When I first posted about my Art Progress, I had far fewer pieces to post and naturally it covered a much shorter period of time. It was also a bit tedious to update, so imagine my delight when I found out that my Hugo Theme supported gallery pages. I’ve now completely updated my progress album and put a link in the sidebar so that I can always find it when needed, which is something I’d found annoying with the previous post-based progress album and before that, an Imgur album.

One of the things I noticed about my previous art progress post was how much negative self-talk there was in there. I’d like to talk about the main categories in my gallery page in general and hopefully more positive terms. I was going through some stuff in 2019.

High School (2004-2009)

During high school, I stopped drawing as much as I did when I was younger as I’d gotten a bit more self-conscious. My nan, who worked as a professional artist gave me art lessons around this time, but I can’t say I was very receptive to them, becoming easily frustrated when things did not come out how I expected.

I still sketched and doodled throughout high school but I compared myself a lot and often didn’t take much joy from it. When I was 17 or 18, I got into copying cartoons as a way to unwind from things that were happening in my life at the time.

University (2010-2015)

I studied at TAFE in 2010 before dropping out and pursuing a degree in history. I wanted to become a teacher, however in my second semester, I took a digital design course and fell in love with vector art - to the point that I would stay up all night working them.

In 2012, I switched degrees to a Bachelor of Visual Communication Design and took several drawing classes. This is where I started to improve and that only continued when I moved to Adelaide and majored in Illustration Design (against my lecturers’ recommendations). In the end, I had to repeat one of my major courses because I was struggling with my mental health and my 3 year degree took 4 years.

Post-University (2016-2017)

After uni, I struggled to find work for nearly a year. One of the drawings in this part of my album was drawn on the day that I finally got a job, which was supposed to be only a 6 week long position but lasted over 6 months before I took a full-time position in the same role in 2017.

In 2017, I bought an iPad Pro and despite a bit of a slow start with using it to draw, I got a lot of use out of it before it was replaced in 2023.

Drawabox (2018-2020)

To be honest, I think this is the single best thing I’ve done for my art skills. I’ve written review of all the lessons and there were a number of drawings I’ve posted in the album that I’d previously talked negatively of, but honestly none of them are that bad and it’s easier to have perspective on it now it’s been 4-6 years.

There are a couple of drawings from the animal alphabet that I did over the course of a year or so. I used to do them in my lunch break at work - knocking out a little animal drawing in 10-20 minutes with one hand while eating with the other.

It was this year that I created Bloaty the Happy Pufferfish. This was inspired by someone on the Drawabox Discord posting a sad pufferfish with popped balloons. In 2023, I redrew the artwork for my Redbubble store and I’m quite happy with how it came out.

In 2019, I bought a Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro and so I started doing a lot more digital photo studies and I think these came out really well.

30 and Beyond

I took a concept art course after I finished Drawabox and this was a great experience. Being smack in the middle of COVID, I had the time to work hard on it after work. Since then, my output has definitely slowed down, particularly in 2022/2023. My hope is that 2024 is the year I can increase my output again.

Hopefully the art progress gallery is interesting and shows even a small snippet of all the work I’ve put in over the years.