A July like molasses

Each month when I sit down to write this newsletter I think to myself, Oh No! I haven't done anything interesting at all this month! And then I start poking through my files and my photos and I find that I've actually been very busy and am simply too [insecure/depressed/insert armchair diagnosis here] to remember right out the gate. So of course I sat down today, dismayed to have nothing exciting for my new supporters or novel for my old friends, and then quickly became overwhelmed with all that I've done and how to fit it into one letter.

I started the month with a lovely trip to the coast, avoiding the nasty heat wave that hit Portland that weekend.

I think it did me a lot of good to start the month with a little vacation. Some fresh air, some good time with friends. There's been a lot up in the air with my housing/roommate situation these last couple months and needless to say that takes a lot out of me. It's hard to paint when it feels like the world is crumbling. I don't want to be a downer and I also don't want to be a liar and sometimes that has me walking a fine line. I'm putting a lot of effort into not getting depressed, and keeping my mental health in check. Sometimes that means rest and sometimes that means focused work, something where you can see progress. So once we were home I signed up for ArtFight 2024 and managed to make a couple respectable character portraits, just to have a little structure and routine and approachable goals.

(the characters above belong, in order, to ArtFight users Kikissh, Balisk, Condorscoop, and baph0meat.)

ArtFight is an online drawing competition that runs every June. Players make a little profile with some original characters, get split into two teams, and get points for their team by drawing the other team's characters. It's a nice way to get some really sweet art of your designs, and its a great low stakes way to gather some creative inspiration and get some practice in just kicking back and creating. Usually it hits at just the point in the year when I'm starting to feel like I'm in a creative rut and need some good silly art prompts to get me moving again. This year it hit right when I was gearing up for my first con, and a lot of my attacking energy had to get redirected into figuring out how conventions work and finishing some fanart.

Which brings us to: Dungeon Meshi!

I'd finished reading the manga right before the anime got announced, and watching the weakly episodes was something that really brought my house together for a couple months. So with an anime con looming on the horizon i just Had to make some tasty fanart for the show. I forgot to record a proper timelapse, but I do have a nice set of before and after pictures: the rough crayon and marker sketch I started with, and my nicely rendered final painting.

The whole point of drawing something in crayola art supplies was to take the stress off myself-- if there's a hard limit on how polished something can look, there's no stress to make it look nice, and it becomes much easier to have fun with it. Ironic, then, that I ended up pouring almost a whole month's work into polishing it up digitally. The detail in her feathers and scales are a bit ridiculous, I must admit. Contrasted with a silly simple face, I'd hoped to capture the eerie blank expression of an adventurer-turned-monster, someone who was deeply confused and losing herself. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Take a look at these close up details!

WasabiCon itself was a mixed bag for me. WasabiCon was my first time doing an Artist's Alley at a real convention (as opposed to the street fairs and art markets that I frequent). There were some things I'm really proud of (my booth looked amazing even with a much smaller space than I'm used to) some things that I really should've done differently (I need way more fan art and way less original art in my next convention setup) and some things that were completely out of my control and made things a bit miserable (they stuck the artist alley in the parking garage? in the basement?? and there were super loud arcade games that slowly drove me mad over the whole weekend). Overall it was an exhausting couple of days, but I'm really glad I did it. I met a ton of really cool cosplayers and fans, made some really nice artist friends, and have a long list of things to work on before I table at Rose City Comic Con in September.

To everyone who signed up for my newsletter at WasabiCon- hello! You came in at a weird time, and I'm really touched that you liked my work enough to come along on this journey with me.

I expect August to be all about fanart, probably a mix of new artwork and reworking some old stuff.

August should be relatively chill for me- mostly Portland Saturday Markets all month long. I'll be there every Saturday, except for August 17th because that's my birthday and I want to treat myself to a day off. I might also be there on Sunday August 4th, but no promises- I'll post it on my instagram day of if I'm going to be there.

I'll also be at Last Thursday on Alberta, August 29th!

Ooh, also I got a sick tattoo this month.

And that's all I did in July! Thanks for reading to the end, here's a little coupon for August~

I'll see ya next month!