New Year. New BEGINNING or Fresh Breaths of Air on Illustration Friday.

     Yay! It, Once Again is Illustration Friday!  Ironically this week's topic is BEGINNING and Illustration Friday is always celebrated, obviously, on a Friday which is the end of the work week.  This week I wanted to create/extend an idea/piece that I had previously posted 2 weeks ago for the topic of TIME.  It's the January piece from my calendar portfolio.

     When I was thinking up ideas for BEGINNING for this week's project, I kept keep coming back to January and illustration the New Year's Baby again.  Not just any New Year's Baby, it would be the incarnation of the New Year's Baby from the January Illustration.

     I have been, in previous SketchBlog Posts, discussing my LARGE Long Term project this year of scrapping my current portfolio for one that works: in the sense of creating a body of work with a breadth of diversity; diversity, not only in medium, but in subject matter and also of subjects.
I embarrassingly admit that I committed the ultimate in Illustration portfolio travesties.  I had created an entire portfolio of smiling white children.  I wasn't showing the great diversity of the youth in America nor even in my own circle of friends.  The issue of not illustrating the diversity of race in my portfolio, I also didn't illustrate the diversity of human emotion, let alone little people emotions.  I was so unbelievably nose hair close to working on the calender pieces and then building my website then getting everything together to introduce my art to the Illustration/Publishing world that I never really stopped for a single second to look at it again and realize I had made some truly major mistakes. 

     I, honestly, have no one else to blame for this except myself my own stubborn nature. Like I said before.... QUITE embarrassing. 

     So why do I share this embarrassing story with you all? It is to acknowledge the true reason I am scrapping this portfolio and saying goodbye to that past and embracing the future of where my Illustration is going.  And this is the reason I felt strongly this week to take that Character, the New Years Baby, the embodiment of change and new life, and re-illustrate him again in a new light... a new Beginning.  He represents, symbolically my mission this year to build something new that I can be proud and not embarrassed to put out into the world and to bury (but in a good way) that artistic past endeavor. 

     I admit, it has been a Breath of FRESH Air ever since I made this difficult decision to go back to the beginning of what I started SO Long Ago and Start Anew.  There is also irony in the sense that what I have spent a few hours this week creating, this illustration, is exactly what I have decided to say goodbye to: a Little Smiling Singular White Baby.  I have considered keeping January in the mix of the NEW Portfolio, but still haven't decided for sure if it will get booted for a stronger piece or idea.  I thought it personally poetic to keep a reminder of my mistakes close to me so that I may never forget and, hopefully, not make a mistake like it again.

     I have resolved to Start Fresh from this NEW BEGINNING and Also enjoy the rest of my Friday and look forward to the Upcoming Weekend. WOOHOO! :0)   I wish the same for you all out there in the World. Good Luck to your NEW ENDEAVORS This New Year!

until next time...
Keep sketching, keep thinking, keep laughing and most important of all, keep making art. 
Cheers,
LEWIS