My Art Commission Updates

and as I should have anticipated, Copenhagen is expensive af. Not to mention the CNFA related treats I bought myself to prolong the joy...

Frames for my signed LPs, and a tattoo deposit for May. XD

(Art by @fawnilu)

After seeing the people I'm following celebrating their OTP for Valentine's Day, I've realised I missed a trick here!

To my beloved Jaime and Brienne. It has been so.much.fun world building, writing and 'arting' this story for the past 7 years (holy shit, can't believe it's been that long!) - ever since their show canon "story" ended and I realised the ship I'd been in love with for years had been overlooked, underutilised, mishandled, degraded and bastardised beyond recognition (and I had been too blind to notice the many pitfalls and warnings even during the run up to that point) a fire was lit in me. The intense and life changing anger I felt over the worst ending for them imaginable (seriously, if you'd have asked the collective fandom what the worst case scenario could be, I'd imagine their guess wouldn't be too far removed from what we got) has fuelled this passion, and on reflection, I'm grateful, because this exercise in complete demolition and rebuilding has been nothing short of a blast.

The anger still lingers (can you tell? It doesn't take much for me to descend into a full blown rant 😂)

But more powerful than the eternal fury is the complete love I have for my own personal interpretation of these characters. I'm grateful for the fandom for providing so much inspiration for my story with their own creations, as well as the performances from the actors and the chemistry they both had with each other. These things, and other things have provided the building blocks of this passion project.

I’ve got to keep an eye on the pennies now as I’m paying out for accommodation and saving for when I’m there, with a lot of my overtime money already being swallowed up by my expenses. Even though I’ll be self catering in my Airbnb probably the entire time to keep costs as low as possible, I’ll be wanting to visit a few of museums which are all £10-£15 a pop to enter, and I’ll be paying out for the Metro etc.

I’m also seeing 2 of my top bands in Bristol in a couple of weeks (2 separate gigs 😜), which although cheaper, still costs money.

So my comm rate will be slower to non existent for perhaps the next couple of months depending on my overtime situation.

(The gigs in question)

Yes, I’m seeing CNFA twice, because their support set is only 26 minutes long and I NEED more! Also sooo excited to finally see IHLO live!! 👏 👏 👏 The headline CNFA show should be double the time of the support set. I effing love that band. ❤️‍🔥

World building, commission planning, inspiration gathering and sorting out the 500,000 + words (or more like, writing scraps here and there when inspiration struck) - just generally sorting and building. ❤️ I cannot tell you how much fun I am having my GOD!! 😂

This is thanks in no small part to a bunch of free/not too expensive programs I’ve discovered and downloaded, some of which are below:

Scrivener in particular is a godsend. I can finally organise my writing scraps chronologically and sort them into chapters, with a view to write proper comprehensive text out of them at some point. 😍 Scapple is also great - a fab way to brainstorm ideas.

I’ve also unsubscribed from World Anvil as I found the interface way too cumbersome. I think WA is more of an end game website when you have the entire world done and just want to display it. Building on there is a pain, so I took inspiration from a Reddit user and am now putting together my own ‘Wiki’ articles on OpenOffice writer! This has actually also helped the world building process so much, as when I’m in the middle of writing article sections it encourages me to flesh out and expand certain aspects that crop up as I go. 🌟

The usual suspects - expanding the map and locations using COA and Inkarnate is so fun and useful. I think the map provides so much of a backbone to the story overall, along with working out modes of distance, the time it takes to travel via different means etc. (which can be sorted in Aeon Timeline 😉)

I’ve also made my offline world work for me. I’ve been spending some extra pennies on buying equipment and resources to make the process so fun and smooth af. My room has become a nerd paradise, with a world building station that can be packed away easily out of sight when not in use. 💖

Here’s a pic of said happy place:

Leg rest, world building books, dice for randomising - just love it so much.

As for commissions, I have 2 fresh ones underway right now. One NSFW (😏) and another super cute one with a brand new artist I’ve been wanting to work with for a while who makes beautiful ASOIAF art. Really excited about that one. ✨

Not only is Joanna Newsom named 'Joanna' but she is such an influence on how I visualise Jaime and Brienne's second born daughter in my story. When I saw this album cover it blew my mind - this is VERY close to how I would envision 'my Joanna' - thin with strong hands with a lot of nature influence around her (she becomes the High Paramount of The Reach when she's an adult as well as being in touch with the lower born/forest folk in that region) - I edited her eyes to be green but apart from that, hair colour is bang on, her skin colour is close if not completely there and her face is very close to my vision (very Jaime)

There is also a lot of Lannister/Tarth vibes in this portrait which I love. My Joanna is also a harpist (which is honestly a coincidence)

I have a few big expenses this year - I'll be going away at least 3 times, once abroad, so I'm also trying to budget this in with the rest of my expenses, which is tricky on a part time wage. I would love to think I can sneak in some commissions amongst all this, but they'll no doubt have to be very spread out. But my new ethos still holds: I will compile full references and info first, then I'll enquire. This has helped me be a little less reckless. I've still been having a blast world building of course. I also purchased Aeon Timeline which I've been completely drooling over. It is amazing and it's really helped solidify a lot of things for me. I also like how it's an old school type 1 time purchase deal as opposed to yet another subscription.

My latest comm is in service of world building as opposed to anything directly related to J&B - but I'm still really excited about it.