About

I was born in June, 1998. In the early 2000s, the source of entertainment was limited. I spent my childhood growing up with animations from cartoon network. I have a sister who is 4 years older than me. We would doodle our silly drawings while watching cartoons. That was my first introduction to drawing.

When I was 7 years old, my parents were interested in developing creative skills for my sister and I. Parents at that time would persuade their children to take classes like music, drawing, or martial arts, in addition to formal education. My sister and I took an art class in a shopping mall near our home. The art class focused on having children draw what they like with no restrictions. IIRC, they didn't focus on fundamentals or art theory (Which I think that's what art education should be, pls don't teach a 7-year-old intense art theory)

They provided us with reference images of popular anime and cartoon characters. We can draw from reference or just draw anything we like. At that time, my sister already had an original character. I wanted to be like her, so I drew one too. The art teachers were amazed that we, a 7-year-old and 11-year-old, had original characters. I overheard them and smugged proudly. That art class was the beginning of my love for art.

As a person who values freedom, art is like the best hobby ever. I can create something from pencil, colored pencil and paper, with no one to tell me what I should do. Later, I began to write comics like crazy while taking inspiration (and sometimes copying) from anime like Ojamajo Doremi and Hamtaro.

Looking back at that time, it was so much fun to just draw anything I like without expecting it to be good or even decent.

I drew my first completed comic around 2007-2009. It was a silly comic with 6 main chapters named “Tewe’s Prophecy”. I copied the name from an RPG game called Ahriman’s Prophecy which I played with my sister. I thought the word “prophecy” sounded so cool. Tewe’s prophecy is a story about main protagonists’ fight with evil fairies.

School started getting more serious as I got into middle school. At that time, most students, including myself, would take private classes in addition to school education, either by their parents' pressure or their own will. Being forced to take private classes had permanently damaged my mental wellbeing. In addition to the 7 hours classes on 5 days every week, my precious weekend would get 3-4 hours taken away by something I despise, against my own will. I would cry and curse the tutors almost every Sunday when I have to take private classes.

I started playing Gaia Online, an avatar-based social game in 2011. While I didn’t interact with other players much, I enjoyed dressing up my avatar with the vast outfit and accessory choice. I didn’t use IRL money to buy cash shop items, but I grinded in-game currency for the outfits instead. Then I discovered that some players offered artwork in exchange for in-game currency. Tempted by all the amazing outfits, I started doing digital art for the first time, hoping to get the items I wanted.

Digital art in 2011 was not widely available to everyone. Most of the time, doing digital painting was trial-and-error. Art tutorials were very limited, let alone digital art. I was so excited to draw digitally after always doing traditional art ever since I was born. I, a 13 year-old, felt like I was some professional artist because I got to draw digitally like them.

I would sketch and do line art traditionally then scan the drawing for digital coloring. I used a regular mouse to color, with the huge help of a lasso tool. A single drawing would take so many hours. Even so, I was really happy and excited to draw digitally.

In the end, I didn’t really offer commissions for in-game currency thinking my current skill wasn’t good enough for people to pay even in-game money for my artwork. However, I did draw a lot and got more familiar with digital art. That’s still a big win for me.

One thing I'm really glad that I did was talking to my parents how bad I felt when taking the private classes and said I'd like to study extra hours by myself, which they agreed and finally, I got out of that hell when I was in the 9th grade.

In 2012, I watched Death Note, the first anime I've watched that is not children-oriented. I loved the artstyle and story. I really like how the characters' expressions were portrayed. I sympathized with the characters like they were real people and yes, I cried like a baby when my favorite character died. I didn't really like anime style characters in the past (think of retro anime style like Cardcaptor Sakura, Sugar Sugar Rune, and Negima), but at that time I became fascinated with anime by the influence of Death Note, followed by Rozen Maiden, and many more.

Another notable event in both my life, as well as my art journey, is that I got into J-Rock and J-Pop since 2013. Alice Nine/アリス九號. is my second all-time favorite band (only second to My Chemical Romance) to this day. What really amazed me at that time is their songs were deep and emotional. It wasn't like some typical top chart songs that talk about love in a somewhat superficial way.

Apart from love songs, Alice Nine had songs that expressed the beauty of nature, motivational, and also aggressive ones. As I was still a teenager, it was the first time that I'd seen such beautiful form of art. Not only their music was melodious, the lyrics were also awesome. I have an entire notebook dedicated to writing their song lyrics in Japanese, Romaji, and translation to Thai. They were my big motivation to start learning Japanese.

Then unfortunately, I got into another hell during 2016-2018 after studying so hard to get into my desired dental school. Being a dentist offers stable income with admiration from society. Even when I was suffering greatly, I tried to think of the future like, suffer now by studying hard and when I finally graduate, my hard work would pay off. In reality, I don't think I'll ever graduate from dental school before going completely insane. And as you may have probably guessed, I got out of dental school in 2018.

*Disclaimer: I'm not saying that dental school is bad or drives everyone insane, almost all 90-ish people in the same year as I graduated and became a dentist

Getting out of dental school was like going back to the human world again. The joyfulness didn't last long because I had to find a new place to study. In Thailand, a decent job requires at least a bachelor's degree.

I was lost because I didn’t really know what occupation I wanted to do. The reason that I got into dental school is because I think it’s a nice idea to alleviate the patient’s pain while earning income, being a dentist uses hand skill, and it has flexible work hours if you’re working at a private hospital.

I always knew that I loved doing art, but it was hardly considered an occupation where I live. Doing illustration as a main source of income won’t cover your daily expenses if you’re not well-known, not to mention being a freelancer like I wanted to.

*TRIGGER WARNING: Depression, Suicide PLEASE DON’T READ THE PARAGRAPH BELOW IN GRAY IF MENTALLY UNWELL

It was the darkest years of my life. All my hard work of studying for my desired university was gone. My relationship with my family became very toxic. I was diagnosed with depression in 2016, the first year that I got into dental school. I didn’t really know what was worse, my condition while being in the dental school or when I got out. One thing that I definitely knew was that I deeply regret being born and being alive.

Studying at another university felt like a nightmare so I couldn’t stand getting into one again. As I have nowhere else to turn and I’m getting older every year, I tried my best to learn art for being a professional illustrator. With the collapsing mental wellbeing, even my way of studying and doing art was toxic.

I was interested in art “hacks” that instantly make your art better without decent skill and foundation. I put the blame on the algorithm and such that my art was not recognized. I even took an “Instagram marketing” course to try to advertise and sell my art (it was one of the most bs things I’ve ever bought)

While I wasn’t clearly understanding art fundamentals (as known as the boring stuff). I focused on coloring techniques and such (as known as the fun stuff). The result is straightforward, my art looked somewhat fancy but it lacked basic fundamentals like shapes and form.

*More to be updated (spoiler: I'm happy now, finally :D)