Art Journey, 2015-2025

Adult Content Warning: there be boobs ahead.

I don’t remember when I drew this, but it was a bit before I met my wife, Chel, in May of 2015.

I was just doodling at work on paper, a silly idea in my head. I thought the idea of an orc getting made mocked for wanting to be a trainer was silly and fun.

I eventually showed it to Chel, since she was already an amazing artist, cuz I was proud of it. She encouraged me to finish the drawing and I decided to look into drawing digitally. I never had at that point, besides MS Paint.

Everything I had done before that was traditional.

It didn’t go well. I hated it. I didn’t like using a drawing tablet. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. How anything worked. Why couldn’t I draw a straight line? Very overwhelming. I didn’t ever finish it.

Later, after I had gotten over that earlier frustration, I decided to draw something and (at Chel’s request) join DeviantArt.

So yeah, I drew this:

Honestly, I was pretty god damn proud of this, at the time. I felt like I did a good job with the lighting, with the shapes, and with just the fact that I made a scene.

I showed it to Chel and she said some nice things. But she also spent a lot of time sitting with me and talking about how lighting works, how shadow works, how colors work. Honestly, I was once again overwhelmed (it was a lot of information). But this time was different. This time, I actually tried my best to keep that information in my head, internalize it, remember it for next time.

I don’t think she realizes just how important this single piece of artwork is to me (because I don’t talk about it, lol). Not because of the product, but because of the lessons she taught me after it.

Importantly, it was at that point that I started to think about how light and shadow affect the color underneath it. Where to actually put light and shadow was a whole nother problem I wouldn’t really tackle until much much later…

I started getting into pixel art, I guess. I didn’t have to worry about fancy art tools or layers or things like that. I wouldn’t call it a step back because I do love pixel art (and it’s super hard for different reasons), but it was kind of just me moving to what I thought was “easier” (wrong).

But, I did put into practice things Chel taught me.

I still love the above art. The Kopaka was done from a reference of the actual LEGO toy (obviously, no one knows how to draw Bionicle from memory).

The lighting in the wraith was me trying to understand my own light source, and you can see me try to change the color of the lit areas based on brightness instead of just “adding white” (or conversely, “adding black” to the darker areas, as was the case with Espur’s Lonely Birthday).

I think I did good! Clearly the lesson was in my brain. Let’s see how it evolved!

Um…

Hm. I can’t find any art until 2021.

In that year, Dragalia Lost was announced to be coming to a close. End of Service was November 2022. It was about then I started drawing again, but on my phone. Doodles in Samsung Notes (sometimes MS Paint). I drew a lot, but here’s just a few of them.

These aren’t in any order, and the dates on them say they were late 2022, but I dont think it’s right (moving content between devices yaayy).

It was around this time that I joined Twitter. I posted all these there and and got a little following (something like 96 followers). No one really interacted or liked anything but I drew because I loved Dragalia and wanted to do something for it.

I soon after got a Galaxy Tablet and finally felt like I could draw digitally on a screen (again, hated drawing tablets at the time). Made more fanart.

I was still learning but I was trying things out. Chel was always around to help me figure stuff out. Show me what I was missing, point out things I couldn’t see myself. I tried to keep her lessons about proportions, light, perspective, and color in mind.

By the end of 2022, Dragalia Lost was… lost lol (sorry). I still drew for it but I started to draw a bit more creatively again. Much less fanart.

I drew random designs in my head and, shockingly to me, Chel LOVED them. She praised the characters and told me a bunch of nice things, and would then ask me scary questions like, “who is she? what does she do? what’s their story? what about their name?”

I had never created an OC. But, because of the questions, I started to put (a little) thought into it. Soon I had a couple characters. Here were the first ever drawings of what would become Roxy and Nekomancer.

In comparison, here’s Roxy and Nekomancer now.

I never thought, at the time, that I’d draw them again. But they were a hit with my wife, so they stuck around. I created a few other characters that never really see the light of day.

Yeah, none of the elves really made it. I still love my Katya doodle (the right one, not the left one).

I never drew any of those characters again. But they did get a little bit of story in my head.

Now lets move to 2023!

Oh, haha. I stopped drawing.

Cuz Twitter sucked. I put stuff up and all the followers I got from the fanart stopped caring when I stopped posting DL art.

The only things I did were some MS Paint versions of friends and drawing of some frogs.

PSYCH. I DID ONE LAST DRAGALIA LOST DRAWING.

And it was a banger.

For a couple years, I called it my magnum opus. This is an insane jump in quality. Right? It’s not just me that thinks this is CRAZY?

Don’t be fooled. This wasn’t indicative of my skill as a whole. I COULD draw that well, but it took an insane amount of time and effort. This took me days. Maybe a whole week of consistent effort and sketching and lining and redrawing and crying and hand cramping. It was awful. And I was glad to be done with it.

Intrinsic validation is extremely important, yes. Doing things for yourself is what really matters. But, I aint gunna lie: No One Gave A Shit About This Drawing And It Felt Really Bad.

I did get a comment from the VA of Yachiyo, though. Which was extremely cool and I’ll remember that forever. But, yeah, that was basically it.

So, yeah, the ms paint doodles were done in January 2023, the cool Yachiyo was done in July 2023. But nothing else after that. I just honestly dropped the idea of drawing as a staple hobby for a long time.

And then came BlueSky

In 2024 (maybe 2023 idk), Chel got on bsky and started posting her art. She loved the website and gave me an invite code, urging me to join. I love her art and wanted to support her but I didn’t have much to post, myself.

I started posting the art I did have and hoped for any interaction. There wasn’t much, but it was better and more genuine than Twitter, at least. Chel did Artfight, told me I should join. The idea was really fun but I was super not confident in my art. But I said I’d start drawing again.

Here’s some early stuff from 2024

I would post some art here and there, and at some point I got 50 followers. I celebrated by Roxy drawing with extra effort and even used a reference. Wow!

This was huge for me. I already knew references were important. I used to do traditional. I wasn’t even bad. I used references for everything, but never creatively. Like, I’d draw a tree or a bike by looking at one. I’d draw my classroom, I’d draw flowers, I’d draw my dogs.

But this was me using a reference to aid my creative endeavors. To shape my original character. And it was A CRAZY IMPROVMENT over what I had been doing. It feels like “woah, when did you learn anatomy.” I didn’t, you fool. I just drew what I saw and changed the details.

I forgot to mention that I had been in my own head a lot. Thinking that my art wasn’t going to mean as much if I used references or something (stupid). I already thought they were important but I didn’t realize I was stopping my self because of… ego? Narcissism? I don’t know.

I told Chel, before I made that drawing, that I wanted to do something higher effor for 50 followers. She suggested references and even showed me how she used them. Girl, I’ve been using that knowledge ever since. Breaking down the picture into shapes, placing things by proportions, looking at positions of things relative to what’s around them. She helped me a lot.

So, yeah, that awesome Roxy picture happened and, for a while, I didn’t draw anything that good. I think I was kinda in a weird slump thinking that if I tried again, it wouldn’t stack up, yknow. I had peaked or something. I’m not sure why.

Some stuff after that drawing:

Some OC stuff here and there, more fanart, lower effort drawings. I wasn’t super confident.

It was around October, I think, that I started to draw a bit more NSFW than I was already drawing.

It was at this point I started feeling like, “Hmm. I dont wanna post this kinda stuff to bsky. What if people think weird of me.”

I argued with myself over whether or not I should open up a NSFW account to post these kinds of things. It would have me practically starting over, following-wise, but that was okay. I kinda wanted it to be anonymous (haha, ha. ha.. that lasted all of like 3 days).

So I decided on just opening a new account and using it for strictly my NSFW stuff. But it wasn’t exactly “ooga booga horny brain, gotta draw boobies” (ok just a little), it was more about taking nude references, drawing them, and dressing them up with some flair/creativity/character.

I decided I needed a mascot. So I invented April.

I sorta became obsessed with drawing the nudes because it almost felt like I leveled up after each one of them. Here are some April drawings in chronological order and you’ll see what I mean. (NSFW WARNING)

It’s kinda crazy. I ended up doing something like 40 drawings of her within a couple months, I think.

After a while of doing that, I started drawing my OCs again. I even created a bunch of new ones. Look at the difference in the art after doing so much NSFW lmao.

Althemia from Dragalia Lost, but this time with my new skill / experience.

Yeah that one Nekomancer pic was from around then.

My FFXIV character. Drew based off a pic I took. Loved the result, tbh! I was also trying to find “my style,” lol.

What you don’t see much is that most of the stuff I drew was in black and white. A lot of these are the highlights. I was doing lots of sketches, doodles, stuff that didn’t take me a lot of time. I was still, honestly, extremely afraid of color. I remembered all the stuff Chel taught me, but I was scared to really give it much of a go again. Or to like… try harder. It sucks to look back and see where my mindset was, even though I was getting out of my comfort zone in other places.

I started to ask Chel for more help. I’d show her drawings, ask for redlines, suggestions, corrections, how to color 101 again pls im dying.

I stayed scared of shading and color lol. I didn’t take many risks.

I went back to April (the vampire cutie on my NSFW account) after watching Chel stream art for a while. I tried to take into account all the little things she did, how she placed light, how she chose color. Honestly, it was stuff she told me before but it was enlightening to see it in action.

This should have gone somewhere earlier in the post but I can’t find the right spot. Chel also gave me some lessons on how to think about poses in my head. Like… probably in early 2024 or so. She’d move herself around, look at her elbow placement, take pictures of her hand, sometimes even just wiggle something without looking at it (which was somehow enough to give her an idea of how to draw it???). She’s awesome.

Yeah, so. I tried to use the coloring and shading I learned from watching her.

Like… you can see a coloring style taking shape. I’m figuring out how light works, where it shows up. Where it gets hidden. Still, I look back at these and don’t see a ton of risk taking. I THOUGHT I was taking risks (like with the heavy black outlined bandage one), but I was still clearly afraid to make waves.

Chel saw this immediately, and was always trying to tell me it’s okay to push shadows more, brighten other things up, just go ham and dont be afraid.

I remember saying stuff like “I am though!” and not really hearing her, haha.

By the end of the year, I still wasn’t pushing things.

I tried to start using other colors for light. And it was cool, I guess. But it wasn’t enough of a challenge yet, to get me out of my comfort zone.

I realized it, and actually started looking for different brushes, tried different techniques, colored differently, thought about texture, and tried to remember to push things more.

The Christmas selfie of Penny got me a lot of praise, so I started messing with that kind of stuff more. And Anais (sheep girl) got the most attention cuz she was so new and I love her.

Yeah, girls kissing, chill.

Then something important happened: I joined Castrella. I was introduced to a bunch of new artists, all hyping each other up and supporting each other. It was really nice. I made a couple characters.

I was just getting into the groove with my process. Lighting and coloring were making more sense to me and I even felt like I did a good job with the candlelit atmosphere in the picture of Juniper.

That was the end of the year. Going into 2025, I made an Art Bingo.

This is the status as of today: July 7th, 2025. I don’t have an unedited copy.

I made a lot of friends on bsky, in castrella, and it felt like people cared about my art. I was having great discussions about art with Chel, and I just felt more and more motivated to create. Chel was also making lots of art and that made me want to make more as well.

I drew a lot for friends. Friends drew for me. It’s been a lot of fun. Look at all the drawings I got of Roxy. People cared???

Nekomancer cuz i didn’t have another Roxy. by jdbuenol

I made a FUCK TON more OCs. I’m up to almost 30, now. Crazy, right???

From this point up until about May, 2025, I was doing mostly sketches and doodles.

I was just super prolific this year. According to my gallery program, I have almost 900 images (some are references i saved, some of it is gifts, some of it is duplicate images). I think the number is probably closer to 700, which is still insane. Again, MOST of it is doodles and sketches.

I think just the pure amount of drawing strengthened what I already knew. It made me more confident. Quicker. I was more comfortable with my tools and felt like I could afford to take bigger risks and try weird stuff.

So, uh. Here’s some stuff from May.

It was about HERE that suddenly I felt like I was making good art. I loved the gift I made for MuffinViking so much that I considered it the best thing I ever made.

I learned a lot from the people I met online. Just passively picking things out of peoples art, looking at it, studying it, absorbing it. Taking note of how someone did a certain color, a certain curve a line, how they draw eyes or lips or fingers.

I made a bunch of brain rotted drawings of a new OC, Piper, because (even though she wasn’t supposed to be a character at all) Chel designed a girlfriend for her.

By June 2025 I stopped caring about making perfect lines again, and just decided to draw without worry. And for some reason those came out better than when I cared??

WHAT IS HAPPENING

Then, Art Fight 2025 started on July 1st (it’s only July 7th, now). And I feel so strange looking at the stuff I’ve done for people in the past week. It doesn’t feel real. How did I go from this: