The sketch page which also had the raw version of the first "sand slinker" image. I'm not sure whether I like smooth and shiny or smooth and matte skin better. Maybe there's both?

Some sketches from late November before things went awry - I realized I hardly draw the environments of my Tenebra Versa headworld and had fun with it, and then the streak broke again ^^'

But - everything worked out with my new employer and while it's a little early for a safe prognosis, it could all be the blessing in disguise I needed. Despite being in onboarding phase, I'm at my calmest since a long time, and the Art Director is so much on the same wavelength it's like coming home.

Added some color to another sketchbook page of the beach slinker. It's fun to stay loose and not getting lost in detail :)

In general, I feel that I took a certain amount of stress-disordery-affliction from my old workplace. It slowly starts to surface, but it's not surprising and I know how to deal with it. Thanks, game industry, I guess? ^^'

I didn't do any sports the entire year because of the stress (which should have been a wake-up call sooner), so all my gainz are gone and I packed on several pounds of nice stress-eater fat instead. Nothing insurmountable, but it's going to take consistent work until next year to get some basic fitness back. We'd like to return to Fuerteventura late January or early February, so that's going to be my goal date.

A redesign of another character from 2002. It was a feline phantasm for the longest time, and its design never really clicked for me. I'm not sure if this new look is final, but it's much better.

The pensive phase continues and I feel it's starting some overdue updates to my approach to more or less every aspect of my life.

I went through an image folder which contains everything I drew between 2008 and 2016, and hoo boy was I productive back then. It was a much harder time overall with heaps of overtime and negative people, but I still managed to create a lot of space for myself. Why is this different now? I have roughly the same amount of personal time, but it leads to much less. Taking a photo of a sketch and pulling it into Photoshop, even coloring it, feels like taking on the world (ordeal pictured above). What happened?

My drumming teacher became one of the most important and helpful people in my life when it comes to questions like these. I only start to realize how right he is when he says: Mind and spirit create reality. Something happened, in me and in my environment, which led to changes, and very apparently, I let them happen. I'm not at fault for everything, but I'm responsible for the way I perceive things, and how I act upon them.

Making and drawing things is something so integral to myself that something rather severe must have happened to lose such a big part of its spirit. It is a peculiar sense of exhaustion that didn't exist back then, despite having a soul-sucking demon spawn as a superior who made me question my value as a human being.

So, what is it? Is it perfectionism? Overthinking? Jadedness? Ageing? One part of the answer is maybe mental overload. I realized that my ability to focus is going to shit, and I'm not even active on any dopamine-rush social media sites. There's a reason why Fuerteventura feels like it's cleaning my senses, and why I feel deeply inspired to draw and do stuff while I'm there. I focus on the things I want to focus on. No Teams strobe light party, no interruptions, no thousand-tasks-juggling, no stupid politics, no ego arseholes I am forced to react professionally to. Mind and spirit create reality, and if my mind is full of ego arseholes and blinking bars, I'm going to have a bad time.

Taking care of such fundamentals may not only improve my personal life, but will also help with the quality of my professional work. Would be a win-win, to use the stupid corporate buzzword.