This was originally a series of posts on Bluesky, but I decided to post this here also.

I finally got a chance to watch Look Back and it really got me thinking...

Why did I start drawing?

Why did I stop drawing?

Why am I afraid of drawing again?

I went back and looked through an old folder of my artwork from grade school I had hidden away and all the answers came to me...

So, why did I start drawing? I was a very shy kid growing up. I didn't understand how to socialize like other kids did, so I mostly kept to myself. A part of me still wanted to make friends somehow, so I started drawing things that I liked and showing other kids. This worked out pretty well. I had a lot of fun drawing silly comics and messing around with my friends. And I kept making friends like this up until my senior year of high school. By that time, talking to people had become much easier, so I didn't need to express myself as much through art anymore. I still enjoyed it, though. By the time I graduated, I decided that I would do art seriously as a career. After some time, I started attending college for a degree in visual communications.

Why did I stop drawing, then? Everything was going smoothly. I was on a path to my dream job. What happened?

Fast forward to around the start of my second year of college. I was very determined to become a professional artist. I would spend hours each day doing nothing but coursework and drawing.

One day, my graphics design professor tells me about a paid internship with a local print shop that I qualify for. As someone who wanted to make art for a living, I jumped on the opportunity without hesitation. To think I'd be making money from the things I create and I hadn't even finished my degree yet. It was a dream come true, or so I thought...

Long story short, things got really busy at the shop. It got to a point where I had to choose between staying in school or working as an artist full time. Of course I chose the latter since it was what I wanted to do. I failed to realize that in doing so I would slowly begin to kill a dear part of myself.

I worked myself to the bone, putting everything I had into every design I worked on. It was exhausting, but I believed that it was worth it in order to get better and make more money later down the line. All that effort I put in didn't translate as well as I thought it would, though. Not only that, but I had lost sight of why I had started doing all of this in the first place. By the time I realized it, though, the passion I had for making art had already dried up. I didn't see it as a fun pass time anymore and any personal projects I started would never see completion.

So I gave up right then and there. I even went as far as changing my role at the shop from designer to screen printer just so I'd never have to go through the process of creating something I did not enjoy myself. Things didn't get better for me, though.

I pivoted to so many different things. Nothing seemed to fill that same void, but I couldn't bring myself to go back to drawing. Especially since it had been such a long time since I put a pen to paper, it felt like it'd be a wasted effort. I'd always look back and think "I'll never be as good as I was or would've been if I kept going, so why bother?"

Seeing Fujino pick her pen back up after everything hit me like a truck. It made me realize that all the negative thoughts I had about myself or my art didn't really matter. I was put into this world to do one thing and nothing else.

And that is to tell stories through art, whether it be good or bad.

I will no longer give up on myself.

I will be the person that I was meant to be.

I will set an example for others to do the same.

Thank you, Mr Fujimoto.

I've been burnt out for so god-damn long with no idea of how to recover.

I just want to go back to the way things were so very badly.

Where I could just sit down at any time and draw or write whatever I wanted to for hours.

And have fun the whole time doing it.

Now I gotta spend half of all my available time alive either working to stay alive or sleeping to stay alive.

I've been in this hellish loop for over five years.

I want out.

I feel like I'm wasting this life away.

Working, sleeping, working, and sleeping.

I've barely done any of the things I set out to do when I dropped out of college several years ago.

I haven't had the the energy to work on meaningful projects.

I haven't had the time to make a new portfolio.

I can hardly even take the time to learn a new skill.

All I can do now is consume the content of people that I myself desired to become one day.

Fuck this, man. I want a refund.

I've been having a lot of strange dreams recently and they've all had the same recurring theme.

I witness someone doing something horrible to an innocent person or group. It makes me so angry and disgusted I immediately make a move to put a stop to it or seek vengeance for the innocent party. Yet despite all my efforts, nothing I do can change anything that has happened. Nor can I avenge the people that were put through so much suffering. Then I'm jolted awake from throwing one last punch or kick in my sleep.

What could this mean? I know my subconscious is trying to tell me something but I can't tell what exactly. I know it must be important, though. I just don't have enough time these days to thoroughly analyze my dreams on my own.

I was thinking about other ways to get around the standard cookie-cutter graphic design spiel, and my search this time has brought me to the topic of Motion Graphics.

Despite knowing my fair share about animation, not once did I ever think about this being another obscure part of the graphic design world. I mean, of course it's not as in-depth as animating a short film or what-have-you. But regardless, it's an image that gives the illusion of movement. And there's such a huge variety of things that motion graphics can be used for. Such as

• Video Intros
• Online Advertisements (gross)
• The UI of certain apps/programs

I was debating whether or not I should keep making posts on just comics, but I'm gonna put my foot down and make this post my last one on the subject of comics for a while...

I just wanted to share some timeless Calvin & Hobbes strips that I found not too long ago. It just amazes me how relevant they are today, despite being well over 20 years old:

He's got a point...

This one was something I could definitely relate to. I didn't like school that much either growing up because I just wanted to do the things that I was interested in. I didn't want to spend all this time learning how to find the circumference of a circle or how cell division worked when I could've been drawing cool pictures and writing neat stories that I could share with other people.

Here's one that I've come to notice as pretty accurate in today's age of Social Media:

This would explain the rise in Fan Art...

A lot of artists I've seen on Twitter got a good portion of their viewership from doing fan art. Or just art of things that are trending at the time. Especially around the time of certain events, like a video game release or an anticipated movie trailer. When I used to post drawing on my Twitter, this was something I quickly realized. And honestly, it kinda killed some of my motivation and bummed me out knowing that anything original I came up with would almost undoubtedly go unnoticed. Even if it was something that I thought was really cool and interesting.

-elm

In my next post, I'll be talking about what this style of comic looks like in today's modern times with some examples of my favorite artists. And if it isn't too long, I may even go into detail about what I chose to do for my first class project. Until then...

-elm

Well, as promised, time to talk more about comics. Although I won't be going too in-depth this time or for many future posts as to not burn myself out before the semester ends.

Today, I wanted to touch on Web Comics. These can come in all sort of different sizes and formats, but the ones that I would like to touch on are ones like this:

This is a web comic made by one of my favorites, Shen Comix, on Twitter(@shenanigansen).

If you remember my last post, I brought up an example of one of the last famous comic strips that was published frequently before the turn of the 21st century, Calvin & Hobbes. Looking at this one here, it shares a lot of similarities with those classic Sunday newspaper comic strips. It's short, having only 4 panels, there aren't many colors, and the backgrounds are very simple. These qualities put more focus on the character(s) and the subject matter, which are a trademark of those classic comic strips. Take this old comic for example:

This is a colored excerpt from another 80's comic strip called Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed.

Despite having vastly different art styles and types of humor, the similarities are still there. It's also short in length with a very limited use of colors and simple backgrounds that lead to more emphasis on the characters and subject matter.

Kinda makes me wonder if some of the web comics being made today will be considered as timeless as the ones before the year 2000...

-elm

By definition, graphic design is defined as the practice or profession of designing print or electronic forms of visual information, as for an advertisement, publication, or website. Or, visual communication by a skillful combination of text and pictures in magazines, books, advertisements, etc. (from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.)

When I looked at this definition initially, it made me feel limited in what I could do with my degree once I graduated. I didn't want to leave school only to work on logos and card designs for the rest of my life. And I utterly despised advertisements (Still do, by the way!), so I knew I wasn't going to do that either. Once the initial drive to go to college wore off after my first year, I felt that what I was doing and learning in class would not help me achieve a career in what I actually wanted to do (Making either original animations or comics.), and thus I became terribly unmotivated. I questioned whether or not the choices I made up to that point were the right ones and if I should still be wasting so much time going to school, working towards finishing a degree that would ultimately not benefit me, when I could have already been learning and doing the things that I wanted to do on my own.

And yet, here I am. Back in school, working towards an Associate's in Visual Communication. So, then. What changed? Well, I took a second look at this definition not too long ago. Mainly the parts that said 'the practice or profession of designing print or electronic forms of visual information, as for [a]... publication or website.' and 'visual communication by a skillful combination of text and pictures...' And then it dawned on me. "Wouldn't that mean something like a Sunday comic would fall under the graphic design category?"

Calvin and Hobbes - Last Minute Panic

That's what most comics are in general, right? Take this for example. It has a combination of text and images that have been arranged in a clear and concise manner, and has been published in a newspaper, if I remember correctly. Not to mention, you can't even make a comic without panels. Because panels are the visual backbones of the medium that communicate to its reader(s) various forms of information. In this case, being an extremely relatable joke.

Now, I don't want to make every post here a five paragraph essay, so I'm gonna go ahead and cut this post short. I just can't help but gush about all the stuff that I'm passionate about! Not to mention writing about my experiences and perspectives on things like this has been very therapeutic for me...

In my next post, I'll be talking about what this style of comic looks like in today's modern times with some examples of my favorite artists. And if it isn't too long, I may even go into detail about what I chose to do for my first class project. Until then...

-elm

Hello!



For anyone reading this outside my classroom, I apologize for any confusion since I'm writing this (And a number of other future posts.) for an ongoing class assignment.

Despite how long I've been a member of this site, I think this is my first actual blog post on here, or anywhere for that matter. So I'd like to take this time to introduce myself and touch on my experiences a bit, if that's okay...

My name is Jaylen and I've worked in the graphics design field for roughly two-ish(?) years now, working on mainly t-shirts and logos for a screen printing company in Columbus, GA. I was a previous student here at Chattahoochee Valley a little under 2 years ago until I had to withdraw due to a gradual deterioration of my mental health. I almost completely fried my brain from going to school full-time while simultaneously working a part-time internship with full-time hours and illustrating for three to four hours a day to better my digital painting skills. I got so exhausted to the point where I couldn't do anything creative anymore and I stopped drawing altogether for a little under a year. Everything was seen as work and nothing felt fun or rewarding to complete like it used to before I graduated high school. It left me doubting whether or not I should actually go through with pursuing art as a full-time career. Since I was alone when I withdrew from school and I still needed to make sure I had a roof over my head at the time, I began to work as a legitimate full-time graphic designer.

After withdrawing from school and continuing to work as a full-time employee, I did a lot of thinking and re-evaluation. And it made me realize that even though I couldn't really enjoy the process of making art, I never really felt fulfilled doing any other work that wasn't art. Ever since, I've been slowly easing back into making art. And even though I still don't feel the same way about art as I did back when I first graduated high school, I'm very happy that I didn't give up on myself. I am extremely grateful for the knowledge I've gained and I'm glad I had gotten the opportunity to work out in the field for as long as I did. Especially since I was sure as hell that I wouldn't survive.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of this semester. With enough luck and dedication, hopefully I'll be in a much better spot than when I started.

-elm