Improvement Meme - 2007-2018

I saw lots of people make an improvement meme in the first week of January, so why not! It's quite interesting to see for myself how my art has changed over the years. Here's some extra information from what I remember at the moment:

2007
During this year, my art style was very influenced by Pokémon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and also several manga/manhua that I enjoyed. Those were also my gothic/skater years during middle school. This really especially shows in my art of my comic Sk8erWolf, which was basically about the skater boy Kiba (hence the name Vixenkiba) and the gothic boy Eroba (who was based on a crush of mine, heh). Good old memories~! Here you also see my first embarrassing pictures that I made on the computer... the base colours filled in with the paint bucket tool, and heck did I know what layers even were?! xD My traditional art was much better. 
Link to Sk8erWolf: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2008
More Sk8erWolf stuff, some of which I'm really proud of. I also started experimenting more with photoshop, especially trying out different styles using Pokémon. I must say I still really love some of these artworks! I also tried out vector art, of which an example can be found on the right, but I didn't like this style so much. 
Link to Pokémon stuff: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2009
I still couldn't get rid of Pokémon, goodness! I even made my own comic, of which the whole story has been written down, but of course I never finished it! Drew 50/50 traditional and digital art this year, and I started experimenting with colouring with light effects and purples for the skin. Kiba and Eroba also never really disappeared, they kept on showing up in different fandoms xD
Link to Pokémon Folklore comic: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2010
Some of my all-time favourite artworks are produced in this year, like 'Tail of Oz'. I know a lot about it is wrong, but I was testing out more and more with perspective, dynamics, shading, and loved it! I didn't stop drawing traditionally though, and the ballpoint pen still was my biggest friend. During this year I was also an enormous fan of the manga D.Gray-man, especially of Kanda. Aaaaah, the memories. 

2011
And there it started; the WoW period! I have so many memories about this period, I don't even know where to begin. I met many people during my WoW time, and created many stories around characters. My own WoW character, Maka (or Makaa), was probably my biggest inspiration of creating Therice (Terra) from TerrApocalypse, though their personalities are very different. The horns, hooves, and tanky-stuff however has always stayed. 
Also an accomplishment of this year is my first ever paid commission! I was so proud
Link to WoW stuff: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2012
During this year, I suddenly missed my Sk8erWolf characters very much, and decided to try to redo the story as Werewolf Universe. This failed xD I created several pages and tons of storyboard for the story, but it just didn't flow for me. I AM super proud of the comic pages though, especially the page containing a huge A3 sized city view that I completely built up from scratch myself and that took me several days:

Link to Werewolf Universe: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2013
During this year, I was completely occupied by the movie that had just arrived in the cinemas; The Hobbit. I was obsessed with The Hobbit. I was obsessed with all the characters, and especially the background characters, and can't remember how many stories I've read about them. Dwalin, Nori, and Ori were even my biggest influences for the characters Garion, Nordin, and Mike in TerrApocalypse, without shame! Next to Hobbit stuff, I also still worked on some Pokémon.
Link to Hobbit stuff: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2014
Probably my most inactive year ever. The only artworks come from Novemeber/December, but at least they introduce the characters of TerrApocalypse! 
Link to TerrApocalypse: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2015
Did tons of commissions this year where I practiced my digital art skills a lot. I'm still very proud of some works, and I also tried to get the hang of backgrounds! 
Link to commissions: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2016
The year started with a lot of Pokémon related stuff as I joined the group PokemonTownship. It sure made me experiment a lot, and I'm proud of the painterly background style that I got the hang of! I also created one of my favourite OCs all-time during this year; Gabriël and his Sneasel Nes. I love their background story so much, that I cannot let them go, and I'm trying to incorporate them into TerrApocalypse as background characters somehow <3 So that I'll have an excuse to draw them.
Link to PokémonTownship stuff: vixenkiba.deviantart.com/galle…

2017
The year of inactivity! My PhD and life currently has my full attention, and it's difficult to find the time (and mostly energy) to draw. When I draw though, I've tried to experiment with new ways of colouring and lining, and I believe I've created some of my best works yet, like my currently-favourite Art Nouveau work made for my mother. 


2018
Getting into the last year of my PhD, I feel I'm having less and less time to focus on art, sadly. At the start of the year I managed quite well, making loads of fanart, but in the second half of the year I really only had time for the occasional traditional art made during lab-hours (whenever measurements permit me to draw for a few seconds between changing the samples). The year was quite harsh for me, not only because of my PhD, and it's quite taking its toll. 
I really wish to have more time, so I can work on my stories! So much epic stuff is written up... Maybe I should just get better at managing my time?



Improvement
I feel like during 2007-2016 improvement has had quite its ups and downs, probably also related to the many hiatuses I've had due to university. The most improvements are seen in between 2007-2008, where I created a shitload of art, and where I had an amazing friend at middle school <3 We basically inspired each other to improve! I got a lot better at digital colouring, and also improved greatly at anatomy. 
There's a steady amount of improvement in between 2008-2010 in my opinion, but also a lot of style changes. The real style change arrives in 2011 really, where I was slowly getting more into 'realistic' anatomy. It's becoming visible in my human artwork, but also greatly in my Pokémon artwork, that I gave a more realistic twist of my own. The manga-style never faded away though. Personally, I don't think there was a lot of digital colouring improvement in this period though, because I was messing around so much and not really focusing on it. 
In 2012 there was no digital colouring improvement whatsoever, in fact, I simplified everything and focused more on traditional art. 
2013 for me was the year of digital art improvement, but personally I think it never really got better than 2010. I kind of feel like I got worse in anatomy and colouring, also because I was focusing on uni. 2014 was even worse; I almost didn't draw anything, and what I drew I'm not really proud of! My first artwork of Therice sucks in many places, for example in her face, and the hand that doesn't exist. I was really struggling with anatomy and really had to get the hang of it again.
Luckily I did that in 2015; I worked a lot with anatomy and slowly also started to try more digital improvement again. Commissions made me get the hang of it again, and slowly I improved...
Then in 2016 I have some improvements anatomy and colouring-wise, which I'm happy about, but the latest artworks still kept being very 'simple'. I just didn't have enough time anymore to make detailed artworks, and up to this point I'm still trying to get back into the improvement flow!
In 2018, I don't feel like there's much improvement in my digital art (it staying mostly the same), but I have gotten faster at doing it. It was surprisingly fun to do traditional art with ballpoint pen again, and I hope to do lots more art like that!

So yeah, lots of ups and downs, and I hope 2019 will give me some more art (and improvement) time!


I'm becoming so good at wall-of-texts. 
Cheers!
Vixenkiba