My Deviantart Story

Aug 9, 20149 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Aug 9, 2014

1.2K Views

Jumping late on the bandwagon but I thought why not, seems like very fun way to look back to how it all started, so... here we go:

When did I join dA? I'm not even sure anymore. About 5 years ago according to this account age, this 14 year old dorky kid created an account on a website because he could find cool drawings about the things he liked, I don't think I ever considered the possibility of uploading my own drawings to the website, when in fact I believe I was using the same drawings I could find here to try and do my own. Back then drawing couldn't probably even reach the title of "hobby" as it does today, I'm really not sure when I started to take drawing a BIT more seriously than just doodles and I remember I enjoyed it but never really invested the time into it (if only). In those days I used to pretty much copy images I saw into my notebook, not tracing them, which made me feel good about them and kept me doing it once in a while. I remember friends encouraged me, telling me it looked cool, and there was another guy older than me in school that already drew pretty cool. I wanted to be like that.
Steadily I kept drawing, filling some drawing notebooks with more and more, until I started to feel I should try something different, my sister at this point had entered college, studying digital arts no less which got her to buy a wacom bamboo tablet. I immediately wanted to use it.
This got my attention to deviantart again, I found out that my sister had one and I realized I had made one long ago, I looked at all these amazing digital drawings that people made and it really made me want to try it out. It was then that I made an attempt of making a traditional drawing into a digital one through photoshop.

Man was I clueless of what I was doing, it was a drawing for a friend with a crossover of things that you may easily recognize, but even looking at it now, I remember I was so happy with it. The moment I uploaded it I was terrified of what would happen, of what people would say. And finally when the first comment showed up, it was someone saying it looked awesome.
This blew my mind back then, "Someone liked it!" I thought, and that really lit up a spark of motivation that day, I wanted to make more!
After much begging to my sister I finally got her to lend me her tablet, clueless as I was I used it about 3 times without having the drivers installed and even then I thought it was really cool to be drawing on the computer, but oh boy was it different and harder than it looked.
I'm not sure when, but about this time is when I started searching for all the info and tutorials I could find, everything was so overwhelming and I looked far and wide for things to learn. I've never been on a proper art class before so the internet is all I had to teach me.
I drew every now and then, but I wasn't still fully into it, in fact with the barrage of information I was finding I thought I probably wouldn't make it far, I was barely starting! How was I supposed to reach the level of all of those amazing artists out there! People like Haychel, whose art I admired and looked up to (and still do) at that point, that I ended up buying my own tablet.
Then 2 years ago, on summer, I had the incredible chance of going to the place I always wanted to go, Japan. I stayed for a month and a half with a japanese family and it was only with the objective to study japanese which I had started in highschool.
It was a wonderful experience and what-not, but I met a very important friend there. He was an artist as well and he encouraged me to continue, to keep drawing. The thing is that, it worked, even being there, I suddenly wanted to draw more, I found the courage to continue, I wanted to commit since everything else I commited to, ended up not working, ended up with me stopping, this was the first thing I REALLY wanted to do, I would fight the learning curve no matter what.
That's still I thought I hold up close to me, the year followed with bigger attempts from me, I had many drawings I didn't even upload cause I didn't finish them, I started falling on the problem of starting new ones before even ending others.

Then 2013 started. I wasn't one for year resolutions in past years to that, but that year I finally had one resolution, and it was probably one of the things I'm really glad I did. My resolution for that year was to make at least 100 drawings, at that point that was a big number for me, I put it as a minimum to push myself to do more, and it worked. Everytime I wasn't drawing I remembered, I didn't want to fail the only resolution I had made for myself did I? thankfully, something else showed up to help me do all of those, something I had seen before through watching Haychel's art but never looked at it with detail, PMDe.

When I found it again at the beginning of the year I thought that the group was exactly what I needed to get more ideas for drawing, it looked like the story was quite ahead and I felt bad for not entering when I first saw it, but even with that I tried to catch up with the story and decided to join the group. This is probably another one of those choices I'm really happy with. The group was all that I expected, I met so many wonderful friends in so little time, I remember one of the biggest things was when I got into a collab with Chisu and even though we never finished it coughwoopscough it was such and AMAZING experience, I wanted to keep up with his amazing art, so I pushed myself further than I ever had.

I'm not sure when I did the change to Paint Tool SAI but oh god it was a lot easier for me than using photoshop.
I kept meeting people through PMDe, who I'm really thankful for, I don't want to say specific names cause most of you know who you are

and I wouldn't want to forget anybody by mistake, lots of you have had an impact in me in different ways and I'm really happy for it

.
It wasn't long till the group came to a sudden end, it was sad to see this amazing group go, but the rumors of a new one were already spreading, wondering what it'd be. I got invited to help with another group based on it, to continue the characters I had, and I realized how much of hard work is required for it.

Another important thing that happened is that I finally created a tumblr, place where I began to be quite more active (thing I will adress in another journal following this), thanks to which I met even more friends and had more experiences different to the ones here in dA.

As PMDU opened, I started becoming really frustrated with my art, I was really happy cause I had already even met my resolution, but I wasn't meeting my expectations for it, which is a problem many artists probably have. My expectations for my art were really high, and even if one drawing managed to keep up with them, most of them didn't, which left me unsatisfied with my progress, I kept pushing me a lot, constantly, which leads to the different styles of coloring, sketching and drawing in general I went through.

*notices size of this* Woops, now I know I do end up writing too much if I'm into it, blegh. Anyway, as I waited for group activities, I got to know lots of friends a lot better, experience rping which I really like but I really struggle with, and just drawing more and more in general. When 2014 finally arrived I had decided, drawing is what I would keep doing no matter what, I made more than 1 resolutions for the year, and the number of drawings I have to reach is 250, which funnily enough, did worry me a bit, but now it doesn't at all xD

This year has been a constant fight to improve and I can finally say that, after so long, I'm finally keeping up with expectations, and it feels incredibly good. I have witnessed how true it is that the only way to improve is just to keep drawing, looking at information and what not DOES help a WHOLE LOT, but it's not until you keep drawing, that you can fully absorb the information.
Today the latest drawing I'm proud of and I can compare to the last one is:

I still have so much to learn, but I'm more than determined to do it, it's been 2 years and a half since I started digital art, and there's still a long way to go.
This summer has been one of the most impactful summers I've ever had, to the point that it probably will change my life. On monday I start another semester of college, and I'm not just determined to do my best through it, but do my best with everything I can. This is my Deviantart Story, and it's far from finished.