Snapshot Sunday - July 30 (Patreon)

Hello Patrons! Did you manage to survive Shark Week without getting any new bite marks? Or were you trying to get some? Well whatever your goals, hopefully you met them! We've got a fair bit to go over this week, so lets dive in!

Sharks, sharks, sharks! So many sharks! Okay so like... 5 or 6 sharks if you count hybrids. Still, this week was both very productive and *exhausting*. Starting with the Shark Week Comms, you'll probably pretty easily see a repost from last week. Only reason it's showing up again here is because a day after it was done, which was right after last weeks snapshot, I *really* wasn't happy with how dull and greyed out it was. 

Tangentially, this is something I need to start figuring out where I want to do as part of my "style" of sketches and stuff, because I've been noticing that some of them just don't read as well as they should, as was the case with Mar's piece. The brighter colors and removal of gray tones really makes it stand out that much more, and while there is a way to do gray sketches that work as pieces you can put up for display, the way I've been doing them so far really isn't it. Sure they work for showing off the rough sketches just fine like I do each week, but there's a reason I'm not posting those to Twitter or Cohost or FurAffinity beyond just the messy sketchy quality. The Retrospring asks are another good example of how it doesn't really work that well reliably. Sure some of those read okay, but I think a trained eye would be able to see that I'm not really confident in my approach and am really still trying to figure out where I want to go with the look for those. Hopefully that's something I'll figure out soon enough though!

Anyway, back on track, the rest of the shark week pics were all quite a blast to work on. Growth sequences turned out to be a bit more work than I thought they would though, which is probably the biggest reason I only have three pieces to show for the week and not more. Now I know folks are probably thinking "Three in a week is a lot, don't worry", and to be fair, I also have that sentiment, but my goal was to do five or more, and I clearly didn't hit that mark. Maybe it was ambitious, but at least it was a lot of fun! Izzy as always is one of my favorite sharks to draw, getting to practice human faces with Celeste was really good, and I'm very happy with how her shark form came out, and then I got to draw Salvia who I've been a fan of for a VERY long time, so that was particularly enjoyable!

Those weren't the only commissions worked on though, but they did take up a huge majority of the time worked this week. That said, I got some progress on BeefSupreme's commission featuring a very much enlarged Neon, and I'd like to get that done soon because BIG KOBOLD. I also got some thumbnails sent to another client BlueskyObserve for a piece they got (only the one they picked is shown here).

And from there, just a handful of sketches done as warmups throughout the week! A lot of kobolds, practicing more cartoony/illustrative styles, and getting a first go at a shark-kobold (sharkobold!) hybrid. Also drew a very macro Tieton, because it had been way way too long since I last drew her, probably the better part of a year at least? I wanted to give her a go at my current skill level because all the pics I'd seen previously were very indicative of my "still-learning" anatomy and muscle, and I'm pretty happy with how that sketch came out. And finally we have Bai, a character concept that spun out of some body type practice. Really heavy characters are something I've never really felt confident doing, as in something about them always felt kind of off, or maybe the better way to describe it would be that it felt like they didn't "feel" massive. A couple of sketches done recently by Jinti inspired the want to practice, and it just kinda went from there!

Alright, gonna wrap up this post here. Yet again another really wordy update, but I'd hope by this point that they don't catch you off guard!

I'm going to put out a quick text update separate from this one just so people don't miss it if they don't read to the end, but there's still a good number of Riptide and Shark-Week themed commissions in the work, so more will be coming soon. I'm also going to post the illustrated pieces separately here in just a little bit (to go with the new posting pattern), and unfortunately I'm doing them all today because I didn't do them when the pieces went up everywhere else. Which is something I really need to get better at doing.

Also, tomorrow is my birthday! Which won't really impact anything here, but I will be taking a couple days off from art stuff because of that (probably starting right after I finish the big post for the shark week pieces), so just a heads up!

Thank you all so much for your support as always! Every little bit helps me out greatly in trying to make this a sustainable full-time thing! As always, I hope your weekend is restful and enjoyable, and that your week goes well! Till next time!