2019 IN REVIEW

With the year (and decade) coming to an end, I thought it was time to dust off the ol' blog and look back on everything that's gone on in 2019! These past two years especially have been a huge whirlwind, with me taking on some incredibly rewarding projects but learning on the fly how different freelance illustration is once you're out of school and balancing other jobs to make ends meet.

Since graduating in 2017 I've gone back to school, left school to work full-time, applied to go back to school again, had an existential crisis, got published, bought a car, got an agent, started getting freelance gigs, switched jobs to make more room for freelance work, went to New York to try to get A Real Job, went back to an old job because it paid more money, had a Tolkien-level Health Journey, got my own apartment, had another existential crisis, went to a wedding, and now at the tail-end of 2019 I'm going into 2020 with freelance as my full-time job? Hooboy that was...a lot.

There are plenty of reasons I'm finally making the leap, the biggest being my mental and physical health. I was officially diagnosed with Bipolar Depression and PTSD related Anxiety Disorder, so it's been harder to cope with all of the stress and demands that come with retail work (especially now around the holidays). With having to spend so much time going to appointments and adjusting to different combinations of medication and therapy, my primary retail job was just draining me to the point that I could barely even take care of myself outside of it, let alone catch up on the freelance projects that have slowly been piling up in the background. 

Although it's terrifying making The Big Leap after such a chaotic year, I'm excited to finally focus on creating art again! And with that being said, we've come to the real reason I'm writing this post: What The H*ll Am I Going To Be Doing In 2020???

Well besides Chupie, there are a few unannounced illustration projects that I hope I can talk about more in the new year! They've been super fun to work on and I'm practically climbing up the walls to share everything we've done for them so far~

But while I can't reveal specific details, I can share my processes and other non-NDA work I do in between. So along with rebooting this blog to update on news, tutorials, resources, and general art-life stuff, I'll be using a one-tier Patreon to post exclusive work done in streams and early access to occasional commissions and adoptables! After a while, once I've built up my buffer of sellable work again, I'll post things to Gumroad and eventually a print-shop to help support myself a bit more financially.

My goal by the end of 2020 is to be working entirely in freelance, or at least ditch retail work forever and do something art-adjacent. But if these past two years have taught me anything, it's that anything can happen! Life is chaos! So I'm just going to do my darndest and hope for the best.

For now, I'll be taking the rest of the month to relax, recover, and spend time with my loved ones (and slowly...but surely...catch up on the backlog of work that I've had to put off the past few months...). 

See y'all in 2020~