Inspired by Austin Kleon‘s 100 things that made my year list, I wanted to do something similar. I couldn’t get to 100, though, so that’s gonna be a goal for next year. For now, enjoy my 35 highlights of 2022:
- Seeing Red Hot Chili Peppers perform live! It wasn’t the best concert I’ve been to (and I haven’t been to many), but I had a great time nevertheless.
- Everything around the release of the graphic novel METRO 010: meeting the other illustrators at the release party, seeing the book in bookstores, realizing I’m an published illustrator now!
- Being able to give a guest lecture at Mediacollege Amsterdam!
- Participating in the Power In Numbers exhibition by Gallery Nucleus again! My piece is still up for sale, and so is last year’s!
- Visiting Copenhagen with my boyfriend!
- Working on my first card game this year, Mandala Mind! It will hopefully be released beginning of next year.
- Going to Gamescom and visiting Cologne!
- Enjoying the warm weather in my own garden this summer 🙂
- Learning to identify wild plants!
- My first home-grown beans!
- Upgrading from my 10-year-old Wacom Intuos to an Huion Kamvas 24 Pro!
- Attending semi-regular figure drawing classes again!
- Starting a monthly newsletter and being able to stick with it!
- Participating in #pleinairpril and winning a 1-year subscription to Clip Studio Paint!
- Discovering the work of Esther Morales – I love the way she uses lines in her drawings, mesmerizing!
- Participating in 3 game jams this year: the Global Game Jam, Ludum Dare 50 and Ludum Dare 51!
- Setting up a new bookkeeping system that works way better than the old one! It’s still Excel, but with more formulas, haha!
- Attending a couple conventions (The Big Draw & Tomofair) and realising I don’t feel ready for more.
- Alternatively, I was able to sell more print-on-demand products via Etsy this year, which I’m very happy about!
- I also sold my very first original drawing in January!
- And of course reading through reviews of happy customers!
- The many events I attended this year, Playgrounds, Fantasy Fest, even the tiny Fantasticon.
- Meeting Eva Toorenent in Arnhem!
- Our cactus flowered for the first time! (and it got cactus fruit too!)
- Teaching animation and game design workshops to high school students! It is not always easy but the people I do this with are amazing and it is really rewarding to seeing things ‘click’ with those kids.
- Visiting the city archive to look up construction drawings of our house. Going through those old documents was pretty cool!
- Working on a very cool game project that has been shelved unfortunately! I hope we will continue working on it someday!
- BNO Start studio visits! Through this program by the Dutch Designers Association, I visited the studio of Hansje van Halem, CLEVER°FRANKE and Afdeling Buitengewone Zaken. Inspiring, even though they do very different things than me!
- Visiting Irene Goede at her atelier ‘t Koewegje during their open atelier day!
- Accidentely seeing the film Moonage Daydream (long story short: I came for another viewing that was cancelled and the lady behind the counter took pity on us and gave us tickets to this film)
- Visiting the Gustav Klimt exhibition with my sister!
- Drawing with friends at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum!
- Analysing my social media and figuring out what each platform has actually brought me! Something I can recommend every artist and creative business in general, because where you spend most time and/or effort might not be the platform that actually does something for you.
- Collecting CDs from trift shops!
- And last but not least: blogging more! I still have a lot unfinished drafts laying around that I might never finish, but writing a bit every now and then is something I really enjoy and I’m happy that I was able to do so this year!