New year, new journal entry

I've had a kind of sombre beginning to the new year with a funeral (in-laws' neighbor), and I have some big new year's resolutions that are intimidating and life-changing, so we're less than 24 hours in and I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed already. These are things that need to happen, though, in order for me to live life as I need to live it.

On the artistic front, and less scary, I've been working hard to mimic the painting style of Alex Ross, and I'm hoping to really master that this year. I've made a good start already, and watercolors are a medium I'm intimately familiar with already so I wasn't starting from square one. The main problem I'm seeing is that I'm actually overworking the details, where when I look close at his work it's freer and less detailed and yet comes off looking more realistic than what I'm coming out with. Anyways, thus far I've just been doing head shots and white page/no backgrounds, but you can probably expect my art in the near future to be putting a variety of characters through this style, and hopefully eventually some full pictures with actual backgrounds. I did better on consistently making time for art the whole past year, and I intend to keep on at that.

Here's hoping the new year finds all my Watchers happy and healthy and feeling good about their art!