May Report

Happy June, everybody! Thank you for making this report and all the work it contains, possible! If you want to read all about what happened last month keep going, or scroll to the end and see what's planned for this month!

🌷May Agenda🌷
✅ More Poll Character Fanart
✅ CYOA Update
✅ Art print illustrations
⏹️ Libby & Holly Ch2 Completion!

Here’s the May Agenda⬆️ 3 of the 4 goals for the month got completed, but let's take a closer look, starting with the first thing on the list:

✅ More Poll Characters/ more flower girls.

To start, I kept working in the style that attached them to the style of the witches illustrations of the past couple months.

I feel like I kinda hit a stride switching to the monochromatic look, I really like these ones. 🙂

Towards the end of the month I returned to one of the runners-up of the poll for some more ancient Greek stuff.

Several of you thought playing further in the monster/mythological aspect of the Greek work would be fertile creative territory and I think you were correct. Some medusas happened as a result.

The behind the scenes updates that Gold patrons saw this month was only a little bit of sketches and a lot of WIP updates as I stayed focused on Libby & Holly revisions and the art prints, but there were a few sketches along the way.

✅ CYOA Update: In the midst of everything else, we had a quick CYOA update and poll which I’m looking forward to following up on this month!

One update a month is slow for something like this, I know, but I think it’s the best I can do at the moment and it’s better than zero updates, which is where it sat otherwise for several months 😩

✅ Art print illustrations. These are the primary cause of me falling short on my Libby & Holly pages goal this month. I’m prone to over-thinking on pieces like this so I was kinda mustering all my creative energy in order to get the art done, printed and framed for the show, which is June 10th in Kansas City at Weinberger Gallery, called Sexhibition: Rated Art. 

It’s a ticketed event to keep the children out which kinda means very limited attendance is possible, unfortunately, but it will stay up in the gallery for the following week! Here’s the info:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sexhibition-rated-art-tickets-605991987347

I wanted to make 4 pieces for the show but that proved to be too much and I settled for 3. This tropical couple was the one that didn’t make it, only emerging in sketch form.

The other pieces were more straightforward because they were technically “updating” other pieces to various degrees. I had this pink bj piece that was really small that I started with:

I liked what adding the cane begonia did for the final as well as the swirly cowlick. Lots of texture through mark making.

The second piece to get updated was this witch piece. It turned into a pretty dramatic overhaul.

I ended up adding a lot of other figures and environment and this peony wallpaper pattern. And kitties. 😌

Third in line was this astronaut piece which I’ve decided to call “Observation Module.” I made the original piece for the kickstarter book #Hardcover3.

At the time I was making a lot more squishy, painterly things and this time I wanted  to unify the work I was doing under a kind of graphic, print look, with an emphasis on lines.

It proved to be the hardest because for a long time I could tell it was missing something but couldn’t tell what. I think adding all the monitors helped in the end.

They kinda act as stand-ins for us as the viewer that kinda makes the piece feel more about voyeurism in a way. She’s clearly isolated but every monitor in the place is looking at her and she’s right in front of a big open window, I think she’s kinda reveling in the chance to be observed even if people are around to see, kinda like being naked in the woods. Or at least that’s how I look at it.

⏹️😩Libby & Holly Ch.2 was where I missed the mark this month, partially because I moved the goal post and added pages to this chapter.  I added two Aster pages to help flesh out the beginning of the story.

I had been annoyed that the CRACK sfx for thunder previously was reading more like a breaking limb instead of thunder on page 3, so I fixed that, plus I added what are now page 15-16 and cleaned up some rough edges on older stuff.

Making edits to pages is  annoying and feels like a diversion, but doing it now just means that it won't take as long to get the book in printed or PDF form for gumroad.

I’m 6 pages short of completing this chapter. The good news is they’ve been thumbnailed and 3 of 6 are in rough form, recently completed in my typical sloppy fashion.,

If past months are anything to judge by, having only 3 things on the agenda will be a lot more doable. I’d love to have a Ch.2 release this month! 😤 Here's what I'm planning:

🍹June Agenda🍹

⏹️ Complete Libby & Holly Ch2 (6 pages) + Cover

⏹️ CYOA Update

⏹️ New Fanart + Theme Poll (Plus sketching more things from the last one beforehand)

💕💕Thank you for being a patron  over the past month! 💕💕
Your support makes this all possible and I’m extremely grateful.

I hope you enjoyed the work that came out of it and I hope to be able to dazzle you all with some fun new work this month!

💕Winton