#7 - What started it all
I didn't know anime was even a thing
Hi there, and welcome back to the Quiet Art Corner!
Thank you for hopping aboard this new adventure! Whether you’re here for the tips, or the laughs I promise you’ll find a cozy place in every edition where you can refill your art batteries! 💚
We’ve been hanging out together in this place for several weeks now, and I think it’s about time I tell you more about myself because maybe you know me from the ancient deviantArt days, or maybe you literally discovered me in 2026!
My artstyle is going through an experimental stage these days. I’m enjoying mixing in bits of realism and trying more painterly styles than before.
But my deepest love has always been anime!
I remember being very young when I watched my first animes without knowing what it really was. Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, Ninja Hattori-kun… To me they were just another type of cartoons I would watch.
Then one day, I stumbled upon an episode of Slayers.
And it completely blew my mind.
The art style was so different from everything I had previously seen. Sharp, elegant, with sparkling big eyes, and characters with the coolest designs and crazy hair colors. I became so obsessed with the show that I even learned the lyrics of the Japanese opening song by memory as a kid. I didn’t have the foggiest idea that I was signing in another language! 😂
Still it didn’t occur to me that I could try to draw like that, so my art stayed the same it had always been. Wish I had some of those mega old pieces, but they looked kinda like this:
It wasn’t until years later when a friend told me he was attending an anime workshop at our highschool and he wanted me to tag along because he was too shy.
The workshop was about 1 hour long, so it’s not like the instructor could teach us a lot of stuff. He went over basic body proportions and how to draw different expressions, and that was it.
But a switch flipped inside of me.
“You mean… I can draw something as cool and beautiful as Slayers? Or Sailormoon? Or Card Captor Sakura???”
(I really was a naïve kid in that sense 😂)
I did my first anime drawing that day, and I haven’t stopped ever since. I simply fell in love with the style. My prior art already leaned into that kind of aesthethic if you look closely. Sometimes people would mention it was weird that I drew such giant heads and sparkling eyes. That “real people didn’t look like that”. My mom was actually worried for a while that there was something wrong with me…
“It’s not real people; it’s anime!” I could finally say, and people just had to be cool with it 😎 Anime gave me the label I had been looking for without even knowing it. It gave me a safe space to further develop that aesthethic I was into without being judged.
Funnily enough, the friend that dragged me to the workshop didn’t carry on drawing as we grew up. But me? I couldn’t stop practicing the very basic concepts I learned on that workshop like the 8 Heads Rule. It was all I scribbled on my notebooks for months.
I can’t find the drawing I did that day, but this one below it’s something I did at the beginning of my anime era. Despite how bad it is (compared to my current skills obviously), it’s a drawing I’m still fond of as it brings back many memories from that life-changing experience.
And now I’m doing something special with!
I’ve been working on a redraw of this piece as a way to reconnect with that magical moment and remind myself that art doesn’t have to be meaningful or grandiose. It can be as silly (and questionable 😂) as a pretty girl wrapped in pink ribbons 🎀
Here’s a sneak peak at the renewed illustration 👀If you’re really curious you can find the finished version on Patreon already!
What about you?
What was your first anime or the experience that pushed you into pursuing art or whatever craft you’re into? I’d love to know your story too! Feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email. I’m reading you!
That’s all for today!
Stay pawsitive, keep practicing and I’ll see you soon ♥