Hello and I greet every one of you to my very first annual reflection here on DeviantArt. Instead of doing my monthly reflection, I take this opportunity to recap the year and sum up my artistic journey.
It is important to me to do this because if I looked back and tried to read the thoughts I had an exact year ago, I wouldn’t be thinking about this or any other platform. Back then, I was still in between my self-called exile. A state to learn and study to improve and improve to become successful and acknowledged and famous and popular, a time in my year that has a dark and muddy aftertaste when thinking back. I’m just glad I could keep this behind me.
It was then, when my self-esteem was the lowest, I found back to a worthwhile philosophy that lays-off the need for money, fellowship and reputation. I learned what is important for my life now; to be useful for society in order to be able to coexist with it. As I started being happy with my works again and laid off the fear I’d get from uploading something, I realized, my artworks would get better and I would have more fun doing them. And thus, I returned to this platform near the half of April to return to this social platform with a fresh set of mind and the will to socialize, which was the best thing I could have done in this moment. Now I feel silly about not trying to be nice and open to everyone I meet here and focus less on the artwork I produce and more about what others have to say, what they create and why they are doing it. Doing so made me realize that I could have gotten the praise I strived for before I had decided to take a break from this platform… I could have deleted my account and start all over again, but I didn’t. I strictly decided not to… so it would remind me what lies behind and what should not be repeated.
And then, what actually changed was the direction in which I developed. I set my original stories aside, turned from a repulsive, odd skeletal creature to an open-minded lively creature in festive ridiculous clothing. A fleshed-out bearded vulture instead of a skeletal, elegant raven. It immediately increased the comfort of myself and I followed on to finding my own style by doing what I like how I like it. It’s not always a good thing to be guided by Idols, I think. You can try as hard as you like but can’t copy somebody else’s style just because it looks awesome; morally and physically. But what you can’t control is how it affects your own. Or how it forms itself.
I know I already did it, but I want to give another shoutout to the two most important artists whose work inspired me to take action and develop my style and the way I approach my work:
MajinBanzai and Wildering
But I felt animated to also give a shoutout to those people in my admirable list of whom I believe have not only been supportive, but also very nice when speaking to: Yacrical, tataiilange, multyashka-sweet, dinoPharao and augustus 13 all are one this list and to you I hope you will continue this niceness while keeping up your awesome work!
But it goes without saying they are only a couple of all the amazing people I have found over the course of the year. I found what seemed a bunch of awesome people I like to call friends: dragon-man13, marek8, ulfeid3, saiyonara10, marcioo9, bluephoenix-epsilon, raphtorr and dregonv8 thank you all so much for your amazing support! I’m so glad I found you and I am happy to call you friends.
But that shouldn’t exclude my already found friends here, of course I love you, that goes without saying 
Now moving to the art sector, it wouldn’t hurt to talk a little about the projects I released this year. To not spam this journal with deviations, I conveniently did an art summary a few days ago that enables me to show my featured artworks without it taking up too much space.
It’s never easy to look back at a year and scale it with a number of impressions. Hard to tell if I strictly improved over the course of this year because looking at my featured artworks, there’s hardly a winner if I would scale them from best to worst. But compared to the year before, I’d say I definitely improved a lot, given that I learned a lot about positioning, perspective, colours and anatomy. But I also found the value of preplanning a scene as well as the use of solid brushwork and even stepped into the right direction considering realistic lit objects and bodies.
Also, I’m finally starting to develop a healthy flow in drawing, meaning I can now very well structure my projects in their respective layout and implement already existing concepts into my own style!
For what’s coming in the future; I definitely want to develop in the character-showcase sector and occasionally do scenic artworks because they certainly where the most fun to do. Since that is a very vague aim, I also like to make some resolutions for the new year, including: study anatomy; particularly chest and belly areas, go in detail with painting hard and soft edges in a believable, natural way and specifically work on my proportions so my characters don’t appear head-focused that much. All paired with a decent showcase, I believe 2019 will offer quite the amount of inspiration for me, given that I take most of it from music, movies and games; this year could feature a lot in the cyberpunk genre, maybe embed the Marvel Cinematic Universe or finally come to doing a Mad Max related scene I kinda wanted to do since Fury Road came out ^v^
I know this doesn’t sound like much, but I never was a guy with extraordinary plans because I know how ‘flexible’ I can be with them
So I am optimistic about the new year and I think there’s no reason not to be. Just like very other year, you go with what comes and there’s no way of evadin’… goodness knows, as soon as I’m done with my A-Levels…
But anyway,
I sincerely wish all of you a great new year… whether you celebrate it or don’t; enjoy the dawn of a new day in a new year!
~ Souvillaine