January Newsletter

Hello!

Thank you so much for continuing to support me on Patreon. You might have noticed that I haven't posted here all Winter and I've been largely absent from social media. I've been having a quietly hard time for the past few months, but I cannot overstate how much your support has been my absolute lifeline for the past few months. For mental health reasons that I'll go into, I haven't taken on any freelance work all season so your support has literally been keeping the lights on for me during a difficult time, thank you so so much.

I'll try to keep it brief but I feel like I owe everyone here an explanation so here's what happened:

- Everything that's been going on with Twitter has been really affecting me to a Ridiculous level (it's very unhealthy). I rely Heavily on Twitter to get my comics out there, find work and reach an audience. Not only that, but I've invested years of my life trying to build a platform there. Without Twitter I honestly don't know what I would do, so watching it be slowly dismantled before my eyes due to the careless whims of a billionaire has been Very Scary. Things seem to have somewhat settled for now but my anxiety about twitter has kind of bled into every platform and the thought of posting has been giving me panic attacks. As a result, I got into the pattern of "I'll do it tomorrow" and tomorrow never came until now. Now that I'm doing a bit better, I'm just trying not to stress myself out about it (I'm also trying not to stress myself out over AI art and all the surrounding discourse. It's been... not a great time to be an artist on Twitter lately) and focus on what I CAN control i.e. actually making art.

- I've been having some health problems. I'm fine (I think) but I've been getting daily migraines due to stress, RSI in my drawing hand/wrist, and some other stuff that is a bit TMI but yeah it's not been great. Things seem to have stabilised mostly for now and I'm doing much better, but I need to make a few appointments with my doctor.

- A bunch of other things that have added up over time: getting COVID and having a really bad time with it, the stress of MCM when none of my stock arrived and I made a devastating financial loss, my anthology coming out in the UK (a good thing which I am very happy about!!! but also it's a lot of pressure and quiet anxiety-inducing haha.

Truth be told, my depression, anxiety and exhaustion has been so bad that I've been very seriously considering quitting my job (I do comics full-time) and switching careers. Making comics is actually very difficult for me and I made Significantly Less money this year than I did last year which is very scary, but now that my mental health is improving and I've had my dark night of the soul, I'm able to see that wanting to quit is anxiety talking and I know that I want to keep going.

I recently had my appointment for PIP (Personal Independence Payment - it's basically disability benefits) and if I'm approved I think that will be a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and the pressure to make this comics thing financially viable will at least be a little bit alleviated.  

Moving into this new year, I'm going to kick my butt into gear and get out of my bad habits and back into some good ones. I want to make Patreon an absolute priority and get back into the routine of making 2 new Lavender Clouds (my autobio) comics a week and posting them here. This week's comics are already complete and I'll be posting them after posting this update!

Something else I've been trying is to improve how it actually feels to draw. I've been drawing a Lot on my iPad for the last few months and while I don't think my iPad work is as good as my work in Photoshop on my laptop, I seem to enjoy making it more. Part of this might be that it doesn't require me to be sat at my desk where I will be cold and miserable, but I think a part of it is that I'm forced to not use my stabiliser, which means that my lines are messier but also more free, which I think might actually make for better, more expressive comics, even if I have to sacrifice some polish to make that happen.

One cool thing about drawing on the iPad is that it lets me create video timelapses of the entire process at the push of a button, so for every comic that I draw on the iPad, I'll be able to share that with you!

As I've said, even though social media has been making me scared, I've tried to keep drawing as much as possible on the iPad so that means that I have quite a bit of new art to show you all!

Mainly I've been working on VIOLAPSE, the graphic novel in progress I've been banging on about for some time now. $7 patrons are about to get a Lot of Violapse content so strap in for that!

$7 Patrons will also get all the pages for [untitled catgirl comic] I've done so far as well as a surprising amount of smut. It turns out that drawing NSFW stuff has actually played a crucial role in reigniting my love for drawing and pulling me out of depression. Wild.

The other tiers will continue to get comics, sketches, misc art and timelapses and my goal is to post 2-3 new comics per week like I used to! 

I know this has been a bit of a weird rambly update, sorry for taking up too much of your time! Honestly, failing to be consistent with Patreon has been really eating me up for months. It legitimately makes me feel like a failure as a creator that eventually my mental health overwhelms me and I struggle to maintain regular posting, and it's definitely not fair to the people who support me either. It shouldn't be this hard. But I wanted to just rip the band aid off so that I can get back on track instead of beating myself up and not doing anything to fix it.

I've been thinking long and hard about what I can do to make sure that I stick to it better this time, and I think I've identified a key problem with my approach. I always tried to post 3 new comics a week, but I think 3 is too difficult for me, and it also results in worse comics. So I always end up falling behind, which sends me into an anxiety spiral, which makes me avoid my responsibilities in one big negative feedback loop. My plan to break this cycle is to commit to 2 new comics a week rather than 3, and if I can make 3, great! If not, I won't! I think that giving myself a more realistic workload will help me to succeed this time and I also think that making fewer comics will result in more thoughtful high quality comics.

Thank you so much for continuing to support me, it really does mean so much to me that you're willing to stick around and hopefully I can repay you with lots of juicy comics!

Happy New Year!

Chat to you again soon,
Bex