#dhjones95

The 6 year hiatus explained

Many things in my life has changed in the time since I first started work on Treehouse ch. 13:

Becoming a parent, getting my master's degree, starting a PhD, dropping out of said PhD, looking for a job during covid lockdown, working a full-time job, building and moving into a house, and generally growing older and less energetic.

With all that, it has been hard to find the time and the motivation at the same time to sit down and draw, and the state of the new chapter of Treehouse itself was not helping.

As you may be able to tell from ch. 13, the story has now reached its first really major turning point, which will set off the overarching plot and several character arcs. I came to a point where I was deeply unsatisfied with what I'd come up with for the continuation, and I hit a hard writer's block trying to figure out how to proceed.

All of this together made it demotivating to even open up the Manga Studio project file, so progress simply stopped happening, leaving the chapter not even half done for years. And then, 2½ weeks ago in the middle of my summer vacation, the stars somehow aligned, and I figured it out and finished the chapter at a — for my standard — blinding pace.

I don't think the motivation was suddenly granted to me by divine intervention, but it was rather the result of many small sources of inspiration accumulating enough + realizing and accepting that I had to kill some darlings (I ended up having to redraw several already finished panels and even deleting a whole, fully sketched page!).

I feel really good about Treehouse right now. My daily life feels well-balanced and calm, and I have more clarity about the series than ever before. I have developed a process and workflow that I think works really well for me, and most importantly, I am having FUN!

THATS A LOT MAN. okay ill make everything short to make this quick uh... im ignoring some of the short words im sorry ;;

im actually trying my best to love myself more than finding a lover/bf/gf because dating seems like 90% of what philippine media says to do and it’s making me feel out of place and it’s one thing i hate about it

i used to feel awkward in dresses, but as soon as i bought something that isn’t a sundress, i started buying dresses for myself regularly and i’d wear one everyday if my parents only allow me!! i guess its the fine arts community influence of making me feel more confident with myself hahaha

sometimes i still feel silly everytime i check my tumblr, and i feel even sillier when i respond to messages with so much exclamation points, and it still persists until now, especially that im getting more messages than before

there are certain moments where i just suddenly feel sad out of nowhere and it never fails to bug me because my friends are all so concerned with how i suddenly sound sullen but i cant. snap out of it. you know?

sometimes just talkign to people makes me happy!!! but often i like just checking tumblr or the internet. or sleeping. sleeping makes me happy

the last time i played any sorts of assassin’s creed was a year ago and im surprised i still consider myself a fan

i once had to borrow my friend’s pencil skirt and she said how nice my behind was and how i shouldn’t hide it. im still not sure how should i take that compliment, years later

the least used tool in my pencil case is this acrylic marker. it’s violet, it can write on black paper, but i dont use it because the shade sucks and i want to throw it away but my mom bought it so im finding somewhere to use it on (well its her birthday in thursday. maybe i should make something with it?)

im still scared of the dark and when i read amigara fault for the first time i was so scared i kept the lights on for one week straight when i go to bed

my old username meant something like “star light”, but i realized that someone else was using that handle, so i replaced one word with my name in greek. sorta. so when you translate everything, lumen meaning light and my name, isabel, meaning god’s promise, it’s over all “light of god’s promise”??? it’s not intentional and i like the poetic-ish ness but im not too religious but it stuck so im not changing it