Hello there! And happy new year :)

Welcome Reader to the first issue of 2025! Now released on Tuesday morning, like I announced last time.

It's going to be a big year for me, but this Newsletter Club will stay the same and continue on its track. I received a lot of positive comments about last week's newsletter, so I'm glad you're enjoying the ride with me 🩷

And this week sure was a wild ride!

Unprecedented progress

The new year has just started, and I’m already astonished by what is happening:

Like many of you I’m sure, I took the opportunity of this change of calendar to reflect and anticipate how this year will look like. And when thinking about the book, I started counting how long it would take me to bring it to fruition...

The result? The book would be finished on the 20th of February.

Not published yet, but simply finished. That’s such a long time!

I have a lot more things planned for this year, so I took it into my own hand to arrive at this milestone way earlier.

First of all, as promised last week, I’ve completed the ink for the whole book!!

For this final stretch, the thing that helped me a lot is also something I have discarded for a long time: warm up sketches.

It turns out that spending an extra 10 minute to freely sketch from imagination is very helpful to get into the drawing mood.

I’ve noticed that I’ve been more willing to tackle texture or complex hands after a little warmup. I wish I had tried this sooner!

It’s a lesson learned for the future: sometimes, it is worth it to not jump straight into the task and let your brain adapt to it first.

But that’s not all! I’ve found another helpful trick for my illustration process, this time regarding colors...

Colors are challenging for me, unlike for example composition it doesn’t come naturally and require more of my attention. This is why I’ve mostly worked from existing color palettes in the past!

When you add color to an illustration, you’re confronted with two tasks: finding the right color, and filling it correctly.

It takes some time to properly define the shape of each object, but not that much brain energy, so I decided to “color block” first: disregarding the colors, simply have each element have a solid color, no matter which one.

And I’m happy to report that I’ve not only done so for the totality of the illustration needing colors, but also that it indeed saves a lot of time!

To properly color an illustration, I simply need to lock the opacity (meaning I don’t go above the line) and find the proper shade.

Using this simple extra step, I have colored 4 more illustrations!

I told you, the ink was the hardest part; but now that it’s done, I feel free!

So what’s left to do now?

There is still 6 more illustrations that need some proper colors, and then will be time for the shading, adding shadows and highlights. And I’m keeping the front cover for the end!

I’m still unsure how much time the shading step will require: I would like to improve the depth between the foreground and the background for example.

According to my retro-planning, the coloring is due for the 24th of January. We will see how much earlier I’ll manage to get there!

Thank you for following my progress, as always 🩷

I organized an Art Secret Santa! (and made some art for it!)

There is a tiny project I haven't told you about in this newsletter: I've organized a Secret Santa!

It took place on the Fediverse, the network that powers Mastodon. I know some of you found me here, but I'm sure a lot of you don't even know about it; this is why I haven't share it here yet :)

​But this network is where I spend a lot of my time, so I decided to create a little event to connect with more artists. Each participant made a request for an illustration, and each got assigned another person's request to be their Santa!

In total 10 people joined, a lot I didn't know beforehand, and 8 of them posted their gift! And here they are!

To the two that were left without a present, because life happens and get busy around the Holidays, I've decided to step in and fulfill their requests myself 🎅

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This was a fun event to organize, and I found some new artists this way; so mission accomplished!

That’s it for this week! I rambled a lot about the book, but as promised there was a lot to talk about haha

See you next week! And in the meantime,

Take care,
- Nighten