☘️ March report

With my attention focused elsewhere, I didn’t get much of anything done on this front, and I find myself terribly exhausted – facing burnout, really.

Drawing for this account fell to the wayside. Commissions, personal doodles, sketches, all of it – my priority was with other work and dealing with a health issue. I don’t actually find myself regretful over this, though part of me feels I should. I love the work I was able to do for my other account, I love the media analysis and character dev I’ve done in the background, and I had to get this surgery done before things became even more of a problem than they already were.

Aside from that, for much of this month, I found myself desperately, repeatedly, bitterly desiring a break. I may have to enforce that through an hiatus effective immediately. I doubt anyone here wants me drawing anything while resentful and exhausted.

Regrettably, that does mean I’ll continue to leave this pinup of Ares unfinished. As soon as I returned home from surgery, I knew this was going to be the case, but it does leave me a little disappointed.

While I wasn’t drawing, I did manage to dig into some movies and books that have informed a few projects I have stewing. I find, lately, my passions are more easily reignited outside of drawing, and it feels it’s been an age since I delved into my own work with a clear and discerning intent. It gives me some hope I’ll make genuine progress on these stories.

If anyone would like the actual titles I’ve been digesting recently, here’s a list presented without comment: Les quatres cents coups (1959); Le Samouraï (1967); WolfWalkers (2020); Bambi by Felix Salten; The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck and Histoire de Mr. Jabot by Rodolphe Töpffer; Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies; plus a few others I watched or read in earlier months.

🌧️ Goals for April:

◻︎ Commission progress
◻︎ Continued project development

Two vague goals, the first of which I leave beholden to my energy levels. Perhaps the spring will rejuvenate me. Signs point to my needing a break and a refreshed perspective.

Thank you for sticking around.

🌸 February report

As I predicted, last month was a bit too ambitious for me, but I’ll go through what I did manage to do:

✲ Finish commissions CM12–14
✘ Thumbs for CM15–16
✘ Shibari illustration

✲ Commission progress

Let’s just lump both commission goals together since I didn’t get thumbs done for the ones I wanted to. I am making progress. Just slowly. Slower than I’d like. And it’ll have to continue progressing slowly while I deal with health issues and other obligations. Normally if I can’t focus at my computer, I’ll use my time to work through sketches at my iPad, but things were so bad this month I couldn’t even manage that much.

I did, however, manage to finish one commission, and I’ll say again how much of a joy it was to work with texture rendering and tentacles. I’m pretty much always down to draw some tentacles, whatever they look like. Ideally, I’ll clean up a few ideas to use as tentacle YCH comms, but those are a bit low on the priority ladder.

The current commission priority? Some ropes. Another huge fave of mine.

✘ Shibari illustration

Speaking of ropes, what makes this personal piece particularly frustrating is I’ve had the sketch and rough colours figured out for a while now, and the inks are about 95% done, but I hit a snag and just haven’t had the time to get back to finish it. Honestly, at this point I may end up re-inking the entire piece again, but for now it’s just going to sit on the indefinite back-burner since I failed to meet my personal deadline.

Instead, I took some time to doodle a few silly things from ideas I’ve had penned for a few months.

Sometimes you just need to put your characters in dumb shirts, and that’s okay.

☘️ Goals for March:

◻︎ Commission progress
◻︎ Ares illustration

Slow and steady does it. I think I’ll also be officially closing commissions while I work through my current queue, and I may keep them closed for the time being. $10 supporters can still send an inquiry at any time, but this doesn’t actually apply to anyone at the moment so.

🍻 January report

This is my first monthly report, so I’ll just recap what I managed to get done in January, then go through each item line by line:

✔︎ Set up SubscribeStar
✲ Commission progress
✔︎ New year’s kiss illustration

✔︎ Set up SubscribeStar

As I’ve said elsewhere, SubscribeStar is meant more as a recurring tip jar than a full membership or subscription. I’ll do my best to share regular posts and will at the very least keep up with monthly reports, but something like monthly exclusives or subscriber art raffles aren’t something I currently have the stability to offer. For now, I’m hopeful that even the act of doing these reports will help remind me of the progress I do make and allow another outlet to reflect on my current short-term goals.

Ideally, I’ll also be able to recap any sketches I shared throughout the month, but I basically didn’t even do any this go around, to my chagrin. Well, sketching and ideation has always been an area of art-making I struggle with most. Unfortunately, I haven’t unlocked how to doodle more consistently.

At any rate, in addition to Substar, I’ve set up an account on Tumblr, which I’ll be populating with older work in the coming months. This will necessitate being my most censored social mirror, but it’ll be open for asks and most likely be the best place to browse any long-form lore drops outside of SubscribeStar.

✲ Commission progress

In all honesty, I wanted to finish CM12–14 last month, but the dreary overcast cold of winter makes it quite difficult for me to get much work done – and this is on top of the hectic cycle of US news, which certainly doesn’t help matters.

But I did make progress with a few pieces, and am eager to continue working at them. Each one has presented a fun challenge, and I love seeing and hearing about everyone’s characters.

Lastly, I know I say it often, but thank you to my commissioners for their continued patience. You can always track my current queue through Trello.

✔︎ New year’s kiss illustration

This was finished for lunar new year instead of the intended Gregorian calendar new year, but I did manage to finish it! I’ve tried to keep an unofficial tradition of drawing a kiss for my first piece of each year, so I’m happy I was able to continue that, as late as it took.

Featuring Aster and Damian, this finishes out Aster’s polycule of four – that is to say Aster, and his three main paramours Verisimilitude, Coinneach, and Damian. I hope I can manage to explore each facet of his relationships throughout the year, playing with the varying flavours each one brings.

🌸 Goals for February:

◻︎ Finish commissions CM12–14
◻︎ Thumbs for CM15–16
◻︎ Shibari illustration

This might honestly prove to be too much for February as well, but I will try my damndest to get as much done as I can.

Take care and stay warm!