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JUNE 2023

June 2, 2023

Dude it's the second man you know what that means!! I remember I have a neocities. I woke up today after a weird dream and felt compelled to write about it, so it now has a page here. I'm no writer, and this essentially a second draft after just a really basic spellcheck. (and replacing random symbols with names, Gil was the only one with a name in the actual dream.) The dream itself kind of shifted between looking like an RPGmaker game and "normal" 3rd person view. I dunno man. I feel very awkward sharing both dreams and writing, I feel like it's very incoherent.

Anyway, eating better has gone very poorly. I stopped my random soda kick finally which is good but I still eat terribly. I ate only flaming hot cheetos and wasabi peas for two days not that long ago. I totally finished the map for the ~secret project~ I just have to do the actual hard work now OTL;;;. I have a friend who re-entered my (and most of our friend groups') lives and its very odd to hang out with and talk to her again after years of nothing. Not bad, she was on the other side of the country doing her own thing for that time, it's just odd. She's been back for a few months, but it's on my mind because her birthday was yesterday.

I'm getting ready for artfight also! I made a hitlist form live yesterday and three people have already filled it out (its a month early, fyi) (may regret this :'-) ) I'm continuing my annual tradition of hating how my old art and ref sheets look lol.

The wedding and baby shower were great, I'm hopelessly addicted to Tears of the Kingdom (my friends bought it for me as a gift I was so dumbfounded, I feel both so thankful and awful because I have no way to return the favor ;-;) (Also TOTK absolutely had some influence in that dream I had - I love exploring the depths.)

I'm in another DnD campaign now! so now when things go according to plan I play once a week (thursdays both campaigns!) I smell disaster brewing for my brain because both are very heavily intertwined with fae activity (one is a from-scratch campaign from the DM, the new one is Witchlight Carnival) and I am stupid.
I forgot I was going to sew those shorts/shirt until revisiting this page, oops! No idea what I'll do in what order.

June 9, 2023

Hello! I read this blog post by Lost Letters a few days ago. I enjoy crochet, so the entire post was a nice read, but particularly the intro of searching for accountability buddies stood out to me. I've been in a bit of an art slump lately, and having a weekly check in sounds like a way to help remedy it. Also, I think it would be better to have my posts here be less scatterbrained. I stumbled across this video about 10 days ago and it really inspired me. If I had to pick a "most impressive" drawing from this year, it'd probably be this:

my art is not worthy of large file sizes, that's reserved for the gunpla LOL

It's...a painting of a girl (forest nymph) laying down. It's pretty symmetrical yet messy. Descriptions of other work from this year include: 3/4ths character on a plain background, fullbody character on a blank background, unfinished render of a character on a transparent background, bust of character on a blank background, a couple characters sitting on simple props in front of a simple/abstract/plain background-- you get the idea.

Of course I can always use anatomy practice, my hands are getting AI-tier lately. My values are consistently pretty bad (and usually poor balance when I try to fix it) too. It's usually details and colors that draw me into various artworks, honestly. What stood out to me most watching this video was in the examples the creator showed, even pieces that are "character standing on blank background" had charm.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but my main takeaway from that video is recognizable shapes (even if its just on a subconcious level) are your aim. When I read about composition in art online it tends to boil down to "rule of thirds exists" "golden ratio exists" and "have good flow."

I'll try my best! I love details and tend to get caught up in them, rather than focusing on a whole piece at once. I've decided to make my approach to get one or two sketches (not finished pieces, to avoid the previous sentence) weekly. Maybe I'll work my way through simple shapes and the alphabet (though I wonder if some letters may be too complex.) This week's prompt in art club is to design 3 outfits--which is a prompt that I would argue works best as "character standing there on a blank background." We'll see if I can at least get some good shapes though.

June 16, 2023

Hello! I'm very annoyed at myself because I forgot to set an alarm, and just completely slept through dnd last night. It was fine- I woke up in time for the last 15-20 minutes. Depite my character having been turned into a horse, I didn't miss anything major. It is still pretty early in that campaign, FWIW. I'm still frustrated, though.

This week in drawing: Not so much learned, but was reminded that actual backgrounds really add to a piece, even if it's not that great

Compressed so you don't have to see that one hand. I somehow missed how bad it was until just now.

I've put about the same amount of effort into those clouds and waves that I have some plain textured backgrounds - but just giving the character an actual setting helps a lot. The anatomy is wack, the lighting is all off, the implied dock underneath is not implied enough, the values are really weak as usual. But I still like it so much more than usual just from having that extra touch of effort. Also, I did...try with the composition. I like this outcome more than if he were centered.

I remembered a couple of days ago that Draw Everything June is happening. It goes until July 15th so while I'm late, I don't feel hopelessly behind. I've done quick sketches for the first 6 so far. Between DEJ, Art club with my friends, and wanting to practice in general, I'm kind of worried I'll burn myself out by artfight lol. It should be fine though.

Also, I don't know when I'll do it but I have this huge desire to make pixel art of the Steward Constructs from Tears of the Kingdom. They're so cute I love them.

June 23, 2023

Hello, happy Friday! I did not draw a real picture this week. I had a dumb internet issue for ~3 days, and ended up working on other stuff. HTML is fun and I have fun making pages, even though mine are simple. I'm working on a clickable (world)map using the (html)map process and I'm having a good time :-).

This week's prompt in art club is to design a character based off of a random color palette. The person who added that prompt chose this website to roll, and I like it a lot--it's a random selection of human-made palettes instead of 5 random colors, meaning they will generally look good.

This is my color palette

With Art Fight approaching, I've been thinking about what draws me to a character's design, what sort of draw (if any) my work has, etc. The best way I've ever been able to describe it is "love." I love when characters have love put into them, and I can't get any more descriptive than that. Passion? Like how listening to a passionate enough teacher can engage you in any topic. While I'm designing my character for art club, I'll do my best to think the process through; and hopefully I'll be able to get a better grasp on what I'm trying to express.

June 30, 2023

Hello, happy Friday. Minus an extremely quick sketch I've drawn nothing this week (Art Fight is tomorrow though!) I've come to accept that I don't like mixing my different online experiences, so I think I'm going to just ...give up on talking about my (non-pixel) art here LOL. Plus adding accountability to drawing specifically makes it less fun for me. I had a huge boring, hard-to-follow rant about what I thought about when asking myself "What makes me like a character?" It boils down to "There are things that align with my interests" "novelty" and "I'm personally invested in this character's story." I tried really hard for multiple paragraphs to be good at writing and insightful, I am neither.

Other things on my mind: I've mentioned long in the past that I was planning on sewing a pair of shorts; I definitely forgot about that for a while, in part to just straight up losing the fabric for a bit. I do have a true plan going forward, at least. I'm using linen from an old, shredded bedsheet. This gives the fabric the characteristics of: dingy, prone to tearing, fairly transparent, and keeping the print consistent will be a challenge due to the weird pieces I have left. At first I just wanted to make a copy of a pair of PJ shorts I own; but I realized that while they would fit, the non-stretch fabric would not be very forgiving. I will play around with things I would like (as loose as possible w/o risking painful-to-lay-on bunched up fabric, drawstring and/or elastic, higher waist, flared bottom hem) and see what compromise I can reach.

I just finished the test run of a very cute plush for my friend, and will begin the actual go sometime next week. I'm excited to start :-). I've done amigurumi before, but most of my crochet is low-aesthetic practical items. Big bath headbands, washcloths, a single-color blanket for myself, etc. Like many people who work with yarn, I have a collection of random, low-quality, single skeins of yarn. Notably I had a jumbo skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Baby Pink. Something about this particular color, it's borderline transparent and much scratchier than any other color I have. I've started and frogged countless projects with it. The skein itself has tangled and fallen apart and become a mess, and then became a variety of smaller, constantly tangled cakes. I've finally found a use for it: brushed into fluff to stuff the mushroom cats. I sort of feel bad that this is how it gets its purpose, but I'd rather use supplies in a less than ideal way than not at all.