I think I have only talked about this one single time a few months ago because I am extremely paranoid that if I talk about it “too soon” then it just will never happen. Or something bad will happen and I won’t be able to do it anymore. But I also want to talk about it and talk about the behind the scenes stuff. I personally find these things interesting and also know there are learning curves that I wish I had known about beforehand. Like how one year to make fifteen-twenty drawings seems like it’s going to be a long time but it actually isn’t. 

In the process of prepping for my solo exhibition upcoming in October-November of this year (2026) I have also learned that I am the biggest procrastinator even when it comes to things that I am super excited for. I have known about this since last December (2025) and still am in the process of prepping drawings. I thought the hardest part of this would be coming up with the drawings in a year but actually the hardest part was deciding which of my already completed drawings I wanted to include or not. 

Obviously if I chose to include zero of my already completed works then I would have a lot more work to do. But then came the thoughts of “Oh my god these drawings are not that good, I’m a horrible artist, no one wants to see these, blah blah blah.” But then also “perfection is the enemy of good” and all that, so, whatever I’m including some older drawings. 

So far I have seven completed drawings I will be including:

“ICARUS/DEADALUS” (August 2025)

“Life Sentence” (August 2025)

“Oracle, Forgive Me” (October 2025)

“For What It’s Worth (Told You So)” (December 2025)

“January” (January 2026)

“I Wish Your House Was Real” (February 2026)

“I Wish You Were Real” (February 2026)

One work in progress:

“I Know You And Your House Aren’t Real”

And only two of those are framed so far, “Oracle, Forgive Me” and “I Wish You Were Real.” That makes for a total of eight pieces out of a minimum of ~fifteen. 

I was originally buying frames as I finished pieces back in early 2025 but immediately stopped doing that when I realized that I couldn’t, you know, hang those framed pieces up in my dorm room. All those earlier framed pieces have been given away so I can’t use them anyways. 

I think now I’ll just buy frames around September/early October at the latest when all of the pieces are completed and do a mass-framing day. I’ll probably also be matting these pieces, which I have never done before so that will be horrible to trudge through in one day. 

The current plan is to finish about three pieces a month (not including this month because I procrastinated way too hard, oops.) If I can average even two pieces a month that should put me right around thirteen to fifteen pieces for the end of October. But having said that, I really, really want to make twenty pieces for this exhibition so I’m going to try to get through as many pieces a month as I possibly can without losing quality. Which should be pretty doable for me, in August of last year I made four drawings, two were 22 x 30″, one was 32 x 44″, and the last was 41 x 27″ . If I’m in the right headspace I can churn out drawings pretty quickly.

If I don’t make it to twenty pieces, thirteen-fifteen will be fine. Every single piece besides “January” (8 x 10”) and “I Know You And Your House Aren’t Real” (18 x 24” (this piece is technically part of a triptych but I had forgotten what size paper the other two were and just guessed which ended up being really wrong, yay.))  are 22 x 30” and I typically buy 24 x 32” frames. So either way I can make thirteen work if I absolutely have to. 

To hold myself accountable because I really will procrastinate up until the very last minute if I let myself, I’m probably only going to be talking about this upcoming exhibition until September. Hopefully at the end of August I’ll start accumulating frames and maybe even begin matting some pieces here and there and will have more to say on that specific process. But until then I’ll just be rambling about pencils and concepts and how I absolutely should not have taken three months off from drawing to play video games and get another job. 

Here is the latest piece I’m working on at the moment, “I Know You And Your House Aren’t Real” . This is the last piece of the triptych I started all the way back in January of this year. I’m going to try to finish it tonight [being 6/19 at the time of writing this] and then start my next piece on either the 20th or the 22nd at the very latest. 

If anyone wants to know anything specific about this process or how to procrastinate horrendously for three months, I am absolutely the right person to ask. Especially on that last part. 

~Ana