2023/03/05- IEX Prep and Distractions (fun ones)

So, I'm never gonna make any promises about how often I'll update this again LOL

Since the beginning of 2023 I've been drawing a lot more!! Not stuff for the upcoming convention (whoops) but Dungeons and Dragons stuff, and fun OC things!! I've honestly seen more improvement in my art over the last two months than I had in the previous two years. O_O

It started with my old campaign of four and a half years ending, and our "Campaign 2" starting in early January! I decided to repurpose an old D&D character for it, since the campaign he was in got shelved. And now he's been reborn as a divine magic sorcerer!!! Here's some art of him I did recently that I really love:

I actually have a thread on the Melonland forums where I'm posting a bunch of my TTRPG art if any forum-goers are reading this.

I'm thinking of doing a page on this site just for my OCs (both D&D and non-D&D) as a way of compiling the art I have of them, and also to have info written down in case people get curious about who the heck I'm drawing! Another character I'm really excited about is Nasra (pictured left), a character who used to also be a D&D character but has been repurposed as a general OC. I'm working on an 18+ comic of her and her GF, and that's been really fun!! Erotica is hard to make and a little embarassing to show other people, but it sure is a good way to practice anatomy! I haven't abandoned the comic I was working on in the last couple blogs either, but I realized I was putting way too much pressure on myself to flesh the concept out into a larger comic. I ended up making it as a simple 8 page mini zine and it worked really well! I still need to finish it up before I post it online, but I think it manages to evoke the feelings I had in mind pretty well.

I want to do a lot more work on this site too!!! I want to redo a lot of the formats and try coding things from scratch, instead of using the format I got from Sadness. I also wanna shift the colours around. I made a new badge for this site, and I want the colours to match it a little more. So more of a pink-maroon, gold, and black colour scheme, rather than the purple, lavender, and black that's going on right now. Making all the art assets I want to make will take a while, but I'm not in a rush. It'll be really exciting to see the site start to come together!

NEW BADGE!!! ---->

As for con prep... well.... Not going great lol. But I also think I kind of hate doing fanart?? It used to be my bread and butter so that's a little weird to say, but I'm way more interested in drawing my own characters and the characters of my friends!!! So I think I will still do my usual conventions this year, but then shift focus for next year to stop doing fandom focused conventions and start aiming for more indie focused stuff. Zine fairs, comic expos, etc. Of course I need to make more things for this to happen ^^; but I feel like I've been getting into a groove with my art these past month that I haven't been able to achieve since like, high school. It feels good! My biggest obstacle is that I think I've been clinging to the "idea" of being an artist rather than... actually being an artist? If that makes sense? I guess a better way to put it is that I've been all talk and no action. Thinking "Oh, I should apply to this comics anthology" Despite not having finished a comic since 2019. It's a bit disheartening to feel like such a poser, but I guess the only way to fix that is to make more things!