Sometimes change is forced.

An art journey.

In the autumn of last year, I found myself in a place I hadn’t been to in a long time. Without work.

I am lucky enough in my freelance work that it is rare that I don’t have a handful of clients on my schedule. This has been the norm for about 10 years now since I made the decision to change my views on working and my career (but that’s a different story). But here I was with no work on my plate and no real work coming in.

This was for two main reasons, the first was that it is the time of year when projects slow down (typically in November) but I can still usually keep busy. The second cause was AI art generators blowing up and captivating everyone in the industry (for good or bad). And clients were either giving it a try (especially my smaller clients) or waiting and seeing.

I’ll admit, I had some burnout going on at the time as well. I work fast, I often illustrate at least 50 images a week, and sometimes more. Working fast allows me to work on lots of things and get paid quickly (which supporting a family of 6 myself, I often need to do). But I was tired, uninspired, hating sitting at my desk and working on the next goblin, dragon, barbarian, or dwarf every publisher seems to want. I had been doing this job, in the TTRPG industry for over 20 years. I was tired, I wanted to do anything else.

I took some time, thought about what I really wanted to do as an artist, and started trying to learn new techniques, new resources, and anything I could do to try something else and still do illustration. I went back to my roots, looking and reading about some of my favorite classic illustrators, thinking more and more about children’s books, and just drawing people and nature and weird things I liked.

I grabbed a bundle of pens and paper textures from True Grit Supply (https://www.truegrittexturesupply.com/) and loved the various pens and such, it changed how I approached my work and my inking. I also found some wonderful brushes from Kyle T. Webster on Adobe (https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/brushes.html) and quickly fell in love with his watercolor brushes (although I grabbed them all). And I just started making my own art and my own way and found that people responded to this new work in a way they never did before.

I worked fast. And I still do most of my client work. I realized though, that working fast and constantly moving on to the next assignment was preventing me from doing work I was really proud of, which showed the level of art I can aim to achieve. I didn’t expect that. . . and honestly, didn’t think it was possible to keep learning and growing.

That’s it. Just wanted to share. This is my latest work and a process shot.