Rummy posted one of these the other day and I found it to be a great read and a lot of it resonated with me since it was pretty close to my experiences with this wonderful corner of creatvity and dick jokes on the internet. This will be a truncated mini bio of Newgrounds and me, its still long as brevity isn't soemthing I'm good at.

So flashing back to when I first found out about this site, in the very early 2000's a friend showed me Madness on funnyjunk it had no mention of Newgrounds anywhere and I had forgotten funnyjunk and was trying to find it again to show another friend when I rean through all the other flash sites, albino black sheep, ebaumsworld etc. Eventually found it and its sequel! I was playing all the browser games, my friend and I fell in love with Halo TSAH (and still regularly quote bits and pieces here and there). 

I never engaged with the community and didn't have an account until I was thirteen in August 2009. I had always been the kid drawing comic characters and rip offs of whatever movies, games etc in dedicated spiral notebooks, I still have the stacks and stacks of Marvel heroes, Spawn, Jak and Daxter and so on into infinity rip offs that I drew and redrew. Then came the Meat-Heads a parody attempt of military shooters that were so popular in the mid/late 2000's I thought I was gonna blow all the art forum peeps away (at the time I had no idea it just recently launched). 

I made my first thread "The Meat-Heads by Jack" and posted the bic pen scratch that was Meat-Head #1 with the promise of posting 110 of these super soldiers. The response was not quite the praise I was expecting it was mixed with a lot of niceties but some harsher words mainly telling me to improve and the infeasability of having 110 characters (very valid points) I was not prepared for criticism and responded like you'd expect a 13 year old to. Excuse after excuse saying "I'm doing my own thing if you don't like it get outta my thread." 

I fancied myself a writer more than an artist when I was thirteen and fourteen (teenagers are an annoying bunch aren't they) but I stuck around the art forum and continued drawing and not being super open to crits, but the stellar art of people like M-vero (now daverom) Hyptosis, e-m-b-r-i-o, and then Bizarrojoe's whore threads, among other activity threads, kept me coming back and in there. Then after about a year and a half I notcied I had been improving a lot; so I was drawing more and more and noticed I was enjoying it more, I was getting involved in collabs (man I miss those) engaging with the community more and commenting on other art threads. I would try to branch out into the General and Videogame forums but the art forum was my home on this site. The Art Forum Stickam chat was what solidifyed it, I was an artist. By the time I had hit fifteen I knew I wanted to go into illustration in some capacity, I was a reg in the chat made friends with some killer artists and great people - Aigis, Lovingthedark ( now radiodark), Ornery, Test-Object, ThePsychoSheep, Bigjonny13, Turkeyonastick, and so many others. 

After being a member of the community for so long when I heard about the pico day 2015 meetup I knew I had to make the trek. I flew out on my own for the first time from LA to Philly and met Radiodark, Kashi and Orn and had a great time met tons of people (all too briefly though). Got to meet brother/sister in ink Linda-mota and Yurgenbergen - my two favorite inkers in this place, racked up a sketchbook full of everybody's little scribbles I could. I remember the feeling after that weekend I was supercharged, everything felt amazing my creative energy was at an all time high and I just felt like Newgrounds was made of magic, having faces to a lot of names and business cards really turned the site into an almost tangible force in my life and I cannot put words to how incredible it is that so many creative and weird people are united here in their love for all sorts of random shit, but also that DIY spirit that doesn't exist in the same way on bigger sites like tumblr and is completely absent in the 'LOOK AT ME' world of instagram. Also its just crazy talking to people whose voices you've heard in countless flash animations and then realizing after talking to them - wait, THAT was redminus, or stamper or hearing Johnny Utah across a room but not knowing the source and investigating the source so you could get a scribble. Or walking up a staircase and bumping into Tom Fulp. BLEW MY dumb little mind 

The next year I began doing super in depth reviews and critiques of art (still available pm me!) and I suppose it didn't go unnoticed as I was made an art mod which I try to still fill out my moddly duties but its difficult with life in the way. ANYWAY I went to Picoday 2016 for Newgrounds 21's birthday more of the magic was there as in 2015 I met test-object (accidentally kicked his shin while gettin that hug) and TOAS, great times, great people, Tom remembered most of my name - still gets me hot and bothered thinking about. I got to tell rikert to his face how amazing his forms are there are countless little moments I'll hold onto from these two weekends and cannot thank Tom and company for hosting them because they really were fantastic meet ups and celebrations of all things NG.

So Currently I am going to community college and will be transferring next spring or fall (depending on how my units shake out) to an art school, Cal State or UC with a major in illustration or fashion design here in LA and I have Newgrounds to thank for that. While I was always the kid doodling in the back, the art forum gave me the critiques, the support and the community to improve. Not just to improve but to pursue learning more and get better at not just drawing but understanding art and branching out into using photoshop and illustrator, I got direction from NG. The Art community was my art teacher since I hated art classes in highschool and always felt they focused on shit I didn't care about or presented information in a way I couldn't relate and get excited for. As dramatic as it may sound Newgrounds gave me not only entertainment but it gave my life as a whole direction. I have no idea where I'd be without it I probably wouldn't be an artist I wouldn't have any artistic skill I'd be a boring motherfucker. So thank you Tom for this place because without I'd just be another guy who can't draw for shit. 

Its been a while since I've done one of these, almost a year in fact. A lot of stuff happened all over the place since then the big world stuff obvioulsy but also on the smaller scale of my personal life. Overall it was a pretty good year for me which is always good.

 I think last year saw the most creative output I've ever had judging by quantity and overall quality which feels good, I'm hoping to to top it this year and so far its not looking so bad. Unfortunately motivation has been hard to come by lately especially with all the distractions the past few months have had to offer, I lost the past week and a half to Titanfall 2 online which was fun while it lasted but the more I think about it the ore embarassed I am of it because I haven't sunk so much time into an online game by myself for a while and it just feels gross to have neglected art for so long. But I'm back to it now and am going back at it with some loose plans and some mostly written scripts I'll hopefully be able to turn into little comics or zines. There are a lot of doubts I have floating around about where I should go with my art, I'm trying to keep up with personal studies and staying on top of improving which I definitely need but beyond that obvious need its difficult to exist as an online mostly presence while staying only traditional, the problem is I don't enjoy the digital process and I want to have fun doing art especially if I am going to pursue it but that's irrelevant for the most part considering the only way forward really is to embrace digital and I know that. Its very frustrating and I'm sort of just venting at this point. Regardless I guess we'll see. 

Also the art forum bums me the fuck out, man. 

Pico Day was awesome I had a ton of fun, it was great seeing all of you people that I saw there the hype for future years is cranked up to eleven, hope to see all of you there again and meet the people I didn't get a chance to. 

Moving on, here's the sketchbook scribbles  I got from all you super cool dudes and dudettes, I sort of left it around and it must've gotten buried somewhere unfortunately, but thank you so much to all of you that got to it!

Page 1 @zombie-pimp @mysticskillz Love the teeth, Zombie. It was great talking to you while you drawing it, even drunk you kicked some ass on those tits, Skillz!

Page 2  @yurgenburgen @superphil-sh @yakovlevart All you were awesome to hang with, all of you are killer artists and all of you on one page is a thing of beauty!

Page 3 @ornery (inert) @Turkeyonastick (sticky hands ToaS) Great times were had by all!

Page 4 @sillybeans and missed the name, but thank you!

Page 5 @rikert Awesome drawing, dude, love the eyes and figure, it was surreal scribbling beside you!

Page 6 @radiodark Already can't wait for the next Dark + Test + Jack collaboration

Page 7 @cryburger pretty sure this is you, didn't see you do it, but I'm happy you did, man!

Page 8 @wellingl @itsmacklin I don't think I had an opportunity to meet either of you, but thank you for leaving some drawings for me! Pointy and round looks like somebody's gonna get popped!.

Page 9 @almightyhans Awesome talking with you man, couldn't have asked for a better welcoming man to HQ. Surprising to find out you live so close to me too!

Page 10 @fgijonc Cool talking with you man, looking forward to seeing your work in the future!

Page 11 @EVanimations @Son23 dextheswede long haired dude I can't remember the name of, but talking to you was great dude, looking forward to your Flintstones anime (pretty sure you were that guy)!

Page 12 @dreaminerryday @barnhouse hanging with you guys for a bit was great, you guys got some sick looking work.

Page 13 @Bowz @supardanil @mosh-bit-cartoons Thank you guys for all the sick drawings, great talking to the dude I learned to draw bears from haha!

That's about it I think, I can't believe I didn't get a drawing from @test-object! What happened there man!? At least I got some hugz. Same with @mattyburrito great conversations dude, goodluck going forward with everything!

Great year everyone, thank you @TomFulp for Newgrounds and giving the community such a great day to meet up. Without Newgrounds I don't know if I'd have even gotten into Art and now I'm seven years in and couldn't imagine life any other way. Go Team!

I figure why not do another on of these updates, maybe I'll make it a monthly or bi-monthly thing.

So the semester just wrapped up, very cool no hard classes this time so its not really too much of a relief, mostly just good to have more time to work personal projects. Pico Day is in two days so I'm pretty psyched for that, I'll be hopping on a plane tomorrow afternoon and arriving late in Philly the same day. Last year was fantastic and expect this year to be even better. Hopefully I'll have a little drawing up tomorrow for the day, we'll see. 

For the next month I'm gonna be going hard at the paintings, I have a gallery show coming up at the end of May, so ideally I'll have ten paintings done by then. right now I've got four, so fingers crossed. Segueing into that I'm now streaming painting on twitch sporadically so drop by and say hi sometime; I'll probably be dropping updates on here or in my art thread when I'm streaming. So far the experience has been pretty good, I need to get more involved with the community there though. I'll also be making prints of a select few of my illustrations so if there's a piece in my gallery that you're cuckoo bananas for let me know and I might add it to the list of prints. 

I am still doing art reviews/critiques by request, and please by God if you're going to request one provide me with a link to A COMPLETED PIECE you'd like me to critique. I can do general reviews of your art as a whole, but really I prefer to go indepth on one piece because I'm able to really get in there; whereas when I speak generally about a body of work I miss things or aren't as critical as I'd be with just the one,  or select few even. The art forum would be better suited if you want a breakdown of your work as a whole plus you'd get multiple.

I'm sure there's a bunch of other stuff going on but that's all the stuff that is relevant to here so have a wonderful day, maybe I'll see you on Saturday. 

May as well give some insight into what's up, if you're on my user page you might be interested. 

General stuff: I currently go to community college (cheap yo!) my major is fashion design, though I'm not very good at it (I put a sewing needle straight through my finger on an industrial machine last year, fun story) so I'll probably end up changing that to illustration or something along those lines. With school I've been trying to get a good registration date so I've been unable to get any General ed's so I've been taking mostly art and German classes and a few fashion classes, I've actually learned a lot, got into some new mediums and learned techniques on the art side. I feel like art classes are bashed a lot here on Newgrounds - and I used to be of the same mind, but when I got to more specialized classes rather than general art I found them to be much more useful. 

I play hockey every Sunday (roller, ice is money, honey) that's a lot of fun, if you've never played I'd strongly recommend giving it a shot. Lately I've been trying to learn how to play Street Fighter V, the first in the series I've ever owned. I kinda got caught up in the hype with that one. I've always been a Tekken and Mortal Kombat player, Street Fighter never appealed much to me and I'm still not in love with it; it doesn't help that all the character designs except Chun Li's standard and Dhalsim  are super duper Fugly, seriously what the fuck, Ken's face. Other than that I've been chipping away at Bloodborne's the Old Hunters DLC but progress is slow most of my free time is spent painting or drawing. 

Miscellaneous: I like, and frequently draw Jesters, cats and crescent moons as well as, to a lesser extent Insects (just the neat ones though praying mantis, moths etc). Ink is probably my most used medium historically, though lately I've been favoring markers colored pencils and oil paints. I got a thing for socks, all the many pairs I own are at least knee high with some pattern or design, usually argyle though I've got some really neat Le Chat Noir socks. I strongly favor vertical formats over landscape when doing art. I also favor asymmetrical hairdos. 

I STILL DO ART REVIEWS BY REQUEST just pm me with a link to a SINGLE FINISHED piece of yours and I'll give you an in depth review to the best of my (I'm gonna brag here) quite adept abilities. 

I made this post because I've been on Newgrounds for going on seven years now and I figure I may as well properly introduce myself, if for some reason there's anything else you want to know about me, feel free to ask away. 

I haven't made one of these for a while, not since the art review request announcement, I'm gonna chalk that up largely to a failure. Some people requested reviews and I am happy to have helped them, but for the most part not a ton of people have made requested, which is understandable. What isn't understandable though is how the "please link me one finished piece to review" was so hard to grasp apparently, but whatever. 

Anyway, as for an update on the status of myself: all has been going largely well; drawing has been steady; commissions have been moving through from time to time; personal life has been personal; and yet here, on Newgrounds, I really just don't know. I'll be going to Pico day this year as I did last year and am very much looking forward to that, but the art forum and the art section, the places I've called my home on Newgrounds for the passed six years or so, have just been annoying. I don't know if I'm just cynical to the changing tides of how artist try to make a living (chances are your patreon can go fuck itself) or if I've just hit a tipping point with fan art, or if it's just that all or most of the people I consider friends have stopped posting so much over the past few years, or if it's just all of the above forming up into a mass of disappointment, but the place just doesn't feel like a community so much as a disjointed mess of a bunch of people throwing out follow me links to their social networking sites full of cartoon  tits n asses asking for cash. Not to forget the heartbreaking lack of any support for any community activity that doesn't involve monetary gain, I mean, the "your character my style thread" has been dormant for months and every time I, or somebody else try to bump it, it quickly falls back away after a post or two, not to mention the other activity threads that don't even catch on for a second post and trying to start a new activity thread is about as encouraging as something that isn't very encouraging at all. . 

All that I know is that the art forum probably isn't in a much worse off state than it has been for the past year or so, but that's just the thing. I think I'm just finally out of juice for this place, I try to keep posting and giving advice where I can because I have learned so much from this place, and I do believe I have some valuable knowledge to impart, but I have been feeling less and less like my efforts to engage are worth it. 

So that's where I am right now, hope you're doing alright. 

        Because of the severe lack actual critiques in the Art Portal for the past month or so I have taken on the task of providing in depth critiques on submissions. I have been met with almost entirely positive response form the authors of the random drawings I've chosen to critique, but there are a lot of artists I feel would greatly appreciate reviews and since my current system is fairly random I'd like to better promote requests for reviews. I welcome artists of any skill level, to leave in the comments or pm mea link  (or just the title since no HTML in the comments) to a  COMPLETED submission in the art portal of yours that you would like me to review. I leave very in depth reviews and critiques of art, so expect to read at absolute least one solid paragraph from me on it. 

       I will disect as many aspects of your art as I possibly can including areas of, overall composition, color choice, anatomy, mood, values, focus, flow etc, and give you advice on how to fix or strengthen any aspects in the imediate drawing as well as how you may be able to improve future drawings. I'll try to take into account your skill level as much as I can and give the most relevant feedback possible. I'm not going to bash you or your drawing, but I'm not going to sugar coat anything either, if something needs work, it needs work and I will be sure to let you know about it.  

      Also I recommend for further more immediate improvement on your studies to go check out the Art Workshop and for tutorials and some general knowledge to go check out the Art101 user page (currently under some construction but there is a lot of information there).

I look forward to reviewing your art!

I've decided recently to to start actually taking time to leave detailed and in depth reviews in the Art Portal. I guess its mostly just being sick of there being so little actual critiques on pieces, especially the ones that are almost there in terms of quality but are just missing some factor that is keeping them from shining. Even more frustrating is the useless comments I see from time to time. 

So if you've got any art you'd like me to critique just leave it in the comments or pm me and I'll probably get to it within a day or so of seeing it. If you're afraid of your drawing being eviscerated then don't worry I'm not going to be an asshole about it or try to tear you down and insult you or your art, I don't derive joy in putting people down like that. 

With that being said I am now going to vent about something that really really really bothers me to the point of actually weighing on my mind that a very small amount of artists do here but is pretty prominent on social media sites and Deviant art(from the extremely small amount of time I've spent on that site). When working with traditional art - particularly colored pencils, pens and/or markers - sometimes the artist will inexplicably choose to take a picture of the drawing with the pens/pencils/markers in the shot to show that "hey these are what I used to make this!" DO NOT FUCKING DO THAT. It looks awful, we all know what pencils look like, you're taking attention away from your art with the materials, you're messing up the compostition or taking up valuable space that could be better suited for details and readability. Write in the description what materials you used. jeez.

Anyway, yeah I'm doing critiques and reviews now so if you want me to review/critique your art let me know. If not I might just do that anyway. Don't forget to go make an art thread in the art forum and participate in the activities there. See ya! 

Hey everybody, a few weeks ago I noticed that in the Art Portal there are very few people actually voting on submissions. After noticing this I realized that I too very frequently simply do not vote on submissions unless I think they're super awesome or depressingly awful. So I went back and took a look at some of my work and noticed I average something like five to eight votes out of an average of like three hundred views (depending on amount time the submission has been up). Now unless it's a very popular artist like Shadman, or Deathink I'm sure a lot of artists get this and I think that it's a little frustrating so for the past month I have made it a point to vote on every single submission to the art portal when I look through it. It's really easy to do and even if it's just a number it does make an artist feel better to know more people took the time to leave even a tiny bit of feedback on something they put time into, at least I feel better knowing that so I'm assuming it holds over for others here too. So yeah, just a reminder, rate the artwork you're looking at it's a nice thing to do that really doesn't require any effort. 

Hey everybody! I recently made a Redbubble account and am working on getting all of my better works up on there. I am trying to reach more audiences and I think that this is a great way to streamline the process of selling my work. Of course originals are still sold through me and if you're interested in commissioning me to draw something for you I would be happy to give you an estimate or even talk about collaboration. So check back at my Redbubble account in the coming days and weeks as I'll be updating it as I update and fix up some of my older work! thanks for taking the time to read this. CHECK IT!

Also check out my Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram (jackcurleo) and this place couts too, I guess.