#its not actually all that bad though fdsjkl

[dandyshucks]

me making myself a fae in the worldbuild: :D

me when i realize im going to have to somehow mix my own personal way of speaking with the fae speech styles: .... D:

[piplupod]

wtf do ppl ask for on their bdays, this is so difficult goddamn

this is the most ridiculous and first-world problem to have but im trying desperately to think up anything that i could ask for this year bc my bday is coming up and my mother is asking for a wishlist from me, but all i can think of is either things she would judge me for (plushies, cute decor like figurines, etc) or expensive stuff like an external harddrive - i'll probably still put that on the list just in case fdsjkl my sister asked for some wickedly expensive stuff this year, maybe more than one person can go in on it together to get one for me oughhh i hate this though bc it makes me feel greedy and selfish fsfdjkl gifts stress me out so badly

im desperately wracking my brain to come up with maybe art supplies that i dont have yet but i think i have mostly everything that i can use for now and that is easily acquired (i dont want parents to have to go searching for shit online fdsjkl that makes them cranky w me) and that i can use without having to have five other tools at my disposal already so,,, augh. hrm. sigh.

[dandyshucks]

i feel like i should say something, some kind of apology or smth, idk ^^;;

i would looove to say that i won't display symptoms ever again or that i'll "do better" to keep it under control but honest to god i am doing my absolute best already, and the only way i could do better w my current state is to get medicated but that's not an option rn (this small town only has one psychiatrist and he's ... not good at what he does. sigh). i will of course continue to try very hard and keep working on things the way that i can and look for new ways of tackling the brain scaries and coping with it!

my main way i've been dealing w trying not to display symptoms publicly is just to err on the side of extreme caution and try not to post anything here that isn't strictly "i love this fictional character teehee", but sometimes i feel stifled by that rule and want to connect w ppl on more than just "yayy my bouyfriend". like i want to be Me but ,, i think Me is probably just,,, not all that great ^^;;;; so i'm thinking maybe it'd be best if i just take a step back again and go on a mostly-hiatus for a while until i get the welfare and disability stuff sorted out (but that could take. several months. so idk 😭😭) bc its been rly having a bad effect on my mental health and stability, ack !!

i also feel like i need to tell everyone that they do not Need to interact w me or respond to anything i say ever, that you should only do so if u Want to, not because u feel Obligated to, but that implies that i would ever have the power over someone to be able to "make" them feel like they have to do smth and that in itself is an egotistical thought which is "bad". so. gestures vaguely at this paragraph. i just have to sit and hope that nobody feels like they Must interact w me in any way, but i do not know how to express it without sounding dismissive or ungrateful or presumptuous or egotistical. when i say "i appreciate this!" it's just that - i appreciate it, but i do not expect it, so please don't feel pressured ever!

anyways, i appreciate the patience and kindness ppl show me (though i do not expect it dsfjkl) and i will continue trying to keep the unwell brain stuff under wraps as much as i'm able to (and i absolutely understand if ppl cannot deal w that and leave! i won't be offended!). i haven't actually said sorry in this but do know i feel badly about it and i'm trying to figure out how to fix this so it doesnt happen more, i just dont know if a "sorry" is really any use here fdsjkl

[dandyshucks]

im gonna critique my own art real quick bc this is bugging me, I DONT KNOW WHAT I DID ??

COMPARING THESE. at first i was like wrow the face looks so great. and then i did the arm (i genuinely dont know how i coloured the arm FSDJKL i remember putting down the base colour for it but i do not remember doing anything other than that and the final touches of the arm hair HELP ???) and suddenly the face looked flat and kind of like... well, the colours look murky and muted in comparison i think. like the colouring looks kind of bad on the face now.

the arm colouring is just so much richer and lively, and i TRIED to fix the face but fdjskl everything i was doing was just making it worse so i had to give up and just call it quits BUT ITS DRIVING ME CRAZY

the arm colouring is just so much better than the face and it's making me GRGRHRHH i wish i could figure out what i did bc im pretty sure i was using the same palette as the face?? so maybe I just coloured it in with a different technique?

MAYBE the underpainting had smth to do with it actually, bc i originally had the sleeve base colour there (a very dark purple) but then decided to do his short sleeved hoodie so i went over that with the arm base and i had colour mixing set to 100 the entire time i worked on this bc im a fiend fdsjkl

also something sort of funny is that I used the same palette for both skin tones (like I used all the colours of the palette for both of them, just in differing ways), I think I have somehow accidentally achieved a pretty good skin tone palette even though like four of the colours I had added to my palette for reasons that have nothing to do with colouring in skin (i.e. for linework or as a background flat colour for sketching)

here i arranged them all nice bc i realized i'd been using all of these for skin tones

(i'm going to keep working on the palette though because I think there are definitely things missing and things that could be changed! but tbh i rarely even use the palette feature, this was just kind of a happy accident when i noticed "oh i have some colours up there from previous things that i could use for this maybe")