You may have noticed that a lot of the stuff I've been putting up are things I've done for other people.  This is kind of odd for me.  On the one hand, most of my actually finished artwork happens to be for other people, because it's often the only motivation for me to really finish anything.  But on the other hand, I don't typically like to do art for people, because I see it first and foremost as a way of personal expression.

For that reason, most of my art that people see publicly happens to look (hopefully) nice and pretty and aesthetically appealing, because as a gift to someone, I want that person to have pleasant feelings when she or he sees it.  But making these cards felt especially awkward at first for me, maybe because I was very purposely doing them with the aim of people-pleasing (where "people" refers to the recipients), and I've never been quite so intentionally aware of having such goals.

However, these cards and birthday gifts have been good for me, because my relative lack of experience with making nice cards means that I get to see these as opportunities to try something different I may not have thought of doing before.  Like "Oh, I didn't know what would happen if I tried this, but somehow it's turned out well!"  And I enjoy doing them a lot, because they're for people I love.

But then, I got kind of annoyed when people are like, "Wow, this is pretty!  You should make cards for a living!"  Because, I guess, in the end, I don't do art with the goal of making something pretty.  Most of what I hope to eventually draw is not stuff you'd want to put on a greeting card.  No, what I really want to do with my art is to present something that causes the viewer to feel what I feel, and to share a part of Life from my perspective.  And, you know, Life isn't always pretty or optimistic or rosy, and I guess the suggestion of making happy-pretty cards outside of the context of being between friends, simply for the sake of making pretty things, feels like I'm not being taken seriously as an artist who has the potential to move people.

And then I feel kind of weird about putting pictures of personal gifts up afterwards for other people to see, but I do think they're sort of artistic achievements that I'm proud of, so I dunno.

As a not so important note, I've been churning out cards on red paper like crazy because I initially bought a sheet for my roommate's Christmas card (which I won't be uploading because I don't have pictures of it) and now I'm still trying to use it up.