2007
I think this was the year I was most engaged with art school and I hate to say it but that wasn't much. While I was definitely learning things in my classes I had some personal life issues that had more of my attention and in spite of the kind of work I was doing I was orbiting the idea that illustration wasn't the career I wanted at the time. Arguably more important for my artistic development was accepting an invitation to a forum which exposed me to a group of artists who were mostly older than me and/or pretty serious. We traded critique, encouragement, and drawings of each other's characters and between that and a few good friends I made at school I found a little bit of groundedness and was able to keep practicing regularly.

I was moving back toward a more realistic style and while my anatomy got more solid, something weird was going on with people's faces. It bothers me in retrospect but I don't think I really noticed at the time. Ugh. Anyway, I was doing some things I like with color at least which is sort of ironic because I balked at the idea of traditional painting pretty hard back then. I also began narrowing the focus of my writing and turning my scraps of story ideas into something that could probably have become a novel if I'd stuck with it.

My big influences other than friends and contemporaries were pin up artists from the early-mid 20th century, Spectrum fantasy art compilation books, and Harry Clarke (who I discovered in a pleasantly magical way via my grandma's cool old copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination).

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