Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New year, new direction

Happy New Year everybody!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas/Yule/Kwanza/Chanukah/Festivus/whateverholidayyoucelebrate and a fun New Year's Eve!

The new year is a time to make changes in your life, resolutions to do things better than you had in years past.  A time to start fresh and try something new.  It is a perfect time for new beginnings, new directions, and new attitudes. 

I have made a resolution for this coming year, one that I hope will help me be more inspired, productive, creative, and profitable.

In recent years I have been focusing heavily on commissions and other projects not my own.  A lot of my personal paintings, pieces, projects, and ideas have been sitting around unfinished for -years- because of this.  I sit and look at these things and think how much I would love to finish them, or any of the other hundreds of ideas I have rattling around my brain.  Then I think of my commission queue and I shudder, knowing I owe it to my customers to finish their work before I even think about doing anything of my own.  It is killing my creativity, and so this year I have vowed to make some changes.

Starting today I am going to be focusing less on commissions and more on my own visions, my own projects, my own creations. I will be working steadily on the commission queue I currently have, but interspersed between commissions will be new art, better art, art that is more....me, and more of what people want to see from me.  I am going to be trying new things, venturing in new, subtle directions, dabbling my fingers in areas I haven't before, and finishing up the things I started years ago. 

And I will be severely cutting back on commissions.

I will still be open to accept commission requests, but I will not be taking on any new "character" commissions for this year.  Meaning that if you want me to do a piece of your specific character I won't accept it right now.  I will open for these again sometime in 2014.  Hopefully this will give me time to get caught up on my current commissions and give me some free time to do some of my own work this year.

With this time freed up I plan on working on some new ideas for products like stickers, bookmarks, keychains...anything I can think up!  I also have a How To Draw Werewolves, Beast Wolves, and Wolf People book I have been working on I would like to see finished, as well as several books of my artwork.  Big paintings are also in the works again, and boy am I excited for those!  I have always loved to work big, and I love doing epic paintings that leave the viewer breathless and amazed. 

This one has been in the works for years, and no that is not Smaug ;)
So that is my resolution for the coming year, to try to do things differently, to try to create differently.  I still have a pile of owed art to get through, but I am giving myself permission to get some things done for me as well.  Hopefully this plan will work for me.  We will see how this year goes.

I hope you all have a wonderful, blessed, happy, and safe New Year ^.^

9 comments:

  1. Good for you. I hope one day to have my character done by you. Or atleast a piece of art from you that most closely resembles my character. Ive seen a couple of them.

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  2. Good luck with your personal works!
    I look forward to seeing some of your personal art again.

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  3. Best of luck and Happy New Year! :)

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  4. Sounds very exciting and very inspiring - sometimes you need to step back and work on the art that is personal to you - looking forward to seeing what you come up with! (and I for one would love to see more step by steps from you - so please finish that werewolf book!)

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  5. Happy New Year and I wish you the best of luck with your art!

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  6. I wish you the best on working on your projects

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  7. Excellent! Looking forward to seeing your inspired creations. =) (And blissfully happy to be in your queue during this transforming period!)

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  8. That's so awesome. I'm excited for you! Personal projects and drawing stuff for ourselves is part of why we become artists in the first place. Sure we gotta make a living, but we gotta make time for ourselves. Good for you! Really looking forward to seeing more art from your heart!

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  9. I agree - sometimes you need to take a step back and re-inspire yourself before you can go forward. In the end, those who have commissioned you (myself included) will appreciate you tackling their characters with enthusiasm instead of dread. It's too easy for artists to get caught up in the 'business' aspect of their careers and loose their love for the ART !!!
    Hope you have a great New Year; I look forward to all the new stuff you come out with :)

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