It's been awesome seeing everyone's entries! Here's mine. I wanted to approach this illustration as an extension of my Inktober 52 series - just my brush pen and linework (with a little digital cleanup right at the end ;))

Oh, and I forgot to share my favorite piece that I worked on this year. It was this Adventureland poster, because it let me define a new detailed, retro style for myself in vector, while limiting myself to 7 colors. Also hippos.

The first time I did Inktober, I did daily sketches and stuck to the prompt list, so this year, I wanted to try something different. I chose to challenge myself in multiple ways: create one scene for the entirety of Inktober, make it so that all the characters have to interact with each other, and work traditionally (meaning that I wouldn't have the option of drawing the characters separatly and pasting them together, or undoing my way out of layout or rendering mistakes). Since that seemed like a difficult enough task, I decided to make it a fan art piece, and went with the Battle of Hogwarts. Maybe 3 Point Perspective's running gag of using a civil war battle scene as an example played some part in that decision.

I like Jake's rule of planning 3 uses for each piece of art, so 1) this is my piece for Inktober, 2) I will be painting it for Slowvember (I'm drawing it on 300 lb watercolor paper), and 3) I'll used a scanned version of the final drawing and the traditional painting as a guide to paint the piece digitally as well.

Here's the progress for Week 1, Days 1-4:

Painted this piece for an exhibition this coming weekend at a local gallery in Dallas. Love working traditionally, and I'm focused on finding more avenues to do so this year.

The final drawing!

Here's my first time posting to the forums! I made this little big guy in response to the "breakable" prompt for Inktober. I had a blast getting away from the computer and getting my hands on real ink and watercolors.

Playing with Spectrum Noir and Copic markers this morning.

Finally able to get to a project where I need to create groups of animals for 9 posters, and just completed the first group tonight. Also, I think sometimes you just have to illustrate a happy pig.

Day 1: Kreacher. This year I'm doing the whole thing with my brush pen on one 12x24" piece of 300 lb watercolor paper, so this guy's only 3.5" tall.

Alright, things are starting to fill out and come together. Here's the progress through Week 2, Days 5-11.

Congratulations!!!

@Gaelle-Grizzly Beautiful work!

My second entry in the jungle and exotic animals poster series visits India. I realize now how much I’d love to illustrate “The Jungle Book.” Gonna go ahead and add that to the bucket list.

@Braden-Hallett Great idea! Way better than my opening the last PSD file and clicking through every layer's blending mode when I start a new project.

First illustration for 2021 is my entry in the Robot Arena Deathmatch Character Design Challenge.

I have three Instagram accounts - one for all my illustration work, one for my sculpture work, and one that's only for posts about personal life and my kids. But I don't split things up for based on the media or intended audience (I let the hashtags do that), so on my aj.illustrates account there's a mix of sketchbook work, pen and ink, watercolors, vector, and photoshop, because it's all me. For that same reason, I do cross-polinate: I'll post finished sculptures on my illustration account and use that post to point to my sculpture account, I'll include character design drawings on my sculpture account to show the design process and how illustration and sculpture overlap, and I'll make mention of my kids and some of the projects we do together in both illustration and sculpture accounts (for example, they have been doing Inktober 52 with me, so include their ink drawings as subsequent slides on my posts, and that really connects for some of my followers).

Basically, I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer. It's up to you to decide what you want your Instagram to be, and then, through trial and error over years, dial it in to be as effective as possible to showcase your artwork, yourself, and your creative journey.

For Christmas this year, I wanted to thank my teammates at work for sticking through 2020 with me by surprising them with ornaments featuring their pets. Jason doesn’t have a pet, so he got Dobby from Harry Potter.

@Griffin You definitely have a style! Do you know what market you are aiming for? My initial feeling is that your style would look great in editiorial pieces and to accompany online articles, or as chapter heading illustrations for middle grade and young adult books.

@NessIllustration Great stuff!

@Jeremy-Ross Thanks!