Good morning Reader 👋

This week, oh boy, things didn't go as planned; because yes, you read the title correctly: I was forced to take a break to recover!

So this week will be a smaller, more focused newsletter issue, where I will tell you what happened and what illustration I'm working on now :)

Drawing the future I want 🪁

I’m really excited to share with you the next illustration I’m working on today :)

Here was the idea this time: I wanted to draw something a bit more high-level, with a stronger concept, and go more towards genres such as Solarpunk.

If you don’t know, Solarpunk is an aesthetic of a utopian post-climate change ecological future, something hopeful and optimistic. My art was actually compared to this genre on more than one occasion!

If you look at my art, you can actually see that I often love to include wind turbines and solar panels :)

You see, there are a lot of reasons to be worried about the future; sadly I’m sure you would agree whatever your beliefs are.

But over the years, seeing how clean energy has evolved - solar panels in particular are getting incredibly efficient! - gave me a lot of hope for the future. And that’s what I want my art to give people: hope 🌿

As I narrowed in on the concept for this illustration, I however realized that solarpunk feels very distant and idealistic; so I decided to instead display a more “grounded” landscape to make it feel closer to us.

And that’s how I came up with this final sketch!

But then...

Disaster strikes

Everything was going great; I had my sketch done, and I was excited to already start the inking during the weekend.

But that’s when, without warning, on Friday morning, I made a wrong movement and badly injured myself: I had a back muscle strain, and it was painful to do any kind of movement :(

I did my best to survive the day at work, barely able to move from my chair!

And it continued for almost the whole weekend: it was very hard for me to do anything, let alone lean over my tablet to draw.

Thankfully I was being taken care of by my girlfriend and future wife, and after some rest I was even able to do almost half the inking!

And I’m doing better now!

On the topic, I can share a fun fact about my art: I always eyeball the perspective.

Common wisdom dictates that you should use perspective grids, vanishing points and other tools in order to get the volume and perspective correct. But I do none of that!

“A bisto de nas” as we say in Occitan 😌 (literally “at sight of nose,” i.e. intuitively)

Now, I have used those techniques years ago, and this helped me internalize a lot of rules! But I don’t rely on them anymore, which sometimes creates mistakes, weird lines and shapes… But I accept this. I vastly prefer my art to be imperfect rather than too stiff or sterile.

Alright, in any case, I’m excited to show you some more progress next week :)

Cutting corners ▢✨

Ah! Quick side note before I go!

You know that recently I’ve focused a lot on improving my equipment and packaging, like I showed you in last week’s issue!​

To continue on this theme, I also received a corner rounder this week! :)

I always dreamed of having one of those, and I finally made the decision to get one!

But what does it do that’s so special? Well, it rounds corners as the name implies. Nothing more. But to me that creates such a big difference!

Typically here with my business cards, I think they look absolutely adorable with their corners cut this way!

Not only that, but it also makes them more durable. So I went ahead and cut all of the cards I had left this way, and I’m super happy with the effect!

(Plus my back wasn’t involved in the cutting, a big advantage!)

And that’s it, I just wanted to show you how cute they are now :)

Q&A! - How did I get into art

Last minute addition! This week one of you left me a nice question in my straw page!​

First of all, thanks a lot for your message!

I started drawing more “seriously” since I was a teenager, but it was one of my many interests along with game programming (I published more than 20 tiny games online!), writing, making websites, and many others. Looking back, I was really spread thin amongst all my interests, so it took a while to get really good at any of them.

It’s only been 2 years ago (we celebrated recently!) since I started to really focus on illustration, rather than just drawings, and on backgrounds, which I always avoided before.

You can see (almost) all the art I made up to that point in my gallery :)

And how do I juggle my art with my day job? Barely 😄

I sometimes work late or have other obligations, so I try my best to squeeze time during the weekend and sometimes the evenings for drawing and writing this newsletter (which takes a lot of time!). It’s hard, but I’m pretty lucky to not have kids yet taking up my time, so I cannot complain!

As long as I can make progress every week I’m happy 🌸

Thanks again for the question! If you have one you would like me to answer, please do not hesitate to write it down here :) 🍓

​https://nightenart.straw.page/​

Alright! That's it for this week's more laid-back edition of my newsletter!

It's nice to have a lighter edition from time to time, as always I need to remind myself to keep it concise; I'm sure you too have a very busy life! But I appreciate you sticking around and following my artistic journey :)

I'll see you next week with more progress on the illustration, and maybe other cool things along the way!

I wish you the best for this week Reader, and in the meantime,

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Take care,
- Nighten

This email is part of my art Newsletter. Invite a friend to join the club: https://club.nighten.fr​

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