2014 Summary of Art

I bet you've seen enough memes like this one by now, but I just love doing it. I'm always looking forward to completing it and seeing my improvement for the whole year. xD

While I definitely improved, it's not as drastic as it was last year. My art became more “stable”.

I'm quite proud of all of this pictures – that's why they are in the meme – and it's hard to choose a favourite one. I still love the metal from May, the clothing folds and lighting from August, the character design from October, the hair from November and the background from December.

I'd love to know which one is your favourite and why?

Also what do you think is the worst part of my art? I'd really like to improve it!

Goals for 2015:

- Properly studying the fundamentals: perspective, (human) anatomy, composition, color & light

- Telling a story with every picture

- More dynamic poses, more backgrounds, more characters interacting with each other

Last years summary:

January – Solitude
This picture was drawn for a contest and shows the strongest feeling of solitude I know. It's about being in a long-distance relationship. It's the first personal piece in my gallery and the first time I participated in a contest - and I even won!

February – Diploma Project
This was my final project for the Diploma (practical part of my studies) and I worked really hard on it. I spent all my free time of 2 months on it and gave the best I could.
My supervisor had no time to answer my questions, so I had to teach myself with tutorials and I was even looking for help in a forum. But until I got an answer I already had to move on or it wouldn't be finished in time. So I couldn't take much advice and was called selfish and thankless.
As I finally finished the project and showed it to my family and friends all they commented about was her scanty clothing. The only thing I didn't design! Also the supervisor gave me a quite bad mark. I passed, but I lost all interest in 3D art and had a massive art block afterwards. It wasn't worth all the effort and time I put into this.

March – The Dark Side
Finally I had some time to draw again. I always liked the thought that even a good character like Link has a dark side (or even two xD), so I created this artwork. I really like how it turned out, especially since I haven't drawn anything for almost 2 months. Also it's my most popular artwork of 2014.

May – Draw this again 1
I decided to redraw two pictures every year – one in a realistic and one in an anime-ish style.
This is obviously the realistic one, which was drawn after a screenshot from the first Hobbit movie. I got some really helpful feedback and an awesome paint-over which helped me improve the painting a lot.

June – Priorities
I wanted to capture the most lucky moment in my RO life on digital canvas. For this picture I tried to draw chibis again, which I do very rarely. It's also the first time I used SAI for doing the lineart which was a great idea, since it's so much faster and easier than Photoshop.

July – Searching for a cure
This drawing was made for a cool description challenge of a friend, which unfortunately never got finished. I haven't created a character after someone elses' description in ages and it was a really good exercise. I can only recommend doing it!

August – Draw this again 2
I finally started to get over the art block caused by the Diploma project. For months I struggled with finishing even one picture, while in August I joined an art forum and drew almost every day.
It were mostly just quick and ugly anatomy studies which I won't put on dA, but the second redraw is a good proof that I practiced more. I never thought I could improve that much again in only a year!

September – Switcharound Meme
In August/September I joined an awesome challenge of the group Rising-Artists: a Switcharound Meme! It was really fun to draw a sketch and see how other artists finish it. Also doing the lineart for another persons sketch was quite challenging.
The original sketch of the picture in the meme was made by me. Then another artist did the awesome lineart and corrected all my mistakes. I made the coloring in November, because I wanted to see her as Midna - in the original meme she became another character.

October – OC Development
From September to November I was in an improvement group. Experienced artists taught others how create interesting OCs and become better artists. Even though it was quite stressful since I had to finish one rather big assignment per week, it also was quite interesting. I finally drew some of the OCs who were on my mind for years.

November – RO Advent calendar
I drew one of my dear old memories for the RO Advent calendar of 2014. The picture shows my little Assassin fighting her way to maximum level, supported by her sister. I really enjoyed drawing some RO stuff again, because after all these years it's still the thing that inspires me most.

December – Secret Santa
I love doing Secret Santas! It's great to draw a surprise picture for a randomly picked person. I really enjoy making others happy.
It took quite long to finish this one since it has the most detailed background I've drawn so far. But I'm quite proud of it.

Onwards to 2015 and even more improvement!

Other Art Improvement Memes by me