#also why the sona is still on the backburner

[thatlittledandere]

Makin a fantroll :3 Started out as a sona but then I ended up giving her like, an actual personality, separate from mine. I mean we did end up sharing some traits - we are all the mask and the wearer and all that - but nevertheless this isn't a sona anymore. NOW I'm trying to not make her too Vriska LMAO

[ravenwolfie97]

2020 Art Summary

Yep, it’s 2021 already. 2020 is finally over. It felt like it lasted forever, and it felt like the end would never come, but here we are. Crazy how the time flew by.

I felt like I didn’t get much art done this year because of Current World Event, but I made a lot more than I thought I did. Even some of my new favorite pieces came out of this year, so I think that’s worth celebrating and looking back upon!

I was insanely productive during the first month of 2020, and looking back I was surprised at all the stuff I did, but then I remembered that that winter season was actually one of the best times of my life! I started being more socially involved, and I think my newfound drive at the time translated into all the art I pumped out this month. This is just a small fraction of what I made in January, but I only have so much space. Quite a few complex pieces in both style exploration and polishing my own style.

Apparently February was a rather intimate month. Things began to slow down in terms of my own art here, with me spending more time in social settings and school work ramping up, I didn’t have as much time to coop up in my room to draw. I did wanna do something for a friend’s Valentine’s Day OC art challenge, so I drew my lovey-dovey couple from Dance of 1000 Words havin’ a dance. Nothing actually came of that challenge, but it was fun to do regardless.

One of the things I was most proud of in the winter season was making more friends, and one of the closest friends I made was completely coincidental. I met a person named Kiri on the bus one night I decided to volunteer somewhere by myself, and we ended up chatting and getting along. They quickly told me their tumblr username, and I shot them a message immediately after they left. A couple days later, we met up for brunch, and we started becoming really close friends and creative partners!

Not much else happened in March cuz that’s when Current World Event started becoming an issue, but Kiri and I still kept in close touch and we randomly started developing a concept for a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Galar Edition. These are a handful of characters we thought up, with Skipper the Scorbunny and Dross the Dreepy as the main characters, Morgrem as the main antagonist, and some shopkeepers such as those of the Greedent Bank and the Indeedee General Store. This was also my first time drawing all of these Galar Pokemon (except Scorbunny, but I also made Skipper a bit more unique than a regular Scorbunny).

Lots of events happened this month. First of all, Steven Universe Future ended, one of my favorite and most influential shows was no longer continuing. I had to do something as tribute, both as a send-off to one of the greatest cartoons in the world and as a cathartic release for my feelings towards it.

A while later, I got the opportunity to start playing an MMO in beta called Fer.al, by the same people who made Animal Jam, which coincidentally I had also beta tested for back in the day. I ended up getting really attached to my first character, a Senri I named Sasha, and though I’ve made more characters than them since, they’re still my absolute favorite. Though I haven’t touched the game in a few months, I was really engrossed for a long time and enjoyed playing through the beta and early access phases.

At the end of the month, some friends of mine invited to a roleplay group with some mutuals, and we all played characters in a crime syndicate. Just a bunch of ragtag thieves and criminals who ended up together in order to protect an artifact called the Crown of Thieves, which was essentially a flag to be taken by other groups to prove that they are the best thieves in the land. My character was based heavily on my sona (if it wasn’t obvious) and was also influenced by Cloud Strife, since the FFVII Remake had just come out and I was super into watching the cutscenes at the time. My character’s (code)name is Valkyrie, and they are a mercenary, going between multiple different employers to carry out whatever duties they need to do. They have a more complicated backstory, but presently they were recently hired by recommendation of their friend Shark (played by @shmoots-universe​ who is also My friend now ily maya) who works with a group called the Court Cards who are currently in possession of the Crown of Thieves. Valk never really had a place to call home, but staying with this group of people had to be the closest they could get to that feeling. They still sleep with a knife under their pillow because of trust issue but that’s okay.

Okay, so technically these examples started in April, but I continued making content with them in May, and the month was just pretty void of art in general, so here I am addressing them.

There were two main things I worked on this month: a Steven Universe AU of my own and the whole #sixfanarts thing that kicked off around then. Let’s start with the fanart bits. I did two and a half of them (six in April and nine in May), and it was so much fun to be able to draw stuff I don’t normally do! My personal favorites are shown here: Blake Belladonna from RWBY, Roll from Megaman, Yuki Konno from Sword Art Online, and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The other thing I’d been planning for a while was a Steven Universe AU, probably to cope with the show being over but also because I was inspired by a lot of those SU AU artists I started following at the time. I won’t share the details here because it’s gonna have its own blog at some point, but the example I’ve shown here is of a comic I made loosely in order to introduce a divergence in the plot of the story as well as introduce a character unique to my AU. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the characters and get a feel for the style.

As the year progressed, my amount of art I made per month began to dwindle, this time mostly because school was kicking my ass especially hard with finals. However, I took what time I had to get some backburner pieces finished, like the Tigerlily picture which I sketched out a couple months back, and the Gunvolt picture which I started working on SIX YEARS AGO. I don’t quite know why I got the urge to work on it again after so long, but it was nice to finally realize. The other drawing for DOTS was done in the dead of night but I was really happy with how it came out.

Despite only having two summer classes left of school, this month was really rough because they demanded a lot of my time and attention. I did not have the gumption to do anything digital, so I stuck to my sketchbook to get out what I felt like getting out.

My friends and I did a stream of the game Helltaker, and I really enjoyed the concept, so in following my friends I made my own Helltaker demon OC named Raksha the Ravenous Demon (it’s a pun but also got mythical insp). I also got super into Hazbin Hotel at this point, mostly because the Addict music video dropped and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I doodled Angel Dust cuz I felt like it. The other drawing I did was actually a free commission I gave a friend of mine as a prize for a trivia game show I ran back in June. He along with a couple other friends got some free drawings from me for getting the top three scores, and this one in particular was fun because of how interesting it was. He wanted me to draw a video game reviewer called the Irate Gamer from a specific moment, and I decided to go ham and just make it as dramatic as possible.

University classes finally wrapped up and right after that I was in the process of moving out of my apartment and getting adjusted to living with my parents again. I did a couple of agg.io drawing sessions with my friends from the Court Cards group as well as a new Dungeons and Dragons homebrew group I had joined. I drew some more of Valkyrie and came up with a design for my DND character Qakuqtuq (or Kai for short). He is monkey grandpa and I love him.

My main focus was on finishing a polished piece for my friend Cake, whose birthday was in the upcoming month. I wanted it to be as amazing as possible, so I put a lot of time into getting more detailed and making them look good. In addition to that, I did a few TOME doodles just for fun. The creature on the bottom was for this month’s art challenge on my Discord server where we made original TOMERPG monsters, and I created Hundylow, a Crystal-element monster based on the Grindylow from English folklore.

This month was a lot more productive than the past few had been. I tried to do a 31-day art challenge called Creatober but failed to get past the third prompt because I was still swamped with other work. I’m still happy with what little I did, including the piece with my characters Kyle and Guarudan from DSWD.

I don’t remember how, but I also suddenly rediscovered an old Flipnote Hatena series called Tales of LostClan, a Warriors fan series that I would say was the most obscure thing I’ve ever been super invested in. It was what got me into the actual Warriors books, and I liked it so much I redrew the animations into a comic... twice. Didn’t get nearly as far the second time but clearly my love for this little fanfiction had not waned after nearly a decade. I felt like drawing a book cover/movie poster for the series, just to get it out there and see how much I’ve improved over all that time.

Also I felt like making a vampiresona just before Halloween because I never dress up for Halloween in art (or real life anymore, for that matter), and I wanted to do something like that for once. It was short-lived but I really liked the design!

The focus of this month was definitely on Pokemon stuff. As per usual I contributed to the current Gotta Draw ‘Em All collab, and I was tasked to draw Regieleki. It was really fun to figure out how to make it stand out and look like it was made of electricity.

I also committed a lot of my spare time to my Fakemon Gym Leaders, as I had been working on bringing them to life in the past year or so now. As of this post, I’ve finished rendering their full body poses and gym badges, but I’m still working on completing all eight VS portraits, the first half of which are shown here.

I... didn’t draw anything this month, actually. What I’m showing here was worked on in the last few days but has actually been in progress for a couple of months, and I just finished it earlier today, in 2021. But I needed to show something off, and it’s also about time I mentioned it.

Back in October, I kept seeing people rave about this game called Genshin Impact, and I was interested but not so much as to start playing it... until my friends started playing and I was like “fuck it, let’s download it”. Since that day, I have been super immersed and in love with this game, to the point I came up with my own canon based on my gameplay experiences. This also included the creation of an original player character: Astra, the non-binary Traveller. And now, I’ve finally drawn them and brought them to life.

It has been one hell of a year. I had some of the highest highs and lowest lows in 2020, lots of changes, and I have now officially moved onto the next chapter of my life now that my time at university is finally over. I’m very excited for what 2021 has to offer, and I’m going to go forward with great ambition.

[katherine-rambles]

@peanutters replied to your post: “@peanutters replied to your post: “hey uuuuh miniature painting is...”:

O nasty but understandable about the residue And thats why i have multiple things going at once (thank u msc 30min wait time)

hah i wish i had more space. i do have a few things happenin’ right now though-- gonna work on a couple needlefelts and also a needlefelt of my fur/feather-sona? which i want to do Really Good Wings for, which requires some research and so on. but those aren’t super great for quick jaunts between drying paint. 

also i’m vaguely afraid that my current energy bubble will burst and i’ll just be left with more unfinished projects BUT i work on telling myself that it’s for fun anyway so who the fuck cares if i have unfinished projects (aside from myself, having to hold onto projects i’ve already spent hours and dollars on and therefore keep around because i can’t bear to throw them out)

but man i haven’t had this much creative energy in... years? i keep remembering projects on my backburner and having to tell myself “well, katherine, you could do that but you have other things you want to work on right now and you can do that later.” plus new ideas and inspirations competing, though those are a bit rarer since idea creation is a bit like a muscle. 

in the past week or so, ideas i’ve recalled/come up with that i’ve wanted to start/restart, many of which i haven’t thought about in years:

my book-librarian dress that i’ve made one of two custom fabric patterns for already

my crystal skeleton repaint/mod of skelita from monster high (currently done with the sculpt and part of a base coat)

a needlefelt Garnet because she’s my Favorite

over four paintings that i have unfinished, but when i tried to work on one i was immediately discouraged because i was never that great at painting, but i still want to try again sometime soonish 

this is why i started art again with a needlefelt Mae-- i was certain that i could do it well. at least i know when i need a confidence boost lmao. PLUS it got some people interested in my nitw vector commissions again even though i wasn’t expecting that

my various lego d&d projects

my intricately planned out toothiana cosplay, which will involve probably hundreds of dollars of two-tone tulle and individually cut out feathers with optionally a sewn-in wire ‘vein’ made of multiple layers of tulle each in order to achieve her natural hummingbird gradient effect + give the longer feathers some posability

re-tooling my bulbabackpack design for more replicability so i can sell it

potentially as a purse

re-setting up my sticker printing projects

my plan to needlefelt a life-sized alien Stitch because??? WHO WOULDN’T WANT THAT

my plan to make a life-size secretary bird because they’re Awesome and basically a Modern Raptor???? fuck yea

any number of poorly-thought-out Lesbian Webcomic ideas

a videogame wherein you are a yarn creature who learns how to knit themselves into different forms Unlocking Abilities. platformer/puzzler for all ages

a videogame where you are a colony of bees and/or a specific bee caught up in hive and intra-hive politics. potentially post-apocalyptic where the bees are discovering how to interpret human language and technology? maybe post-human solar punk earth setting, because a traditional “everyone died and you’re the only intelligent things left” is too fucking tired. plus also hatoful boyfriend did it pretty well already, not sure if i can add to that

of course my amiibo mods, of my splatoon main gal and knight!peach

uuuuh my desire to introduce resin casted parts into my needlefelt creations

the general desire to learn how to sculpt+mold ball jointed dolls

the general desire to learn metalworking

soldering for techy repair stuff

more extensive training to create better frameworks for my needlefelt stuff

 my extensive pokemon quiz idea that requires webscraping code i don’t want to deal with

.... and that’s just in the LAST WEEK

I’ve had more creative, constructive, and social impulses in the past seven days than I’ve had in the PAST SEVEN MONTHS

this is how my LIFE USED TO BE LIKE!!! i wanna keep it this way!!!!!!!!

The other thing is right now I’m in a good spot of balancing these impulses with my rational, don’t-spend-too-much-money side; I can’t tell for certain why but I know when I’m depressed I’ll be excited for projects that require a lot of new equipment and skills I’ve barely used previously.  But in reality, what this means is I spend money and don’t do projects when I’m depressed. (That’s how I ended up with my big “I’ll make stickers!” plan that will probably never pan out, even if the profit margin can be stupid high. I didn’t realize that I a.] don’t draw things that lend themselves to stickers and b.] that an in-home inkjet press was going to create less durable stickers than you can get from, say, Redbubble. And I spent like 500 bucks on a printer and a papercutter for that... though I do plan on using the papercutter anyway for unrelated projects and the printer was a purchase I wanted to make anyway.)

The realistic thing to do is to work on projects with what I have or small test kits, and then upgrade more as I become more familiar and desire better tools for the work I’m already doing. A tablet does not a digital artist make, but it can certainly make a digital artist’s workflow much easier. 

Anyway right now I am cautiously optimistic about life and h---FUCK I FORGOT TO RETURN THE CALL FROM THE PSYCH OFFICE AUGH. 

i am putting a sticky note on my phone now. fuck