Double Double, Toil And Trouble

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I haven’t bothered writing an introduction to the following entry. Instead, I’d like to get straight to the point.

When I created my Patreon two years ago, the goal I had set for myself was to provide people with an opportunity to support me on my journey. That journey consists of doing one thing and one thing only: creating the highest quality art I possibly can. The focus of the Patreon had shifted somewhere at the end of 2021, when I decided to forgo drawing explicit pin-up content in favor of pursuing a much more ambitious, personal project: the graphic novel that I’ve hinted at and been meditating on this whole year. Though I’ve never been a great writer, I’ve always had a penchant for storytelling, interesting settings and tackling difficult subjects through nuanced, yet accessible means. Being a vegan asexual woman also lends me a certain level of experience that one does not get from many other people. Making friends with (absolutely wonderful) transgender persons has also substantially broadened my horizons on sexual and gender identity, which in turn helped me better understand myself and my role in the world. The decision then to write a graphic novel was a natural conclusion of this line of thinking.

I like to think I am pretty damn dedicated to what I do. My pursuit of mastery has motivated many changes in my personal life. I dropped out of the university because of art. I’ve started to take much greater care of my health, I moved out of the city to facilitate better working conditions for myself. My commitment to self-discipline and obsessive time management is largely the result of my desire to become a better artist. The first half of this year, my goal was to expand on my audience by drawing lots of fan art of various characters from eastern media. This undertaking proved largely uneventful; I was not able to gain any substantial following on any large social media platforms. It left me feeling very disillusioned and maybe a little jaded, like a maddened virago clutching her paintings to save them from the undeserving world. Nevertheless, I’ve had my Patreon backing me up and I’ve always believed everybody joined me because they genuinely loved my art. As a result, in late August I decided to abandon fan art and instead focused solely on commissions, personal projects and also maintaining a level of care on my Patreon page. I hope you like the new banner.

My setup has been for many years in dire need of an upgrade. In September, I decided to focus all my efforts on saving up for an iPad Air 5, since I’ve heard plenty of praise towards it as a potential tool for drawing on the go. To me, this is a very big deal, since in order to become a great artist, one has to go outside and study from life as much as possible; something that’s much easier accomplished if you’re not tied to a chair all day. I’ve never been particularly fond of sitting at a desk and drawing with tablet and keyboard, so procuring an iPad seemed like the logical choice before I could focus on my comic proper. In early November I had some unforeseen dentist expenses, which considerably set my iPad funding back. Nevertheless, by the end of the month, I had accrued enough money to order the iPad of my choosing, as well as a stylus.

While the iPad arrived within a couple of days, the wait for the stylus took far longer than anticipated. It was originally supposed to arrive on December 6th. On December 8th, I had received word that my package was finally in transit, so I sat down and waited. I would rigorously check my inbox every day for ten days. Not having heard a word from the person who sent the package, I decided to message them myself, demanding an explanation. It turned out the package had been delivered without me being notified, to a post office several kilometers away from my home, around December 11th. Flummoxed but undeterred I made my way to the office and received the package, only to realize that the stylus inside was not Apple Pencil 2, but a cheap Indian knockoff, worth about $20 from what I've gathered online later. Lacking even pressure sensitivity, an absolute necessity for digital art and a baseline feature in every graphical tablet, I had no choice but to send it back, hoping that I would get a refund by January.

It’s for this reason I felt uncomfortable even coming back to Patreon to break in the bad news; at the end of the day, I wish for my Patreon page to be dedicated exclusively to my art, without any personal issues worming their way in.

This turn of events had left me in a tight spot. No matter how hard I tried to focus on commissions, I would bounce off every day, relapsing, watching videos, studying anatomy from a variety of sources and so on. My attempts at drawing during the last two weeks felt like trying to stop Godzilla without having a Kaiju monster of my own; pouring a lot of resources, to little or no tangible gains. With the winter holiday around the corner and my promises of drawing Lili as an extra December special feature, I was beginning to crack. What was supposed to be my month of celebration after a whole season full of nothing but persistent, scrupulous labor, my triumph was plucked away from me at the last moment.

I have always staunchly believed that a delayed artwork is eventually good, but a rushed piece is forever bad. You only get one chance at a first impression, which is important especially for artists. I refuse to put a bow on an artwork, if I can see that there’s room for improvement; I have subscribed to that philosophy for over ten years and whilst it’s probably bad from a business perspective, I would rather disappoint you with a deadline, rather than my art. There is a small part of my soul embedded inside every drawing I have ever created; every artwork of mine is deeply personal. To paraphrase Quentin Tarantino: When I make a painting, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.

There is always a level of commercial viability that tempers what I can feasibly do as an artist. Money is always a major concern on this lifepath and I am thankful to anyone who’s never chastised me for taking too long with my art, patiently waiting and donating to my Patreon, knowing I will eventually get it done and knowing that I am as serious about my craftsmanship as I boast to be.

With all that said, it’s time to take a shortcut back to the start.

Before the end of the current year, ask yourself if my art, not me, is truly the reason you’re here. If what I’ve said deeply resonated with you and you found my comic pitch convincing, then I guarantee you are going to love Hornet: Origins. My aim is to be evocative with my art so much so that it will speak to your sensibilities and let you to learn something about yourself. Your money is going towards ensuring the longevity of this long and arduous project, whether it’s for the comic proper or a one-off bonus feature, I hope you understand that while your support is appreciated, it’s entirely impersonal from my point of view. Cherish the art, not the artist.

On New Year’s Eve, I am going to release an in-depth FAQ post that is going to scrupulously detail everything I’ve gathered about Hornet: Origins thus far, outlining main sources of inspiration, the broad strokes of the story, Hornet’s design as well as her key personality traits and probably more. It should be an interesting read and I hope to see you there. Thanks for reading.