reviewing 2025, part 1: on 365 days of daily art and creative resistance training

in december of 2024, as many people are wont to do, i began to assemble my list of goals for 2025. generally, i approach this as specifically goal-setting and not resolutions because i find that vague quantification of specific achievements tends to work a lot better for me. i' ll spare you the full details of the list, but included among them were:

• big life goals (e.g. get a new job, buy a car -- both of which i did accomplish successfully, by the way!),
• fitness and health goals (e.g. run 1000 miles, of which i only got through 1000km instead, but not too bad),
• artistic consumption goals (e.g. get through 12 books, or N games in my video game backlog -- which went somewhat okay? but not amazing)

now, that was already an ambitious and daunting list i gave to myself for 2025. i might discuss later my thoughts on the things that happened last year, but all i' ll really say is that it was a very tough year and i'm proud to be on the other end of it.

to top it all off, the final section of my list was about artistic output goals:

• release 1 piece of music a month
• draw something or contribute to a visual art project every day in a way that includes using a digital or physical writing implement.
  • optional: create a personal brand sheet; a self-designed logo, wordmark, and color palette.

more than i can likely fully verbalize, these last two goals both dominated more of my free time than i anticipated but also served as important emotional anchors for me throughout the year, contrasted with the large number of life changes i went through.

i wanted to spend some time reflecting on the massive corpus of art that i amassed, and the things i learned and enjoyed about the art i created and skills i honed throughout the duration of the process.

this massive post is a discussion of the daily drawing project. i'm still working on my reflections re: the music i made, and that'll be the next post.

i'm gonna walk you through a little bit of how the year went, sharing some highlights and favorite pieces throughout the year, and then chat about what i think might be gleaned from this experience.

and a note for those of you on rss readers: sorry if the images are embedded weird! for my website i decided to show them in tables with CSS to hide the borders, and i suppose that makes them look quite weird here.

# the start of it

at the start of this year, i'd say i'm what you call an extreme amateur at visual art. i had tried my hand at pixel art enough to own and use Aseprite once in a while when i play tabletop games with friends, but otherwise i' d say that since the art classes i took in elementary and middle school, i had not meaningfully developed or pursued any skill in art. why start now? what did i want out of it? i can't really tell you what exactly struck me to do it, but i realized that i'd always really wanted to be able to call myself an artist, and specifically i realized that i wanted to eventually be able to produce visual art approximately at a similar level to the way i can produce music: to be able to take something in my mind's eye and produce something pretty damn close to it, enough that i think i can share it with others and they can somewhat approach an understanding of what i originally conceived internally.

the original formulation of this drawing goal was much more simply worded: "draw something every day." it evolved into the form you see above sometime in march when i got a drawing tablet and started working on some pieces of art across multiple days, since it contributed to the reason behind the goal; to get better at visual art and begin developing a personal art style.

that being said, at the beginning all i had was some notepads lying around and a few pencils. so i got cracking.

from day 1 i chose that the way i'll hold myself externally accountable to this goal was to post on public social media and share the link with my friends. i chose bluesky for this as it's the one i was happening to try to navigate at the end of 2024. but even after i definitely knew that the habit had cemented itself quite well, i kept the bsky posting as a way to publicly document the progress i made and have proof that i did accomplish this.

my day 1 pencil sketch, a copy of a screenshot of von lycaon in zenless zone zero	the screenshot in question

i started the way many of your favorite online artists might: with some fanart. i painstakingly spent 75 minutes on the above day 1 drawing, carefully line-by-line copying off of a screenshot of the game Zenless Zone Zero. You can see how scratchy these lines are; how they seem all discrete and independent from each other rather than being a combination of lines intentionally representing a form; flat and messy; and on very small paper.

and hey, it doesn't actually look half bad! it looks relatively close to the source, at least! but the time it took was kinda abysmal, and it really didn't feel like "real drawing" as much as just copying (oh, little did i realize at this point how much learning art is studying art you like)

so after this i did what anyone would do. went to youtube and watched a bunch of random beginner content! within a few days, i picked up a few things repeated across a decent number of vids; i needed to learn about lines and shapes, i needed to be paying better attention to my surroundings, and i needed to have bigger paper to draw on. mostly, i picked up that i needed to initially start by doing more shorter, messier drawings than slow, concentrated copy work.

# getting into the habit

day 13; cubes in one- and two-point perspective	day 21: sketching the empty train seat across from me on my commute home

day 26: drawing based on the xenoblade chronicles 3 artbook in my apartment.

the first few weeks were a lot of this sort of thing: studies, screenshots, practice of fundamentals. drawing things and people i saw outside.

looking back, i think the thing that stands out the most to me is how dark and scratchy the pencil lines are here. i really was putting a lot of force behind my pencil marks and redrawing them a ton unconfidently.

# day 50; in the depths of the habit

when i hit around day 50, i was unbelievably excited and motivated to keep going.

day 50: a self portrait

looking back on it, a lot of what i see during this part of the year i already cringe at in terms of the quality. but in the moment i remember feeling really pleased with what i was putting out, because of how much growth and improvement i was seeing.

the motivation from my friends really kept me powered up, too!

# the drawing tablet enters the ring

for my birthday, my sister gave me her wacom drawing tablet. she hadn't been using it, and wanting to motivate my consistency here, she thought i might get good use out of it.

day 77: my first time using my wacom digital drawing tablet

and boy, did i!

i found a bunch of utility in the way that i could take reference images and study them a lot closer -- including tracing over them, but outside of tracing, a much more intuitive way to gauge shape and form and practice. i'm especially glad i didn't start with this tablet because i think physically drawing first ensured i had some important fundamentals before getting access to superpowers like tracing and ctrl+z.

day 79: studying the box art to xenoblade chronicles x: definitive edition

extremely notably, 83 was a self-portrait i'm rather proud of, which i used as my profile picture online for a large chunk of the year.

day 83's self portrait

# logo and style guide

on day 94 and 95, i decided in my dunning-kruger haze of confidence that i was skilled enough to do the optional side quest from the beginning of the year. and if do say so myself, i think i cooked:

the svg of the logo

the logo here is both a cube shape with piano keys on it, but the orientation of the keys subtly contains my initials (EM). choosing the colors and fonts also was a great time, and i'm happy with the result. you can see this at any time on the brand sheet page of my website!

# passing day 100 and hitting my stride up to day 150

during the meat of the 365 days here, the habit was pretty firmly embedded and i was just doing what i could as many days as possible, i was travelling a bit, which meant that i had a good mix of both digital and physical art during this period of time. i definitely leaned more into digital art once i got the tablet, but returning to physical art showed that i did in fact learn and grow a good amount during my initial stint with the tablet!

i hit day 100 on the road:

day 100: a page full of doodles around the number 100

as the days continued, i saw myself still making a good amount of fanart and self portraits, in addition to studying things around me and still occasionally doing fundamentals exercises:

day 120: studying tetsuya nomura's art for cloud strife	day 128: self portrait based on a mirror selfie!

i think that this is when i slightly began to plateau in my skills; still improving but way, way slower than before.

i still saw a ton of really cool stuff come out of this, and i think i generally am still proud/happy with the level of art from this point forward (we've kinda exited the era that i still truly cringe at; i'm sure as i grow in the coming years the overton window of what of my old art i still like will shift too.)

day 132: pencil study of nia's key art from xenoblade 2	day 144: studying a frame from gundam gquuuuuux, the new gundam of the year

# hitting 200

On day 150, i'm particularly proud of this multi-day piece i worked on as album art of my May track (which, of course), i'll talk more about in the next post:

day 150: album art of me as the lofi hip hop girl

amongst the next 50 days included:

• a trip to the aquarium, whose photos gave me references to use for multiple days;
• the introduction of a new regular oc (original character): the character i'm playing in a dungeons and dragons campaign, an elf rogue named petra.
• a trip i took to europe in july, which had me using a very small sketchbook and doing a lot of ink drawings (rather than pencil, for portability and ease of use).

day 164: jellyfish	day 168: it's petra!
day 176: petra jogging	day 192: brouerij 't ij in amsterdam-oost
day 194: delirium brewing in brussels	day 196: doodles in london

# lead up to october

returning back from the europe trip earned us a return to drawing tablet stuff. it was during this time that i was playing a lot of the game xenoblade chronicles x definitive edition, and as a result doodling a lot of screenshots from the game - a game with really excellent different clothing and fashion gear, with a ton of different shapes and colors to see. here we get some of my really favorite things i did this year:

day 201: elma from xenoblade x in the

day 222: more xenoblade x screenshot studies

and especially this one:

day 221: landscape art of oblivia from xenoblade chronicles x

it's during this time as well, that i begin to be one of the primary caretakers of the cat that i live with, arlo! cats have such dynamic and fluid shaping to them that studying them as a beginning artist has been invaluable in learning to minimize form into the most basic shapes while still conveying enough information.

day 223: arlo!	day 258: more arlo, this time on the couch

day 268: i depict him with pencil also!

and of course, more petra!

day 239: petra with a sword!	day 246: drawing petra based on screenshots from the anime adaptation of frieren: beyond journeys end

# the mechatober arc

one of those back-of-my-mind wishes i've always had was to participate in some sort of an inktober challenge. when a discord server i'm in shared the prompt list from @mechamaria64.bsky.social, i knew that it would absolutely be something i wanted to try:

the prompt list for promptober

honestly, at the start i really struggled during promptober to stay motivated, because drawing something completely different to everything else i was doing made me feel bad at art -- it felt like my flaws were very glaring! it took a lot of reading blog posts and watching youtube videos to wrap my head around mecha drawing, and more purposeful following references. here is some of the stuff i made this month, and you can see how things improved:

day 275: mechatober day 2: mercenary	day 281: mechatober day 8: solar big terrarium mecha with a small crew. the team here seeks to protect endangered flora and fauna and travels the continent to do so.
day 289: mechatober 16: abyssal	day 297: mechatober 24: freeze

day 303: mechatober 30: mass produced. certainly no resemblance to zaku from gundam '79.

# the final stretch: hands week and more!

with the conclusion of mechatober, i succesfully made it into the 300s. i view the final 2 months of drawing as a bit of a blur -- but i think as can likely be evidenced by the quality of the output, i really feel confident and happy with my skill level and ability in these final pieces. i'm also able to work quickly and effectively, completing things in significantly faster time than the original 75 minute sketch i had.

i made the self portrait that as of writing this post, is my current profile picture of my online presence; i also did a few other self portraits that i'm quite fond of.

day 320: my current profile picture!	day 348: a really good self portrait of an outfit i wore to my company's holiday party

for the week of 321 i did "hands week", as prompted by my friend who loves to draw them:

day 322: a hands week day	day 327: another hands week day

we also saw some good arlos and petras:

day 337: petra from below, in the angle of the frieren meme	day 349: the arlo

and generally brought the year to a close on some really great digital pieces:

day 341: mobile fighter g gundam	day 343: 343 guilty spark from halo

day 359: my current phone wallpaper, art of malos' monado in front of auresco, from xenoblade 2's prequel dlc, torna: the golden country

ending the year on day 365, which was the album art for the finale track in my 12-track album!

day 365: the culmination

# overall reflections and learning

well, it isn't a surprising result: doing something every day for a year will make you a lot better at that thing than when you started. the consistency and practice alone will make you comfortable in the skill, and the sheer quantity of output will skyrocket your growth.

day 59: speed sketches on my commute

even though i feel pretty self-aware of my lack of skill, i was surprised by how hard i fell into the dunning-kruger effect in the pre-day-100 time -- and let me share that i am so glad that i was the one to deflate my own confidence bubble in the following months as i learned more and more and realized how much more i had in store to learn.

day 296: mechatober 23: dark

as i mentioned above, i think it was unbelievably valuable that i was without a drawing tablet for the first part of this experience. i almost 100% guarantee that i would not have had the self control to not ctrl+z myself out of any constructive learning if i had it from the jump, given how much early on i knew i really was not great at art.

however, getting to it eventually brought it around to me as a valuable tool for drawing from references in a much more ergonomic and intuitive way, and i also was able to learn other things from references that aren't just shapes and forms: things like color, lighting and shading, and framing were a lot easier to analyze and look at digitally.

day 256: lordgenome from tengen toppa gurren lagann

the motivation and validation of the people around me was essential to keeping me excited about my work. i had a really great community of friends and family members encouraging me, requesting different drawings be made for them, and generally validating that they, too, see my growth and are proud of how far it's taken me.

outside of reflecting on the specific growth in my art skills, i think the other thing i really got out of this endeavor was an immense buildup of creative motivation. i think leading into this year, the only kind of art i was creating relatively rarely/not often enough, music, was something i'd stagnated at from a skill level and really not pushed myself to grow and learn more. getting the "easy" validation from how much i grew in the initial 50 days genuinely made me feel so excited to create any kind of art at all, and motivated to try things, be ambitious, and be unafraid and unashamed of making "bad" and amateur art.

that probably sounds counterintuitive! i feel like instinctively, you'd guess that drawing so much would lead oneself to burnout and creative blocks. but surprisingly, i think that analogizing this to the overload principle of resistance training is important: if you bite off way too much more than you can chew, you'll hurt yourself; if you take too small of bites, you aren't challenging yourself at all and will quickly plateau in skill level; but if you take just big enough bites that you are challenging yourself constantly, you'll be able to progressively increase the demand on your muscles and see your capacity, endurance, and strength increase. i feel that concretely recognizing this is how most artistic media works feels obvious in hindsight after stating it, but i think it's something that never concretely clicked for me. and i do feel that my art grew the most during the year when i had bit off just a little more than i could chew on. and i think that's probably the most important thing i learned this year about myself and my ability to grow and learn.

on the other hand -- this was stressful. i feel immense relief to no longer have the pressure of something daily looming over me. as positive as i feel about the outcome, i cannot say that the deadline looming over me wasn't a massive cognitive load on me where i had to coordinate logistics around when i could feasibly get a good drawing in.

learning to draw on transit, in public places, even at live concerts, meant that i was kinda obsessively thinking about drawing and art all the time; but it also meant that i was paying attention to and appreciating my surroundings in a newer light than i've ever done before.

day 214: sketches from a concert featuring metal band architects.

# what's in store for 2026?

i think this upcoming year, i'll be focusing a lot more on finished pieces. my current plan is at least 2 more complete visual art pieces per month (pieces that evolve past sketch, and are either inked/colored physically or are digitally linearted+painted); i hope this amortizes to me doing some kind of drawing at least biweekly, in some form. i think this will probably stay in the realm i'm mostly comfortable right now: some fanart, some video game screenshots, arlo, petra (and other ocs), and self portraiture; however, i do hope that especially from the physical art perspective i can get more into landscapes and cityscapes. i really want to improve at this, and i also think it'd translate well digitally to the backgrounds i draw.

i'm excited to not be pushing myself as hard as my first year of art; i think while the regimented daily work was really important to get myself out the door, i think that the only way i can successfully resistance train my skill going forward is to push myself to have more completed pieces that i don't simply insist are sketches or doodles; but i also think that plateauing for a bit ain't a bad thing, especially when the skill level i've reached is at the point that i do feel like i'm almost able to convey my minds eye into the visual medium.

to keep up with my art in the new year, follow me on bluesky!

farewell, 2025! it was quite the busy year. the time capsule of this many drawings will certainly become much more interesting as the years go on. here's to many more years of artistic growth, creative inspiration, and joy!

day 2: self portrait, that took me about 60 minutes to do	day 350: some self portraits and doodles of arlo, that took me overall maybe 20 minutes across the 4 things on the page

and if you read to the end, thank you! this turned out much longer than expected -- i hope this held your interest; i'm still new/getting back into blog posting. i'm excited to continue talking about my 2025 art with my next post reflecting on my musical project of the year! see you in the next one.