2018! Thank you for such an amazing year

It's one of those times when I have a hard time believing how lucky I am. I have you and you always have my back, so that I can keep drawing pictures for a living. It's insanely wonderful! Thank you so, so much for your support. You are making a huge difference in my life!

Now, I threatened you with a long post about 2018 and here we are. If you don't want to read all this stuff and scroll down to the bottom, there's an attachment that includes phone and desktop wallpapers as well as new Photoshop gradients I made today.

It's been a crazy year!

I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas and took the time to be with your friends and family.

Since I wasn't in a festive mood (I never am, to be honest), I started  changing stuff around the apartment. I painted furniture, purged a bunch  of items I had no use for anymore, and right now, I'm feeling slightly  dizzy from some strong varnish fumes. My boyfriend is a tiny bit annoyed  with me, but it's just one of those things that I have to do every  couple of months. I'm a minimalist at heart and I can't stand having a  ton of things around me. But because of my work – especially the online  store – the apartment has gotten crammed over the last few months.  Shipping materials have no proper place to go, so it was about time to  make some changes. But hey, this is not a freakin' Pinterest blog entry,  so let's talk about some other stuff!

I should start  off by saying that 2018 has probably been the best year of my life. For  the first time ever I feel like a complete human being! The last few  years have been ~80% focused on work, which left me little time for  relationships and self-care. But this year, everything started falling  into place  and I can't stress enough what a huge difference it makes  for my well-being. I was able to cut down my work daily hours to 4-7 per  day (from-9-12 in previous years). One thing that helped with that was  applying the 80/20 rule to eliminate stuff that just wasn't that  effective or that didn't make me happy. So YouTube videos and some other  things had to go and make room for more important projects and tasks. I  also starting tracking my work hours to be able to see how much time I actually spent on things. And it's a great way to separate work and free time since I know exactly when I'm off the clock.

I also stuck to my rule not to take freelance jobs anymore and said no  to a few "dream jobs" (Marvel and DC among them). Just because I know  myself well enough that I'd be happier doing my own thing. That being  said, I'm pretty happy with the illustrations I created this year. I  can't believe I painted so many backgrounds and I can't wait to explore  more environments, characters and stories next year.  

 One thing that was important to me was  trying to establish a deeper connection with my audience. After planning  it for so long, I finally went to my first few conventions and met a  ton of amazing people. I do my best to be present and open on social  media, but there's nothing quite like those face-to-face conversations.  When someone tells me that my art means something to them, it gives me  all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings. It makes me want to keep going and  make better and more meaningful work that inspires people.

I already mentioned that I cut down work  hours and another thing that goes hand-in-hand with it is this: I  allowed myself more me-time and vacations this year. Where it's all been  about work before, I now gave myself room to breathe and to take care  of myself. I went to Amsterdam, Kopenhagen and Dublin without feeling  guilty about it. I also picked up learning Japanese again after learning  some basics in 2009. I'm making a conscious effort to maintain hobbies  and to "work on" myself apart from art and it feels pretty great, even  if I'm making very slow progress.

And then there are some items that I was able to cross off my bucket  list: I made it into Spectrum: Fantastic Art (full page, yay!) and I was  invited to be a guest on my favourite web show One Fantastic Week.

My favourite TV shows and books in 2018 

A little disclaimer: These didn't necessarily come out this year, but that's when I watched or read them. And hey, I'd love to hear yours! I'm always happy about suggestions, especially if you feel like we've got the same taste.

TV shows

• Dark
• Mindhunter
• The Haunting of Hill House
• Stranger Things (Season 2)
• The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Books

• A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki)
• Six of Crows & Crooked Kingdom (Leigh Bardugo)
• Journey Under the Midnight Sun (Keigo Higashino)
  
   

So, what's next? 

If I'm being honest, I just want 2019 to be  the same as this year. A few more convention and maybe a trip to Japan  and a nice summer vacation and it would be absolutely perfect.

But one big thing I'm working towards is releasing an art book. Since  I'm not crazy about page layouts and shipping a ton of books, I thought  I'd try to go the same route as Loish and Heikala. They teamed up with a  publisher (3D Total) and did a Kickstarter. That way, they only handled  a part of the whole process - delivering the content and promoting the  campaign - and the publisher designed and distributed the books. That  would be my ideal scenario. Buuut both artists have have a lot more  artwork and social media followers than me. So my plan is to build my  audience to 300k on Instagram and to create more finished illustrations  and THEN I'm going to approach a publisher and see if they'd like to  collaborate. Maybe at the end of next year, who knows how quickly things  progress. :)

Extra Goodies

I made three desktop and phone wallpapers  with my artwork - ready to use! And if you're an artist using Photoshop,  you might enjoy this: I personally love using Gradient Maps in my process to tint my pieces and play around with different colour schemes.  Just today, I made a ton of new gradients that I'm sharing with you  now. I hope you like this!

See you for the livestream tomorrow!

-Djamila