As of writing this, I’m now 31 years old and introspective about my art journey so far! I continue to tackle new conventions as I keep my head on a swivel! I’ve been sketching small bits of art on my social sites over the month, but I’ve kept myself busy going to cons, taking other art commissions and recording livestreams!
I’ll be honest and say that we haven’t made that much progress on Blackmask from last January to now. My programmer took time off for a vacation, so he’s been away from his computer. I myself have been taking other art commissions and streams, but we’ll be in touch with majors changes as soon as possible. I’ve been sketching small bits of art on my social sites over the month, I’ve been sloppy about posting my art here in a way that is an easy to find.
Time to kick February off by opening character commissions! For this year, I’m taking a seasonal approach to taking commissions. Every Three Months or so, I’ll have Five Slots Open to take safe-for-work character commissions.
A Single Character Drawing in a cool pose in a simple background.
Flat Color $80
A Single Character Drawing in a cool pose on a blank background.
I can also offer a 2-View Turnaround for a bulk price of $140!
Line Art $60
A Colorless Character Drawing in a cool pose with no background. If you get this commission from me and come back to me to color it for you, you’ll get a mighty discount!
I can also offer a 2-View Turnaround for a bulk price of $100!
Full Body Pixel Art and Animations
Animated $160
A Retro-style character animation loop in the style of colorful arcade games. If you have a suggested console or palette, message me with details!
Static $100
A large Retro style character sprite in the style of colorful arcade games. If you have a suggested console or palette, message me with details!
I’m proactive with my new year stuff since the middle December because waiting for New Years to start making real change isn’t necessary! My video game, Blackmask is making baby steps getting new backgrounds and assets drawn. You can check out my monthly report on the Blackmask Website! Beyond that, I’ve been busy building up my new year!
To help people out with their New Year’s Resolutions of learning to draw, I thought I’d drop in my two cents on getting started or getting into it.
A concern I find is the lack of time to draw. When I’m always on the go and away from my drawing desk at my day job, having a small sketchbook helps me jot down ideas!
After a packed year of conventions and art events, I’m reflecting on my 2022 year and planning my next one! I feel like I spent more time learning to write than learning to draw. I wrote more blog posts, more promotional stuff and more story things that I’ve been sticking with instead of burying it away in my files.
Despite my feelings that I didn’t get as much artwork as I wanted to be completed, looking back, I had a good run for my convention stuff, doing a convention almost every month and figure out myself as an artist and what I really want to do with my work.
One month left in 2022! Time has flown fast for me! I’ve been trying to stuff as many of my art projects into the month as I can while keeping my sanity!
New Website
The first big thing I can say in November is that there’s now a new website for Blackmask and news of its development! This is a large task that’s been taking up my time. Even if I’m getting things down on this website, there’s still much to learn about self-promotion.
I will say to join the Blackmask Mailing List! It’s a direct way to get news of our progress without missing any of my posts due to algorithms. Now that the website is set up, it’ll be less confusing for anyone who’s been following my website and getting unrelated news.
As the year wraps up, I thought I’d share some of the tools that I’ve been using often to work on my art and art-related projects! The software I use is the similar to what I’m rocking before, but it doesn’t hurt to drop some new stuff I’m trying out too!
This is a simple 6×9 spiral-bound date book that I use to track my schedule. The pages are set up by week, so it makes it easy for me to plan it out. It’s portable to carry anywhere in my bags.
Together with this calendar, I also use black or blue Pilot G-2 Gel pens for general writing. The color packs are a great start to buy as well. From my daily tasks to my regular maintenance tasks to my annual events, I use various colors to organize the types of tasks I do.
Nice and simple leaves of paper help me with little notes that I need to add. When I fill my notebooks, sometimes I want to add other notes if I don’t have enough space. If I don’t want to erase what I already wrote, so I can use post-it notes. Sticky notes are also fantastic bookmarks for novels and calendar books. If you get them in different colors, you can even organize them by subject.
As of writing this, I have a day job, so I’m always on the go and never at my home studio. I keep having ideas but little time to draw them. With my SketchWallet, I can hold a sketchbook, credit cards, and cash in one spot, so I don’t need to fish for them. When you first buy the wallet, it comes with its own sketchbook from the start. Luckily, it can hold any other 3.5-inch by x 5.5-inch sketchbook inside.
My trusted mechanical pencil that I never need to sharpen! I have other sizes, but 0.5 mm is my best-feeling pencil. All the pencils have great lead capacity, so you don’t need to refill them as much. The side clip is a switch that retracts the tip of the pencil to save your point from breaking or stabbing you in the leg. Not having a large enough eraser can be a dealbreaker for other artists if you erase all the time. The next time might suit your needs.
Using my pencil’s eraser is a pain in the butt because it rubs down too short or pushes down into the lead barrel. The Tombow Mono Eraser is an eraser pen where it stores one long eraser. It’s cleaner to hold in my pocket than a kneaded eraser, and not as big to erase on like a white plastic eraser.
This USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a fantastic partner to my iPad. I can move files around my computer, phone, and pad with ease! I worry that it gets hot enough to be a problem. Even though it has 256 GB of space, I don’t rely on it too much for storage.
I began trying out Kdenlive around June on a lark. I was sick of dealing with Adobe Premiere’s issues, and I wanted to find alternatives. It was rocky at first, but after watching tutorials, I improved my video editing. The fact that this app accepts MKV files is a massive time saver! No more Remuxing VODs and I keep a higher quality video!
This is my personal list of things I currently used over the year to stay productive. It’s not perfect, but if you want something to start, you can try out what I have here. I keep a larger archive of my personal recommended tools on my Supply Page! I update it enough to have info that you can look at for your own art needs.
Sir Peer Keely is a royal knight of the Kingdom of Seraplume. Together with the mighty Blade Wing Knights, the plucky bungling budgie hero dedicates his life to protecting the Kingdoms of Sopranado from the rising menace of Sky Piracy!
This is a blog post about my process of drawing my bird knight illustration. It was a struggle, but I pushed myself to complete my art piece. After several months of self-doubt, I finished this Bird Knight Illustration. I juggled this drawing between the Procreate App and Clip Studio Paint to complete this artwork.
