After so much time, there really is just one way of opening this journal…
I LIED!
This is actually the 107th reflection. I’m counting the annual ones as well!!!
No but really, I’ve seen this number creep up since #80 which was almost 2 years ago. I was never sure how a celebration of the century reflection would look like or even if I made it this far. All i know is that I don’t want it to be just a summary of what had happened each year, it’s what I’ve been doing so far anyway and to quickly give you a grasp of what we’re talking about here: I have written over 100 journals stretching over the past 9 years and so much has happened in this time. It took me the last two full days just to read them. So what else should this be? An overview of the most important points in this time? What themes affected me? My overall development?
I think to be fair to myself and not repeat myself, I should approach this journal as I did every other: I’ll just begin somewhere and figure it out as I go. Sound good?
The Green Odyssey – featured as first work I talked about in #1
This whole ordeal began July 1st 2017, I was in the 11th grade back then, 18 years old and still very much a beginner in drawing. I have a small history on Deviantart and found some friends that I have shared many interactions with. But mentally, I was a much different person as you will note.
Prior to my monthly reflections, I did 2 quick annual recaps much like my now annual reflections which probably were an incentive to begin a more frequent (monthly) recap. It was a decision to make them publicly readable, which differentiated them from diary entries and from how I know myself, this meant that I wouldn’t be as open as I would have desired to know about me but also probably helped a lot with making these journals last as long as they did. If not for the pressure of social media, I probably wouldn’t have made the attempts to write one of these every month and the pressure was there, as you’ll soon come to find out.
Anyway, my first reflection was very brief to introduce the concept and probably test out how I felt with it. The next were more fleshed out and talked about each project I’ve been working on. I notice that I was always giving an update on my personal status and gave insights to what media I consumed with art still being the main focus as repeatedly mentioned.
However, I cannot get around to state how alienated I felt reading my own journals. I was vulgar, pessimistic and cynical. It would be interesting to know what a psychiatric evaluation of my self back then would look like. My guess is that I was spoiled with the need for attention online.
It wouldn’t take long where this would show itself as by #4 of my reflections, I announced I’d take a step back from social media (SM). It is a bit funny but how I started with my reflections before the (spoiler) major change in my personality and interaction with SM which fortunately means I can talk about it now.
Deviantart had a very negative effect on my early development as a hobbyist. Constantly comparing yourself to other bigger artists planted this expectation of an equal success and fellowship that would come from your work. But as per usual, this behaviour came unchecked and sprawling. Keeping distance from the platform grew as an urgent need. I was fed up with having to produce art and put out what was expected to gather the most interest and the saddest part of it was how it was internal pressure, like you believed you were the problem.
While I’d like to demonize Deviantart for being this platform that prioritizes viewership and favs, I cannot deny how important it was for meeting basically every close online friend I still am in frequent contact with. And reading though my old journals definitely helped me realize this. There were so many interactions going on, which all have sadly gone to be forgotten, but are still somewhat archived, which is still the reason why I haven’t completely deleted it but I digress.
So at my announced break from the platform, I was of the belief that an amount of work should be met with an equal amount of recognition without seeing the many many beautiful complications. I don’t remember it being so definite and harsh as I made it sound in #4 but the cynicism which had poisoned me back then really shines through in these journals. I refrained from uploading any artworks but still came back at first to write my reflections.
I never openly stated what had happened then but I definitely feel the need to spill the beans now because it led to the rebranding of my persona.
In the later half of 2017, I increasingly felt whatever I was doing wouldn’t get me anywhere art wise. I was suffering from what I could only describe as a misguided perception of the world and a toxic ego which almost must have ruined my online social life. Now with reading these journals, I remember the state of mind I had back then: that I was too eager to be a professional artist that I believed I could achieve all this by completely reforming my online presence. My current persona ‘Souvillaine’ was brainstormed during this time but I had also thought about changing my drawing software, deleting and recreating my accounts and – what’s worst of it all – even leaving my friends as a sacrifice to start anew.
This never came to be, thankfully. I don’t know what exactly had changed – or if I just sobered up – but after 3 months of quiet, I wrote #7 and I tell you, after reading the previous 6 entries, this felt like sunlight coming through dark clouds after rain.
I want to share this part of the journal in quotation because I believe this is a very important bit of self-reflection that should act as a reminder to never forget your history and appreciate what you have and how you came to be:
<< I am back, open-heartedly, with a lot of post-experience from the months of my time-out in my back pocket. I only thought about working, working, working hard and practising a lot so that I could return with a dozen of fine polished artworks, starting all over again with a new account… Now it seems ridiculously arrogant to me.
I realized I stumbled into this ideal of a professional illustrator, who never made any mistakes, who always did such great things and succeeds with everything he puts out… What a lying and betraying douchebag! really, that sounds like a walking wall of advertisement!
I left this gorgeous platform with such wonderful people on it without knowing what I had… a journey! I had a semi-detailed journey on this profile that showed me how I developed, and how really I improved in just a couple of years since I started with this hobby that I’m so incredibly passionate about! I had all my little stories, all the artworks and collabs and fan-arts that I was so proud of when I first released them and then had to realize they never really got the reputation I thought I deserved. I got the reputation though, I got the pay-off all along, I thought it was supposed to be views, favourites, comments, critiques or watchers, no, it simply was fun and pride. >>
It’s important to keep in mind that no statistics or numbers are ever important – a platform will die, you won’t remember the numbers – but it’s the journey that’s important, the reason why you are where you are now. And I think now I can say, I’m proud of not being a professional, I’m proud of being a hobbyist and pushing through with it for so many years that helped me reflect and understand myself, that connected me with wonderful people and let me grow out of my shell to socialize more and become a better person.
Oh no, did I just make a defining final emotional statement? But this hasn’t even been a 10th of my story – how do I top that?
I guess, I could go on to explain my artistic journey – how long it took me to stop using square aspect formats and too soft rendering – but I don’t believe anyone would be interested, I mean I don’t really care about it myself. After all, there’s all the info in my previous reflections on my website to read. But I don’t wanna end things here either, hmmm.
Okay, let’s make a deal, I’ll only talk about things that have a distinct effect on me now.
I believe it’s as good a time as any to think about what actually makes me want to create art.
Basically every reflection that I ever did was project – oriented. I would talk of my recently finished projects or talk about what my next ones would be and I think that’s okay – they’re all about art anyway. But I can’t help but wonder if this is caused by my workaholic tendencies to always need something to do… or if they caused this workaholism. It’s soothing to know your days have structure, that there’s something that can be worked on but it’s also destructive if something is preventing you from doing just that. It’s Art Block, it’s what I’d describe as the lack of motivation or creativity to go on with the hobby that gives you joy. And I fell victim to it many times before, albeit not as severe as to knock me out for more than a couple of weeks. I believe there has only once been a month in which I was unable to finish a project to talk about in my reflections and that was due to my school exams in 2019.
I’ve already talked about how the need to feed the SM machine fatigued me but I rarely talked about my main problem (or fear if you will) about creating projects. I have had toxic views regarding my esteemed position in the art community before, which I since distanced myself from, but I will openly say that I was very very eager to create art – and not to please people but to put out my characters and their stories or have them interact with my friends’ OCs. I still share this motivation but it has been increasingly difficult and that is due to a lack of creativity on my part. It honestly has become very hard for me to create something – anything – out of the pure joy of creating. If you didn’t know, in my teenage years I was writing a novel’s worth of a story all in my own fantasy world with a skill for poetic descriptions which I would admire myself now. But with the beginning of high school and learning the intricacies of writing a three-act-structure, characters and dialogue all under an overarching theme, it got too complicated to even try. You have to plan and plan and plan ahead before you get to write. Then, when it comes to writing it’s just no fun anymore. And I wonder if something like this is causing me to lose my creative spirit in drawing. Although I have no clue as to what it could be. Since starting my studies, I’ve gotten to the point artistically where I believe I make good enough art to not need to think of the intricacies. That I could just start drawing and not need to worry about anatomy or color theory and just pick what feels natural. I dunno, it’s weird. Perhaps there is a social aspect to it; a demand to always create something interesting?
Nowadays, what pushes me to create art is either something with purpose: if it is a product that can be designed to be appealing and have value to it or drawing someone’s character for a birthday gift. Personal art…? I reserve that for practice sketches. Even working on my annual fruit hat piece this year was hard as I couldn’t find any ideas until actively brainstorming. Then came a moment that helped me reconsider. I am at this moment at a point where I’m not having any active projects; no commissions, no gifts, I’m waiting for some feedback from uni to kick off my bachelor project… And for a long while I was actually bored. And from this boredom came something:
In 2020 – I believe, I had stated I wanted to make a character of the xenomorph species. I had sketched and studied them in my exercises then, and in the year after and the year after – but it never came to be. And now I’m doing it! Without any incentive, just going with a vibe, not second guessing it. Maybe there was just too much going on before? What I don’t hope is that I need to be actively bored to be creative or motivated to refer to an old concept to have something to do. If anyone can give personal advice on building creativity, I would be hella grateful – if it wasn’t clear already that I have no idea and am just rambling at this point.
But having a focus on designing more product-oriented artworks or downright selling originals as a product had me forgetting how to be creative for my own sake and not to survive. It’s something that I came to conclude after last Eurofurence actually, that working creatively would probably not be what my future job would look like, as I pretty much gave up on being an animator and freelance artist due to stress and ‘environmental’ reasons, maybe it’s a sign that I have more time to actually work with myself as the client once again.
Which takes me to the question: how do I imagine the time over the next 100 monthly reflections?
Well, if it comes to writing 100 more – it’s still hard to answer… The last 9 years were literally the most defining of my life.
I graduated, built a portfolio, started to study, learned all kinds of media production, got addicted to furry cons, managed to work for a festival, design my own merch and start a brand to sell it, finished an animation film project, organize myself, be in a relationship again and I’m currently realizing my own fursuit.
I can hardly imagine what my life after my studies will look like. After all, it has been a time of new, incredible things and experiences and I will no doubt look back to it and feel nostalgic.
But I would love it if in my 30s, I would be able to continue making new experiences like these.
I won’t lie, I have moved places 8 times since starting my reflections and I could never settle down in a place for more than a couple years – which is stressful. I want a fixed and secure place for at least 5 years and – well – I need a job to go along with that. My recent termination of my intended job positions has put me in a difficult situation where I’m – once again – not sure how to go on, which will force me to be flexible going forward and that undoubtedly means more of the same for the moment. In any case, I still have one more straw I want to reach out and that’s to produce my very own shirts starting with the pattern of the fabric, sewing them myself and selling them at cons. As a side project and to keep connected with the artistry at conventions.
Apart from this, my only goal is to see more of the world, visit conventions outside of Europe (looking at Vancouver and Bali for instance) and the friends that entails.
-> I can’t help but be simple in my aspirations ^v^
What else could there be to talk about? Honestly, I see nothing more.
It has been a wonderful time, coming to this point. I was lucky enough to meet such sweet and heartwarming and welcoming people, go to so many places, have so much fun, how could I include it all in a single journal? But this is no particular point in time, it’s simply a mark that happens to be when I released my 100th… something reflection and for whatever reason, I will find my way back to it eventually. Maybe next year or in a decade when I write a follow-up to this.
I will for sure focus on my immediate goals for now and let this one rest. It has eaten up more time than I thought and apropos eating, I yet have to buy some groceries for dinner haha.
Alright, I want to thank you all for reading, for being there with me on my journey or joined recently.
May your future be bright and full of joy.
~ Souvillaine