality imagery. There was a lot of purple in this year and 2015, though that’s nothing really new for me.
2015: This was easily the busiest (and most path altering) year. Second semester of VCA happened during this time, but also what would be new beginnings for me. If I didn’t get into Sheridan animation, I had a choice to make for a plan B: Either stay at Sheridan for VCA Year 3 and try again for animation, or try to get into animation at another school. My buddy Amelia then dropped Seneca’s name in one of my elective classes, and I had no idea how much of a fateful conversation that would be. She mentioned it was considered a second to or even better than Sheridan, and that at least provided a clearer answer for me. A lot of trepidation followed: I didn’t get into Sheridan animation for the third time, and thus applied to Seneca (and a few other places). I was pretty scared of being a first year again at a new school with new people, and while my art definitely reflected the time I spent at Sheridan, I had no confidence in it being good enough for a portfolio given my track record. But low and behold, I got in! I was on my way to a three year rollercoaster of all-nighters, amazing ride-or-die classmates, and relentless, rigorous training. The art from this year does reflect this, both in quantity and quality of uploads, though in more of a “transition period” kind of way. This was the year I really started to draw human characters, most notably with the creation of my first comic project: Starglass Zodiac. This was the first time I had a story idea with a primarily human cast, much less a comic idea, though the designs for them didn’t start appearing in my uploads until the following year. As you might expect I didn’t have a lot of confidence in drawing people. Ironically, my first year of animation taught me all the skills I initially needed for the portfolios!
2016: When I mentioned a path altering year for 2015, I was referring specifically to the path in my art education. 2016 was a path altering year for everything else, and a polarizing one at that. 2016 was a year that was kind to no one, and while the details of what happened to me are not really relevant to this post, there’s no denying what effect it had behind the scenes. This was the year that I fully realized I’d developed symptoms of depression, and with my increasing anxiety to match, this didn’t (and still doesn’t) go so well. I don’t think that’s really reflected in my art, however. Regardless of my mental state, the outside view of my art still features the colourful characters that they always had. By this point I was in my finishing first year / starting second year, and this was easily the best time for me. My time to shine, if you will, at least when it came to character design class. We had an overarching story project that was perfect for SGZ, so I used that time to develop the characters. The double-edged sword of troubled times is my escapism is cranked to 11, so this was probably the year that spurred the most story ideas out of me. This year (and part of the next) started both Id Pariah and Feather Knights. I got my iPad Pro for Christmas this year too, and that proved to be a game changer in the amount of art I could make. I was already used to the Cintiqs at my school, and I was lucky to finally have a screen tablet of my own.
2017: The end of my second year and the beginning of my third and final year of animation. Classes split, streams chosen and a world of missed opportunities began. I didn’t do a lot of art at the beginning of the year, aside from the beginning of my Feather Knights stuff. On top of that, my college had a 5-week long teacher’s strike that literally no one wanted to be a part of, effectively derailing all hope for a good semester. Attempting to do a short film project with this happening was a recipe for disaster. During this strike was the start of my first month long challenge though: Huevember. It was an uncertain time, and most of us were not compelled to get much school work done. Completing Huevember did feel like an accomplishment though, as I was actually able to keep up with it even when school started again. I’d say this art year focused a lot on colour for this reason. What art I was able to complete outside of my schoolwork saw a lot of expansion in that area. In all honesty 2016-2018 tends to blend together for me, for better or worse.
2018: My graduating year. The strike did its damage to my final semester too, but ultimately I survived. Despite completing 5 years of college, my path became the most unclear. Third year taught me a lot of things about myself and how I approach art, but most were not positive revelations. The expectations set out for me are ones that I cannot achieve. However, I have more time than ever to do art, making this year the most art I’ve made to date. I also participated in Inktober, which reminded me how far I’ve come as an artist, despite not doing traditional art for what felt like a century. My illustrative work for Inktober ended up being some of my best art this year, and the prompts made me get creative in more ways than one. The dark cloud hanging over my head has not disappeared since 2016 however, and the toll that has taken shows more everyday. As far as my art was concerned I did more of what I loved, mostly in the form of character sheets and designs. It’s all I can do, for now.
2019, I have one thing to say: Don’t you DARE.
what she means: i can’t believe it’s been 8 years of one direction! i am honestly so happy they existed and made music for us all to listen to and love. they were one of the reasons i joined this strange site and i hope the boys know how much we love them :3
Happy 8 year anniversary to the best group of boys I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Happy anniversary to the beautiful family created because of them. Happy anniversary to all the love and acceptance they’ve spread all around the world. I wish the 5 of them, and their billions of fans a successful future. ❤️❤️🎉❤️❤️
This Fall, Supreme will release its second hardcover monograph, published by Phaidon. Following the first monograph, published in 2010, the book documents the brand’s visual history from 2010-2018, including products, collaborations and cultural documentation.
The book also includes a poem by Harmony Korine and essay by Carlo McCormick, and features projects with David Sims, Nobuyoshi Araki, Kate Moss and Dash Snow, among others. The 351-page book also features a product index of T-Shirts and select Lookbook imagery from Supreme’s archives.
The Supreme edition of the book comes in a slip case and includes a poster and sticker.
This edition will be available exclusively in Supreme stores and online on November 21st.
