☀️ July report

Frankly, I had a great month, but here’s a rundown of what I wanted to work on:

✘ Commission progress (0/3)
✲ Website updates

There isn’t any art in this update. In fact, most of it is irrelevant to this page. A personal blog post, more like.

Here’s what I did:

⟡ A new Life

I’m talking Fantasy Life i, which is a sequel I had been eagerly awaiting for over a decade. The first Fantasy Life logged the most amount of playtime on my 3DS, and has been a game I’ve returned to multiple times when I wanted something cozy and cute to relax with.

I dug into Fantasy Life i for the first half of the month, and found it to be as much of a delight as its predecessor, and a very welcome break from everything. The first was always the most fun when I played with others, however, and I haven’t had anyone else to explore the game with Fantasy Life i. :( Ginormosia especially seems like it has some excellent multiplayer options compared to Origin Island.

I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t consider making some questionable fanart of Edward. (He is very maddeningly my type.)

I still need to finish up the main story though.

⟡ Reading, movies…

As other things came up in the later half of the month, I switched gears to books and film.

Milton’s Paradise Lost I’ve been picking at since about April. The 17th century language coupled with the numerous references across various mythologies makes this a rather dense read for me, but I’ve been really enjoying it.

More recently, I picked up The Bone Ships, which is a book I’ve been wanting to read and was happy to find at the library through some happenstance. I finished it yesterday. A perfectly enjoyable, easy read, particularly if you are a fan of swashbuckling adventure (though I’ve seen comments say parts of it are dense – while Barker doesn’t hold your hand with any of the worldbuilding, it’s really nothing difficult to go along with). I’m eager to dig into the rest of the series.

As for movies, I picked up these two DVDs largely on a whim, and what gems they turned out to be!

If you are a fan of puppet animation and special effects, Karel Zeman is a must-watch. The three movies included with this collection are Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), Invention for Destruction (1958), and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961), the latter two being large inspirations for Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame, and the foremost bringing me particular delight as someone that grew up on dinosaur documentaries. There’s a magic and earnestness in these films that I absolutely adore. The world would be a better place if it were filled with more minds like Karel Zeman.

Occupying a different tone is Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1977), an existentialist exploration of personal choice set to the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Belorussia and built on the framework of religious allegory. It is phenomenal.

⟡ … and music

This is mostly to say I have gotten a piano, and the following day was gifted, coincidentally, a MIDI controller.

Within the past year, I grew tired with telling myself I could never make music, and started to shift my attentions and attitude wherever I could. Getting these pieces of hardware is perhaps the biggest step I’ve been able to take towards this new hobby, and it feels like an appropriate beginning for my 30th.

Though just to be clear, I’ll aim to clear out my commission queue before I dive much further into music.

✲ Website updates

Alright, but what about something actually on my list of goals for the month? (If it seems like I’m doing everything but drawing, you’re not the first to notice.)

I haven’t published any updates yet, but I did finally start poking at some new code. I’m very much an amateur at coding, though, so even what I’m sure are very basic problems can take me a while, but I find it fun, and it seems to be a go-to of mine when I’m particularly stressed and procrastinating.

My current goal is to set up a light/dark mode toggle for accessibility. I do have the basic functionality there, but I got caught up trying to set up a slicker design, and I need to figure out how to keep the toggle setting from page to page. If I can manage that, I’ll also work at (finally) setting up an age verification module.

This isn’t an invite for suggestions! If I can come to you with questions, feel free to let me know, but I enjoy trying to puzzle things out for myself, and these aren’t high priority concerns.

Goals for August:

◻︎ Commission progress (0/3)
◻︎ Dragon fucking YCH comms
◻︎ Avian doodles

My brain wants to do things with birds and dragons this month, so we’ll see what I manage to do.

If you read all that, hey, thanks.

🌥️ June report

I felt driven to take a bit of an unexpected hiatus near the beginning of the month. Progress unfortunately stalled along with this.

✔︎ Commission progress (1/4)
✘ Website updates
✲ Dante+Thalia latex bench

✔︎ Commission progress (1/4)

At this rate, I’ll progress with one commission a month and be fully clear by October.
Much like my monochrome sketch commissions, I’d theoretically be open to do experimental pride busts for folks any time, but I know there’s not really interest for it. I enjoy how these smaller pieces let me play around with a little less stress than a full illustration.

If nothing else, I may just try to set up a handful of busts for my characters and really push the colour experimentation. Been too long since I did that.

✲ Dante+Thalia latex bench

Eager as I was to work with Dante and Thalia, I couldn’t find the motivation to finish this piece. (Part of the problem there is I sincerely lack the enthusiasm for latex that I have for ropes or leather.)

Honestly, a struggle with these sketches is keeping the energy of the piece when I go to ink and colour. They’re tightened up a little too much – it’s easier to get energetic inks when the sketch underneath is incredibly loose. My brain also just parses this as a monochrome piece unless I take the time to do colour thumbs, which I should really be better about.

✘ Website updates

While this was admittedly low priority, I’m still disappointed I didn’t get around to it. Contributing to this (and, indeed, my struggles with each task this month) was an aversion for sitting at my desktop throughout the month. I do what I can from my tablet and phone, but the bulk of my work I’d rather finish at my computer proper.

This does get genuinely more difficult to do when the temperature’s increased. Headaches from the heat and worrying over the device’s functionality and such. Our building doesn’t have air conditioning, and my room warms up from the sunlight hitting it throughout the day.

Goals for July:

◻︎ Commission progress (0/3)
◻︎ Website updates

This hiatus is continuing through July. I will, however, endeavor to schedule the collection of Scabbardfish WIPs I have lying around, and continue working through commissions. My time will be cut somewhat for birthday reasons though.

Thank you for reading! I’m going to go play some Fantasy Life i now.

🌱 May report

A bit of a messy month for me to be quite honest, but still working steadily. And to start, I said this last goal was more for June, so I’ll be ignoring it here.

✔︎ Commission progress
✲ Cluaran dev
◻︎ Website updates

🌧️ April report

The past month was a necessary break, as I put it. I cut down on expectations and am feeling a bit calmer. Finances continue to be a source of anxiety.

✔︎ Commission progress
✲ Continued project development

☘️ 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.

🌸 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