My Art Journey So Far

The Beginning

I started to draw when I was able to hold a pencil. I never really played with the other kids because it was difficult to relate to their games.

I kept drawing until I went to a new school at the age of 10. It was the type of school where you start to focus on your future from day 1, starting to prepare for higher education. This was the first time I came across video games, through a couple of classmates. I loved video game concept art and illustration. That was the first time I thought about doing something like that... but the teachers told me that I'll never be able to earn money with art. Since my long-term dream always has been to earn enough to support my mother one day, this was a strong enough argument for me to stop doing art seriously. I kept drawing my anime favourites, from time to time, as a creative outlet, but I stopped learning actively for a good 8-9 years.

Education

After the finals, my first shot at higher education was Japanese Language and Culture. 6 months into the course, however, I realised that while I'm really passionate about Japan, the types of jobs available would not satisfy my creativity. So I quit and started to work whatever was available, while trying to figure out what to do with myself. Art still wasn't an option, because of the negative view I learned in secondary school, plus by that time it felt like I was way WAY behind, since I skipped all those years when I could have gotten some sort of training.

Then, one day when I was drawing for 13+ hrs straight with only some water intake, just for fun, I realised that art is the thing that I can do tirelessly, forever. I still had no idea how and what though.

I took the turn when I started to play video games (yes, way after 18 - computers were a luxury in my family). I learned about all the art jobs associated with the field. I was (still am) entranced by the quality of the art these artists put out. So I went back to where I was at the age of 10, wanting to do games art. Since my mother is a first-generation degree holder, college degrees are kept in high regard in my family and I knew I had to get one, since I can remember, so there was no question about it. The issue was that we didn't have related education in my country, so I had to go abroad. I was still very behind though, so I decided to do a technical course first, hoping to catch up.

Oh boy was I wrong! I had insanely bad luck with the first art schools I went to. I started with animation, and the school turned out a money laundering business - they closed a year before getting my certification. I tried to go to another school to finish the course, but it turned out that none of my exams were acceptable at official/legit courses. At that time I was already getting nervous: i was trying to get educated, hoping that schools will also give me a job but this illusion started to break and my old teachers' warnings seemed to prove right. Meanwhile I was doing odd jobbs here and there, everything except art. Hoping to learn something actually useful and at least a little bit art related, I started a graphic design technical course. I finished it - then the entire exam system was shut down due to COVID, so I never got that certification either. I could have taken the exam 6 months later but by that time I was already abroad, at my dream university.

Art School

In retrospective, it was not worth it, from an art and education point of view. The only thing I learned from my tutors was the concept art process. I am self-taught besides that (or, to be more accurate, went to the YouTube art school, haha). Besides this, while I was starting to gravitate anime-style art, they heavily disapproved of this direction. The speed of my fanart development was slowed down by trying to please the western fantasy / sci-fi expectations. I didn't have much confidence in them either, so I never really shared anything and what got shared has been deleted since. 

This was also the time when I started to do commissions, which boosted my confidence and allowed me to live flexibly. However, this meant doing art 12 hrs / day, 7 days / week.

By the time I graduated (and finally got my degree!), the isolation due to the pandemic and constant work (doing art for a living, plus school assignments) and back-to-back burnout phases wrecked my mental health so I knew that even if I really wanted to, I wouldn't be able to fill a position related to game design. I decided to stay a freelancer until getting better.

However, I am really enjoying being a freelancer, and in the meantime, I got to do more fanart as well. Nothing comes close to the personal connections and inspiration I enjoy through commission work and fanart, so I had to admit that I'm not even interested in working for a company anymore. I thrive in freedom, not competition, and I found that I can make much more people happy with fanart. My personal goals also align with freelancing much better, let it be commission work, or, possibly, doing fanart.

Earlier this year I started to share my art on social media (oh boy this is an entire essay by itself...), and change my usernames to differentiate between my fantasy/commission work and anime fanart.

Your Support

Your support makes it possible for me to assign more of my resources to doing fanart. Not only that, but it also helps me build a healthier lifestyle. I hope that in the future I can spend enough time with recreation and self-education, increasing the quality of my artworks, and with a bit of luck, the quantity of my fanart as well.

Thank you!