Let's sit down for some end of the year talk. (Patreon)

Hey everyone, i hope you are all doing well? Just prepped the second content pack for the 25th and now wanted to sit down for some proper sort of closing thoughts on the year and all that stuff.

Thank you all first of all.
I really can't stress enough just how much of a help this patreon is in just taking some pressure off when it comes to the monetary side of making a living as an artist. We've grown steadily over the years to now hoving around 100 patrons with a a little over 500$ a month typically.
Now, not exactly going to be living large on 500 bucks a months (especially after fees, currency conversion and taxes taking their part of the pie), but next to commissions it is the second largest income source for me, and just offers some breathing room there.
So you all continue to be absolutely amazing, and especially now with the discord being as active as it has gotten it's really a treat to hang out with those of you who decide to say hello there.

Then how has this year been all in all?
Eh, i think for most of us this has been a pretty draining year and that is not that different for me. Uncertainty from a war right around the corner, and the impact it has in economic terms (can't wait to get my electricity and gas bill in the new year), of course the effects of covid are also still around, now in the artist space we had stuff like NFTs last year, AI this year, the general annoying state of social media and the devaluation of everything into "content" for the purpose of monetizing the entirety of human creative output into ad revenue for billion $ companies.. It's... it would really be nice if just drawing shit without these things looming around every corner would be an option.
Not even asking for much, idgaf about 15 bedroom houses, cars and all that shit. Just kinda want to chill and do the painting part without the worrying part.

Soooo...yeah. I mean all in all it was a pretty good year. Made paintings i've been really proud of. Still haven't figured out how to make good watercolours, but ya know, all in all it was okay.

It was still planned for me to work until the end of the year before taking a break but i did end up hitting a bit of a burnout these days and so i'll be starting my break from today and not touch anything art related until the new year. I usually have small 3 day breaks every quarter, and of course every now and then i'm away for a convention, but outside of that i haven't really had even a week off in...probably since i moved back to germany 5 years ago or so, where i was forced to while waiting for my stuff to arrive.
So i think it just all caught up to me a bit and a bit of rest hopefully helps along. Will of course still be around in discord and whatnot. Purely just a case of me not touching art for the rest of the year.

Oh, as i haven't gotten to the vote sketch for this month yet, that'll most likely be pushed into next year. Just one of the victims of that burnout.

What about next year then?
That's when i originally wanted to take the break but look what happened. But what i had planned and what will remain in the plans is to make January a bit of an experimental month. That's something i didn't do this year either. Usually i ended up  using one month to study and experiment and just draw what i want, which i skipped doing this month (weird, i wonder where the burnout came from this year?).
So january will be that, and i plan to make it a bit of a wider experimentation than they usually were, where they only really were study months, or experimenting with some art techniques or something.
No this time i want to branch out a little. Don't take these as promises or anything, part of the experimentation month is to not have any expectations for it after all, otherwise it'll just become work that needs to be done. But on the discord i mentioned that i want to experiment with making a visual novel, and i also kind of want to try other traditional media.

As i mentioned above still can't really make watercolour work and i've dropped off from it pretty hard. I really like it in theory and some of my favourite paintings of all time are watercolour paintings. But it's just such a goddamn weird medium...
Weird in a frustrating way.
So i'm tentatively thinking about giving oil painting a try.
It feels like it might be too much of a hassle in different ways (can't exactly just chuck the water down the drain after you're done, and i'm not sure how enough ventilation is to be achieved in flipping january when it's cold). But we'll see.
I also assume i'll be pretty bad at it. So much of my drawing process nowadays is extremely digital that i assume if i end up trying it i'll be more like a fish out of water than i expected to be given how much of my process is trying to emulate some parts of oil painting.
But who knows.

And then as for the visual novel. Idk, it's just a think i thought about. I do quite like a couple of them and so i would like to at least give a little introductory passage a try. See if i enjoy it beyond just the fancy of it.
I'd really like to have an alternative to just painting all year long. So having ab it of a retreat into writing would be nice.


And i think that's it.
Can't really plan the year beyond that. I mean it'll mostly be continuing what i'm doing. Painting a bunch of stuff. I feel like i've narrowed my view of what i want to paint down a little further with some of the paintings i really enjoyed, and those that i didn't enjoy this year. So hopefully that'll help me refine what i do even further so that we'll get even more fun and cool art pieces in the future.

So fingers crossed for a good 2023. For you all as well of course. You all deserve it.
I hope you have a wonderful time no matter if you celebrate christmas or not and of course also a wonderful new year aswell.
Make sure to tell your friends and those dear to you that you are glad to have them!