slonkin fat doinks

And it is a country that if I were forced to live in it, I would prefer to just live out in the boonies away from everyone else. Holy fuck.

The extreme longing I had to just run away to some farm in the countryside, or to get on a boat and just sail away into the North Sea. To just become a total hermit and try to not interact with the great big cities, only to stop and get supplies and go back to my reclusiveness. I would feel insane jealousy every time on the train and we would pass these small little villages nestled amongst the cow and sheep fields, and watch the people living there do their daily tasks and living their life. That - that is what I want my life to be.

Like, don’t get me wrong. Some of the cities we visited were very interesting and charming as well. But I don’t know if I could deal with it every day. I just don’t think I can deal with people every day anymore. I don’t think I can live in close proximity to people, and in these cities and suburbs - people are just living basically on top of each other. I think the only thing I’m banking on now is how unaffordable and unattainable housing is there. That maybe when my partner attempts the process to relocate, once nailing down housing becomes an impossible feat, he will just give up on this dream.

Besides the fact that my body kept breaking down and I was just physically and mentally not healthy enough to do all of the things we did every day. I pushed through so hard. But man, it’s actually a very depressing thought that because of my various ailments I am not able to travel anymore. Which is kind of shattering to me because I had always dreamed about going to Japan or New Zealand or South Korea or something. But this trip put me through the wringer. It’s been 11 years since I last went on a trip. So it was a crushing realization that, well, maybe I just can’t do it anymore. And the absolute devastating thought that perhaps I’m becoming like my mother who wanted so hard to travel throughout her life but her body couldn’t take it and she died having so many regrets on that front.

The Netherlands is not a perfect country. I was never under the assumption at all that it was. I never even deluded myself into thinking so (unlike maybe my partner). It has a ton of faults. I would never fit in there. I don’t really fit in anywhere anyways. But the trip was eye-opening in many respects. And affirming other things, from everything that I’ve studied about it. It is a country that will chew me up and spit me out. Though maybe that would be an improvement than this current country that wants me dead or put into camps for being unwell/neurodivergent. I have many more thoughts about this trip that I will probably leave off of public spaces. Or just need more time to sort out. In any case, just visiting a place as a tourist for 3.5 weeks is very different from living there.

1998 TalaWolf was just a very rough character then, not even meant to be a persona or anything. Only one sketch of her in an old sketchbook exists, may have been drawn in 1998 or 1999. All I had available at the time was a pack of 100 color crappy markers, so since I couldn't color the sketch, for some reason I just kind of outlined what the color marking should have been with markers? Linework was done with fine-liner sharpie that would bleed every where from the markers.

1999-2000 Here's where TalaWolf starts to finally surface as a persona (or fursona, whatever.) Mostly real media at this point from a cheap wooden box of assorted art supplies. I couldn't figure out the right pencil color to make a 'slate blue' so I would pencil in a blue color and a grey color overlapping. Mostly pencil sketches at this time as well since my art supplies were lacking.

2000 Ahhh the CGI starts. All I had available was some free program that came from my printer, an early version of Jasc Paint Shop Pro. And MSpaint. I had no idea what shading was so I would just fill in darker and darker colors around the edges of things, and leave things lighter on the inside. Linework was mostly scanned pencil sketches. I did all CGI with a mouse back then. And of course, shoutout to big tails covering the back hind leg anatomy that I could never figure out.

2001 Here comes the linework experimentations. Linework was mostly done with scanned inked drawings lined with a fine-liner pen or sharpie. I also experimented a little bit with the linework tool in Jasc Paint Shop Pro all mouse drawn. Still really couldn't figure out shading, but here's where the infamous 'dodge and burn' tool for shading came in. Hilarious how so many of us started this way. I really struggled getting the right color blue for Tala, and my art was getting eaten up by dithering when I would save in PSP.

2002 Big tails covering wonky hind leg anatomy! Mostly CGI at this point and I started using more tutorials and working my way around Jasc PSP and a little bit of Photoshop while at school. Linework was done with the mouse with the Linework tool in PaintShopPro. Shading still remains a mystery, but now I started using layers with multiply and screen. All art was still done with the mouse and it was killing my hands. Tala started to take on her infamous blue that was inspired by a flavor of Kool-aid. The style of this one is self-indulgent, there's no way I could have made something that looks like this back then, but it was my goal to reach it one day. So this one is a gift to my past-self.

2003 Also I started to acquire more quality real media tools. I got my first packs of Prismacolor pencils and did a lot of real media pieces using them. I made so many artists friends during this time and learned so much from various communities.

2004-2005 TABLET OBTAINED. I kicked Jasc PSP to the curb and started doing everything in Photoshop. I couldn't figure out inking with the tablet, so almost all linework was done with Micron pens and scanned. The tablet made coloring and shading way easier, and I started to do some style experimentation. But poses were still static and anatomy was still a mess. Also, lots of confusing lightsources.

2006 I finally figured out how to do inking with the tablet, only to switch my style to sketchy inking for some reason? Work was almost 100% CGI around this time, and I used predominately Photoshop as well as Corel Painter. I continued to play around with styles back then, and was more playful and loose with it. Tala's design is basically solidified, I finally made character sheets and swatch sheets so I could stop picking the wrong color blue. Ignore the back paw, I didnt feel like drawing it.

2007 No CGI work, or even colored work, for this time period. Everything was sketched in a sketchbook, and everything is grayscale. This is also around the time that I dropped art for about a decade.

2022 I have many years of experimentation under my belt, so I feel like I can do things in basically any style I want now. Still using Photoshop, but leaning more into Clip Studio Paint as my primary. TalaWolf's design is shifting slightly. Trying to get rid of the garish bright blue and go back to the 'slate blue' that might fit me better now. I still don't really know what I'm doing. My old art looking back is so embarrassing, but I see the little stepping stones that stayed in place for me to get here.