2012, the year of awesome

Summer is arriving in Wellington and I find myself reflecting on the year I’ve just survived. No, not survived, conquered. For the last several years the goal has been surviving, but this year was a bit different from the very start. When I look back I almost don’t believe in that girl I was last year, she seems so small and fictional in a lot of ways.

My goals for 2011 were pretty simple. I wanted to be employed and healthy. I honestly thought they were borderline impossible things to want, but I’ve been able to prove myself wrong. I get to ring out this year with a full time job, and the ability to stand on my own two legs for all 8 hours of the working day. This is a bigger achievement than I have words for, and probably needs its own post at some point.

Now that that’s done, it’s time to get back into the art. 2011′s been a bit fail in regards to actually completing illustration work. I finished very few pages of my comic The Otherwalls, even though I’d planned it to be its biggest year ever. I did finish a few things and sold a few things, but it never felt like enough. I’m not sure I can quite capture with words how it feels to not be able to draw. It’s like a vacuum, an anti-thing. It sits on me and fills my heart with emptiness that no amount of socialising, money, friends, or good times can fill. Until I’m making art again, something will always be missing. Always.

Even though I haven’t been drawing as much as I’d like, I have been thinking about it constantly. I’ve had time to reflect on who I want to be as an artist, rather than just creating a constant stream of noise, like I have up until this point. Now I feel like I need to edit my work a bit more, making sure it’s going to contribute to a bigger story.

I guess this is all part of maturing as an artist. It feels pretty good, especially now that ideas are finally beginning to solidify and projects are starting to take shape in my head. They’re all stories with very clear direction, and while I should probably try and do one at a time, they all link together in some way, so they need to be executed simultaneously.

I’ve started a brain-book to help me plan out the projects I have in mind. At the moment there are about five major projects all with overlapping links that tie them together in some big and little ways.

They’re largely collaborative projects, which has me very excited. They’re also all on awesome things. Comics, stories, history, fiction, non-fiction, New Zealand, Japan, print, web, poetry, magic. It’s all going to overlap and be amazing and I’m going to make sure it all happens. I’m dusting off this blog and I’ll be sharing the progress of things as I go. It’s all going to be very awesome and exciting and I just can’t wait.

2011, you were great, but 2012, you’re going to be awesome.