FA+
Shop
Bye 2020, you won't be missed!
5 years ago
Hello everyone, I wanted to wish all of you all an Happy New Year!! I know that for most of you is still early but here in Italy it's past midnight so, yeah I'm already in 2021! Today I decided to write a little something so, I apologise for this never ending journal, I know that there's a lot of writing here but you don't have to read all of it actually, in fact I'm mostly going to talk about what I have planned for this 2021, but this is also going to be some sort of rant. To be honest I don't really like publishing stuff like this but I felt like I had to get this off my chest, but of course, you don't have to read it, if you want you can skip directly to my 2021 resolutions.
RANT So, 2020 huh? I'm pretty sure that it's been a shitty year for all of us as we suddently found ourselves locked down in our homes without being able to see our friends, partners, relatives etc. Basically at some point we weren't even able to set foot outside for a little while. Due to this virus a lot of people lost their loved ones without even being able to say them goodbye, I haven't been through that luckily, as all my family and friends are doing alright, but I feel so sorry for the people that had to go through that kind stuff. I'm apologise if I haven't been as active as I used to be before, but during this year I found myself struggling with stress and demotivation and, at some point, drawing was the least of my concerns. I suddently found myself unable to do all of the things that, in the past, I used to take for granted: I miss hanging out with my friends, hugging my loved ones and being able to walk around town without having to worry about anything... But hey, at least this is not going to last forever, am I right? One day I'll be able to see them again but, as for now, I'll stay home for all our sakes. Due to this virus I wasn't even able to celebrate my 18th birthday with all of my friends, in fact the only people that I saw that day were my parents. Not even my relatives were able to pay me a visit and trust me, it's quite sad to not be able to spend such an important day with the people you love. In the end I had to posticipate my birthday party in summer 2021 when, hopefully this fucking pandemic will be over. The beginning of this school year made things even worse, as my teachers soon began to give us a shit ton of homework to do, leaving me and my classmates with not time to dedicate to our hobbies and, due to that, I barely found time to spend on my drawings. Though, even if this year has been awful there is actually something that made it slightly better. There was a little something that I you guys didn't know: I had a very low self esteem. The thing that made me dislike myself was my body which was way too round in my opinion, even if I wasn't really overweight. I've been trying very hard to lose weight in the past, but nothing happened until this year. I don't even know how, but I managed to go from 82 Kg (180lbs) to 73Kg (160 lbs) which is good for a 180cm tall (5.10) guy. The more weight I lost and the more confident I started to become with myself. After all these years I finally started to embrace my body and, even if I still have a lot of work to do before having that muscular body I always wanted to have, I'm already starting to like my self a little bit more. If I keep pushing like this I'm probably going to lose a little bit more before summer 2021 and that would be amazing! I really hope that in 2021 things will get better for all of us, and that we'll all be able to get our lives back, I'm looking forward to that. In the meanwhile let's just say a little something to our dear 2020... FUCK YOU!
MY 2021 RESOLUTIONS Since I haven't been able to do much last year, I prepared a short list of things that I would like to do this 2021 to get back on track with my art. Here's what I'm planning to do this year: 1) Make a ton of drawings featuring my Ocs In january 2020 I felt extremely confident and ready to fill my entire gallery with a huge amount of drawings of my ocs but, due to the global pandemic and other personal reasons, I ended up being demotivated for the entire year which led to a lack of content on my social medias that made people lose interest in my art. I really hope that this years things will go differently and that I'll be able to draw like never before. During the past few months I even managed to come up with more that 60 ideas for future sketches of my characters, all I have to do now is to roll up my sleeves and turn these simple ideas into actual drawings. 2) Draw more than 20 new pages of “A Royal Sleepover” “A Royal Sleepover” is a comic that I started making back in april 2019, though I haven't really been taking this project very seriously. I mean, I've been working on this comic for almost two years now, but I've been able to finish only 14 pages. Is that a good thing? No, not at all cause, If I keep up this rithm, I'll end up finishing this damn comic in my early 30s lol. This year I would really like to focus more on this project and stop procastinating every time that I have to make a new page. I don't really know if I'll be able to make more than 20 pages though, because I'd like to focus on other drawings as well, plus I'm currently attending my last year of highschool and I'll also have to study for the final exams, but I'll try my best anyway. The main reason why this comic is taking me so long to finish is that each page takes me more than a week to complete, but why's that? You see, making a comic is actually harder than it seems, ya know: first of all you have to make the traditional sketch, then write the dialogues making sure to stay in character, start digitalising it, fix all the anatomy mistakes that you made, add a little bit of shading, the background... It's quite a lot of stuff to do, huh? I don't even know if there is a way to speed things up but, if there is, I'll make my sure to try it, I don't want you to wait ages before being able to read a new page of my comic. 3) Write some backstories for my characters So, I spent the last couple of years making a bunch of new sonas but I didn't do anything other than drawing them. Now I have 75 original characters but only a couple of them have a backstory so... Yeah, I'd better write something about them if I want to avoid having characters with 0 personality. 4) Practice with anatomy, perspective, facial expressions and much more I've been drawing furries for almost four years now and even if my artstyle has drastically improved since I started drawing anthropomorphic animals, I still have a lot to learn, as I keep having issues with drawing certain poses or characters viewed from a specific angle. If you have been following me for a little while you'll probably know that I'm not that type of guy who likes to go unnoticed, so I'd love to turn my artstyle into something cool and rather eye-catching but, in order to do so, I'll may have to spend more time practicing and experimenting with my style. 5) Be more active on Deviantart, Instagram and Twitter A year and a half ago I used to publish my art on Deviantart and Instagram as well but, as time passed by, I stopped publishing my drawings on there. This year I'd like to give these digital platforms another chance plus, since I recently got Twitter, I could also try to publish a little something on there as well. 6) Sell a couple of drawings Now that I'm 18 I'm finally able to take PayPal commissions though, at the moment, I would like to avoid advertising my commissions as I prefer to focus more on personal art and homework but during summer, once school will be over once and for all, I'm planning to make a few bucks by selling some of my art to other users. I don't really know if someone will be actually interested in commissioning me, but there's no harm in trying. 7) Make a couple of NSFW drawings Ok, I wanted to bring this to you for quite a bit of time now, I was just waiting for the right time to tell you this, whether you guys like it or not. I'm afraid of losing some of my followers due to this, but I've been thinking about starting to make more NSFW drawings. Don't get the wrong idea though, I'm going to draw that kind of stuff only once every couple of months, I don't want others to think that I'm that kind of guy that thinks about yiff 24/7, cause I'm not like that! Though, I have already a couple of things in mind that, perhaps, some of you might like. 8) Make drawings inspired by some songs that I listen to This is pretty much self explainatory, I'm also sure that I already wrote this somewhere on FA but I don't remember where. Lately I started to consider the idea of making a few drawings inspired by some of my favorite songs so, while I make these drawings you can make fun of the type of music I listen to XD. 9) Making short comic stripes featuring my characters During the last few years, while browsing on the internet I stumbled across some short comics, consisting only of a single page, featuring some furry characters in some pretty funny situations. Recently I started to think about making something similar as well and show the struggles that some of my characters have to go through their daily routine or other random stuff. I personally like this idea, what do you guys think about it? 10) Redraw some old and cringy drawings If you take a quick look at my gallery and scraps you will be able to find a bunch of drawings, some of them are new, some others are old and quite crappy in terms of quality, but little do you know that on my laptop I have some drawings that are even older. This year my objective is to pick some of these drawings, redraw them and compare the the old version with the new one to see how much have I improved during the years. I have already made a list of drawings to remake, there's only one small problem: they're too many, I don't even know where to start XD!!
Before going to celebrate this new year for a little bit more I wanted to thank you guys for everything that you have done for me during this shitty 2020, thanks for supporting me and taking part in my journey of becoming a professional artist, thanks for all of your faves, comments, shouts, gifts... You don't even know how much this means to me, thanks for everything guys, really ❤ ! I hope you all have an amazing 2021! Love y'all! -RedDiamond