It’s the end of another year, and once again to look back on the past year and reflect on the things I accomplished and on things I can do better. First, last year I didn’t do a review, this was due in part that a lot of personal things happened and although I still tried to keep up with art, I wasn’t in the right headspace to write a review. And although this year has been another busy year personally, I wanted to write one this year.
The year started off with some contract work. I was hired to illustrate a cutaway of a shipping container by a company called “White Board Creative”. The illustration was going to be used by one of their clients on their website. I was to illustrate a list of different items (supplied by the client) that could possibly fit inside the container. I think the final illustration came out pretty well and the client was happy with the finished piece. Some of the items that were to be illustrated really pushed my illustration skills and I walked away learning a few new things.
This year a personal goal of mine was to commit to more sketching. The difficult part was trying to incorporate it into my everyday and where I could fit it in. I came up with using my lunch breaks from my full time job and taking that half an hour to get some drawing in. I had to remind myself early on that the goal for these sketches was not to create masterpieces, but to just draw everyday, and that in itself would be a success. I kept a pretty could streak going and I could see myself improving the more I sketched. I came away with a nice little collection of sketches, two of which I decided to add to my portfolio.
Late in the year I heard about an exhibition called “The Art of Planetary Science 2025. I decided to take a chance and submitted my protoplanetary disc illustration. This illustration was created a few years back for a book called “Impacts”. I really enjoyed creating the piece for the author and have wanted to do more illustrations depicting planets and space. I will find out if my protoplanetary disc illustration was accepted into the exhibition in the new year, here’s hoping I will be lucky enough. Closer to the end of the year I actually did a quick mock-up of another illustration, this one centered around the planet Mars, the preliminary work was all done in Adobe illustrator using the 3D features of the program which also allowed me to use some texture maps from NASA. The early work on this has me excited for this potential future project.
Lastly, I also spent some more time on my human skull illustration. I started this illustration a few years ago and have been chipping away at it over time. I have to keep reminding myself that art, wether that be drawing, painting, etc is a marathon, not a sprint. Although I thought I would be done this project by now, I’ve learned sometimes you just can’t rush things. I know that if I want this piece to come out how I’ve imagined, I have to put the time into it. Life also hit pretty hard over the last two years, and that’s not to say that art takes a back seat, but when your confronted with personal challenges sometimes it’s best to give yourself time and get back into the right frame of mind. I’m hoping to wrap this piece up early in the new year.
So that’s 2024 wrapped up, some contract work, sketching and some more work done on my projects. In the new year, I’m hoping to get my skull illustration completed and start working once again on my peregrine falcon project, which has been on hold for some time now. I also want to get lots more sketching in, and I’m thinking another visit to the natural history museum in Ottawa would be fun. I’m excited for the new year, lots of new work planned and it will be fun to get back into art on a more consistent basis. Thanks for taking the time to read this post, have a safe and happy new year!
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