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Apologies in advance for the length of this, but how does one concisely summarize a year?
As always seems to be the case when I put together these things, there are a few months where I have at least a couple good pieces to choose from and far too many others where the pickings are fairly slim. At least I had a couple valid excuses for not getting a lot of drawing done when August rolled around.
I started off the year finally finishing a couple commissions I’d been procrastinating on for months. However, there was one commission I never got done on time and then the person who commissioned me unexpectedly died before I could complete what they paid for! More on that in a bit.
In June, I did a couple commissions of which I'm quite proud for Centurion030, who was also nice enough to buy me a "core" membership. Still hate the term "core," though; it makes it sound like only the people who paid money are the truly essential members of this site.
Coincidentally, I had to leave July of 2014 blank as well when I did last year's art summary. What was I even doing in July? I can't recall. Too much time on the internet, probably. That might help explain why my right arm started hurting so terribly at the beginning of August. It sure made it difficult to get any drawing done, to say nothing of sleeping through the night.
I lost two grandparents this year: my least favorite and my favorite. My paternal grandfather died in January, which I’m afraid didn’t elicit much of a reaction from me one way or the other. I hadn’t been in touch with him for ten years or so. The last time I saw him was immediately after my Mom’s funeral. My siblings and I went to see him in his motel room and he spent half the time going off on tangents about why he and his kids don’t get along and then saying, “But I didn’t want to talk about that.”
Leonard Nimoy died the last day I saw my maternal grandmother. She passed away at the start of August, exactly one year after Robin Williams, which is also a day shy of the one year anniversary of me moving into my new place. Like I said, she was my favorite grandparent. Her passing didn’t come as a huge shock since her health had declined enough in the past couple years that she’d had to go into an assisted care facility. Even so, she seemed to be doing well and I’d kind of counted on her not going anywhere for a while. The previous December, she’d sent me a cheque and asked me to make some Christmas cards for her. Well, I never quite around to it. At first I thought she’d have to send them out as Valentine’s cards, but then February came and went and I started to think that when I finally made the cards, she’d just have to use them for next Christmas. Plenty of time to get them done by then. But there wasn’t a next Christmas for her. I feel badly I never got her those cards. I feel badly that I didn’t visit more, though she was a five hour drive away and it wasn’t as much fun as when she lived on her own or when I was a little kid and would visit her and my grandfather on the farm with my Mom and siblings.
I spent most of the rest of August resting my arm as much as possible, but I did enter that deviantART Rick & Morty contest at the last minute. If I’d had more time, I might have done a better job, but considering how much I procrastinate on everything, maybe I would have waited till the last week regardless of how I felt. I probably didn’t have much of a chance of winning anyway (even with everyone outside of the U.S. being disqualified from entering).
Oh, I remember what I did in July. That’s when I launched my Patreon page. Then I spent months not uploading any paid content because I was so afraid that my patrons would hate the art I posted there that they’d be mad that they pledged money to me. Also, Grandma dying didn’t help get me in the mood to do the sort of art people expected to see.
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I have to vent a little about September. Feel free to skip the next three paragraphs if you want.
I’ve got this online “friend of a friend” who is an aspiring author. The only times we chat is when he wants to tell someone about whatever story he’s working on at the moment. In September, he commissioned me to do an eleventh hour book cover for him because his first two choices had failed to deliver. I thought that it would be a relatively simple assignment- basically a drawing of a guy from the shoulders up- but it turned into a major hassle, as nothing I did made him happy and he kept requesting multiple changes.
First, even though he approved the sketch seen above, he waited until after I’d inked and colored it to complain that the quarter-Native American character’s features didn’t convey his ethnic heritage well enough. He also asked if I could get the piece to look as detailed as a painting. I’m sure I don’t know how he thought realistic digital painting was in my wheelhouse. I mean, has he even seen any of my art?
Making this anecdote even more perfect, I just discovered that he never used my drawing. I don’t know if the other person who was supposed to do it suddenly came through at the last minute or, in desperation, he commissioned yet another, better artist. At least I got paid. There have been a couple other times in the past where a client wasn’t happy with their commission, and I do feel badly on the rare occasions when that occurs, but this time I kind of feel like I wasn’t paid nearly enough to put up with all the crap I went through. I've barely scratched the surface when talking about my frustrations with this guy, but I don't want to make this thing any longer than it already is.
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It wasn’t until the end of October that I started to get somewhat back on track with my drawing and also started to make a little money through Patreon.
I’ve chosen my “concept art for possible sci-fi themed comic” to represent December because something futuristic seems appropriate when speculating what 2016 might bring. Will that concept become a reality or will it fall by the wayside like so many of my other ideas? Can I find the time and energy to do a comic- even something that’s just a one-shot- and if I do, will anybody even care enough for it to be worth the effort? Right now I’ve got almost a dozen drawings planned out, not to mention a couple commissions I’ve been putting off. And I’d also really like to see some progress made on that book that I’m supposed to be collaborating on… Sometimes I’m just so overwhelmed by how many ideas I have, I can’t decide where to begin and never accomplish anything of note. Here’s hoping that when I’m compiling my 2016 summary of art, I’ll be lamenting that I have too much quality artwork to showcase rather than not enough.