HEY, HERE'S THIS THING! This year, I managed to submit 23 things to my portfolio. And a whole ton of doodles elsewhere... Last year I submitted 21, but a couple of those were just stuff for school. So I FEEL LIKE I SUBMITTED MORE THIS YEAR...
Still, I didn't get as many finished pictures in as I wanted to. I have a list of drawings I want to do this year for the sake of an anime convention portfolio type thing, so I hope to finish some of those things in the coming year. ;u;
Anyway, here's all the things in this summary:
January: I remember liking how this pose came out when I drew it. I haven't used my markers in forever, really... they're probably all dried out at this point. xD;
February: My sis told me to ink and color this, even though I didn't really like the sketch. I'm glad she made me do that, though, because it helped me realize that I don't have to be so clean cut and stiff with all my sketches in order to ink them. :V Though I do wish I cleaned up Stefan's pose a little more, haha. xD
March: I still rather like how the soft shading came out in this picture... IT CAME OUT PRETTY DANG NICE, IDK HOW I DID IT.
April: I didn't have anything that I liked in my gallery for April, so here's some random Tomato.
May: More markers! I think I was experimenting with sketching using a harder lead pencil for this drawing, which helped the pose come out kinda decent for this. :V I was looking at the real version of this a couple days ago, and the shading was actually pretty nice... maybe I should try using markers, again. xD
June: ADVENTURES IN PRINTING--PART 1. I actually saved this at a bizarre file size, but I'm pretty sure it's still big enough to print. *u*; This drawing reminded me that cell shading is where it's at. ...digital line art is a butt, though. orz
July: I have no idea why it took me so long to finish this picture.
August: ADVENTURES IN PRINTING--PART 2. This one actually printed decently, but 8 x 12 is actually kind of a weird looking file size. I think I'll just stick to 8.5 x 11, or 11 x 17. Also, that polka dot background took a bizarrely long time to get aligned.
September: With this, I realized I could ink something in one day if I really tried.
October: BACKGROUND!!!!! I traced it, but still. I think I might be willing to try some backgrounds, in the future. This didn't turn out too bad. *u*
November: Tried a new soft shading technique with this picture! :V Still practicing with it, but it's pretty fun. Also used the brush tool for the line art, which is GREAT. For soft shaded pictures, at least. *u*
December: Tried soft shading using a sketch, for this one. I did a test print with some other stuff to see how the sketched line art would print, and it looks pretty decent. Might do some more drawings like this, if I ever find myself short on time! :V
This year, I did a whole ton of digital art. I haven't really touched my colored pencils since summer, and even then I didn't manage to finish anything with them... orz I wonder if I've gotten worse with them.
What I have figured out this year is that I can do cleaner sketches traditionally!! I use a hard lead pencil for the gesture and pre-sketch, and then I can go over it cleanly with a HB mechanical pencil. That's how I did the drawings in this, which has been good for me to figure out doing neater drawings. :V
I'm also still experimenting with soft shading, digitally, and a whole bunch of other digital drawing stuff... I miss doing a lot of traditional art, but digital art is so much cheaper since I don't have to buy supplies all the time. ;u;
ANYWAY, THAT'S WHAT THIS YEAR BROUGHT ME... Let's hope the next year is fun, too! :D