NEW YEAR, NEW ART - Closing the year 2015 and opening art commissions for 2016

Happy new year, everyone!

How can 2015 be over? I'm in denial and using a planner from 2015 that was too pretty to throw away unused. Will be confused about which day of the week it is for the whole year, but it's probably worth it anyway.

After a very hectic and kind of restless December, January is much more relaxing. I'm back on Jeju after having been away for over a month - don't misunderstand, I love traveling! Switzerland, Paris, Seoul, it was wonderful to be there, but traveling with all my art supplies and several commissions that have to be crammed in while catching up with all my friends and family is always tiring me out.

Yeah, yeah, as if eating and playing around was hard.

Also, my luggage was the strangest beast ever, with a mixture of interior design objects we bought on sale in Switzerland to take to Jeju, gifts from the Korean family to the Swiss family and the other way 'round, the mentioned art supplies, A2 paper, all sorts of food we can't find in Korea and absolutely had to stuff in (who doesn't want goat cheese in their handbag?) aaaand Christmas gifts aaaaaaand cookies from two grandmothers aaaaaaaaaaaand (for the trip from Seoul to Jeju) a CAT.

You talkin' about me? Miaow!

As for traveling:

It looks so peaceful...

... and beautiful...

...with food everywhere.

Everywhere, I said.

With a coffee here and there to change things up.

Food again. (Fondue!)

... You get the drift.

Rant over. I'm so glad to be home and a lazy bum again.

Like this.

As for blogging new year resolutions: I'm very motivated and very intimidated at the same time, haha!

On the beauty front, there are a lot of reviews lined up - especially for some of the newer makeup releases in Korea. Also, I FINALLY own a mirror that isn't a handmirror, so I can now use both hands for applying makeup and everything has gotten a lot less shaky, which makes me want to up my skills and maybe even do some tutorials. As if anyone could learn anything from me.

It's a game-changer.

On the art front:

I've started and finished a variety of things last year. 2015 was a turning point in my 'career', if you can even call it that. I'd done commissions before, but had mostly worked as a Manga artist since my first year of art school. While it was so fulfilling and fun to work on books, it also consumed all of my drawing time and while I have, by now, several books under my belt, I'm still a relative newbie to the whole 'freelancing' thing.

... a deserved (??) art haul
Seoul has the best art stores. My favorite paper!

After finishing my last book in spring 2015, I wanted to try something new. I started working as a freelance illustrator, accepting odd illustration jobs - and slowly, out of those, came projects and art styles I really grew to love. Children's picture books. Makeup illustrations. Blogging as a whole.

One of the makeup illustrations I enjoyed the most! Flatlay feelings!

And a LOT of freedom, all of a sudden. I didn't have to spend every day working on a seemingly never-ending number of comic pages. There were less creative decisions I had to wrack my mind with. I had time to meet friends, to eat dinner with my husband, to study up on my Korean. I even got a cat - something I could never have imagined while drawing comics, which are just too all-consuming.

My ONLINE SHOP is open again, too. So if you don't want custom illustrations,
there's prints and stickers and mirrors....

Of course, I miss it anyway. If 2016 brings me another opportunity to work as an author or manga artist, I'll grab it very, very tightly. I just don't feel quite ready to dive into it head-first all over again, as there are too many other things I love dearly and wouldn't want to sacrifice.

For the moment, I'll continue doing illustrations for smaller and larger companies (some stuff I can never even show you here because it's either copyrighted or would bore you to tears) and hopefully expand on my whole makeup artwork thingy I've got going on here!

You can find my commission rates for social media illustrations (icons, brand logos, personalized blog headers or youtube banners) and portraits in the custom art section of my Etsy shop.

Thank you for reading this very random, picture-heavy and kind of useless blogpost. I wanted to ramble a bit before getting my serious face on for the next year! Hope you have a great 2016 ahead of you!