ashsomethingart

[ashsomethingart]

I've been a bit MIA on here, but I've been stupidly busy doing planning work on a bunch of projects. A lot coming soon! In the meantime here's a new artwork I was commissioned to do! Nyx, Goddess of the Night Black and Grey, realism style tattoo design for Nikki Stewart featuring the goddess Nyx, as Nikki sees her!

This piece took me around 10 hours in Procreate, and I'll be dropping a timelapse of it later today! I'll also have prints of it available going live on my Redbubble in awhile. I'll create another post when I have that ready!

[ashsomethingart]

Streaming! Come check out the art process and have a chat with me while chilling out to some chill new music.

[ashsomethingart]

AM Stream because I have plans this evening! Come chat and watch along as I whip out the rest of this character logo for the Drunken Bard!

[ashsomethingart]

Newly finished logo for The Three Little Sisters’ mature division, The Dread Sisterhood, featuring my newest artwork entitled Angrboda.

This piece took me around 10 hours, drawn in procreate and then turned into the logo in Clip Studio Paint, and it features the Giantess Angrboda: the lover of Loki and mother of Fenris, Jormungandr and Hel in Norse mythology/Northern European Paganism.

[ashsomethingart]

Streaming art live now!

[ashsomethingart]

New logo design for Tempest Saucedo's small business, Tempest's Omens!

Go check out what they do if you're into tarot readings and divination!

Lovely working with them.

This piece took me around 6 hours total, between Clip Studio and Procreate!

[ashsomethingart]

It took me awhile to get around to posting this but it’s done!

This piece took me a solid week to draw, but it is finally complete!

Commissions by Kashena Starr, as a t-shirt design to be given as a gift for her dad! THey wanted to feature the clown school they had recently gone to, as well as their dad's favorite motorcycle, the 1942 Harley Davidson Flathead ULH model.

Clip Studio Paint, around 38 hours; illustrated by Ash Something

[ashsomethingart]

Streaming art on twitch in a bit!

Twitch went great yesterday! Had a bunch of people in chat, and got 5 new twitch emotes started, and two finished!

Going live within the next ten minutes or so to finish the lastthree emotes in this set!

Come join in and chat along! http://twitch.tv/ashsomethingart

[ashsomethingart]

Good evening my loves! To prevent technical difficulties today, I held myself up and did everything on the back end, to make sure tonight's stream goes smoothly! I will be starting the stream over on http://twitch.tv/ashsomethingart at 9:30 PM Pacific time!

[ashsomethingart]

The product of today's stream: Title: Siren Procreate and Clip Studio 9 hours Commissioned by Allisea Raeyvn Lillith

This one was an awesome process, where Raevyn was in stream the entire time I was drawing it, and I was able to get it pounded out from start to finish in one session. Rare that everything flows so smoothly like that, but I have the entire process up on my Twitch and Youtube starting tomorrow!

[ashsomethingart]

Good morning Party People

I'm headed live on twitch to promote my september fundraiser while I work on commissions! Come chat with me and help me get my viewer count up for the session!

http://twitch.tv/AshSomethingArt

I'll be going live at 3:30 PM Pacific!

[ashsomethingart]

Horns 2.0

Profile pic commissioned by Bones

This is a portrait of bones in an updated style based on an artwork I did for them around 6 years ago.

[ashsomethingart]

Bacon’s Tavern

A 4-piece modular twitch overlay, for use in OBS

Commissioned by @TheBaconDragon on twitch

This piece took me around 14 hours, and includes a frame, a removable back wall to replace with a video game feed, and a bar front and bar back that are separate pieces so he can slip his camera (with green screen) behind the bar.

I had a lot of fun with this piece: he gave me full artistic license so I just had a field day.

[ashsomethingart]

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT EVERYONE!

I'm running my first ever Month-long Fundraiser discount! That means that I’m continuing the 50% discount from September 1 until the end of September! You can find more detailed info about it on my website here!

What’s going on? Well, as many of my followers know I’ve been having a TON of trouble getting back on track since I was forced to move last year, resulting in me being late paying rent at my new apartment every other month since I moved in. I’ve continuously been forced to put off looking for new commissions until the last minute because I’ve been juggling a massive backlog of projects, and despite completing that backlog I realized it had become a routine that I was stuck in, and I need to get out.

So instead of waiting until the last minute, I am spending the entire month of September pushing to get as many new commissions as possible, so I can hopefully get an emergency savings fund and next month’s rent.

I am openly accepting tips and donations all month, as well as hoping to get new subscribers on my VIP Funpass membership.

It’s time for me to stop living emergency-to-emergency, and get back on top!

So now you get the opportunity to get your art for a discount I never offer anymore: 50% off.

You don’t have to do anything special to get the discount, just message me so we can chat about what you want me to draw, pay, and you’re added to the list.

Let’s get our Art on!

[ashsomethingart]

Good evening my loves!

I hit a bürnøut wall pretty hard a couple days ago, and it’s been a rough one. I’m gonna have to power through recovering and get back to work soon, because rent is coming up fast, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about this issue.

As all of you may know, I’m a 100% independent artist. I don’t work for a company, instead I work for all of you who order commissions from me.

That being the case, it comes with a lot of work that people don’t ever see. This month has brought some absolutely phenomenal changes to me in the form of tech/setup which will make some parts of the process a lot faster and easier, but the reality of what I do is that 95% of my job is not art, and all of that side and back-end work can be soul crushing.

I’ve talked about it in the past, but to upkeep what I do I have to do constant commission hunting, create marketing materials and maintain a constant social media presence, continuously update my portfolio, constantly learn new techniques and art programs, as well as keep up with doing the art, planning and completing my personal projects, keep my merch and print shops up to date, and so forth.

My biggest roadblock as an independent artist is having no base income; meaning a consistent amount of money I get at regular intervals. Every dollar I make is either from commissions or tips, and currently I can work upwards of 100 hours in a week without earning a single dollar, because none of that 100 hours ends up being art that has been paid for, but work to help me BRING IN new paid work.

It’s incredibly rough on me and I’m always on the lookout for ways to make it easier; I tend to go through this ebb and flow of doing 1-2 months of work with a crazy amount of output that ends in 2-3 weeks of intense burnout where I’m totally nonfunctional, then come back to the grind.

I do not have a social life. I wake you to work and I tend to work until I crash for the day, then rinse and repeat.

Not having a base income means I can’t plan for savings. I can’t set aside money for upgrades to my business; I have no emergency funds. If any single thing goes wrong I can be set back by months.

It also means that every month, when the 1st rolls around I have to make a mad dash to the finish line to meet rent and I never know if I’m going to have it all in time or not.

The last two months I was on time, but for around 6 months prior to that I was over a week late.

When I explain all of this, most people fall back on that argument of “Well why don’t you get a real job” and I’m not going to explain my reasoning here but suffice to say; I can’t. It’s this or nothing for me.

All of that said, I have a business plan for myself that hinges on all of you; the start of that plan is (and has been) to build myself up a base income that I can rely on every month, and once I have that, start expanding what I do.

It’s no secret that I have big plans that don’t seem to go anywhere, and the reason they don’t is because I’m CONSTANTLY grinding trying to upkeep my bills and rent, and I have no energy to put into those plans.

I want to move forward with my tarot decks.

I want to start a new endeavor that I’m calling Something Strange. I want to start actually publishing my webcomics.

But I’m not fortunate like some artists who somehow manage to land the startup funds I would need to be able to focus on just those things. I currently HAVE to rely on commissions while slowly building my base income up.

Which is where I come to my point.

I was on Patreon for ages, and I did fairly well there; however it was really only pocket change I managed to get from that platform and I got hit with a warning every few months because they didn’t agree with my content.

Eventually, I left Patreon and founded my VIP Funpass membership, which I host right through my website.

I need to build this membership up to the point where I’m making at least $800 a month on it, and I’m asking you all to support me in that endeavor. Please.

On the VIP Funpass you choose how much you pledge each month: I have four tiers; $5, $10, $25 and $50.

In the past I’ve gone on about what YOU get if you join up, but you can find all the info about it on my website.

If I can build my VIP Funpass memberships up to the point where I am making $800 a month through my site, and only my site, that covers my site ent ($675), my phone bill ($50) and my Internet bill ($25) plus the fee my seller platform takes.

It will remove around 80% of my daily stress and help me stop needing to grind myself to burnout.

This will mean I can put more focus on finishing commissions, cut my turnaround time in half, and allow me to divert energy into my passion projects.

So, I’m asking everyone who follows me to consider subscribing to my VIP Funpass Membership; the way I see it is, for the same cost as a single fast food meal every month you can help me change my life for the better; support an independent artist and help fight back against AI image generators all in one go.

So, do with all of that info what you will; if you want to learn more about the VIP Funpass Membership you can check it out here.

[ashsomethingart]

Good morning everyone! As the end of the month nears, I wanted to take a moment to reach out and let you all know about the different ways you can support what I do! I am an entirely independent artist, and I work predominantly on commissions.

I’m currently taking orders for September/October, and you can submit your request either:

On my website - https://ashsomething.art/commission-request/ Or by messaging me directly!

Over the last year I’ve also been trying to work towards getting a consistent base income, and I’m nowhere near my goal! If you can’t afford a commission another way to support is via my VIP Funpass Membership, which you can find the details about here: https://ashsomething.art/vip-membership/

The Funpass gives you awesome perks like a consistent discount as well as commission credits in the amount of your monthly subscription cost, giving people an easier long-term way to get custom art from me! I was originally using Patreon but the platform was too restrictive for me, and I decided to host the subscription service myself.

And finally, if you love my art and want to get some existing work, you can find many of my artworks up in Redbubble, here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/AshSomethingArt/shop

I can’t afford to run a discount this month, as things are tight and I’m likely going to be losing 3-4 days to Jury Duty, so please consider helping me out and either ordering/signing up, or jumping onto my Facebook and dropping likes/comments/shares on any of my original art posts! https://www.facebook.com/ash.vindhlerlokasson

[ashsomethingart]

Apparently I forgot to add these two here,

Ref sheets for my characters Clopin and Pierrot, that I did as planning for an upcoming project called Something Strange.