PSA: Life and Art Update

Hello! I'm here with a few updates.

1. 200 Patrons!

It is not an exaggeration to state that my Patrons made it possible for me to continue doing fanart. I don't only mean the Patron-exclusive pieces, but every single public post as well, both SFW and NSFW. I got in a situation where I had to choose between work and doing fanart, and for obvious reasons, I had to prioritise my work.

The work-hobby balance was a bit funky in my life. Sure, doing art is my hobby, so I'm happy to spend time with it beside work - however, I also do art for a living. After a whole day/week of drawing, I rarely have energy and creativity left in me for meaningful pieces. I often did art before, but I was also constantly battling with serious burnout phases, and I was living a very unhealthy, isolated lifestyle with zero recreation. This also started to affected the quality of my pieces, and/or seriously increased the time I needed for an artwork.

I'm still getting used to this new, improved way of living. The long years of workaholism still linger around, but overall I have been feeling much better and I'm much happier with the art I create as well. I don't know how to express my gratitude. Thank you.

2. Update on a thing I shared at the beginning

Detailed story here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-your-help-93267341?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

TLDR: eviction in May

Things are turning out quite good. We got an extra month, so the relocation has been postponed to June. I was also offered a temporary accommodation, so it's possible that I'll have more time to look for a new place to live in the long run. This is very appreciated, given that it's possible that I'll need to leave the city, so any extra time I can spend with considering my options is highly valuable. The vast majority of tenancy agreements are for 1 year at least, and I'm cautious about this decision. (I lived abroad before, but never in a different city in my own country.)

YOUR support made it possible for me not only to move whenever I need to, but also to continue doing fanart while having this peace of mind. I don't feel cornered anymore, which improves my general day-to-day life immensely. Thank you, a million times.

3. Future plans

At the moment, I'm working in a zine project. Once that's over, I'll have a better understanding of my general schedule and I'll be able to make more improvements here.

As for fanart... I have a couple of thoughts in my mind, but I'm not sure how much of this will be put into work. I'd like to do art of more characters from JJK. I'm also considering merch, if there is interest, but I'd prefer a way that doesn't involve multiple stages of shipping.

My current skill-related goal is to draw more - not paint -, whenever I can. I feel like I got lazy with lineart. I often catch myself thinking "ill fix it during coloring". The main issue with this, the way I see it, the backbone of anime-style character art is the attractive stylisation that already works so well in black and white. After this, once I feel comfortable with my new habits, I'd like to further develop my coloring style by doing a lot of style studies of many different artists. I'm trying new things all the time, but I never go into it too deep and never do anything radical. My latest achievement is getting more friendly with handpicking colours instead of using certain layer types to add shadows, highlights, etc. I also experimented with new brushes and I think I found a new workflow I like (starting with very hard brush and then softening gradients only where it's necessary).

My biggest plan now is to do something I wanted for ages, which is getting further education in the form of online art courses. I'll probably start next autumn, as I'll need to relocate soon and the summer heat greatly decreases my efficiency.

Thank you, everyone. I do my best to improve my skills and everything related to my art in the hopes that you'll like it.

Take care! <3