2025 Is Dead!

It’s a new year! 2025 has been defeated. You made it. A lot of terrible things happened, so I’m glad you’re still here with me and still persevering. And learning!

It’s a great week for re-examining not only your goals, but the sources of anxiety and peace in your life. What did you think was going to be important to you at this time last year that you’ve since discovered wasn’t actually aligned with your priorities and passion? What kept you going when everything felt terrifying and bleak? Personally, I think this should be a you-centered year. I think we all deserve a chance to chase our niche, weird, outlandish dreams. Give yourself permission to just go all-in on what you’ve been wanting to do for a WHILE now. Life is short and can be quite shitty. Let’s celebrate and protect each other, and our dreams.

I have five new resources for you:

1) Paul Scott Canavan’s Making Magic Tutorial (How to paint a Magic: The Gathering card illustration!)

Paul’s a fantastic teacher and this tutorial is three hours long, with another hour of focus on DAZ and Blender for creating preliminary mock-ups. If you’re an illustrator looking to level up (like me) and want a comprehensive focus on concept, composition, lighting, visual hierarchy, marketability etc etc etc, this is aimed at you.

2) No, Fan Art Should Not Be Compared To GenAI, by David Palumbo

This is an article written by David for Muddy Colors, which is an online hub for great artist articles and resources, especially in the Fantastical Realism (lots of sci fi and fantasy) space. Great article, you don’t need to be an artist to appreciate the themes he touches on here about passion, drive, and how inspiration transforms into personal voice.

3) The Artist’s Year with Stacie Bloomfield 

In my last post I hyped up Stacie’s “The Artist’s Side Hustle” book, which is great so far (I’m going through it now!). This little mini-course called The Artist’s Year is kind of like a gentle, abbreviated walkthrough of a lot of that content. Stacie talks about how to use self-reflection to build a solid foundation for the coming year. Worth checking out for any creative, especially if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed.

4) The Met Collection 

A searchable database from The Met. It’s pretty self-explanatory, you can play around by putting in old artists’ names as well as specific terms. For example, I’m learning to draw rosettes for my pattern design work, and I can just type in “rosette” and see what The Met has in its collection. Great resource for history buffs. Treat yourself to an actual museum trip this year too though!

5) Claire’s Historical Fashion References and Resources, by Claire Hummel

Claire is insanely cool. She’s internalized so much research on historical fashion trends that she’s a great concept artist and all-around rad artist and human being. This is a MASSIVE resource, a chronological list of links to historical sources, all about fashion. Bookmark this and savor it.

That’s it for now! Leave me comments if you want to recommend resources I might like. And of course have a safe, productive and fulfilling 2026!

-Stephanie