Kana's art blog

Words written this year:

Difficult to get an exact count, but somewhere around 18k!

Fics finished this year:

4, but only one is posted lol

Art pieces finished this year:

-17 "big" pieces

-8 smaller pieces/more polished sketches

-11 rough sketches/doodles

(lmao those sketch numbers are abysmally low, i need to work on that)

Hours spent drawing fanart:

okay i had to do math for this one and i won't bore you with my methodology but: 353 hours and 53 minutes, according to procreate stats (that's a lil over 2 weeks!)

Number of pen strokes made:

once again a procreate/math number: 508,819

Most time spent on a single piece?:

my painting for the fanbook took about 45 hours in procreate (so, not including the graphic for the title + typesetting in photoshop/indesign, which was solidly another few hours 😅). this piece also takes the cake for pen strokes with 65,984.

on the flip side of that, of all my "big" pieces, this background study was the quickest at about an hour and a half, and my 6th frame for the frames project used the fewest strokes (since it was a collage), with 2,531. (2nd place goes to this other background study at 3,753, which i thought was interesting, since it took a lil longer than the other one).

Tried anything new this year?:

soooo much! i tried out new styles, new techniques, way more ambitious pieces, and drawing backgrounds in general (lol). practically every piece i did this year was me trying something new. it's been a huge year for me in terms of improvement, and i couldn't be happier :)

oh and also, you could say that writing fic at all was new for me, since i only did it very sporadically before this year! (and i didn't show it to anyone, haha)

Participate in any fests/events this year?:

yes! (another new thing for me, lol):

-seven frames for @dbdframesproject (i should post them individually someday sksksk)

-four entire different pieces for two authors for @deadbangdetectives

-a painting for the SFW half of @dbda-nsfw-zine

-an illustration for @carefulrenzine (that i'm not allowed to post yet!)

-and little fills for @catcrowweek (X), @jennygreenweek (X), and @dbda-creature-week (X) as well!

What do you look forward to writing/drawing next year?:

all of the MANY ideas and wips for dbd that i have! and i know this is pulling away from the fanworks theme, but i'm hoping to set aside some time to work on a few original projects, too <3

This one had a lot of ups and downs. The pose was so fun and although the lineart still took up a good chunk of time, I actually had a lot of fun doing it--I like Mucha's style of a thick outline and then limited lines in the rest of the drawing. I thought my usual pencil brush would be the best fit for it, especially since most lineart brushes drive me nuts and I don't know why. The disadvantage of the pencil though is that it's a little textured and not 100% opaque, making selections difficult (this was especially a problem on the pants).

As for the rendering, I was trying to imitate a watercolor style with a mixture of hard edges and gradients and not a lot of fine detail. I think I over-rendered parts of this one again, like the shoes for example, which breaks the style a bit, but yk. Using Procreate's watercolor brushes was a struggle because I've never really used them before, and I'm not even good with actual watercolors, so I sort of felt like I was floundering the whole time. I actually half repainted the face before I decided that the first version was better and then went back to it. Also I tried to do something with the hair that did not pan out at all, but since these are supposed to be quick studies (hah) I decided to leave it. Overall I'm really happy with it though, I like the look of it and I think I captured the elements of Mucha's style that I was wanting to try out. I also did more painting with the selection tool and that's starting to feel more natural and was really helpful for this one, so yay :)

I've been enjoying pushing myself out of my comfort zone and doing things I didn't think I could manage with these studies. I've sort of been feeling like my art is stagnating/not good enough or contributing anything worthwhile etc., and this has been really refreshing and a reminder that I can, in fact, draw :) Most of all, I feel like I'm learning stuff I can apply to other projects, which is a really good feeling.

The next study I'm doing is Lyendecker, which is smth I've been wanting to do for a while but kept putting off bc I was afraid of failure, but I was looking for references yesterday and actually? I think I can manage this. Excited to start working on it! ✨