Once upon a time, there were two successive art pieces that made the front page on Newgrounds.

But it wasn't always like this, for, years ago, we had these for art submissions:

I guess it's important for me to put down some takeaways:

• My earlier years trusting much of the art forum were some of the worst decisions I'd made in my life with regards to my art practice. (Maybe the atmosphere has changed now, I don't know.) While some were helpful, many were quick to point faults without offering any practical help. Now not everyone learns the same way, but I can really only summarise this with: if it's toxic, find a different way.

• I ended up learning figure drawing from two non-Newgrounds friends, asa+kari and Alroetsue, both doujin circle friends and artists for the Aetherhythm releases. Over time, as I learned to copy better what I saw from reference images, I devised a system where the important parts would be tracked — head, shoulders, elbows, hands for example — and all we had to do was connect the dots. I'm far from the only one to have thought of drawing that way; I'm only saying that this thought process massively simplified the way I understood proportions and poses.

• I learned colour theory, composition, and environmental design from looking at, and taking influence from, @ForgottenDawn's artwork.

• Working with limited palettes has helped make my images look less wishy-washy and more pleasing to my own eyes. Thinking like a pixel artist has given me ideas on how to play with light and colour better.

• I was also incredibly lucky to have been gifted a tablet by my then fiancé, now spouse, and to have had the time and space to develop my craft. Between 2019 and 2021, when improvements could be seen in some aspects of my drawing, it could be said that the time I spent developing my craft was an unforeseen happy side effect of an otherwise bleakly unhappy set of circumstances, being an asylum seeker. Now that I am settled and working, I push limits in my work wherever I can.

Circumstances are going to vary from person to person but these things are crucial:

• Find your own way of understanding it and improving on it, because we all learn differently (if what I said about the "joining the dots" method sounds like your method, HMU and I'm happy to show it in a future post or conversation)

• Art, like music and language, has tropes. Once you understand them, you can wield them well

• Don't give up

• You can, and will, do that thing