Snapshot Sunday - October 8 (Patreon)

Hey there Patrons!

This was a bit of a weird week for me, though notably another one where I didn't have as much bandwidth as I would have liked (hence why this update is so late at night), but sometimes that's just how it goes. Still, plenty of bigness on display, and some good news with recent art struggles to boot, so let's get into it!

So right away you'll probably notice that I was actually able to get an inked piece done, which is a good thing, right? Well the pic of Olly did still suffer from recent troubles with inking taking a *lot* longer than it really should have, but you might also notice that some decent progress has been made on the page for Mar, and that looks basically inked too, right? That's the first bit of good news with this whole "What's going on with Onyx's Inks" scenario.

While it might not be extremely noticeable at the resolutions for these pictures, at a glance, I'd hazard most people would consider the cleaned up drawings for Mar's piece "inked" even though it's labeled as a "sketch" page. There's a reason why it's getting the extra clean-up but that's a topic for another time. The important bit was after I finished the inks for Olly, I was able to clean up/ink the panels for Mar's piece at a **much** faster rate, much more in line with where I would want that kind of quality to take from a time investment, and after having some time to analyze it, I think I came to a few conclusions that might help explain the time difference.

Barring the different resolutions of each image (which probably played a small factor but likely not as much as I would think given the comparable level of detail), the major difference was the brush I was using. For the Olly piece, I was using a cleaner brush that lacked any baked in texture, whereas for Mar's piece, I'm using an intentionally messier brush with a lot more noise and character, namely in variable opacity/density as well as a toothier texture. I actually made the brush I used to ink Olly's piece from the one I used to ink Mar's, and while I should say that I still very much am happy with the results of the Olly piece, I think I might have over-tuned the brush and lost what I enjoyed about it in the first place. It's just slightly cleaner and less noisy, and just a little bit more precise, and I think that removal of it's naturally more "chaotic" feel is a contributing factor to what has been causing my inks to slow down lately. Allowing me to get lost in the details because the brush is more controllable, whereas the other brush is too "blunt", for lack of a better term, to let that side of me get out and eat up so much time.

On top of that, I did some experimentation with other brushes that were similarly a lot noisier and more textured, and experienced a similar sort of result; I was able to get some pretty decent lines down relatively quickly that I could also comfortably give to a client as inks. The experiments aren't pictured because I didn't save them (they were just re-draws of parts of Olly anyway), but overall I feel like this is a pretty important breakthrough in getting my workflow back on track to having a reasonable time-frame. That being said, it was also important for me to get the inked Olly piece done, because towards the beginning of the week, I was feeling myself getting way too into my own head about my inks, getting to the point to where even thinking about doing them felt like an insurmountable mountain, which spiraled into a bunch of other negativity that I won't go into detail here (this post is already long enough as it is), but it touched on some impostor syndrome and thinking that I just "lost the ability to even ink in the first place". So to be able to put that part of my thinking to bed was a huge help, even if it did mean I didn't spent much time on other projects.

Moving forward I'm going to try inking with noisier brushes (like I did when I first discovered these ones) and, similarly importantly, try to care a little less about the smaller details. I'll say again that I really like the detailed inks, but I think I need to make a conscious separation between projects that get that highly precise and detailed treatment verses something that gets the "noisier" inks that at a glance look nearly exactly the same. This will probably also take form in different tiers of linework for future commissions, which might actually work out for the better, ESPECIALLY if it means I can get pieces out to clients faster when they'd like the messier inks, as well as be more properly compensated for my time when they prefer the ultra precise inks I've done in the past, knowing it'll still take longer unless I managed to make some other breakthrough as to what's going on with my workflow.

But enough rambling about that! Let's quickly wrap up the rest of the sketches as well as provide some updates for what to expect this month. So you might have seen the phrase "OC-tober" on the snapshot pic, and that's because each October, the plan has been to dedicate some time to creating character sheets and ref sheets for my OCs (hence OC-tober), largely due to the fact that I often neglect doing so and as a result don't have any up-to-date reference for folks to use. So the sketches at the bottom are some planning work for that theme, first exploring some more eye-catching fashion that Vallory might wear, which plays into her backstory, and then taking a more fundamental approach of figuring out where I want her "default" size to be, as well as doing the same for Cali. And while reference material is one of the primary goals of the themed month, I also want to start introducing the character's lore and flesh out their stories, making them more approachable in the process! I'll probably be focusing on Vallory first, but I might also open things up for voting on by Patrons. Time will tell!

Speaking of Voting, Halloween is rapidly approaching, and I'd like to get a Patreon exclusive Halloween picture made! So I will be doing a series of patron votes later this week to see what folks would like! For a sneak peak, the idea is to do two pics this month, one being public and the other being patreon exclusive. I'm also debating between doing OCs or Fanart, and what the overall theme might be (costumes? spooky gothic vibes? Halloween transformations?), so if you want to help decide, keep an eye out for more posts this week!

Lastly, Art Packs for September will be going out this Tuesday, the 10th, at 1:00 PM (13:00) Pacific time! The pic of Olly will be included in the pack despite being finished this week, though I did allude to that possibility last week. Plus it fits the theme of the month!

Alrighty, another really long-winded post done. If you made it to the end, be sure to take a breather and get some water! As always, thank you all so much for your support, especially during these recent art struggles of mine. It means a lot to me! I hope your weekend was relaxing and restful, and I hope you have a wonderful week! Until next time!