I started this blog as a way of sharing my artwork more publicly with friends and family, and also as a way of compiling a summary of my life as an amateur artist. I've shared drawings from my childhood, assignments from art classes, and my first wobbly steps into self-directed artistic development. But the personal nature of this blog has its limits; there's virtually no way of finding this unless you're my Facebook friend, and no real reason to read through it if you don't care about all the personal stuff that's gone along with my artistic journey. Throughout my life the main audience for my artwork has always been friends and family who, for the most part, don't really care about art that much but think it's cool that I have a hobby. That's great, but it's not the extent of where I would like to go with all of this.
The story of this blog is ultimately one of learning to be comfortable and confident in myself. I've framed it as a sort of stumbling journey in the dark to figure out what I wanted to do with my talents, but the truth is that to some extent I've always known what I liked making, and my journey has been more about learning to be okay with that and not needing to be something else.
Until the last couple posts, which I basically cranked out in preparation for this one, I hadn't posted anything for about a year. That's because I've spent that time preparing some more "finished" digital illustrations to present as a portfolio. I wanted to establish a baseline of what I'm capable of and interested in, as much to prove to myself that I can do it as to advertise myself to the world as an artist. I've gotten only minimal feedback on this stuff, so I'm not entirely sure where it sits in terms of quality, but hopefully I can get more feedback over time and build up some sort of social media presence based on an appreciation of my art for its own sake, and not just as a group of friends and family who care about my art because they care about what's important to me.
Will this lead to some sort of actual artistic career? Eh, who knows. I'm trying not to set my expectations too high; I'm also happy with my budding social work career. My plan is pretty much to just continue making stuff, put it out there, and see what happens. The future of my artwork is about as uncertain as ever, but now it feels more like a "journey" and less like a "crisis".
Side note: I'm using a pseudonym from now on, not because I need my identity to be secret or anything, but mainly so that if potential employers Google the name on my resume, my artwork isn't the first thing they see. Besides, it's kind of cool to have a made-up last name that, as far as I can tell, no one in the world has.
So... Here goes:
Portfolio
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