Life/Announcements,  Work in Progress

Long time no see

Sooo… I’ve been artistically inactive lately. For a long time. There were multiple reasons for that but I think some of the reasons are slowly going away and therefore my inspiration is also slowly coming back.

Portrait of a girl

During my hiatus, I got myself a display tablet after years of dreaming about one and I’m impressed with how much easier life (as in: digital art) is now. It’s much more intuitive and less tiring than using a regular (non-display) graphic tablet since the brain doesn’t have to perform the circus trick that is processing drawing the thing in one place and seeing the result in the other.  I do recommend getting a display tablet to everyone who can and is considering it. It makes a huge difference.

One of the things that helped me get inspired once again was my discovery of a very interesting website. What you do there is merge (or “breed”) 2 or more images together, to create a new one, with traits from each “bred” picture. You have sliders depending on the category that help you edit certain desired or undesired features (“genes”). My favorite categories to play with are portraits and landscapes but there’s is more categories to explore like anime and general and it’s fun and addictive to use the website so definitely try that if you need some inspiration.

And yet another thing that somewhat gave me the inspiration to create art is a new Clip Studio Paint feature that is recording the timelapse of your work (like in good old oekaki if someone remembers the thing or Open Canvas). I’ve always been a fan of timelapse recordings so I definitely love the feature but I’m still experimenting with it.

As for the results of coming back to life from my art hiatus…

Several days ago I finished my first drawing on the new tablet and at the same time my first art in 2021. You can see that picture above in this post and in my gallery (as well as on my deviantart, Instagram and Reddit).  I did use a reference for it. And I tried to make it look as similar as possible to the original but I’m also on my quest to quiet my internal voice saying “MAKE IT IDENTICAL OR IT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” and “MAKE IT PHOTOREALISTIC OR IT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”. It’s going to be a struggle 😀 But still, I’m actually proud of how it came out.

Currently, I’m repainting one of my old works from 2011. It wasn’t horrible back then but now, after 10 years I think I’ve improved my skills a bit so I hope it will look much better than “not horrible” when it’s finished. The drawing is also my test subject for trying out Clip Studio Paint’s timelapse’s recording feature I mentioned earlier. For now you can see the first part of the timelapse video of the drawing here on my Ko-fi after buying me a coffee 🙂

This is mostly it from the updates, I think. I may dabble in some games fanarts soon but first I want to finish what I’ve already started so the fanarts are sort of my “carrot” that keeps me going 🙂

See you soon! (hopefully~)


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