Improvement Movement 2019

Along with my yearly recap of art in general, I revisited an old project this year called the Improvement Movement!

It was hard to keep up with it in addition to doing daily projects and things, so some of my last ones were done late, but it was a fun way to keep on working on projects that helped with world-building throughout the year.

Here's a recap of what I did each month:

This was a project I did with a few of my friends, and was meant as a way to keep us all drawing, and kind of simulate the feeling of drawing together. We did the same projects and would post them in a channel on Discord.

It was a fun project, but with everyone having busy lives and other projects, it was hard to keep up as a group. I ended up barely finishing all of the prompts, since it did take up a lot of time, but overall I think it was a fun project.

I don't see us doing it again this coming year, but maybe we'll revisit it another year in the future with some new prompts!

Check out our website here to see everyone else's!

2019 Recap

So it's that time of year where the year is ending, so I'm gonna reflect a bit on how this year went. Let's start with how it went in my art:

I started out by experimenting with inks and watercolors to try out some different traditional mediums. It was fun and I enjoyed the ink tests. I ended up doing a few illustrations of scenes from The Nays, but not a whole lot. I did my 47 Days of Positivity project again. I did Inktober, Huevember, and Digicember as usual. And then some sketches here and there.

Overall, things went pretty well, but something felt kind of static.

I feel like I wasn't really getting into my drawings a whole lot this year. I was just kind of drawing for the sake of drawing and posting, rather than for fun like I used to. I was looking at how many Eventures I wrote and it wasn't a lot for this year. I redid a bunch towards the beginning of the year, but once summer hit, it kinda went downhill.

At my job, summer is a crazy time and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and busy. I think that's why I would play video games or do something less involved when I was done with work or on weekends. I also visited a lot of friends in the fall and winter, which meant going out and having fun. While I love doing those things, I was noticing that I kind of neglected working on my story and drawing for fun during those times. And that left me feeling kind of unfulfilled in a way, even though I was having a lot of fun doing other things.

So overall this was a really weird year for art. I drew a lot and accomplished a lot of things, but it didn't really pay off and put me in a weird place, artistically. I have some plans that I'll talk about in my next 2020 post, but that's all for now!

And as a bonus, here's my 2010 recap to show the difference between the beginning and end of the decade.

Sketchbook Planners

These are just a bunch of sketchbook doodles I've done in the past few months.

Some quick inking tests when I was doing inktober.

I was helping my brother figure out the proportions for his Indivisible fanart, so I did this sketch.

A quick draft of my first inktober, but I didn't like how it was turning out, so I redid it.

Fun Times at Work

I've been able to do a bunch of little sketches at work during some of our workshops and other various activities!

We had to design a mech off of an object, so I chose bubble tea! This is a flying airship basically that runs off of bubble tea. I took some reference from the machines that make bubble tea.

We did some learning at work when I first started and I got to learn about how to make a DnD character and some other things! So much fun.

Nay Sketches

Some quick sketches of The Nays.

Here's a quick sketch of Pubby.

A quick morning doodle of Ralphie.

Re-Designing The Nays

I've been doing some character re-designs.

I decided to re-design Eather today since I didn't really like how her old design looked. I'm going with something like the top left one.

Thinking about demon skin tones and trying to figure out one that works best. I'm still kind of leaning towards the original one, honestly (the far right). The orangish one and gray ones are also top contenders though.

Val Character Re-Design

So Val is a character I made up a long time ago, but never actually did anything with or really had a design for her. She was just a character in Clove's past and didn't have a whole lot of personality or backstory. So I went ahead and created an Eventure about her and developed her much more!

For her design, I created a character in DB Xenoverse 2 and based it from there.

Here's the original concept based on her design in DB Xenoverse 2.

A typical day with Clove, Jibu, and Val during their childhood. This is a scene from the Clove Retrieval Eventure.

Nay Doodles

Some recent doodles of The Nays that I've been doing.

Another quick doodle of Gair.

Sometimes life just isn't fair.

New Clothes for The Nays

I was thinking about what clothes demons would wear other than their uniforms.

I made some new clothing designs for Akuma!

These clothes are pretty similar to Snull's old clothes, but she also doesn't seem like she'd want to change it up very often. I'm thinking this could be how she looks after the Death Finale Eventure.

Happy Birthday, Jinny!

Today is my friend Jinny's birthday!

Whenever Jinny asks me what she should draw, I always say Camille. So I drew Camille for her birthday today!

And then this is a mini-bonus of her character, Tails!

Clothes Variation Sketches

Some quick sketches I did during lunch breaks or before work.

I was thinking of some new clothes ideas for Jibu and came up with this one.

It's been very cold in the Midwest. This is how I've been dressing indoors.

Eventure Drawings

Some recent drawings related to Eventures.

I finished up the Clove Retrieval Eventure!

Some sketches related to the Eventure I wrote a few weeks ago!

Gaming Nays

The Nays have been playing some games recently.

The Nays started playing KH3 when it came out. The photo mode is definitely my favorite part. I probably should've drawn Zandra since she spent like an hour taking photos around the city, but Gair's the one that likes KH the most.

So I'm replaying TWEWY and Neku acts kinda like Scott at the beginning of the game.

Improvement Movement: Draw This Again

As part of the Improvement Movement project, I redrew an old drawing from 2010!

Here's the 2019 version.

And this was the 2010 version.

And this is a gif to showcase the process!

Inking with a Manga Pen

My brother bought a Manga Pen for me when he went to Japan and I finally got a chance to test it out.

Here's the final illustration. Inked on paper and then scanned and colored digitally in Photoshop.

It started out as a pencil sketch on paper.

Then I used the manga pen to ink it.

And then the final digital coloring and effects in Photoshop.

Quickling Doodles

Some quicker drawings I did without really worrying about color.

I did some sketches of scenes from some of the Eventures I've been working on recently. I've been trying to figure out how to redo and fix some of the backstories of the demons in The Nays. And I thought up some new ideas while drawing this, even! The guy with the hat and Dark Vaiyo markings is gonna be the one Snull failed to protect, but I don't have a name for him yet.

Rabiah was in our Global Game Jam project last year, so I did a quick doodle of her as warm-up before it started.

DBZ Drawings

Here are some DBZ-related drawings I've done in the past few months after the Broly movie came out. I always get in these DBZ moods for awhile.

I've been playing a lot of DB Xenoverse 2 recently and finally finished all of the Parallel Quests. Here are all of my characters I've recreated in the game, based on my characters from The Nays. All that's left is to make a Majin, but I haven't decided who I want that to be yet.

I watched the new Broly movie and my favorite part was everything to do with the Saiyans' past.

Watercolor Painting

So the other week, I decided to get the watercolors out and try to do a full watercolor painting. It was really hard for me, but it ended up turning out better than I initially thought it would.

This is the final painting of Cheelai from the Freeza Force!

It started out as a pencil sketch

I got a photo of it about halfway through inking, but I did that after laying the colors down.

And then finally I inked it and added some colored pencil to bring the colors out more.

On the Spot Nay Sketches

These are sketches I did on the spot when I couldn't think about what to draw.

I realized I only had like 3 drawings of Rammako, so here's a drawing of him.

Just a thought for a future eventure with Yaguzi.

Nay Sketching

Some more sketches of The Nays!

I've been playing a lot of Battle Chef Brigade recently, and Muyo's probably the Nay that enjoys cooking the most other than Bryan.

When Kali first joins The Nays, she wears a hat to cover up her demon horns. I was trying to figure out what that hat might look like.