Hi there Reader!

I hope you're doing fantastic!

This week edition will be a bit shorter than usual, as I have been extremely drained by work recently; so I sadly didn't had much energy left for art 🌱

But despite this, I have some progress and inspiring things to share with you! Welcome back 😊

A milestone in my art journey :)

If you’ve been following my art, you’ve probably noticed that I love to draw illustration and landscapes 🪴

But this wasn’t always the case!

Like a lot of artists, I was dreading making anything more complex than a colored backdrop for my characters (what I was actually interested in). And because I was dreading it so much, my background were not improving; often being absent or ridiculously simple.

I’m happy that I broke out of this mentality; that I decided to tackle the challenge instead of hiding it.

And the time I did it fully was actually 2 years ago! Almost exactly, as I finished this illustration on the 14th of May 2023.

If you ever visited my online gallery (that I need to update!), you’ll notice that this is the very first one listed on there :)

It wasn’t the first time I drew a background, but it was for me the first “canonical” piece: the one were I decided to use a specific format, a specific technique, and strive to become really good at illustration.

Now after 2 years, I’m so happy to look back and see how much progress I have made! 😊

I found out by accident that this piece had its birthday, and I couldn’t help but share my joy with you!

As for my current illustration, I had very little time this week but I finished the sketch!

I’m excited to show you the progress next week, as always ✨

Dream art, extreme BBQ

There is a game I’ve played recently, and since then I can’t stop thinking about it!

What I want to share with you today is ENA: Dream BBQ, a surreal adventure game that indeed feels like a dream (and has not much to do with barbecues).

For context, and if the name ENA doesn’t ring a bell, it was at first a series of animation made by Joel G:

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Many episodes later, the concept grew to such popularity that the ENA team was formed, and now the first episode of the game is release!

Instead of doing a review on it, I will simply encourage you to play the game (it’s free! and very good!) and tell you why it inspired me so much :)

What I loved so much in this project is the amount of creative energy that went into it: ideas are everywhere, in characters, location, little details, secret rooms… it’s a very generous game, and I was honestly not expecting this going into it.

Critically, it doesn’t take the safe route for any of those ideas! Being a self proclaimed surreal game helps in that regards, but even with that expectation the game as a lot of way to surprise you.

Ultimately, I found the game very touching despite it’s absurdity.

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I have been listening to the soundtrack a lot after completing it.

I love weird and “extreme” art: Art that is unapologetically itself.

Not because they are shocking or different, but because beneath the surface you can still feel the creator reaching out to you.

ENA could have been just a non-sensical joke game and that would have been fine, Tchaikovsky could have NOT considered a cannon as an instrument, Tim Rogers’ reviews could have been objective and 20 minutes long.

I found ENA inspiring, not because I want to create something similar, but because its boldness and care are worth striving for.

(Unrelated, but I I love the definition of unapologetically)

A fun character exercise!

But another thing ENA inspired me to do was to work on my characters!

You see, coming back to the first section of this newsletter (it's all coming together!), I've been working so hard on my landscape these past 2 years that I've been putting characters on the side. A lot of them look similar, and I've been playing safe with their designs.

And the game is so full of interesting characters that I really felt like something needed to be done.

To remedy that, I told you last week in the outro that I've been sketching more characters in my sketchbook.

Sadly much of it are smudged pencil drawing, and I had very little time this week to clean them. However, I did a fun exercise I wanted to show you!

The goal was simple: make a few random blob shapes, and fill them all with characters!

Some are more creative than others, but for a exercise that didn't take me that much time this felt effective.

My favorite are the hunchback grandma and the old backpacker; none I would have come up with if not for the weird shapes of the blobs. If you're an artist, why not give it a try!

When making up characters I thought I had issues with finding ideas, but what I was lacking was instead constraints and goals: it's hard to design something if you have no direction to aim for.

I will keep it in mind!

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Thank you for reading this week's issue!
I hope to come back next week with more energy and pretty art to show you :)

Until then, have a fantastic week and as always,

Take care!
- Nighten