me: *starts this blog intending to update a couple times a week*
also me: *effectively abandons this blog for weeks after the first post*
id be lying if i said i was surprised lol
SO heres some older work, just cause i saw it as i was looking for some files for school and got to thinking. most of this stuff would be right around 2 years old now, since i did a lot of it during my freshman year of college, took a gap year, and am now back for my sophomore year. all pixel work done in paintBBS, which i clearly still love <3
a lot of it is fan art, which i think as i moved further up in my art education and towards my major, i felt sort of ashamed of making. i think i felt like the fact that i enjoyed making fan art meant that i wasn't creative, like i was able to produce pretty ok art, but not my own ideas. but now i kind of look at it differently.
now that I'm a graphic design major, most of the work i do draws less from illustrative abilities, which is all i previously thought i had going for me, and more from the knowledge of composition, color, fluidity, color palette, etc., which are things that ive had an eye for and have been working to improve ever since i first picked up a pencil whether i realized it or not. i was worried i wouldn't enjoy graphic design because i thought it'd be too wildly different than what i was used to...and it is. but in a really good, challenging, and exciting way. I'm having to do things ive never done before and look at things in an entirely foreign way, and its almost relieving how much i already love it.
so in that vein i think ive learned to separate the work i do in my free time simply because i enjoy drawing and the work i do to hone my professional skills that i can use to one day land a job in the field. drawing relaxes me, makes me happy, and keeps me in practice and loose, and i no longer see any shame in drawing things that just make me happy. my experience from drawing for fun shouldn't take away from my experience from working towards a graphic design major, and vice versa. the relationship isn't adversarial anymore; mutually beneficial if anything. now that my major has taken off, i no longer feel like fan art, or any art that doesn't have a “purpose,” is a crutch or a display of how little creativity i have. its just something i do that makes me happy, because creating any art, in any form, has always made me happy.
