Happy new year 2024!🥳 (Patreon)

Sharing this here early so I don't end up forgetting it since I do not trust patreon's schedule function -

SO as I said if I have the time I might do a little special treat to end the year and this is it! ✨

Something actually wholesome and chill this year, Kiran & Grima watching the fireworks together or rather Kiran is watching them while Grima is starstruck 🤭

 couldn't decide on regular vs. Star eyes for Kiran so I let twitter decide and you can see the result . I just really really wanted to draw something cute and kinda sappy, it's the kinda vibe I want to channel more in my art again. They're married for long enough now that even the fell dragon gets to marvel at his wife at times and I get to draw the most self-indulgent stuff😌

In absolutely fitting fashion to sum up the whole year I almost had a whole existantial crisis and dread over this picture when clip studio randomly corrupted the whole workfile with big black artifact chunks all over it and there was no way to fix it cut to me despairing for like half an hour until I ran out of option aside from closing the picture, trusting it did not save it with the corruption in the previous version and just accept that I lost a bunch of progress that I had to re-do.  

Despite that I managed to finish it in time so here we are at the end of the year, arguably personally my "worst" in terms of full render complex illustrations performance due to a number of factors through the year but I personally don't consider the year itself a bad one. In terms of art? Maybe but then again I took alot of time this year after the worst things (like my partner's job situation & the overall financial worry attached to that) were finally resolved to just step away from things and actually take time to properly heal from the past three-ish years with all of their ngl absolutely terrible and life altering events and boy was that needed.

 I've been pushing myself way too hard to keep going through all of that to a point where it genuinely sapped all of my enjoyment out of art for myself, even in terms of personal art to a point where I got super anxious to even post things on twitter at all and straight up having a lowkey nervous breakdown working on a bunch of pictures if they did not turn out the way I wanted them to, leading to sometimes full blown existential crisises that thankfully my friends helped me with lots of reassurance. And honestly, I couldn't keep going like that, every time in the past years since 2020 when I took breaks I ended up feeling guilty or that the financial pressure was so big I jumped back into working way too soon, overestimating my own limits and in the end just making it overall worse for myself and tying my own self-worth way too hard to my art.

So I took the second half of 2023 to actually fix that and detached myself completely from social media pressure and actually do more things I enjoy with the people I love, picked up some old hobbies I haven't done in over +15 years (I crochetted a huge plush Snake this year!) , actually did the London trip I wanted to do for years and just. Lived. Went to a bunch of cool things like a pumpkin fair too, saw my friends alot, caught up with games I've been wanting to play in a long time and fell in love with a bunch of cool shows.

I also managed to hit several longterm life goals this year I've set for myself including a big patreon milestone, even if it was just temporary. 🥺😭💕💖💕I'm still insanely happy about it! It's been such a HUGE things I never thought I could archieve and honestly it kinda overwhelmed me a little so I ended up not even knowing how to properly celebrate it, aside from yelling about it like an idiot 😂

There's been so many ups and downs, especially huge downs in my personal life in the recent years and maybe this year hasn't been good for my art outwardly but I haven't been this at peace with myself and my life in a long time as I have been in the past months now so I can gladly say I'm thankful for 2023. might not have been my best artistic year but it's important groundwork for the years to come and I'm feeling actually somewhat optimistic for the next year! Don't have any huge goals or resolutions for next year aside from one, and that would be falling in love with my own art again but aside from that I won't set any huge expectations, it's better that way 🙈

so while I'm recapping I also want to thank all of you guys for sticking around through this year, you are the true MVPs and without your support and encouragement I probably wouldn't be typing this right now so THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR BEING A PART OF MY 2023 AND MAKING IT AWESOME!! 🫶💕 I'm wishing ALL of you a fantastic 2024, I hope it'll be the best year of your lives!! Thank you for following me on my art journey, for supporting and encouraging me at all times,   For bearing with my insanity and also simply for loving my art!! It means the world to me 🥺💖💕💖

HERE'S TO 2024! 🥂🍾