My Influencer Apology Post (+ some art, finally) (Patreon)

Featured picture: Passimian Gijinka for a Pokemon collab!
Featured following text: LONG post that's kinda depressing and self deprecating but needs to be said.

TL;DR - I am a whole ass year behind in my work and I have to suck up my pride and shame myself by just posting my overdue work and scrapping pieces that just aren't working. I will be posting backlog for a while until I catch up because my shotgun strategy clearly is not working for me.

I've made comments about this before but it really does need to be addressed. I am very behind on my rewards roll out and I am so incredibly sorry. I've always been a little slow but I recently realized... I am A YEAR behind on rewards roll out!! How did I get this far behind? How did I let it get this bad!?

A lot happened in 2023 and it really had such a hugely negative affect on my productivity and I hate being this guy. I hate being the guy who can't make art. Because this is what I want to do. And the further I get behind on my work t[he more I want to hide away because it's pretty gosh dang shameful. I didn't and still don't really know how to handle going about posting or even talking about these hugely overdue pictures but it's at a point where I just have to suck up my pride and do The Thing™️! It'll be against all my natural self preservation instincts but as I post older pictures and WIPs I'll be forthcoming about which month they'll be for.

I also have to mention but I'm in a tumultuous position with the actual art that I make. As my backlog continued to grow I felt the need to make my art better and better to justify why it's been taking me so long, yano? I've been chatting with a few fellow artists and they've helped me see that I just have to make art that I like and trust that it'll be good enough and I can only hope my overdue Patrons will agree. Part of that means I'll be scrapping a lot of my planned WIPs because, as the advice I've been given goes, if I love what I'm drawing I'll enjoy drawing it more and I'll draw it quicker. Therefore, if, after A YEAR, I'm not liking something, it'll be be before in the long run to just start over and make something I, and you all, might like better.

It also doesn't help that Patreon itself has increased it's restrictions on the type of art I can make for y'all, but even Gumroad is outright banning it 😅

This is all to say that it took me over a year to come to realize but... making something is better than struggling through work I've grown to resent and ending up making nothing. If I'm gonna make drawing gay art my living, I have to do better and I'm gonna have to live through the embarrassment and face my shame head on.

I want to thank everyone who's stuck around offered me support as I struggled with creating this past year. Your understanding has been so reassuring, but now I have to be hard on myself if I'm gonna dig myself out of the mess I've made for myself 😤