My 2023 Year in Art
Because of my sporadic drawing, I just picked 12 pieces of mine, spread out across this year, that i felt had an impact or shows an one on my overall artistic style, from the first time I've experimented with something, and when i solidified it.
i nerd out over my own drawing under the cut!
In chronological order, starting with my portrait of my first WOTR commander, Alaun.
Original Post!
Not only is this is representation of me getting into WOTR, its one of the first times i did smoother and softer shading, something i haven't really done since. Additional, i can easily see the line between the metals i rendered here and Cecio & Celia's more stylized metallic elements. I miss Alaun, he was ahead of his time as a good kc of mine. its a fairly big full piece, and one I'm still proud and fond of today!
Original Post!
Estinian! god i miss ffxiv... Here is the root of my bright idea to use pencil brushes for colored shading, to get a textured gradient, and i used it in the metallic golds. its also my biggest art post on this blog!
it is a big & detailed piece, and seemed daunting at the time, but i just put in the time, and was rewarded for trying to make sense of the armor [i used my own dragoon as a model for how thing actually interacted & what was what] Im still stupidly proud of it. it was my second piece of FFXIV fanart, and the beginning of many more!
MURA! original post
Given this is about drawings that have impacted me, i think this one is an easy contender for the one that's done so the most. Drawing Mura reminded me how much i loved fashion & clothing, and drawing it! I've always has a tremendous amount of fun with her drawings, and it all started here!! Mura also was the first time i repeatedly used a colour pallet for a character, with her pinks and purples now ingrained into my mind!
Original Post
Out of all my drawings, Estinian and Mura are tied for how much ive drawn them, which Estinian has an advantage due to my large bank of FFXIV screenshots & my redraws thereof.
This was great fun, not only for understanding the armor better, but having fun experimenting in colour pallets! something i can see has carried on into my non-literaly coloured Celia & Cecio drawings!
Mura<33 original post [has link to its original art]
My first head only drawing in a long time, and somewhere where i experimented with coloring, as well as the introduction of Muras netted and braided hairstyle!
in fact, you can see the visible brush strokes as what would eventually be the stylized shading used in my more recent portraits!
The shattered stained glass. looks cool as hell. and was my first time majorly experimenting with layer options, something that would become very common for me.
Mura again<3 original post
Look narrowing it down to three was hard, i drew her so much, she really re-inspired me to draw.
Lighting<33 you can really see here the style i would use on Cecio, just using a pencil brush rather than a roller one. its a piece Im very proud of, and one day i will light everything as consistently as this
Miss Star-Sailer<33 original
Expanding the working with a limited color pallet from Mura, and once again rendering metals, this piece of my wol has a special place in my heart. just... her<33 She<33 her muted and dark colour pallet, her expression... i love this one<33
GEORGIE!!! original
my baby boy<33 Im finally drawing curls... and the brightly coloured iris & tiny white pupil may have become a thing of mine.
Celia<33 original
the limited colour pallet, the non literal colours, the sketch peeking through, the shading on both clothing and skin, the hair? this is like the payoff to all theses previous drawings. i used a different pencil brush, and goodbye 6b and hellooo procto pencil!!!!
Cecio<3 original
If the previous drawing was the payoff, this is one of the stages of refinement, taking the new stylized skin shading and applying it to a portrait where the face is the focus, and damn!! Cecio<3
original
A compositional outlier, this piece earned its place for me revising what has to be one of the most drawn compositions of mine - the eye. In many ways its the closing loop of a full circle, the brushstrokes exactly how i would shade with my pencil on paper, the lines and movements coming naturally to me, in an entirely different medium.
the main difference is colour, while my pencil drawings were firmly grayscale and i resisted all attempts to get me to use colour, this is practically a sunset, using my knowledge of not just colour but layer filters to create bright and overly saturated variations. full circle, just add colour.
Original
And the final piece! a portrait of Cecio, showing off all i have developed, from the metallics, to the stylized shading, colour pallets, the use of filters for alternate versions, the hair, the face, the new brush!!!
its not my last drawing of 2023, but its a fitting end.
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end note.
if you will permit me to get sappy, 2023 has been hell of a year, but damn if it hasn't been pointing upwards. in 2023 i came to understand i was disabled, and my whole life changed course. My art became not just a hobby or skill of mine, but will be my main source of income once i graduate. my existing friendships have strengthened, and so have my online ones, ive met so many new and awesome people. seeing everyone's tags, comments and reactions to my art has been amazing, and thank you all for that. i have seen so many amazing artists and writers who inspired me to better myself, and also to focus on what makes me unique.
2023 has been a hell of a year, but thanks in no small part to some of the most amazing people i've had the privilege of knowing, it been a damn good one.
its been tough, coming to realize your physically disabled and having to rewrite your life plan was hard. its been overall up, but there have been some spikes down. im aware, that every year i say i cant get happier, and then i do, i break though another barrier, reach another high.
im not saying that this year, because i know next year will be better, and the year after that, as i have the opportunity to steer my own life, it will improve in ways i cant even think of now.
Thank you, all.
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episode 5 has left me considering the different - and similar - ways taeyoung and kwonsook think about themselves, and how they respond to pain/violence.
kwonsook calls herself a monster, someone who goes crazy in the boxing ring. that monster, she says, was created by her father, and her father used abuse, violence, and emotional manipulation to create that monster. he didn’t treat her like human, so it’s no surprise that the way she talks about herself when she boxes is as if she’s discussing an animal: she gets cornered, gets scared for her life, and lashes out to kill. she calls herself a monster with resignation; it’s not what she wanted to be, but she knows it’s what she was. she ran away to escape that monstrosity, to live as a human, doing good things, but that part of her never really died.
taeyoung, too, calls himself a monster. he’s a SOB, he does thing no one with an ounce of humanity would do. he seemingly has no qualms about what he does, perhaps because he can always justify it to himself, always has an exit prepared for when things really get bad (until, i’m sure, he doesn’t). like kwonsook, taeyoung accepts the label of monster, accepts his own inhumanity, even if they are inhuman in very different ways. whereas kwonsook wants to break away from that monstrous part of her - she’s only returned so she can free herself from that part of herself permanently (and if she finds a way to box without a monster, then...) - taeyoung embraces it. it’s through being a monster that he’s found success, how he secures futures for his athletes, and how he’s able to ‘solve’ their (and his) issues. monstrosity was not imposed on taeyoung, but (due to what we know so far) is something he chose for himself (although the factors surrounding this part of his past are decidedly murky).
in this episode, taeyoung and kwonsook also demonstrate similar responses to violence and (emotional) pain. when taeyoung upsets kwonsook by working with her father behind her back, he offers her an outlet for her anger by punching him. later on, after ahreum has already slapped kwonsook, instead of lashing out, kwonsook offers to let ahreum hit her again if it will make her feel better. in parallel responses, both ahreum and kwonsook debate taking that opportunity to hurt, but decide not to (kwonsook because she’s taking a chance on taeyoung, or moreso giving him another one, and ahreum because she decides that she doesn’t owe kwonsook that, that kwonsook is beneath her in terms of boxing, no longer on her level).
kwonsook learned to respond to pain at a young age. in boxing, you can’t flinch from the hit - you have to learn how to take the pain, absorb it, and get back up to hit again. outside of the rink, kwonsook absorbs the pain, but she doesn’t hit again. she’s experienced firsthand what her hits can do to people, and that terrified her. after all, she only boxed so that she could protect her mother. so when confronted with violence and pain, she takes the hit, because pain is what she knows and understands. it’s the emotions behind it that are hard for her. pain is easy for kwonsook, because she’s used to living through it, surviving it; beneath it, she’s always empty. she’s never really cared about boxing; it was what she had to do. the lee kwonsook that was a boxing genius was a monster she ran from, after all. but in order to break away from that monster, she has to come to understand the emotional investment of her fellow female boxers. before, they were just her opponents, never her friends, but now she has to face their own feelings about the sport, the passion they have for boxing that she never felt. like ara said, she didn’t feel happiness about winning, and kwonsook has never lost, so she’s never had to live with that humiliation, either. how her feelings will change in relation to boxing will likely be a reckoning for her.
taeyoung, on the other hand, is confronting his fair share of non-boxing sanctioned boxing. even though kwonsook is the boxer, it’s taeyoung who’s been touched by ‘true’ violence in this present timeline. his life is quite literally on the line, which has been shown again and again. he’s been ambushed by her father, threatened, blackmailed, and beaten up by chairman nam’s guys. he lives on the edge, anxious at every shadow, which is chewing him alive. to him, kwonsook’s anger is much easier to deal with. he knows she might hurt him, but his potential to hurt her is so much more (and if he does, in that case he’d find her anger justified, and probably let her beat him to death or something if what we’ve seen of his feelings for her is an indication of anything), and she might hurt him, but she’d never hurt him as much as other people in his life at the moment would (i.e. by killing him, or hurting the people he cares about). taeyoung is used to weathering the storm of other people’s dislike; he’s the scumbag, and he does bad things, deserves other people’s anger when it’s directed at him.
both taeyoung and kwonsook want to resolve things through violence. i think it’s telling that despite being two emotionally aware people, they both consider other people’s feelings to be so easily taken care of. they want the quick, instant pain, and then they want to get it over with. because the violence is what they’re used to, and to a degree it’s what they both think they deserve. however, what lies beneath that, what doesn’t go away with a single hit, is much harder for them to confront and understand.
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This isn’t Johnny discourse but it is kind of discourse about the discourse about him balding (which he isn’t).
What would it matter if he took off his hat and he was a shining beacon?? The dude canonically fucks (well not canon-canon but I feel like there’s implications of fucks-ing)!! At the most, he would be a Pitbull reference and that would be cool because good for Daisuke. Listen to Timber by Ke$ha (feat. Pitbull).
It kind of felt like they were making jokes at the expense of people loosing hair. It’s like that thing where you shouldn’t make fun of people for ‘X’ because then your friends who ‘X’ will know you think that about them.
John E is cool. I think he’s lame but he’s cool.
-A concerned Jellyfish Pirate
Idk anything about Pitbull, to be honest, but my GOD does he look like he's having the time of his life in the Timber video hahah Been a while since I heard that song...
Anyway, Johnny totally fucks. There's no way a man that toned, running around shirtless all of the time, with that slight yeehaw accent, couldn't find someone DTF with the tiniest bit of effort. He's absolutely gettin it rofl He could still get it if he was bald too, or receding.
I've complained about it on here a bit already, but yeah I don't think people making fun of Johnny because they think he's losing hair realize that a lot of people in real life are going to lose their hair as they age, and their jokes at Johnny are also jokes at these people. It's not even just an issue cis men can have either, everyone's hair thins with age, some just more (and sooner) than others. To make fun of someone, fictional or otherwise, for losing their hair is digging a trench to fill with future self loathing at one's own hair loss. And hair loss in >2023 isn't even that bad anymore!! There are so many ways to manage and style it now.
Johnny's a babe. Big fan of his "dad trying too hard to be cool but is actually somehow still really cool despite that" energy
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