Remember and Look Forward
The New Year is almost here!
For most of my life I never set any “New Year’s Resolutions.” I thought it was dumb to do so. I knew I wouldn’t follow them. Like everyone else, I imagine I’d forget them. I also didn’t have anything I was aiming for. But now I do have some big goals I want to aim for. And I think setting yearly goals can be encouraging for me as an artist to see my progress. In view of that I decided to set a couple of resolutions for 2018.
But before I go on to those, I think it’s also nice to look back and see what I’ve accomplished this year. I think it’s healthy to “count your blessings,” see how much you’ve done. Good self-care practice. And that way, next year I’ll have a point of comparison!
2017 Accomplishments
Art
I created the visuals for the three shows the Calvin Theatre Company is doing in the 2017-18 school year
I helped conceptualize a video and Christmas card for Calvin College.
During the Summer I dedicated myself to creating art and made about 10 different art pieces without anyone telling me to.
I started making commissions and made 10 different personal commissions of people. You can check some of them on my Instagram.
Made a little bit more than $1000 through art commissions and print sales.
Social Media
Reached 500 followers on Instagram. With 9,000 likes on 172 posts!
Reached 300 followers on Facebook.
Reached 33 followers on Twitter? I mean, every follower counts right?
Blog
I think one of my biggest accomplishments has been this blog. This was the year I started it, and while it’s still small, and had some struggles with it, I’ve been able to post somewhat often and it has encouraged me in my writing, reading, and drawing. Here’s a couple of benchmarks for the blog:
1,156 Views (With a record of more than 241 in December!)
555 Unique visitors
72 Likes
25 Followers
14 Comments
The top three most viewed blog posts are: Orange Unicorn, I’ve Done Enough, and my Illustrations portfolio page.
45 Total blog posts. With 10 of those being my Orange Unicorn webcomic. And 10 of those being for my What Made Me Cry This Week series.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that this is just the beginning. But I’m thankful for moments like these, where I can take a breather, look back and remember what I’ve done and accomplished in one year.
But what’s to come?
2018 New Year’s Resolutions
I have a couple Major goals and a couple of Minor ones. The Major ones all relate to my art, while the Minor ones relate to health, relationships, travelling, church, etc.
Major Goals
I want to start my Youtube channel. I already have a couple of ideas bubbling – like a section called “Knitting my Thoughts Away,” and just like how I used the Summer to launch this blog I want to use this coming summer to launch my Youtube channel. I already have a profile set up if you’d like to follow so you don’t miss it when I start posting.
I also am planning on participating in two different ComicCons to test out the waters on selling my art at these types of events. I’ll be going to AniMinneapolis, and I’m hoping as well to get into the Grand Rapids ComicCon. With this goal I hope I’m able to make $5000 through commissions, prints and freelance work with my art.
I want to participate in ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. If you don’t know ArtPrize is this huge Art festival, where the whole city is filled with art and people walk around seeing lots of cool art. There’s some prizes and such, but honestly, I just want to do it for the fun and thrill of it!
To continue growing my Blog, and other social media audience. I want to reach more than 1000 followers on Instagram. You can always help out my referring my Instagram account to your friends!
Get a freelancing gig with an Illustration agency. I’m hoping to have this help me with bills during the summer! It’d be great to get some work experience in before I graduate.
Start work on a graphic novel (Writing).
Wow. I think that’s it! It’s a lot. Or at least it feels like it is. But it’s what we got for now. It will be awesome if in a year I look back and see that I accomplished all of them!
Onwards!
Minor Goals
To continue practicing yoga twice a week, and to start another form of physical activity
To make more friends and deepen the relationship with the ones I already have
To get a cat
To travel to one foreign country that I haven’t gone to yet
To get back to going weekly to church
To finish an Age of Empires story campaign
To read 20 books
Some of these are kind of silly and I don’t know how serious I’ll be in pursuing them, so I guess if they happen it will be more by accident than overtly conscious effort? Anyways. I think this is it!
It’s been a great year for me. With many struggles along the way, with much learning as well. I hope I don’t forget the lessons I’ve learned this year, and that next year will be an even better year!
Here’s to 2018!
And if you’d like to share below some of your New Year’s resolution I’d love to hear from you! It’s always good to write these down 🙂
Your support means a lot to me: it helps me keep going. So if you’d like to stay updated with the webcomic make sure to follow the blog – button is off to the side!
You can also follow my Facebook Art page, Instagram (@jandrewgilbert), and Twitter (@jandrewgil), for updates.
#HappyNewYear #selfcare #settinggoals #practicingselfcare #growingasanartist #makegoals #artistsnewyearsresolution #growasanartist #practiceselfcare #Newyearsresolutions