18,000 in the Hydrus Network!! (sick :<)

I've been sleeping like 18 hours each day fighting off this sickness. To pass the time when I'm awake I worked through my backlog of sorting art references. I used to keep my art I liked in increasingly complex subfolders for my D&D campaigns. Seven years ago I found this app called 'Hydrus Network' which lets me tag each image. Sorting random stuff is one of my favourite passtimes. I think if I got fired I'd be pretty happy as a librarian. Although I think you need to be specificially educated for that so maybe just a random administrative assistant.

I can remember about 80% of the art that's in my Hydrus Network. It's rare that I'll come across an image I have no memory of - I used to not be able to see stuff in my head. Aphantasia, I think. It's not amazing - I meet people a lot whose drawings come fully birthed from their head. For me, I know it's in there, but it has to be sparked by drawing first. I have an amazing indexing memory - my first memory comes from when I was 3 and sitting next to the couch and I thought 'I will remember this'. When I draw I'm constantly remembering references that'd be useful and finding it within seconds with my tags.

My older references usually has 3 to 7 tags, but most references these days have 20+ tags. There's the specifics of the character in the drawing (if there is one) with gender, what they wear, props, their archtype (villain, hero, wizard, etc.), facial expression, any motifs, hair style. Next I move onto the camera angle and how it's drawn (sketch, painted, pixel art), how the image is cropped (headshot, fullbody, waist up). I also include tags for how I want to use the art - there's general inspiration for how I want to draw, but there's also shape inspiration, pose inspiration, colour inspiration, hair inspiration, texture inspiration, framing inspiration, etc etc et cetera. I tag stuff still for my D&D games if the character or location would belong to a specific Nation or game world. I could go on forever.

So, 18,000 art references is a big milestone for me and I'm excited to keep working on this. I love getting art references for my fellow artists, I pride myself more on my organization skills than I am as an artist.