Draw-Along Events! (Patreon)

IT'S FINALLY THE WEEKEND, BUDDIES. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely looking forward to sleeping in. Not like I don't already...but you know...more excuses to. ANYWAY.

TL;DR Draw-along events forthcoming! Starting with special patron-only ones! THAT'S YOU!

And now the rambling!

I've been trying to think of some fun stuff for you amazing people as a way to thank you for your continuing support. While I've done some big event planning and organizing in the past, it's a bit strange for me to do that for something that's centered around art, so it's been a bit of a struggle. BUT I  have come up with something that I hope that you will all really like!

Long, long ago, in the early days of my joining the Interwebs, I got really into something called oekaki, which was a Java applet (!!) that lets you draw and post directly to a forum, and the community of artists from some of the major forums. In fact, I met a handful of my oldest and best friends through there (RIP BN) whom I still talk to every day (hey, you! 👀). Better yet, this was so long ago that I didn't even have my first drawing tablet (a Wacom Graphire 2) so a lot of the stuff that I drew was using a mouse, including this:

This was done in 2003. Literally almost 20 years ago. 😱 It's so old I had to dig into my "old > Old > Hella Old > Oekaki2" folder to find it. 🙃

There was also a related browser-based painting app cleverly called PaintChat that allowed multiple users to join a canvas/room and...well, basically do exactly what it says -- paint and chat. It was always so much fun, and lots of other people seem to have thought so too, because there is a new one that the creators behind Schoolism, a very affordable online series of self-study and critiqued art courses, created Magma Studio. I used it a couple years ago and it's pretty much a browser-based Photoshop, with chat and collaboration features, which is pretty cool! Here's a messy doodle I did when it was first released in 2020 and I was testing it out with a friend:

SO without further blathering ado, I wanted to offer to YOU, my wonderful and amazing Patrons, a day when all of us get together and do a collaborative drawing session! It can be a draw-along, or it can just go wild -- whatever you want! Usually it devolves into shenanigans anyway, from my experience. 🤣 Most likely there will also be a voice chat going on the Discord for those who'd rather do that instead of chatting, because the chat feature is unfortunately a little bit clunky still. But anyway, all the details to come!

I'm so excited to be able to draw along with you all and not just blather at you on livestreams! 💖 Hope you can join! Once I find a good date for it to work, I'll update you with all the info.