Well, everyone, it's been another year. Like last year I cannot believe how it has gone by so quickly but seems like a lifetime. It is the season for making resolutions and looking back and seems like a good time to do an anniversary post like this. These journals are going to be an actual tradition from now on for a few reasons. First is as a thank you for everyone just being here and for every bit of support. Second is to set goals for myself and to let everyone know what I have planned for the upcoming year and to hopefully get input and ideas from you guys. Third is for personal archiving so I can track what I've done and where I haven't been before.

Starting off simple: what happened this year? One of the most surprising turns was how much the furry community has affected my personal life. I'm extremely introverted and tend to be more antisocial than I should be but this entire endeavor has slowly been breaking down some of the bad habits. I've gotten out there in the community a little and have started to get to know more people in my academic life. Most notably was joining the Learning to Draw and Drawpile groups on Sofurry. These were the main takeoff points and now sees me drawing with a small group at least one a week when I'm able and loving it. I've posted a few basic tutorials and will likely be making a few more during the summer when classes are done. My productivity did drop this year, partially because of an extended funk that lasted about half of the year and partially because each image is taking much longer now. I take this as a good thing because after one year I can see more improvement and what I have posted now is nothing compared to what I have in the works in terms of both quality and scale. I did find a happy middle in the pseudo-traditional pictures I've done as of late (well...4 months ago) and is something that I'd like to continue going into the new year and experiment with.

That leads nicely into the next section: what about the next year? The plans are rather simple and much like last year. I want to get better. Part of this will involve speed because at the moment I work very slowly. An image can now take well over 30 hours and I won't work on them for several days at a time, meaning an image is finished every few weeks. I'd be happy with a small skill improvement while getting much faster and I have a feeling that they will both help each other. The Drawpile sessions have already been helping with this because it's done in a set time frame and if I'm not fast enough, it doesn't get finished. We've also been doing a weekly (mostly optional) prompt that usually stretches the creative muscles. Scale is something else that I plan to broaden in the future. For technical scale that will involve making images large enough to see print. I'm not saying that anything will ever reach print but I'd like to have the option to do it if the time is ever right. Mostly for this I need to fork over the money to get a desktop because my laptop isn't quite cutting it now. As for creative scale...that might be for next year's journal.

Now, in conclusion and probably the most important part: Thank you. I honestly cannot begin to describe how awesome everyone has been. This goes especially for everyone who responded to the 'tell me about your week' post a few months back. Even though most of the responses and conversations came after I no longer needed them, I loved getting to know you all a bit better and it really cemented that appreciation for the community. I wish everyone the best for the next year and many more to come.

~CW