After a packed year of conventions and art events, I’m reflecting on my 2022 year and planning my next one! I feel like I spent more time learning to write than learning to draw. I wrote more blog posts, more promotional stuff and more story things that I’ve been sticking with instead of burying it away in my files.

Despite my feelings that I didn’t get as much artwork as I wanted to be completed, looking back, I had a good run for my convention stuff, doing a convention almost every month and figure out myself as an artist and what I really want to do with my work.

As usual, I can stand to do more experimentation with my style. I can press harder on making stickers and more “purposeful” artwork, like Posters, Pins, and Card mats. Overall, I need to make a larger effort of finishing my art.

Ko-Fi

First, I’m finishing the year with a new digital sketchbook for sale on my Ko-Fi Page!

It’s a whopping 90-page collection of my daily sketches through December! This along with my past digital sketchbooks are a $5! It’s a fair price for a complete archive of my artwork!

I opened a Ko-Fi page early in the year to make first draft tutorials, such as my Game Store Tutorials and Art Process Articles. In the Art Process Articles, I add sketches and thumbnail art for potential large illustrations.

I’ve also used Ko-Fi as a digital e-book store, as it has a larger capacity than my Etsy Store. Have a tip jar without obligation to buy anything from me. If you’re interested in Early Access Artwork and sketches, follow my Ko-Fi page.

Blackmask

Blackmask is going alright. I didn’t need to do as much artwork for the demo compared to last year. So I got busy making a new website made to promote the coming game.

Since Adam had everything he needed from me to work with programming behavior and movements, I could hang back and focus on dealing with my personal convention stuff, scouting for places to show off the demo and writing to develop Cole and his world more.

For now, I personally wanted to add more enemy variety to the game to give the demo more depth and my self-indulgence. I’ve added new enemies such as a stretchy weasel and a gigantic bear into the mix!

Game development is nice for convincing me to look at games more often, I’ve glanced through a few games on my Nintendo Switch and some emulators to learn more about sprite animation. It’s taken me into some rabbit holes like finding out how Capcom plans thier Street Fighter animations and the Game Boy’s Technical Limitations.

If you want to keep up with all the development news and going ons, join the Blackmask Mailing List for monthly email updates!

You can also follow our updates on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!

Gallery Seven

The biggest thing on my mind at the beginning of 2022 was doing Gallery Seven in Lockport, IL. There I had my original comic pages for Shirley’s Day and Incident at the Game Store framed to put on the wall.

Gallery Seven was the first time I’ve ever shown my artwork in any gallery. As a cartoonist and comic artist, I never thought I’d ever get in one. There wasn’t much of a showing, as it took place during Comicopolis where I sold my individual issues.

I needed to learn a mess of things to prep in the month leading to the showing. From framing, to transportation and learning how to write artist statements. I probably won’t be able to get such a large gallery showing too soon, but I’m sure I’ll get into smaller shows and events in the future!

Conventions

This is the one year I actually went to conventions! I felt the crunch of some months preparing for events that are closer together.

Some highlights from this year are Northwest Indiana Comic Con, Anime Central, and Alley Art Festival as they were not only my most profitable ones but the cons that gave me more thought to how I could tackle my convention set-ups going forward.

The difficulty of traveling with my items gets me thinking of how to streamline my set-up, being more choosy about what prints to make and items that sell.

New Art

I purchased an iPad earlier in the year in hopes to practice digital art in a portable set up. My skill to Procreate is minor compared to my experience with Clip Studio, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it as I go.

There’s few of my piece to Procreate that I’m proud of. I have more unfinished art than finished, and too much of it got deleted in my frustration.

Pixel Art

Along with Procreate, I also spent time learning how the Pixaki App worked, so I was slower on my Pixel Art output as I was incorporating it into my workflow. To be honest, I was more interested in drawing on paper than pixel art.

Commissions

I took fewer commissions overall because I’ve been so busy traveling and freelancing on other stuff. Blackmask also keeps me busy, but overall I take up commissions who interest me.

Most of my commissions took place at conventions, since that’s a big thing to do, of course! To my surprise, I was able to work on people’s OCs over Fan Art, which brightens my day as a person who like messing about with character designing!

I’ll make more of a point to take more time to do commissions at a later date, not only to make extra scratch, but also to take my time to help people out. In the meantime, you can look through my Commissions page to see my future prices.

In the future

The future will be bright! I’m interested in furthering my mind, body, and art as usual and keeping myself sharp.

I donated some of my Bard Cat art prints to New Hope Art Auction for the Cat Guardians No Kill Cat Shelter in Naperville, IL! Prints of three of my art pieces will be up for auction to raise money for my local cat adoption shelter! My local Naperville galleries was seeking cat themed artwork, so with my current body of work, it was a slam dunk! Bidding starts on January 3rd and goes until the 7th!

For my New Year’s resolution, I’m practicing with my digital art tools, instead of buying new software and forgetting them.

These rabbit characters are spur-of-the-moment sketches I drew in the ArtFlow App on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I still get bothered by how my phone pen feels, but like my iPad, I’ll give this a bigger chance.

Along with this, I’m changing up my regular drawing style with more paintings when I can. I got too frustrated with the messier style and I want to change that. I hate how stupid I feel painting because I think I’m took too long on this. Despite that, I’m trying to give painting a chance.

There’s no significant plans for 2023 besides continue what I’ve been doing. I’m putting less effort into maintaining my social sites than my own website now. However, everyone else is out in their little “town squares” I might just keep my face out there as well. But to reiterate, here’s a list of places you can follow me.

With that, I say to keep up the hope in the future, take a walk sometimes, and have a happy new year!