Yello's Art History

I like making pretty pictures.

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My ENTIRE art journey...so far:

The beginning of my journey (2014 - 2018)

Growing up, I had an fascination with roadmaps, so I would start drawing my own imaginary city street maps on lined paper at school. But I would've never considered myself an artist. Aside from the mandatory art classes in school, I never attended any art clubs or lessons outside of that. If I had to draw something, God knows what 7 year old me would've conjured up.

Fast forward to Smash 4's release, I was so into the game that I became fixated with those beautiful high-quality renders of my favorite characters. So I took a stab at trying to draw them out by hand during school. Unfortunately, I no longer have any proof of those drawings, but I remember drawing Jigglypuff, Rosalina and Luma, Robin, and of course, my boy Yoshi. I actually have a completely different drawing of Yoshi's side profile from back then as the last remaining evidence of what some might say as "observational drawing practice".

Art as an escape (2018 - 2019)

Throughout high school, I wanted to learn how to make games. So I made the mistake of choosing computer science as a way to learn, like any young naive gamer. Instead of learning level design, graphics, and what made games fun, I was forced to learn how to simulate an elevator and how to program things as efficiently as possible. I quickly realized that I'm not a very logical person. I would get frustrated and sometimes emotional when some random code that wasn't working the way I wanted, as if it's being particularly rude to me. But I felt trapped because I didn't know any other subjects that I would be interested in, let alone something artistic. So I kept clinging onto computer science throughout all 4 years of high school...and I hated it.

And that bled into my college application process. I was doing computer science for so long, that I felt like I had no choice but to choose it as my major, despite never really caring for it. That turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. My indecision led me to having the WORST first college semester ever. I hated all of my classes, I hated what I was learning, I hated everything that had to do with this major. So, after so much inner turmoil, I decided that enough was enough. I need to choose a different path. What path? I had no idea. So I chose something that I remembered doing on my own: drawing. I didn't take any lessons and never really practiced, but I just needed some way out.

So after somehow convincing my parents about my plans, I began the process of swtiching majors, a semester into my college experience. I hadn't done any research and I had no idea what I was even capable of within the art field. But I was willing to give it a try. I remembered having to talk to various counselors and professors to make it happen. I had absolutely no portolio to show, so I had to build one from scratch, with what litte skills I had. I absolutely did not wanna delay graduating even a semester late, so within those couple last months of that semester, I hunkered down and conjured up as many pieces I could muster up with my new sketchbook.

I'm not gonna act like I was this prodigy right out the gate. But honestly looking at my very first real attempts at drawing, I'm shocked at how decent I was with creating semi-accurate depictions of objects. I remember even getting myself a humble little drawing tablet for my very slow Windows 8 laptop to take a stab at digital drawing, which I ended up really liking over traditional drawing. So I grinded out as many quality pieces as I could and against all odds, I managed to enter the art degree pathway...with no prior experience. This will always be one of my proudest moments because I managed to crawl myself out of such a dark time of bitterness and confusion through determination and discipline. I'm pretty sure I would be miserable right now if I was still stuck in the CS realm. Blegh...

I do art now?? (2019 - 2020)

I pretty much entered the art major as a complete blank slate, which was terrifying but also empowering. Since I was getting a formal education, I had to start from the basics, AKA observational drawings, charcoal, models, the whole thing. Traditional art wasn't my favorite medium because I didn't like how seemingly permanent it felt, even if it was a mistake. It also required a ton of physical supplies, preparation, and cleanup. Even one novice piece would take me HOURS to complete, and it wouldn't even be anything extravagant. Physically setting up the environment to draw/paint was always a hassle for me.

But when I tried my hand in digital art, that's when I felt right at home. The amount of control over the colors, brushes, even canvas size was tantalizing. Not gonna lie, it took me a LONG time to glide my stylus across the screen properly. Going from the tactile feel of graphite on paper to a plastic nob on a smooth surface was an interesting adjustment. I remember I used to struggle so hard to draw a competent circle on my drawing tablet. Even though it was an uphill battle to relearn the ropes of art fundamentals as an already-beginner artist, I was so excited to learn.

While I was formally learning as an art major, I finally gained enough confidence to post my digital drawings online, mostly through Twitter, my only social media at the time. My online persona was a Yellow Yoshi named "Yelloyoshi" since I loved Yoshi throughout my life. I hadn't yet formed a unique character because I was still such a novice, so I figured, I'd latch onto my favorite character and color and call it a day. While most of my pieces weren't seen by anybody except my mutuals, I did have my first taste of "virality" for my standards. Admittedly, it was intoxticating watching my notifications blow up, when that was not at all normal for me.

This newfound excitement wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. I noticed very quickly that my skillset hit a roadblock: I struggled a lot with anatomy. Even though I was decent at drawing things from reference, I had no prior experience conjuring up my own poses, so it made sense why this was such a hurdle for me. I would spend hours redoing every single line stroke because they always looked off to me. What might take a talented artist half an hour for a sketch would take me many hours. But I persisted, pushed through, and did the best I could. I also found out that I could never sketch just to practice. It felt like I had to see it through and make it super polished...which is probably why I spent way too long on each piece.

This will go down as one of my most prolific artistic periods because it was one of those early highs of overconfidence in my abilities. Now that I got to know the basics of my drawing software and how to hold the pen properly, I wanted to keep drawing whatever I found interesting. I found myself drawing during my free time, which felt amazing to have the drive to do so, even though I was still just beginning my art journey.

I guess I do art now! (2020 - 2022)

At the beginning 2020, this silly little virus called COVID-19 shut down the world. It was literally earth-shattering to everyone, including me. I was only a second semester into my sophomore year of college, when we were all forced to learn remotely online. While this affected many aspects of my personal life, it really shifted my perspective with my own art. Since everything was moving to digital spaces, I noticed the uptick in online entrepreneurship, especially digital art. Seeing those amazing pieces on my timeline encouraged me to keep improving my digital art skills to a point where maybe I COULD make some sort of living from it.

This was the birth of my original character "Yello"! He was actually born from my Character Design class assignment, where we literally had to come up with an original character. Since my persona was Yelloyoshi at the time, I obviously couldn't use that copywritten design. I wasn't expecting to have to create a whole new character this soon, but I need to have SOMETHING to pass this assignment. I actually struggled a lot with utilizing references to creating something new because of my lack of experience doing so. Therefore, I went to Twitter for inspiration.

Thankfully, I found an artist that I really vibed with named ExDweller. His art style was perfectly cartoonish and bright, just like the media I consumed growing up. His OC partcularly spoke to me to most, so I used him as the main reference to whatever my character end up being. Brainstorming and conjuring up possible character designs was...difficult. I'm still not the kind of person to sketch in their free time, so I really struggled to come up with a humanoid character that looked even remotely decent. It started extremely basic and unappealing, which I would hope is normal for creating a new persona for yourself.

While it took several iterations, I eventually came up with a character that looked somewhat decent for my standards. What I came up was a slightly chubby, black haired boy with a yellow hoodie, black sweatpants, and black and yellow shoes; pretty much a stylized version of my real life wardrobe. But once I settled with this design, I grew to really love it. Aside from some changes in proportions, this is still the design I've stuck with to this day. I've noticed that I'm the artist who really sticks with a design if I like it the first time. I've never had the desire to switch up the clothing or art style. I'm glad to say that I nailed my artistic persona pretty much the first try.

I also started taking commissions from close friends in order to practice for the potential future of making a living with my art. That was obviously still far down the line and I had much more to learn, but I was excited to learn the ropes of online transactions, and how to price my own skills to others. Thankfully I've had quite a few online friends give me the chance to get paid in exchange for a custom piece of art from me. While I was extremely anxious about my still novice skills, I persisted and made sure to make the best possible art I could for my friends. Thankfully, they all gave me positive feedback, which helped reinforce my desire to keep going. At this rate, who knew what my art would look like in 5 years?

In 2022, I wanted to challenge myself and participate in an annual event called Art Fight with a few online friends. It's basically this month-long community challenge where a bunch of artists are divided into two teams, all competing to get the most points for their team in the form of drawing a TON. The idea sounded so cool to me, especially doing it with a group of friends. This way, I could really put my skills to the test and see if I could draw stuff outside of my comfort zone. I ended up only completing 4 pieces during that event, but those are still some of my proudest art pieces to date. Forcing a deadline along with unfamiliar territory was the push I needed to level up my art.

Ok, now what? (2022 - Present)

Eventually that excitement and drive from my early art years slowly turned into self-doubt and imposter syndrome. I felt like my digital art was good but not good enough. My growth has been no-doubt impressive, but I still didn't think I reached a respectable skill level yet. Since the start of my journey, I've since learned that my biggest weakness was my lack of creative ideas. While I was improving my observational and proportional skills, I always struggled coming up with interesting ideas. While I saw so many online artists creating wacky, hilarious, or interesting pieces, I felt I like was merely imitating established styles, such as popular characters and formats.

I envied how some artists could think of such interesting ideas so quickly while I struggled to even sketch things casually. My perfectionism bled into basically every art piece I did. And while that was helpful in ensuring some level of polish, the lengthy amount of time that it would take me to get there was discouraging. I'm sure every artist hits this stage where their skills stop improving as noticeably, and by the looks of it, this is where I'm at right now.

I think that burden of self-doubt finally caught up to me, because I stopped producing as much art once 2023 rolled around. And when I did make art, it was usually a friend commission or a YouTube thumbnail. I basically stopped drawing things for me. Which looking back, is very sad because I would hate for all of my progress to stagnate and fade away because I got in my own way.

So...now what? To be honest, I'm not sure. For me, art was born out of desparation for change in my life. I was tired of listening to what I was told was the "best path". And since I was too scared to speak up, I ended up in an existential crisis during my first year college because I felt like I had no agency. So now that I've been down this creative path, I can assure you that it's never been a smooth ride, but I'm SO glad I took that leap of faith. Because without it, I don't think I would've made it this far. And this website certainly would not even exist.

These days I'm more preoccupied with YouTube, this very website, and actually finishing my backlog of games. So art is pretty low on the priority list. While I'm very grateful to have done the commissions I have, I don't see myself making digital art specifically as a career path yet. My passion burns the most bright when it comes to making videos, so it makes sense why I put most of my creative energy there first. But it's helpful to remind myself how far I've come. I didn't take any formal art lessons until college. I might as well have been a late bloomer by today's standards.

Right now, I'm relearning how to make digital art fun again. Since I've stopped posting on social media, I have no incentive to constantly "catch up" to my inspirations, so there's no harm in continuing my journey at my own pace. As long as I keep grabbing that pen, I'll be exactly where I need to be. Now that I've built up enough technical abilty, I gotta step up the other half of being an artist; to keep going despite the doubt.