FAQ Page Image: 2021

There's more history to this piece than I thought. I was fact-checking as I was writing this and there was some information I got wrong. This happened because I was selective about the information I kept track of, on an art gallery of all places.

I never bothered to make entries for my original page images back in 2021. Looking back, I can’t remember exactly why I did this. I have a few theories, but my main theory is that I fixated on my website’s appearance and was under the impression that gallery entries were unwarranted for images this simple. In hindsight, however, this doesn’t carry a lot of weight because I wrote entries for the original front page image and the new front page image I premiered a few months later, one that has since been retired.

At the time of writing this (July 5th, 2025), 2020-2022 feels like a blur to me. I was in college at the time, but lingering effects of the pandemic kept me from having a normal experience; only a handful of my classes were in person, with the rest being hybrid, remote, or asynchronous. This left me with a lot of time to myself and a lot of time to draw when I wasn’t working on assignments. More often than not, I found myself drawing to pass the time and decompress, especially since I found myself working ahead of schedule and had plans to step out dashed due to weather.

I can’t remember if my website was still in markdown at the time or if I was using basic HTML and CSS, but I was focused on keeping the layout consistent. My original profile picture had a purple background, my original front page image had gradient inspired by it, and my original page images had matching gradients. The purple background meshed well with the shades of white and blue I was using, so I kept it in my design, filling the same role as the teal wallpapers in my new page images.

I don’t remember a ton about my process as I was drawing this, but I have some trivia to share; When I checked the properties of this piece, I started it two days before my old about image and saved a mockup of it on March 7th, eleven days before the other piece was finished. Despite the time differences, the mockup had a blue gradient rather than a purple one and the question mark was purple instead of yellow. I wouldn’t be surprised if I used the mockup to test how a blue gradient worked against a blue wallpaper (despite a white border) and kept it in both files in case it worked, which it didn’t. I know this because my TOS image in this style doesn’t have a hidden blue gradient and I finished it over a month later.

The last noteworthy detail is that I had trouble drawing Aqua’s cardigan, especially the sleeves. Whenever I draw her sleeves, they are usually viewed from the front or the side, never from a lower angle. It caused trouble in this piece because I wasn’t sure how big the inside of the sleeve should be visible nor how wide the fabric should be. This aspect of her design still trips me up to this day, but I hope that as I continue studying depth and finding ways to blend dimensions, I hope I can iron out those flaws and improve my artistry as a whole.

March 7th, 2021