#this is all i can stand to draw today

[lovesickgoose]

[xxplastic-cubexx]

[right to left]

finally finished This Wip from Ever ago and so now i ask you ever look into another dudes eyes and suddenly want to do whatever he wants

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy day one of Chatember, starting it off with strong with the Thunderclan (Jin) leader, Jin Guangshan (Lionstar)

(Name and AU credits to @clintbeefwoods!)

[lunarharp]

into the deep end - 30k T orufrey fic, focusing on memory trauma, disability, and romance.

the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the witch.

for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.

the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.

but they were never whole to begin with, were they?

qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.

olly says nothing.

[qaanngi]

being economical and borrowing my art summary template from 2019 lol. notes under cut

I did want to do something similar to my 2020 art summary which had notes/thoughts on each digital piece baked into the image itself (and is also the prettiest lmfao) but I haven't been as proactive or even content since then sdfhsdkflds but I'm also of the opinion that artists should talk about their work, even if I still struggle to call myself one T_T

I met my monthly quota of one digital piece per month + one coloured sketch per month except October, which tends to be the month of exceptions since some sort of art challenge crops up. This year I opted to meme countdown loosely for Veilguard, and was the most free and loose I've been with drawing but also kind of burnt myself out a little on that front.

I do appreciate that there have been a few style experiments in the monthly things (March/Sept./Oct/Nov). I always found my style to be pretty generic but able to emulate other styles a little as a result. Except anime/manga evidently. But that means I can evoke different tones with different styles and do really left field stuff, which is always fun and leaves a lot of room for experimentation and a diverse body of work, which I prefer.

Managed to land LNY piece, which is a tradition I want to keep. I think my favourite piece is probably June's, the Lumine/Paimon/Osse/Scylla piece, which I referenced a screenshot because the location in-game was too pretty for me to not draw it. The Lumine/Girl With a Pearl Earring piece I'm pretty fond of, only because it was a genuine study of an old master, and I think it turned out well. The Lucanis minimalist piece is also a favourite, and it was me doubling down on the things I'm better at instead of trying to aspire to whatever the fuck I've been trying to do. Improve in some way I haven't defined yet, or operating on the notion that there is always room to improve (which is true and healthy to think), but also I guess a sense of dissatisfaction that my work is Objectively Broken in some way and desperately needs to be fixed. What's it like being content with your style and process?

The 2019 art summary had a template for Honourable Mentions since I actually managed to do more than one piece per month throughout the year (tho admittedly a lot of those were schoolwork). That's kind of been a struggle since 2021 for Reasons I still haven't fully recovered from, but I did manage a few extra things this year, chief among them the 19/20 Day Countdown mark for Veilguard, which I really wanted to do since I did one for Inquisition 10 years earlier, and I'll probably do one for the next Dragon Age game lol. I'd also like to probably redo the Inqusition one, and do full illustrations for both since I can actually draw backgrounds now. Something for 2025 I guess.

Others among the Honourable Mentions include a twt xlmi event piece I got a ton of "omg it's giving Sailor Moon + Tuxedo Mask" comments which makes it sound derivative as hell 🙃 The concept, was the moon (Lumine) and her night sky (Xiao). He is often associated with darkness and depicted looking at the moon pretty regularly. Also he is literally fading into black in the piece. My interpretation was that the night sky is quiet, and it darkens the sky so we can see the moon. The moon sits in the night sky's embrace. I actually quite like this one, the more I look at it. I've also used Giant Moon in the Middle of a Drawing a lot throughout the years, so that absolutely tracks. Maybe I should do one every year.

Other Honourable Mentions are my friend's commission (she was so patient with me), a noir Neve piece I did around September-ish too (was supposed to be a comic, might revisit the idea. I picked up reading comics again and was inspired to give one of my greatest inspirations a run - comic art, specifically the way they ink), and a quick lineless illustration for the xlmi zine I helped with.

For daily sketching, I only filled about 4-ish sketchbooks this year, all about 30-32 pages, but I've started to double up on pages so each is filled with more than one thing. Some sketchbooks were lazy in terms of what I did than others. Some were great, and had a lot of stuff where the things I practice (people in environments, action-oriented things, foreshortening, the bane of my existence) were abundant and pretty well executed. With the exception of one Lumine sketch that was so very in my own style that I really love and an adapted sketch of an OC, the favourites are all very action-oriented, and I'm glad. I really love the ones with Lucanis and Rook since there's genuine contact and an energy to them that feels very alive, which is something I've been working desperately towards, so it's nice to see it pay off. In a little daily drawing no less~

Around June there's a huge shift in subject and I all but ditched Gnshn immediately, which I think is healthy. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the months leading up to June and throughout with my daily sketches trying to force change my style to be more anime-esque since the gnshn fandom isn't particularly fond of western art styles, of which mine is painfully so. I have a lot of uncoloured sketches of Lumine that I'd like to get around to, but feel like a waste of time now. Leaving trying to make it in the gnshn fandom behind has been good for me, and it's been really nice to go back to the shit I love, which is just fights and blood. It's funny, since I ended my Cybird Ikemen run with swords and blood to jump into soft, cute shippy art for xlmi only to return to swords and blood.

Appropriately, I started my art blog ages ago for my silly little Dragon Age doodles, and I've returned to that. So: thanks, Veilguard. I hope I'm still fixated on you throughout all of 2025 because I have a loooot of ideas. And hopefully the patience and skill to get them out there.

[flamemons]

what are you looking at

[runefactorynonsense]

Cozytober - Day 25 - Sunflowers

[elytrafemme]

do you ever meet someone who you understand only exists in your life in a very temporary manner because of the nature of your relations but you feel so much strong emotion about them that you know they will be written into the fabric of your life forever? anyway i had the same phlebotomist as last time and have empirically determined that she is one of God's angels and i would just about do anything for her

[i-am-agent-washingtub]

Took my little brother to school with me and all he did was nibble my homework >:(

[critical-birb]

Sometimes I feel inspired to pick up my art supplies again and draw and paint and print beautiful things. I feel a burst of love and passion like I had in my youth to create things and share them with the world.

Then I log onto Instagram or twitter or any of the places I was aggressively told in university to post work to eight times a day if I even wanted a chance to break into the industry, and I see every small company that uses to be the entry points for young artists now using crummy AI art for everything they do and all of the larger companies and publishers advertising art that has been so aggressively forced into one very specific, lifeless style because that is what fits the market and is quick to produce.

I see every artist desperately posting the most beautifully crafted artwork that means the world to them and those posts being mindlessly ignored until they beleive their work is worthless because Internet culture has unfortunatly conditioned us all to be bottomless consumers and so hundreds of hours of blood and tears is nothing more than something to scroll past.

Then I log out and go back to bed, and my art supplies sit sadly on the shelf another year.

People love to say "create for yourself!" but that only takes you so far. Humans create as a way to share.

Imagine you baked a stunningly beautiful cake every week to bring to work - it took you practically the whole weekend to bake every teir and frost it and decorate it to perfection. And either no one eats it or a single piece gets taken, and nobody ever thanks you. There's a thousand cakes on the coffee table; most either store-bought ones or even fake ones.

Eventually you stop bothering to bring a cake in. You still bake, sure. You like baking. But you don't make beautiful cakes anymore. You only have you to bake for, after all. What's the point in making them beautiful or trying to create something new when you could just eat it out of the baking tray with a fork?

Its just all so....sad, isn't it?

[smalltimidbean]

oh to have a fiend plush… i mean i can technically get one made by budsies (a plush making company) but you’re probably not comfortable with that. which is perfectly valid

i must confess i never thought i would admire them so much as i do lol (even if they slightly scare me /lh)

ah well i’ll continue to admire them from afar

Yeah, not only would I be very uncomfortable with that, it'd be incredibly disrespectful (and just plain weird) to take my personal character (or anyone's, really) and make a plush of them to keep for yourself - so, please do not do that

If I did theoretically have a project featuring Bean and Fiend, and it was popular enough for merch, Fiend plush would definitely be one of the first things to make, much to their chagrin hehe

Again, unlikely to happen, but thanks for liking Fiend so much!

(Also tangent, but if I had a nickel for every time someone really liked a more antagonistic spin-off of Bean, I would have at least two nickels, which is not a lot, but it is weird that it has happened at least twice… (reference))

[calyptramoths]

nothing to do today i can finally rest...

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[malachitezmeyka]

I always forget just how many love songs I have in my playlist until I’m having an ultra-love-repulsed day and have to try my best to contain my breakdown until I get home

[un-pearable]

bro convinced me to play kakarot… he is. so small

[peridots-pixiwolf]

[Start ID. A green-toned drawing of two characters from an original universe, shown from the shoulders up. It's framed as though they're taking a selfie. On the left is Heathrow, a human with dark skin, long hair, a good number of facial scars, and two painted lines below each eye. He wears something akin to a green hoodie, with fluffy plant matter sewn into the back of the hood. On the right is Crassie, a half elf, which in this universe entails long pointed ears, a pair of short pale horns, a slightly rabbit-like nose and markings under her eyes. Her skin is olive-toned, sporting a couple distinct scars on her face and hand, and she's wearing what is essentially a bush and spiked glovelets. Both of them are smiling, Crassie a little bit wide-eyed and Heathrow with a fond expression. The background's a saturated green with the text "1 YEAR!". End ID]

A redraw-in-spirit of the post from last year's Feb 16 that introduced these two to my blog. It's their birthday :]