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Hi! Thanks for bothering to click through. I think this will be roughly three sections, so let’s start with:

where I am

In may of 2019, I moved from California to Colorado! I’m currently living with two friends in an apartment. It’s been a little scary being more independent, but it’s overall been pretty good for me, because I feel I can be more openly myself. I get to like furries and be gay all I want, and no one can stop me or make me feel uncomfortable! It’s pretty great.

I’ve also improved my workstation a lot! I upgraded from a surface pro to a proper desktop computer. I built it myself, and I’m always so grateful for how well it runs. It also looks embarrassingly gamer for a workstation, but I also play osu! a lot these days, so that’s okay.

Look at all that blue!

how I’ve been

While there have definitely been some tradeoffs, my mental health has never been better since I moved away from my family. There was always constant arguing, and no effort to communicate with each other. I always felt like everyone hated each other, and that I wasn’t excluded from that. Here though, while we still have our disagreements and our peeves, it never escalates to shouting matches, and we’re all committed to trying to be better housemates, instead of getting offended when someone points out something inconsiderate we’re doing. I feel I’ve become a much better person to live with, both for my ability to clean up, but also my ability to cook!

What I have been struggling with though, is burnout. Drawing is the only thing I have going for me to make any income, so I have to do that every day, even when I don’t feel like I can, and it’s a bit of a drain. I’m trying to work toward some solutions though.

what I’m doing

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Last year, I saw huge improvement in the quality of my art. I’m always trying to do what I can to learn new techniques, and I feel it’s really been paying off. That said, with increased quality, comes increased effort, and it’s been a bit of a strain on me to be consistently and frequently creating it.

So, this year I decided my theme should be growth. I want to expand not only my skills, but also my presence on websites other than Twitter, and also my business in general. As part of that, I’ll be keeping my big, space consuming talks to this Tumblr account, while my Twitter focuses on smaller thoughts as well as artwork. I’d also like to have less talk between art posts, since that tends to be a turnoff for a lot of folks. And, most importantly, I’m gonna be testing a lot of ways to make my Patreon more enticing to new people. Having a steady income that doesn’t rely on commissions coming in would be a huge help for me not only financially, but also mentally. A huge part of the stress of making art as a living, as a commission artist, is having to constantly turn over new customers. And in 2020, no one had any money! It was a miracle I filled up all my commission slots, and I often barely had the energy to power through them over the month. Money coming in through other means ensures that I’ll be able to focus my efforts a little more on personal projects, so I can continue to make cool things for you guys that’s more interesting than portraits and headshots.

For small and mostly inconsequential updates on my life (like what dumb thing I’m cooking on any given day), I still recommend you follow me on Twitter. I have a lot of other sites you can keep up with too, but that’s the most active one. I’ve been trying to stream more too, because I think it’s a fun way to engage more with my audience, while also having small goals to set for myself every week. If you’d like to see my art process, I stream art on Picarto every Sunday at 4:00 pm MST. And if you’d like to relax with me while I play some games, tune in the same time every Thursday on my Twitch channel.