The Artist's Journey

Amaruuk

Amaruuk

[span="letter-spacing: -2px;"][b]└──[/b]►[/span]TY
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    the artist's
    journey
    come and share yours!
    Here's something a bit different. Often online we only see artists (particularly professionals) put their best foot forward, and so all we see is godliness and none of the long and arduous journey they took to get there, which can be rather disheartening no matter who you are, because there are always those who have been at it longer or are just better/more diligent/whatever. PC isn't a huge art community, but there are certainly some great folks here who I'm sure have been on rather insightful journeys to get to where they are now, and it is my hope with this thread that they might come forth to share them with the community and help foster openness and growth in this section as well as inspire the newer artists who are just beginning their own journeys.

    I've sorted my journey by year but you may sort yours like this or in whatever way makes most sense to you. You can include as much or as little as you want - put in whatever best illustrates your journey and growth as an artist. There're certain things I left out, mainly physically crafted things and old drawings that hadn't been scanned or the scan had been lost, mostly because I don't feel like scanning, and just the fact that there are already way too many pictures in this already; I had to draw the line somewhere.

    Each year is prefaced with a short description, and further writings for clarification of some bits will also accompany pieces or subsections as needed. You certainly don't have to be as wordy as I am if you don't want to. Tell your story however you wish, just make sure the images are prominent (and in spoilers) and the words support them, as this is not the writing section.

    I tended to revisit old characters or drew from old ideas as years went on so I tried to include those instances as best I could. If you do that, too, "then and now" comparisons of characters or other subjects drawn at different times really illustrates change over time. I hope you can learn from my journey and have fun sharing your own and getting to know your fellow artists through our histories.

    Forewarning - my post is incredibly long since I included a whole decade of time, but you can make yours however long or short you need, depending on how you want to walk us through your own journey. Just try to make sure it's all relevant and preferably in keeping with the idea of change over time, be it improvement or change in media/style/etc. And most of all, learn from each other, get to know other artists, follow the forum rules, and have fun!




    Artist Index





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    2003

    I thought I'd start with the year before I joined PC. As you'll see with most of the earlier years in this, there isn't much I actually have left, as entire life stages have occurred since then and things become lost between eleventy computer migrations/crashes/that one theft or get left at mom's house or whatever. In any case, what remains is some of the earliest pixel-by-pixel undertakings done in MS Paint and a couple of drawings, all being of a hilariously dumb fanfic/crossover nonsense idea I had (humans got turned to Pokemon and also Link and Kenshin for some reason, I dunno, I was 14-15), and a couple of acrylic paintings (though I think the blue dragon was from 2002).

    DRAWING
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    PAINTING
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    PIXEL ART
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    2004

    This, of course was the year I joined my first forum, namely PC. I was 16 and an insufferable fangirl but man the people here were a lot more patient and kind to me than you'd expect from the internet. Anyway, what remains of my art of that year is rather formulaic in that it all used the same technique. I had purchased my first actual art program, Paint Shop Pro 8, and so began the beginnings of my journey into digital art, which at the time was "do a drawing with felt tip pen, scan it, and use the paint bucket and pattern fill tools."

    Spoiler:


    2005

    For some reason this year's stuff was harder to dig up or maybe there just wasn't as much to begin with, I honestly don't remember too well. I probably doodled a lot in my school notebooks more than I did other things. High school was dreadful so art was just how I dealt with worldly frustrations and unexpressable (or unrequited) feelings for as long as I can recall. You'll see a lot more evidence of that later in college, as it was the major driver of my art before "being professional" was, and still it plays a role to this day. This was the year I got (and lost) my first boyfriend so it definitely came into play, as it started the pattern of using pairs of creatures to symbolize myself and whatever fella I fancied as an outlet. That blue dragon from way back was turned into the first "me" in this regard.

    This was apparently also the first year I tried to actually draw straight on the computer with a mouse, because I found a couple of drawings which were presumably done at Mew's Hangout Oekaki (yeah, remember those things?).

    DIGITAL ART
    Spoiler:


    TRADITIONAL ART
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    2006

    I spent a lot of that year shaking off the breakup from the previous year (and it also got more complicated since we "secretly" got back together on and off and eww high school drama bs), so the "moon" and "sun" dragons showed up a lot as a way of channeling out all the feels.

    From a technical standpoint, this year saw a lot of beginnings in terms of digital media. I was still using Paint Shop Pro (albeit a newer version) at home, but at school (a tech school I took morning classes in, not my awful high school), I got my first tastes of Illustrator and Photoshop. And thanks to PC and its then-bustling pixel art section, I really started getting into actual pixel art and entered a couple contests.

    Also of note (but I'm not putting the stuff in the thread because laziness I guess), I started using my newfound digital skills to texture models for products on the then-still-in-beta 3D messenger, IMVU, which was one of many things my best friend dragged me into during high school. Later it would prove to be the first taste of working with 3D that would become an important influence much later.

    TRADITIONAL ART
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    MISC. DIGITAL ART
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    PIXEL ART
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    2007

    I wasn't actually on PC during this year at all, but that certainly didn't make it uneventful. This was the year I graduated high school and moved out to college, and while I did some revisits, this was also when I first attempted to move away from fanart and life-driven things, though I certainly did start out with a pair of kitsune which served the same role as the moon and sun dragons from 2006.

    Going back to the technical aspect, this was the year I bought my first copies of Photoshop and Illustrator as well as an Intuos3 tablet, and so began really trying to do more with digital art, though it was still frustrating and looked like a whole lot of smudgy garbage until right at the very end of the year.

    PIXEL ART
    Spoiler:


    EVERYTHING ELSE
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    2008

    This was the year I rejoined PC under this account (then called Kinarii), as well as my first full year in college and in a new state by myself, which was certainly rife with uncertainty, and thus spawned a lot more nostalgic revisits because comfort zones, I dunno. In terms of media I took both vectors and digital painting at least one stage up, as the former I had classes to broaden my skills, and the latter I found some tutorials online for lineart and blending and whatnot.

    Apart from revisits of old dragon characters for practice doodles, I toyed with the idea of re-imagining the Pokemon fanfic thingy from 2003, keeping the idea of "dystopian world where people were turned to Pokemon by mad scientists and the heroes must journey to fix it" but replacing all the Mary Sue and crossover garbage with new, original characters (Kin, a brotherly and wise Arcanine, Kuro, the obligatory aloof anti-hero type, and Rina and Luna, two naive young Eevee sisters). I had even made a logo featuring the pair of Absol who were to be the antagonists.

    POKÉTOPIA
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    MISC. TRADITIONAL ART
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    MISC. DIGITAL ART
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    2009

    Off the web, in meatspace, this was one of the most infamous years to date, because unrequited feelings + a perfect storm of awful timing and cartoonishly bad social blunders + recently lost IRL friends = all of the crazy. On PC, however (in part thanks to needing an escape from real life), this was the first year I really started making a mark (and friends!). In a rather desperate attempt to hold onto something or channel feelings or whatever, I took quite a liking to Roark (and if we're being honest, I would totally like to find an attractive guy who likes fossils that much IRL) as I became really good pals with Lily and Maddy, who kept my insanity on the enjoyable and silly side. Lily in particular had just a massive influence on me artistically because damn that girl has a way with everything, it's still overwhelming to me even now.

    Subject-wise, the first 2/3 of the year was spent channeling unfulfillable feelings for a man into drawings of a gold dragon being all majestic or whatever or the self-metaphor-of-the-year, Kinarii, a wingless dragon. Later on in the year, the crazytown situation got buried, and I patched things up with those lost friends (including one I had a crush on before that other crazy situation. He is represented as a purple sea dragon in my art), so things looked up and subjects changed. Towards the end of the year I drifted off PC for a while but got a boyfriend. I redesigned my dragon and we came up with one for him, too, and it was really fun! I also reignited my love of colored pencil which would continue for a few years.

    On the technical front, largely thanks to PC, I underwent a renaissance of sorts with pixel art. This was also the year that began my eternal infatuation with putting paper textures on everything, though some of my other stuff was definitely still of the "scanned ink drawing colored digitally" variety. Also, hot damn, actual backgrounds! They were garbage, but for the first time I really actually tried to put things in a more complete environment.

    PIXEL ART
    Spoiler:


    VAGUELY PC-RELATED ESCAPISM
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    EVERYTHING ELSE
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    2010

    This year was also one of beginnings, as it was then that I changed majors in college from Graphic Design to Media Arts & Animation. If you still recall from the 2006 synopsis, I had an interest in working with 3D which had been shelved for years until I finally got to learn Maya in school beginning in 2010. Plus, what had been "hobby" art for my whole life finally had some relevance to my studies, so I did a lot outside of class working with characters. I also came back to PC for a while and did a bit more pixel art (even winning a couple contests).

    In the summer, my boyfriend and I broke up (but we're still good pals, no worries!), and later the beast that was early 2009's feelings clawed back up from where I buried them because the man whom the feelings were for was now ever-present at school (my new major was one that was intertwined with his, and he also had become a tutor in the new Cintiq lab, which was actually where I got my first taste of ZBrush, albeit briefly because I was simply petrified of being in a room with him, and couldn't focus for beans).

    Media-wise, I got into a lot of stuff, particularly at the end of the year, after the man I love(d) graduated, and I was inspired to start a series of images of the gold dragon with each being in a different medium. Originally it was planned for there to be one for each letter of the alphabet but I never ended up getting around to all of them, so there are only five. Also of note, in a class just before I changed majors, I was assigned to do a handmade book containing 100 images, which I used to do a retrospective of my own characters through the years, beginning with then-current-style redoodlings of all characters that I had before 2009, followed by Kinarii's evolution up to that point. If you want to see it, both the *image removed* and a *image removed* are on my deviantART.

    PIXEL ART
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    EVERYTHING ELSE
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    2011

    Honestly 2011 feels a lot like "2012: The Prequel" because it was the start of the stretch leading to the light at the end of college, but nonetheless it does have some of its own distinctions. As it was the year immediately following the graduation of the man I love(d) the previous December, I was drawing the everloving **** out of the gold dragon and variants thereof (and even kicked off the year with a little papercraft project I did in a day because I was snowed in and bored) as a means of dealing with all the damn feels, and began representing myself not as a dragon but a maiden offering light or other gestures of simple kindness to the gold dragon. I also conceived of a story/world called Kingdom of the Sun, which involved a creature called the Dawnbringer (which was a spinoff of the gold dragon) and the conditionally immortal Dawn Phoenix.

    Like the previous two years I kept on my momentum of experimenting with and occasionally mixing different traditional and digital media, and generally just practicing stuff in general. I became particularly fond of oil pencils. It was also notably the year I first got a chance to legitimately do something with ZBrush.

    KINGDOM OF THE SUN
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    EVERYTHING ELSE
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    2012

    This was the year I graduated from college (in early September), so most of the year up to that point was preparing pieces for my portfolio, some of which went unused or unfinished. I continued fleshing out Kingdom of the Sun (two of my portfolio pieces were related to it), but it eventually got shelved. Apart from all that, really the most significant things I did were two series at the end of the year. One was some gift art for a few friends for Christmas, and the other was some concepts of malevolent beings that embodied aspects of winter because I really hate winter.

    Media-wise, I obviously honed 3D stuff a lot in school, and also experimented with using models/sculpts as a basis for paintings. I also really tried to push my digital painting to look more loose and painterly and not so digital. I also tried getting into Corel Painter, but while it has some advantages, it's rather unstable and prone to lagging and crashing so later I ended up mostly abandoning it.

    KINGDOM OF THE SUN
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    MISC. 2D
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    MISC. 3D
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    2013

    Technically a lot of what's in my gallery thread was made in 2013, but there's some earlier and/or not as good stuff that warrants being put here. There was also a helluva lot of quickie stuff and a few big things that, as usual, got shelved or put on hiatus. Also I got a job after being out of college for only 4 months so lucky me!

    One of these was something called The Oculus, which was a group blog a friend, myself, and one of his friends started at the beginning of the year to help all of us hone our speed at art with 2-hour pieces based on topics we'd take turns coming up with, though it eventually was put on hold because life happens. Another was a story and world that was actually first dreamed up at the end of 2012 but I'm putting it here because most of the concepting was done in 2013. It was called Starslayer, and is actually where Amaruuk, the dinosaur-like goddess in my avatar (and of course my namesake online) comes from. Like all stories/worlds I envision, it never really made it past a few conceptual pieces and text documents outlining aspects of the world and a general plot synopsis and whatnot. I like to draw snapshots of stories more than actually writing them, it seems. Hard to imagine considering how wordy this post is, sheesh

    Also, all of the sculptures currently in my gallery thread were done in 2013 (except the moon, which was actually from 2012). There was also another one, which I will show WIPs of, but it has remained unfinished for at least a year now, though I do fully intend to get back to it, as it is a companion piece to the painting Guard of the East Tower, also in the gallery thread.

    THE OCULUS
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    STARSLAYER
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    GUARD OF THE WEST TOWER
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    EVERYTHING ELSE
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    And finally, to bring this to a close, here's a sketch I did in 2013 based on a drawing I did all the way back in the late 90s, something like 15 years earlier before some of you guys were probably even born. I don't think anything illustrates change over time quite as well as this!

    Spoiler:





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    Wow, you really did progress over the years. If there's a will to learn and practice it goes to show how far we can get.
     
    Guys, just so you know, this is not my gallery thread, it's an open thread for anyone to post their own histories as artists. Read the details at the top of the first post for guidelines and stuff. Y'all can totally comment like you have, too, but I feel like something has gotten lost in translation, perhaps. But if/when you do post yours, I will put it in the index of the first post. Thank you, though! :3
     
    The elegance of this post will not mirror that of Amaruuk, as I do not possess the same knowledge of css. And content wise, I only showcase one media/type of art, as that is all I am capable of. Nevertheless, I thought I'd be the second to contribute.

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    Oh, how wonderful! This is exactly what I'm looking for. It was a great walkthrough and I quite enjoyed the evolving styles. You've been added to the index :3
     
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