2025 Artwork Update (or The 2018 Sketchbook – The Backlog of Backlogs)

January 4, 2025
7:05 AM

If you’ve followed my artwork galleries at any point from 2014 onward, you’ve probably noticed that I like to arrange my artwork by years. I also like to use method of arrangement to gauge how good of a year I’ve had based on how much artwork I put out. But for any of my artwork to get made, they all start from a sketchbook. Currently, full-renders are still on the 2018 Sketchbook. Before this was the 2016 Sketchbook. The main purpose of the 2016 Sketchbook was to do concept sketches of whoever I was drawing, as well as to begin the sketch phase of a fully rendered pic that would then be scanned and uploaded to my computer. The sketches were still done in pencil and left as is, so all the pages would get smudged with pencil lead at some point. Eventually the sketch phases for the full-renders would be done on the computer itself, ending the need to do them on the sketchbook. But the concept sketches continued. This book lasted until 2018 with the last usable page being a sendoff pic, with the date and signature on it.

What Is The 2018 Sketchbook?

So, as you’d properly guessed, the 2018 Sketchbook followed and is still ongoing. Well, I say it’s still “ongoing”, but the book itself has actually been completed for years now as I write this — since 2021 to be exact. The 2018 sketchbook was witness to many changes both in artwork and in personal life events. The book was started right around the same time I started my part-time job at Michaels. This of course meant having access to more traditional art supplies with the employee discount. I bought Micron pens to ink my sketches, which finally meant no more pencil smearing. I also started to color in my concept sketches, starting off with some Pigma Brush pens, and eventually a complete set of Faber-Castell brush pens. I learned on my own to do swatches for these pens, and that it’s not quite easy to blend the colors on these pens. Since they were all pigment based India Ink, they’d dry up in under a minute. Also, the pages themselves weren’t really conducive to easy color blending, evidenced by my attempt to use Copic marker that would bleed clean through the page. Regardless, this helped me to get a better grasp of what colors to use when it came time to start the full-renders. Somewhere on the page I’d make a mini swatch of what colors I used, and then extract the color with the eyedropper after scanning the concept sketch. The sendoff page for this was done in 2021, and was fully colored in traditionally to reflect what I had done in this book. This sketchbook was also the first to have concept sketches digitally re-done if they just looked bad traditionally and not help me much when it was time to start the full-render.

2016 Sketchbook: Ichigo-tan Concept Sketch, completed 2018. Full Render done 2018.

2016 Sketchbook: Ladybug Concept Sketch, completed 2018. Full render done in 2018

2016 Sketchbook Sendoff

2018 Sketchbook: Princess Honey Concept sketch, completed 2018. Full Render cancelled

2018 Sketchbook: Jucika Concept Sketch, completed 2018. Full render done in 2024

2018 Sketchbook Sendoff

Okay, so now I’ve talked about the sketchbooks themselves. What about the fully rendered pics? These, in my way of thinking, are classified by what sketchbook they came from. For example, all the artwork I first uploaded in 2017 came from the 2016 sketchbook. Eventually, everything that was eligible for full-renders was done, and thus the book itself was archived to history. So what about 2018? Well, that’s what this whole post is about. The sketchbook itself is done, but the full-renders are not. I can’t archive this book to history yet. From the outset, things were getting a little tough. 2018 was my busiest year with artwork, with 26 uploads listed on the Blue Fish Apartment (with the pics themselves numbering at just above 30 total). 2019 though… that crashed down to 8 uploads (8 pics total). This came about due to the difficulties with work/life balance and the job schedules putting me to random days, mostly as a closer for my section of the store.

Chaos in the City – One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

But just as I finally got the hang of a more stable schedule as time went on, 2020 happened. And you know what that means: Pandemic Time! Lockdowns everywhere, people dying left and right, and then a riot in spring! Fun times… I was temporarily out of Michaels, which meant more time at home. This was cool at first, this meant more artwork could be done. But once news broke that a neighbor of mine had died due to COVID, the weight of the reality hit hard. I eased myself back to artwork eventually. But this was also the start of a new venture: building the new Blue Fish Apartment gallery away from FC2 Blog. This took way longer than I anticipated. This resulted in artwork output going down to 5 uploads for the entire year. I quit working at Michaels in late 2020 due to a COVID outbreak at the store, going back to doing artwork full-time. 2021 came, and I was able to finally finish not just the new Blue Fish Apartment gallery, but the 2018 Sketchbook itself. While the site has 5 uploads listed, in reality is more like 14 since the Main Circle had their own individual uploads on other gallery sites like DeviantArt and Pixiv.

However 2022 was pretty bad. My mental health wasn’t so hot, and my savings were running low, affecting my motivation to draw. This came to its ultimate conclusion with the sudden death of my brother-in-law in late 2022. The gravity of that grief pretty much halted all drawing activity until around February of 2023. This also meant 2022 saw only 3 uploads, my lowest output ever since my “Return to Artwork” in 2014 (still doesn’t beat the current record of 0 in 2013!). Then in late 2023… I landed a Full-time job that I still work at at the time of this post in 2024 (I’ll get into that later). So through all that, this resulted in a general lack of output from 2021 through 2023. And now I actually have another sketchbook started, the 2021 Sketchbook. Honestly, my motivation was low and I was started to feel overwhelmed with a lot of tasks and events not related to artwork.

Re-Evaluation and Re-Classification: The Backlog is Born

Once things calmed down in the middle of 2023, I evaluated what to do about the artwork. I still pushed along, finishing a couple of overdue commissions as well as chipping away at some full-renders from the 2018 Sketchbook. I even finished a pic from the 2021 sketchbook! But that’s where I had to stop and think, and re-prioritize what I was gonna draw going forward. And thus, my focus shifted: The 2018 Sketchbook is now the 2018 Sketchbook Backlog. And now I had a multi-year plan. The subject of the artwork is still the same: pinups of mostly retro ladies, many of whom don’t get much artwork done of them. I actually have a spreadsheet that keeps track of all the artwork still in progress and which ones were completed. I don’t talk about who’s on the spreadsheet as I still like to surprise the audience with my character choices upon upload. Some are already revealed thanks to WIP Artwork posted on the BFA, but some are still kept secret. The current goal is to get 80% of the characters in the 2018 Sketchbook to fully-rendered pic status, and then completed. This means that some characters are gonna get dropped. Heck, two of them have their full-renders canceled and no-longer listed. I plan to get this done by 2026, with at least 4-6 pics uploaded each year.

If you’ve read up to now, I mentioned something that pretty much changed everything: I have a full-time job now. It’s definitely much more stable than my old part-time at Michaels. But, since it is full-time, that means less free-time. And sometimes my job-site changes. It’s not often that it changes, but it can move to somewhere far from where I live. Not to mention the shift time can change too. But when the schedule is set, it’s set for several months with the possibility of it staying the same for even more time. With that in mind, I’ve accepted that my output must be lowered to 4-6 each year to prioritze both physical and mental health. That’s detailed in a post I put up on DeviantArt in early 2023. I’m also picking artwork to do of varying simplicity and complexity so that I’m not stuck doing all complex pics at the end and overwhelming myself again. Some of these are already ahead at either Base Color or being shaded in, so I’m factoring that in as well. There’s also a three-trunked elephant in the room that I need to address: AI Generated “artwork”. I have to make sure that my artwork is glazed so that the scrapers don’t learn from what I’m capable of doing now. There’s nothing much I can do about artwork I finished before 2023. Thankfully I upgraded my computer this past summer to run Glaze 2.0 via GPU, so glazing shouldn’t take so long.

From my spreadsheet of planned artwork. Anything not blurred is already known. Everything here, except those listed as “Referenced”, come from the 2018 Sketchbook.

So to recap, the 2018 Sketchbook Backlog is artwork that had its start as a concept sketch from the sketchbook that was started in 2018. The book itself was finished in 2021, but artwork from that is still being worked on. It, and I, have been through quite a bit behind the scenes. But things are on the upswing, albeit with a more measured approach. Again, I have to keep my artwork output more reasonable, with about 4-6 a year. Any WIPs I post will be going to Instagram (and Bluesky if there’s traction there). There’s no plans to paywall these previews as there’s no plans to re-enable Creator mode for my Patreon account. These will all be public. While this backlog isn’t as daunting as my videogame backlog, this one has an end to it and cannot grow. It’s probably gonna take me until the end of 2026 to get this done. Might take longer. But I don’t like leaving things unfinished like that. Until then then wish me luck. I will get this backlog done, and its book archived to personal history.