Hi, I’m Joviann, I am the co-owner of flaredust studio. You can learn about me as a person and my current projects over there.
I am a web developer by trade, but I’ve been drawing pretty much my whole life. If you’re interested in geeky stuff, you may find my web rants over here.
Art journey
Art and code were always sort of intertwined in my life, so I’m going to ramble on how I grew as an artist and include some geeky shit. Sorry.
I was lucky that, growing up, my father was drawing and doing acrylic painting. He was very keen to encourage my brother and I to do art as extra-curriculum activities while we were in elementary and high school.
As a kid, I would pretty much only draw women. I grew up playing countless hours on Sonic games and re-reading Sailor Moon mangas. All I wanted to do was design cute clothes and create cute worlds for my adorable characters to live in.
Behold, artwork from 2002 Jovi. I should do a “redraw today” meme with ’em.
My father also started a business in 1999, which prompted me to start learning HTML by playing around on his website. I also got really into Neopet at the time, but I wanted to design a competitor as I found a lot of features of the website and game were dumb and I felt I could be better.
I started coding in PHP around 2005 and started to design my own weird creatures for my many better raising-game ideas. One of them that I recall vividly was a mermaid-panther raising game. This one stuck in my mind as, one day, my brother and I had a fight and, to get at me, he deleted all of that project’s PHP and sketch files off the family iMac. I was salty about it for a while. I sometimes remind him eheheh.
In the meantime, in high school, I was in a program that had computer classes focusing on multimedia. There, I learned about 3D modelling, composing with Fruity Loop, video editing and delved more into web design. In class, I spent most of the time doodling on any surfaces anime edgy or emo girls. Once, I doodled on a smooth-surfaced class desk and it stayed on for like, a week. I take it as a compliment as nobody felt like erasing it. 😎
After high school, I signed up for a fashion design college. It seemed logical as I would draw cool clothes on girls all the time, and I was super into cosplay. It was fun and I learned a lot, but I ended up pretty much hating the industry after a year and a half of classes, and couldn’t picture myself working in the fashion industry. I still have problems with it today, even with Print-on-demand merch. It doesn’t sit well with me.
However, fashion school did mold my art style into something new. I started using watercolors and I strayed away from the anime-style I used to do. At that point, I had a cartoony style for figure drawings, instead. It still somewhat shows today, as I struggle not to make my figures 9 heads tall.
Artwork from my first year in fashion school 2009-2010. Sorry I didn’t recognize the value of taking good pictures then.
After fashion school, I went to college and got a degree in multimedia integration. It’s basically fancy for “put things onto the internet in different formats.” With the access I had to computers and multimedia tools growing up, that degree was pretty easy to me, and while I certainly don’t regret doing it, I sorta didn’t push myself as much as I could have. Oh well.
While in college, between the years 2011 and 2013, I drew some silly stuff for my social-media persona Sailor Gible. Nothing serious, though, but I did learn some new tools in the process like Fire Alpaca, as Photoshop isn’t great for digital painting. I made some friendoes, too, so that’s good.
I found these on me.me ??? Who reposted these ahaha
Anyway, this comic was done for a cool RP group where I contributed with only this comic. Circa 2012. This deserves criticism :P.
Papers Please x Sailor Gible, 2013. I got better at digital line art, at least a little, in these years.
I started really getting back into art only in 2016 when Beb and I decided to make video games. Ever since, I’ve been a little (a lot) scared to draw most of the time. As of right now, April 2020, I don’t have much game-content to show for it.
In 2017, I realized that YouTube had a shit ton of helpful content. I wasn’t much of a YouTube user before, but now it’s become a problem. I use it a lot in order to get me in the mood for drawing. Listening to other artists on their experience, their techniques and their woes just speak to me on a deeper level. Plus, once in a blue moon, I get inspired and fall into hyperfocus territory. That’s pretty much the only time stuff gets done, though.
As of April 2020, with now a whole month of being stuck at home, I have definite proof that my lack of drawing isn’t just a matter of being generally tired after work. I lack focus. I don’t have any discipline to draw consistently. I have yet to tame that part of myself.
Right now, if I can draw for an hour straight in a day, it’s much better than most days where Clip Studio Paint is in the background 24/7 and nothing happens. It just sits there, shaming me.
My next strategy would be to stream my drawing sessions, in order to force myself into drawing for prolonged periods of time. I can’t accidentally spend 3 hours on Twitter if there’s potentially some rando online judging me now, can I?
Working on that, though. Knowing is half the battle.
Esoterism
When I’m not doing websites, art or games, the main focus of my remaining time is energy work* and self-development. I work part-time in an esoteric store, where I:
- get retail marketing experience, both brick-and-mortar and online;
- help the people who come to us for spiritual and life advice;
- coach and teach extrasensory development (main focus on Tarot reading).
I love this fraction of my life. I get to talk to a lot of different folk and learn a lot of different perspectives. Plus, I believe Spirituality of any shape or form is important in someone’s life. Whether you awaken to your meaning or choose your own meaning, it doesn’t matter to me: I find it all beautiful!
*100% of the energy work I engage in is through communication. I think it is the most effective way to do it: just use your voice. I do have an irrational love of Tarot and Astrology, though. But it’s mostly for aesthetics, as a way to frame the content of what has to be said.
My personal spiritual practice is pretty much tailored to myself. I don’t really give it a name. Every day, I try to learn and pick up stuff from different experiences, distill them to their core elements and try to fit them with everything else, like a big messy space puzzle.
My basis with ~spiritual truth~ is the belief that it is multidimesional and only a product of humanity existing. It therefore can not be absolute nor perfect. My goal isn’t to try to grasp a truth, as I believe it would be inconsequential to my life, ultimately. Plus, I have authority issues, and I’d be struggling against it anyway.
I believe anyone could very well convince themselves of anything, and it matters only for as long as it leads them in life in a direction they are pleased with.
If I had to choose a label to best describe what I do, I orbit somewhere around secular chaos practitioner.
That is all for what’s relevant on this blog. Thanks for reading it through. 😊