A bit of an experiment in painting and kind of an emotional self-portrait.

Basically I was trying to convey my relationship to art. On the one hand, it makes me feel magnificent. It feels like holding the power of raw life and creation in my hands, making anything I want come to life eventually. Slowly but surely, I learn to focus on progress instead of fretting over individual flaws too much, and I do improve.
Art completes me and gives me a way of healing myself sometimes. I’ve started to draw hugs when I need them, or kisses when I need those. I’ve started to let out negative feelings with angry or sad scribbles if necessary, and to sometimes doodle silly nonsensical stuff just because I enjoy creating art for the sake of itself. It doesn’t feel unrealistic that I might have a career in art - in fact, I’m already selling commissions, so why wouldn’t it work out in the future too?
It’s good for me.

But on the other hand, it often drains me. When I work on a piece for a longer time, I sometimes just get caught up in a huge, inexplicable feeling of sadness, outright grieving even. I still have to struggle to feel the most basic pings of pride about myself, and when I finish a piece that has been draining, and I have trouble feeling accomplished and seek positive feedback from outside for it, it can completely destroy me to get no feedback at all, as stupid as it sounds.
Then I feel incredibly lonely and pathetic.
There are also those times when I’m simply unable to continue a work, or to create any art to begin with. Those times make me especially sick - it’s as if my body is reacting to the fact that I’m bottling up all these pictures and characters and stories I want to tell.

But the worst feeling ever is to look at my art and feel like I’m stagnating when I could long since be so good and professional. It’s worst when I see people who only do art as a hobby, on the side, occasionally - yet surpass me by far. It hurts, it hurts really bad, and I don’t know what to do about it, except for staying on the path I’m on right now and clinging to every bit of progress, tackling every flaw over and over again.

So, art at the same time feels like the raw power of life coursing through my veins and like slowly bleeding out. I couldn’t not do it, though. I get sick when I don’t do art for a long time.
But if I should ever desperately beg for your attention about a picture or whatever… you now know why. It’s probably because despite my mind knowing that I accomplished something, every single emotion within me cries out that I failed, that I should be ashamed of myself, that I should hide and shut up and just stop doing art altogether.
And I try to fight that.

I DID IT!

Meet Calvin, Tuss’ new buddy and crush.

Also mystery-person-with-fantacle.

I discovered how to do the lettering with Manga Studio, which saves me a lot of time. *u* And also allows me more shenanigans with balloons.

I’mma link this later, right now I have to do the dishes and celebrate my progress with a date~<3

It might not look like the hard work of 2.5 hours. But that’s what it is.

Since I’ve now reached the milestone of having everything inked, I’ll have a little lunch break now. Myum, scrambled eggs. ^^

Okay, I think I need to call it a night. I just can’t keep doing this anymore tonight. x.x

But you get a little preview at the next page for the OCT. And as a little bonus, the storyboard I made for it. This is pretty much how all of my storyboards look, I don’t think anyome but me could make sense of ‘em…

The bad news is that I still need to shade all of that shit and I haven’t even put in the background yet.

The worse news is that THIS IS ONLY ONE PANEL AND I STILL HAVE TWO TO GO

FUCKING

HANDS

UGH

I didn’t start working on the comic until a week to the deadline YET AGAIN

have a stupid sexy Andreas Jarp. :<

I’ll probably have to cut the fluff/exposition shizzle I wanted to add in before the actual entry thing and just make the actual entry thing only 7 pages max because NO TIEM

which means you won’t see this silly handsum mofo again until after the deadline.

At least his head will have the right size then.

This is what happens when I’m left alone with a sketchbook and nicki minaj on repeat.

Tuss you’re not behaving like a lady, just sayin.

(i hope this is not too blurry…)

This Tuss makes me happy.

The body looks like poop, but I think I made a lot of progress in terms of semirealism and that makes me happy even on poopy bodies.