Left my day job late this month. Now preparing for the move to Japan. Thinking a lot about how to manage my time well. I also started working on a visual novel / point and click adventure mystery game.
Books: Witch Hat Atelier Vol. 11, Ping Pong Vol. 1 & 2, Bird by Bird, Thoughts for Young Men by J. C. Ryle, Pursuing Peace
Games: LOL: Wild Rift, Roadwarden, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores
TV/Movies: Suzume no Tojimari (Suzume’s Locking Up)
I submitted my resignation at work. My last day is Dec 22nd. I’ll be preparing to be a fulltime Christian Missionary to Japan after that. Also, I started learning Ren’Py to make a visual novel.
Books: It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, PTSD by G. Singelin
Games: Frog Detective Trilogy, LOL: Wild Rift, Tangle Tower
Started working in 3D with Blockbench.
Books: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
Games: Titanfall II, Horizon Forbidden West, Journey, Ooblets
Podcasts: The Climate Denier’s Playbook, The Visual Scholar
I have been thinking a lot about anatomy and mannequins. Joined a few Discord groups as people seem to be fleeing social media.
Books: Happier Hour, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga), ‘Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye’
Movies / TV: Cencoroll
I have decided when I say busy, and I assume when other people say it, that they dont alwys mean “lacking in time.” I usually have some amount of “free” time every day after the kids go to bed, but I don’t typically have the energy to do something productive with the energy.
Finished moving for the most part, still need to clean/organize the office and thus the art space.
I cancelled my plans to go to GCAMM. We found out it was during my son’s first week of school. Consolation is that I am now slated to go to the Created Conference.
Very excited that Break!! the tabletop rpg was released.
Books: Alloy of Law
Movies / TV: Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse
Finished the main storyline and final boss in Tears of the Kingdom. This lead to not much drawing going on during May and early June. Trying to get back into the swing of things with Tim Mcburnie’s Line and Color course. Lots of good stuff about developing a regular practice. Also, I am moving down the street at the end of the month.
I finished Reid’s book on Watercolor Basics. I learned a lot about watercolor, especially about grouping values. I wonder how applicable it will be to a lineart driven watercolor style. I have hardly been making time for watercolor so we will have to see in the future.
Books: Watercolor Basics by Reid
I have been trying to journal daily, a sort of “morning pages” thing but with 250 words as the goal instead of 750. Gotta start somewhere.
I am very excited for LoZ:Tears of the Kingdom! I finished Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity late this month to prep for it. As far as HW:AoC, I love the cutscenes and “what ifs,” but was not super jazzed about the gameplay. The “normal” difficulty really ramps up unnecessarily towards the end of the game. Also, make sure you click ‘retry’ instead of ‘retry battle’ if you die during a scenario. Retry battle takes you all the way back to the start of the scenario. I managed to finish the game without much grinding, but I could definitely see how accomplishing more side missions would have made the final levels more achievable.
I have been pretty busy this month. Not much time to draw. I would like to be working on commissions that I have taken (unpaid) but I seem to not be able to make the time for them.
Started renting manga from the library. Also going to start tracking the books I am reading here. Blood C was ok, just getting started in the first book. RG Veda was sad but cool. Definitely be prepared that this is a tradgedy. It is a little hard to keep track of all the characters. Space Drawing: Perspective was legit. A really good guide to perspective and a few good tips on how to practice and apply. Very down to earth. Covered a lot of common questions I had that some other resources don’t cover, like how to draw an object that is rotated differently than the vanishing point. Tsubasa was fun, and it is neat to see how CLAMP creatively re-uses their characters. I will definitely continue reading this series. I like the art style in Tsubasa better than the style used in RG Veda.
Sold my guitar to focus on art making. Trying to learn Japanese, art, and guitar at the same time was too much. Speaking of which, I hit 100 hours of tracked art making this month! I am trying to work towards 10,000 hours of art.
I have been trying to study posing for splash art and commissions. I feel like this is one area that there might not be a good book on the subject.
I signed up to go to GCAMM.
Got back into learning Kanji with wanikani.
Something I would like to do this year is make money from illustration. A reasonable goal for now (starting at $0 a month) is to get up to $4 monthly or $48 yearly to pay for this website. The next hurdle would be to make enough to cover my Notion.so subscription. How I want to accomplish this goal though… I am not sure. I have been thinking a lot about commissions.
I have been putting my artwork together from mid-2020 to now. Trying to make a sketch collection to really show where I was at compared to now. // After noticing most of my art was badly photographed on my phone, I am going to wait on this. I ordered a buget friendly nice scanner to start scanning future art on.
I worked on my learning page a bit. I want others to be able to learn alongside me. I want to try to create a page that is helpful to artists of all skill levels. This includes the new addition of a link to my “art notes” which I will use to record what I learn as I study from videos and books.
My son has been pretty sick towards the end of this month so my energy has been quite low. Lots of waking up at night. I am hoping for his sake and mine that he gets better soon.
Picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Pretty fun so far! I also started playing Ooblets which is very amusing. January ended up being quite a blur. Took a vaction which was great but also had some intermittent sickness. Another highlight related to art is that I committed to making art daily on streak.club. It has been really helpful to be a part of a few small art communities online. I feel like I can see myself getting better as I spend more and more time drawing and seeking to improve.