I’ve finished the 2 illusts I want to finish, and it’s like 5 days away from May and I only have like 6 pages inked and none toned for next month HAHA. nbd though I’ll most likely get 16 done before May 1, but I don’t think I’ll have another double update month in case I don’t finish in time ): I’M ALSO PISSED I COULDN’T POST ANY MANGA PAGE WIPS because half the things are spoiler ]:

I focused a lot on each individual task a lot so far, but the only thing that really benefitted from this is my manga because I was able to read over book 4 a good number of times with a fresh eye and fix some stuff I don’t like! everything else is kind of meh because every time I pick up a new piece I’m like uhhhhhhhh how do I draw ?_? I’m not retaining much knowledge from what I’ve learned from lack of repetitious practice BUT WHATEVER I forget everything I learn zzzz

Drawing manga pages feels like grinding in an mmo sometimes it’s weird HAHA. I love just doing whatever in a grindy mmo, it feels therapeutic to me… it’s probably this aspect of azns that western gamers don’t understand LOL. For some odd reason every page I finish feels like some mob I killed and it feels very satisfying to keep doing, and I can go on for days or weeks without really giving a shit about anything else. Especially if my mind is also on the story, I filter out the outside world and just lose interest about pretty much everything in the world except my story, sometimes when I think about this objectively it kind of makes me think wow man I have problems :1 It’s these times when I work most intensively and efficiently on my work, and it’s also these times when people interrupt me I explode HAHA… I fucking hate it when people around me don’t comprehend the notion that I can’t just pause to do something else and get right back to work afterwards, and it sucks ass when I get knocked out of a work mood that I took so long to attain :[

ok back to grinding \o/

Anime North is already closing in and I JUST realized that because I’ve spent so much time on contract work–stuff I can’t sell, I only have like 3 new presentable CP prints right now ): I want to finish at least one, if not two more, but it sucks because I have to think about ~sales~ for these prints and actually care if people would want to hang such a picture on their wall, so I can’t just paint whatever scenes I have in mind :1 I wish I could sell my contract pieces because they were done under direction with lots of hours put in and a much higher quality standard Q___Q

I’ll most likely try to work on some cool coloured pictures because everything I ever paint is full of red LOL. I wanted to finish this scrap of vocruen I just did but like kristen said, even if the content is nice it’ll be downplayed by all the other warm colors :c maybe I’ll finish it when I have time afterwards.

I’ve wanted to draw Vocruen like this for a while but I never liked the things I came up with. I kind of like this one though! I came up with this plus some other sketches while I was doing crunches and staring at my popcorn ceiling. Exercising is proving to be much more productive than I imagine. Maybe I tricked my brain into being creative by activating the “quick! she’s not near a computer or pencil/paper right now, flood her with inspiration” function.

The process of this scrap was rather standard instead of my otherwise paint inexplicably everywhere and eyeball everything method, so I thought I’d post it! I used a lot of layer modes to end up with the final colours. I usually do this when I don’t know what I want to do with the colour scheme, as you can see I laid down his colours without any lighting interaction (just plain red, skin colour, white, green etc). if I have a clear atmosphere in mind I usually pick the final mixed colours straight from the colour picker without relying on layer modes to grant me the colour interaction.

in other news LOOK WHAT HAS BEEN UNEARTHED FROM LIKE 11 YEARS OR SOMETHING AGO

I think this gameboy only ever played pokemon gold/silver/crystal, and the next game I played would be phoenix wright and pokemon diamond(?? the one with dialga) on DS and that’s the end of my nintendo experience. I was obsessed with pokemon when I was that age, but not in a very intellectual way like I was good at it or anything just… I played it a lot LOL. My dad bought the regular game boy for me in the beginning because I wanted to play pokemon yellow, and I don’t think I played anything else other than small individual games like mario (I wonder where my brick is ;_; probably lost in china) I have no idea where my gold/crystal is anymore, the only reason I still have  this silver is because it was still in the gameboy when we found the gameboy LMAO

I was so surprised it still works LOL. I remember the game had some connectivity problems when I last played it, and sure enough I have to carefully insert the casette and not shake the gameboy when it’s running or it dies HAHA. BUT IT WORKS.

I played all pokemon games in japanese because I was still in china. They only sold the japanese version, but English was as foreign a language to me as japanese anyway so it didn’t even matter, if anything I find the characters in japanese names easier to identify somehow?? even though I have no idea wtf they say… I did manage to learn what all the move names and pokemon names look like somehow though, but my game experience wasn’t very a tactical one because since I couldn’t read what the game said, I had no idea what any of the buff/debuff moves did, so I only used attack moves…  my search to capture the legendary dogs in crystal was so painful because I never knew there was a move that stopped them from escaping LMFAO.  Even when I was small I really liked godly/legendary stuff so my teams were usually those pokemons and I had no concern about balancing weakness beyond having elemental attack moves HAHA… I think the 2 mr mime icons up there are mew and celebi? which my friend made for me/traded me. The rest of them I think are lugia, dragonite, articuno and ho oh. lugia was my FAVOURITE POKEMON EVER and I was grinding my way to 99 it, but never made it ): I would do it now but I don’t remember what the moves/names are anymore ;-;

lastly some pocky because I’m japanese i never snack but the box was beautiful so I bought it. look at my priorities!

I started a new picture from scratch on livestream in an attempt to make a tutorial as requested for my fb page show of thanks and I like how it’s turning out! I’ve been struggling to find an old sketch to colour now that I finished colouring whatever I was colouring before (god I don’t even remember what it was). There are like 20 scraps I’ve done in the past years that I’ve ALWAYS been dying to finish, but idk maybe it’s cus of the time that’s passed that I’m not so into them anymore, that every time I open up one of those files, I just don’t feel right or feel the drive to start working on them. I’ve been trying to start new pieces because of that reason, but because I so purposely try to steer away from things too similar to what I’ve drawn before, it seems everything I come up with recently feels uninteresting to continue :1 So I went back to drawing the same old shit again–this is even pretty much the same as another sword and dance themed scrap a while ago but I stopped caring. I feel excited to work on it until I can share it, and I think that’s the feeling I love getting from drawing and writing stories: slaving away on something thinking aw man I can’t wait til it’s done and I can show EVERYONE or just stare at it myself like a true narcissist

I really should just stop giving a shit about variety and broadening my horizons and becoming a better artist or whatever, because right now it’s doing me more harm than good; it’s making me not want to draw and not like what I’m drawing. As long as I know I’m not avoiding things because I don’t know how to draw them, I think I’ll stick to drawing the same shit I like to draw all the time ]: there really is no point for me to have an impressive and well planned comprehensive porfolio in my pocket if I don’t feel personally involved in most of it. I’m certain I will just turn back and look at those achievements and ask myself why I wasted my time on doing that. I see motivational and professional quotes and posts all the time about the “trooper professional artist” type, how waiting for inspiration is for amateurs, how thinking outside the box and expanding yourself is good, that you should HONE YOURSELF, prepare and refine yourself, train yourself to be a master. Logically I completely agree, I encourage people to do this, and I admire those who can do this, those whose pursuit is in art itself rather than a narrow topic or theme/interest. But like everything, it can’t just be taken  and applied to every single person because, hey, I don’t want to be a great artist. I just want to have the tools to make what I enjoy possible; the ability to draw allows me to bring into existence what I want to see without paying others to draw it for me, and that’s it. same for music. I will certainly want to improve, but the mindset in that desire to improve is completely different from an artist hard at work towards enlightenment. Still, every time I see those posts I feel like a guilty criminal because it feels like I chose to be ignorant and shallow despite knowing I made a carefully thought out choice. I’ve developed such an indulgent personality because of my drawing/piano playing pursuits, but maybe I should just embrace it and actually let that help make whatever I create more compelling, than to second guess myself every couple of months about my ~artistic direction~

OK SORRY FOR THE INTERNAL BATTLE MADE EXTERNAL I have so much guilt piled up about what I choose to draw and this is probably the 10th time I talked about this idek. pls have a bach chaconne

trying out colourizing from a grayscale sketch again, I failed all my previous attempts and even this time it feels weird ;-; but I guess at least all the values are correct maybe?? I WILL SAVE THIS METHOD FOR IMPORTANT DRAWINGS WHERE PEOPLE WILL SEE MY VALUE PROBLEMS.

I drew her jacket wrong but w/e it’s a experiment/guilt sketch wehhh. I hope I have time to draw more but I don’t think I’ll have time ): I’ve only done 6 pages for book 4 so far because the first 7 are all in colour q______q here are some crops from those pages. Need to do at least 10 more in the next 2 weeks to post next month, which is easy except I have other stuff to work on oops

Lastly I’VE BEEN TRYING TO GROW MY OWN GREEN ONIONS. The first day I excitedly planted them in water and put them in front of the window, and then they got fried the SECOND DAY LOL. Good thing they’re resilient and easy to grow and came back to life……… I didn’t know I would fail that bad and I was so depressed |: but I did my first cutting today after a week and they taste good! I’m conflicted because I prefer the white parts more than the leaves, or at least have it be a mix of both, but I can’t eat the white part if I want to grow it WHAT DO

Ending with epic snow plowing from that crazy storm a few weeks ago

OK ANYWAY TO NOT LEAVE A TL;DR AS THE TOP POST OF MY BLOG

I haven’t posted for a long time and I still have no actual drawings to post ;; I’ve been working on thumbnails for volume 4, which I’m at 130 pages! I think another 10 pages (plus 10 pages of bonus story) will finish it up. I’m rather surprised how well the page count worked this time, because while I was scripting and estimating the amount of content, I was really worried that there would not be enough content to fill ~150 pages. I decided to really take my time with the pacing because of that, since I was unsatisfied with rushing previous volumes anyway, and it all turned out well! This volume will be an exciting one YEAH

I do have more photos of my place and fan stuff! starting from my place

The view of my giant windows are amazing really

And sometimes the sun just lets in the most incredible lights that make me want to stop doing what I’m doing and just zone out.

2 more pictures from nyc! My friend’s omg wtf cute pom ugh SO CUTE THIS FLUFFBALL WHY SO FLAFFFYY

LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE PAWS

A little before I went MIA and between that time and now, I got 2 more amazing cosplay and cosplay items!!!! Faryl Smith as Veloce (she even made her drink bottle and the necklace from scratch WTF OMG) and hetemsenar as Blackbird (same with her bracelet!) I have the best fans ;_;

She was so kind to send me the actual necklace, inside a gorgeous clear container ;-; Thank you so much! ♥

Look at how legit this all is

And augh precious little Blackbird SHE LOOKS SO CUTE AND ACCURATE AND SOME MORE CUTE. Not only is the cosplay so well done but the cosplayer pulls off her look so well too!!

y hello there hot stuff