the wheel turns again (it's march 🌿🪻💐)

It's nearly spring! 

And with that comes me continuing to think about my recent goals, how they're getting on and how I can make them work. 

Art improvement was the main one. Despite doing art reasonably often these days, I've felt a bit shaky in my art ability, especially in my job, which feels competitive all the time, at least in my head (saying more about myself here, although in general the wider games industry is competitive especially in art and design disciplines).

To be honest that's more of a mindset thing but making my art practice more consistent isn't going to hurt!

O is asleep so I just did some planning, mapping out my free time and then seeing where would be good to have art focus time. There's a little gap after work 3x a week and another block of time on a Monday morning I can use. This focus time only equates to about 2.5 hr a week but that's because I have left a lot of 'flexible' time in since life admin, chores, illness etc. often appear and get in the way.

I don't want to be too strict and then just fail. 

Next step is probably to plan out a project to work on as I think that will help me have some art focus. I was planning to make some prototypes in a game engine with art involved too so that might be the plan. Plus some sketching to warm up each time would be good.

should/could be painting right now

[A bunch of disparate thoughts/paragraphs, not particularly cohesive here]

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O is at nursery for a few hours and I'm off work, so I could be getting better acquainted with my watercolour paints that I bought myself in January. Yet instead I'm doing a little bit of knitting, organising my room a bit better and thinking about walking to the shop to buy something different for O to eat for lunch...

To be fair, I have managed to get a bit more sketching done in the evenings, although it's digital art. Nothing wrong with that of course, and it's much more convenient when the lighting's rubbish indoors at night. But I need to make more of a concerted effort to get on with watercolour and traditional artwork. Just because I like it, too, not because it's better in any way!

A recent sketch, playing with the symmetry tool in Procreate (software for ipad)

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I've done a bit of cleaning up in this room. Recently my parents have been organising their own belongings, and whenever they visit they bring a bunch of my old stuff with them which I had left with them over the years, between houses and towns and so on. A lot of sketchbooks, art supplies, some wool fleece, metal etching plates which have been drawn on... So bit by bit when I have the time I process this stuff and see what to keep, give away, recycle, or (last resort) bin. I don't think I've thrown much if anything in the bin yet. Lucky for me, sheep fleece is compostable and arty paper and such is recyclable.

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I couldn't sleep last night and spent some time thinking about wanting to write a mundane fantasy story about how a nation deals with immigration in a way that is kind to people. We'll see if anything materialises.

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At work we're working on setting goals for the year and mine is to do a bit more work in-engine.

[Game engine - for non game development people - the software used to make games!]

This might mean some coding which is both exciting and intimidating! I want to make a very simple prototype of a doll making game (I used to play on these websites in the early 2000s and also did my own pixel art dolls too) and also I'd love to make some sort of recipe storing thing that I could use for making meal plans or picking recipes. I know all these exist already but I want to make my version 😆

I have been making small inroads towards the doll maker project, trying to explore what kind of style 'base body' I want to use (the body onto which we would put clothes, hair, etc). And again I come across the feeling that art directing yourself is a skill in itself that needs practice! By this I mean choosing a style that feels right (in terms of mood) and is appropriate for the type of thing I'm making, and within scope (what level of quality/complexity should I aim for). The experiments continue, and perhaps I'll share the sketches I've done so far in a separate post!