It’s been a long year, I’d say! 2023 had plenty of ups and downs, but overall, I’m alright with this year.
Besides all my art stuff, going to conventions, and I losing my iPad, I’ve been living a simple enough life. Back in August to went on a trip to Arizona to met up with my friends and visit SabotenCon. The previous time I went to Arizona, we did more hiking and exploring the state. Most of my 2023 trip was wandering the convention, but I’d love to comeback again and visit the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas.
As of wring this, I’m doing laundry and not feeling that my day is any special. I still waste my time wondering what I did wrong in the year and hoping that I can fix what’s wrong with me in the future. For now, I’ll look back on what I’ve been doing for the past month and the past year.
It’s the start of a new summer and my schedule is open enough to take on new character commissions! I have five slots open to who want them, so first come, First served!
You can read more about my options and specific rules on my Commissions Page!
When you’re done, you can fill out my Google Forms Sheet to send in your ideas!
Icons
Tiny Icons drawn by me to rep yourself online!
Cel-Shade $30
Static $20
Animated $60
Full-Body Character Commissions
Cel-Shaded $120
A Single Character Drawing in a cool pose in a simple background.
Flat Color $80
A Single Character Drawing in a cool pose in a blank background. I can also offer a 2 View Turnaround for a bulk price of $140!
Line Art Full Body Character $60
A Colorless Character Drawing in a cool pose with no background. I can also offer a 2 View Turnaround for a bulk price of $100! If you get this commission from me and come back to me to color it for you, you’ll get a mighty discount!
This weekend, I’ll be at Anime Central once more! And as a treat, I’m offering Early Bird Traditional Art Commissions before the 19th of May!
With this exclusive ACEN only offer, You’ll get 20% off a 9×12 traditional art commission of your choice! Once you get to Artist Alley at my Table G38, You get your commission from me personally!
The cold days are wrapping up, and I have five open slots for safe-for-work character commissions for you all to spring into! First Come, First Serve!
You can read more about my options and specific rules on my Commissions Page!
When you’re done, you can fill out my Google Forms Sheet to send in your ideas!
Icons
Tiny Icons drawn by me to rep yourself online!
Cel-Shade -$30
Static Pixel – $20
Animated Pixel -$60
Full-Body Character Commissions
Cel-Shaded $120
A Single Character Drawing in a cool pose in a simple background.
Flat Color $80
A Single Character Drawing in a cool pose in a blank background. I can also offer a 2 View Turnaround for a bulk price of $140!
Line Art Full Body Character $60
A Colorless Character Drawing in a cool pose with no background. I can also offer a 2 View Turnaround for a bulk price of $100! If you get this commission from me and come back to me to color it for you, you’ll get a mighty discount!
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!
Animated $160
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!
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 couldn’t finish one of my commissions by the time Anime Central ended. So I needed to finish this two-character piece at a later date and mail it to my client! With this, it gives me a short opportunity to tell you about my Copic Marker technique for this piece.
This commission is for ToastyGhostey’s OCs and Az and Miko. I dig the art style, and it was a nice challenge to figure things out with my markers. ToastyGhostey told me that I didn’t have to draw AZ’s helmet, but I took that as a challenge. Do I regret it? No, this was still great.
Next, I fill in Miko’s first jacket with YR18S Sanguine. I should’ve used a lighter red marker since the color is too orange compared to the refs. I pressed forward to avoid my perfectionism. Likewise, I also took the time to add Y18S Lightning Yellow trim to Az’s jacket.
Then I needed to layer more colors to darken Miko’s fists. I tried using E15S Dark Suntan and Mauve Shadow. Then added V06S Lavender, but it wasn’t enough. Using an N2S Neutral Grey 2, I dulled the stone color down.
I realized that messed up a detail for Miko’s Jacket. Failing to notice the small patch on her Jacket from her refs until after I colored it. With a Colorless Blender, I attempted to clear away the color to the best of my ability. Time to add in the YG03S Yellow Green in the eyes and a 0.3 Pentel Arts Hybrid Tech Pen for smaller details.
Finally, use the E27S Milk Chocolate to darken the wood of Az’s rifle and antlers.
After all this, I add a smidge of Ice Blue for shadows and complete Miko’s jacket with Lighting Yellow trim! All that’s left is to message my client to get their approval, and mail the sucker off in an envelope!
This is a sloppy explanation of my process. This gives me a good idea to make a formal article about Copic Markers. Heck, I’ll try to make a video about it!
I’m still open for commissions and so if you want a commission for yourself, check out my Commission page to get some cool unique art from me!
This month has been my most successful month of the year saleswise for my art! Anime Central was this month, and it’s a huge one! It’s a good sign that can sunset my time at my day job to take a big plunge into full time art. But I’m sure this is wishful thinking.
Things have been picking up for February! I’ve been starting up the con season, doing commissions, and more art! If you want to keep up with my tasks in real time you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram! I’m also cultivating my new Ko-Fi page for tips, so stop by there as well!
Most of Early February was preparing for Northwest Indiana Comic-Con, the first con I’ve had in years due to the plague. It’s nice to resupply and get ready. I’ve been taking on extra hours at my day job to get more money to print and reprint missing things. Luckily, NWI Comic-Con was better than I worried about! My Cat Stickers are a smash hit, they sold even more than my comics!
My stickers have grown with my newest addition to my growing collection of stickers!
Thanks to StickerNinja, you can get a large 5×4 size of my Hipster Medusa stickers!
While there, I took one nice marker commission of a Tracksuit Mafia guy from the Hawkeye show and comics.
His comic-inspired colors were simple enough, though I was worried I’d run out of ink in my Copics.
My next cons are CODCon, and Schaumburg Library Con. All of these before my giant event at Anime Central in April! It’s going to be a big jump for me, and I have a bunch of rethinking of my convention approach to do.
I’ve been working on new digital commissions as well! This Family Portrait commission is another experimental one where I’m doing my hardest to try simple painting. I’ll say that I’m getting faster and cleaner at painting, since I’m not getting lost in the weeds with brushes. I also decided to stick with my stylization and not stress hard about an exact likeness.
This one is more of a likeness drawing, and I get kinda nervous when it comes to commissions where I draw likeness. But my client was satisfied with the sketches, so I’m no longer worried.
The Art experiment continues where I skip the inking process and go straight to colors. The coloring went faster overall because I began the flat coloring at a lower resolution and I didn’t use the lasso tool on my line art.
To break out of my comfort zone, I bothered to look up how the skin varies in temperature. Unfortunately, I got frustrated by the odd in between look of this painting, thinking I was making the face look clownish. I settled for a subtle red splotch in the middle to settle my mind. I’ll figure this out if I do studies in my own time.
This next part is the more tedious part, as I’m painting over my pencil art like a physical painting. Without formal painting training, I’m going off of tutorial videos. Many about basic edge control and blending.
I don’t like the rendering step in the process because it’s boring, and I have no idea how to make it interesting. The rendering is half the reason I don’t like painting. Despite that, I press forward!
I tackled another large commission for a friend. This one was for an icon, which is simple enough for me!
I’m getting used to sketching in the Artflow Phone App on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I draw all my icon sketches on 150 dpi 3 inch canvases because it emulates drawing on a Post-it Note.
She liked sketch number two on the top middle and wanted the Mohawk to be longer, so I obliged.
I ink and flat color in my trusty Clip Studio Paint program! It’s a common step where I use my Lasso and Hard Round Brushes to get down a drawing area. Once that tough part is done, I can plunk down the basic colors I need with a Clipping Mask!
There’s plenty of trial and error with figuring out my lighting. Other than that, I took enough breaks to get out of my own head and simplify what I wanted to do.
Add some detailing to show off the materials and I complete a great looking icon for silly Discord conversations!
Here’s some old art from a game jam Adam and I worked on 2018 about being a liar in an office space. I was messing around with silly designs for office workers. Adam converted my art to pixel art, as I didn’t know about making pixel art at that time.
Other Art I’ve been doing and uploaded to my Illustration and Sketchbook Galleries. A bunch of bird people just vibing. I don’t draw that many birds. There’s too much to draw out there.
Some dog guard sketches that I’m brainstorming for Blackmask. I’m still doing new writing for the game, as I’ve sent so much pixel art for Adam to program. Adam’s shooting for having a playable demo ready for summer, but I’ll keep you all informed.
Monkey Knight Sketches I’m also considering for Blackmask. I haven’t thought about monkeys that much before recently. But now I’m figuring out cool ways to work in Blackmask. Having a prehensile tail is a straight-forward, yet unique way to add some flair to a sword and board warrior.
And finally, some more miscellaneous sketches I drew of people I see around when I’m at work or anywhere else. It gets tough seeing people’s faces with their masks on, so I use my imaginations on many of them.
These posts get long in the tooth, so next time I’m going to make shorter blogs for easier, faster writing. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more of my daily tasks. I’ll be off to celebrate my 30th birthday!
