Life and poor health got in the way again 😭 I haven’t been able to sit at my desk and draw for two weeks and I miss it so much but I’m also SO TIRED ALL THE TIME 🫩

I didn’t get to work on this study as much as I’d liked since I had such a rough week 😵 but hey at least I did it and managed to stick to my goals in a small way…even if circumstances weren’t ideal #art

seeing all the epic games folks posting on social media about their layoffs today has been heartbreaking. I have friends and family in the games industry and the amount of daily anxiety over how that “upcoming big announcement” is going to be about massive layoffs is so real. It’s no way to live.

wow Twitter turned 20 and my account just turned 10 💀 I didn’t realise I created my account on Twitter’s birthday 💀 rip twitter 💀

ALRIGHT. ya girl bought a one year subscription to Clip Studio Paint 5.0 The goal is to try (again) and see if I can get used to it this time. The last version I tried was 2.0 and I just couldn’t stick with it. I’ll most likely commit to a perpetual license if I can learn how to properly use it.

finished this portrait study in 2hrs 56mins…just 4 mins away from the limit I set for myself 😩✌️ there was no room to experiment with anything new here I was just busy fighting to get all my shapes correct the whole time and I’m still not too happy with it 😭 #art

Happy Birthday Rafayel! Since my birthday is fairly close to Rafayel’s I like to imagine that my MC and Rafayel had a cute time celebrating their birthdays together this year, even though the poor guy had to work on his birthday 😅 #loveanddeepspace

…I want to make art but I need to get some adulting done rn 😤

looking for some advice! I really want to try and learn how to use Clip Studio Paint, and do have version 2.0, but I’m absolutely torn between going through all the steps to upgrade to 5.0 or just getting a subscription to try it out for a year or so to see if I can fit it into my workflow 😭

not me continuing to edit and transform my layers with just my fingers because I happened to enter the coveted deep flow state right when my Apple Pencil ran out of juice 😤

i notice that i’m starting to quietly set higher expectations for myself with each study and feel anxious every time i start a new one becuase “what if this doesn’t turn out as good as the previous one”. #art

…when your physiotherapist is surprised by your knowledge of muscle groups and you tell her that you’re an artist 😬🤦‍♀️

Had a lot of fun with this study! I’m very pleased with how I managed to capture the volume of the face better, but getting the lighting down properly was HARDER THAN EXPECTED 😵 #art

When a job listing says it requires knowledge of AI but you find out that they mean Adobe fucking Illustrator.

I love Wolfwood’s new design but I’ll never get used to how they took away his khaki leather shoes and gave him little canvas vans loafers with pink undersoles and no socks. Those shoes always make me laugh whenever I see them and I can’t take him seriously 😂 #trigunstargaze

"Artists peak at 30", "30 under 30", "by 30 you should" ridiculous. Arts industries capital craves young people to exploit and burn out. It doesn't want older artists thriving and guiding the young. It also doesn't want artists to exist. Stop letting cannibals tell you you only matter on a plate.

Rafayel and my MC under a pavilion with wisteria flowers 🌸🌼 This is my submission for the Mortality’s Tenderness fanart contest and it took 43 hours to finish, I’m just glad I finished it before the deadline 😭 I’m going to rest now, see you all soon 😴 #loveanddeepspace #rafayel #祁煜 #恋与深空

this study was deceptively difficult and I felt like I couldn’t get anything to look right, but it all worked out in the end, I still managed to stay under the 3hr time limit I set for myself 😅 #art #artstudy

back with my portrait studies! this one was a little chaotic because I just couldn’t place the features well but I did it in the end 😮‍💨 #art

This is the last fruit still life for now, the portrait studies are coming back after this 😅 I really miss using oil paints so I tried out a different brush to achieve an impasto / impressionistic look.

not me rewatching all my old process videos over and over to remind myself that I actually KNOW how to do this and that I shouldn’t abandon my current painting just because it doesn’t look good (yet) 😭😩😭😩

still taking a break from drawing faces so here’s a tomato 🍅 #art

GIT YER ART REFS AND STUFF

I actually managed to get my old @gaiaonline.com account back 😳

get rid of the AI and I’ll be back in a heartbeat dA 💀

just spent forever figuring out how to make my own custom feeds and ended up using skyfeed 🥲 i THINK it's working? i just wanted a way to organise my own posts by big themes and i'm slightly annoyed i can't reorder them on my profile's public facing feeds tab.

got tired of portrait studies and needed a break, so here’s an apple 🍎 I’d like to work on more still life studies if I can find the time 🤔

Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a reminder of how powerful human creativity and exuberance can be; all the designers, costumers, props, set, cameras, sound, lights, choreographers, performers, even the tree people made this happen. AI could never.

here’s my weekly portrait study 🤗 I think I’ve just started to get comfortable with using this new brush 😅

In today's installment of Old Lady Yells At Clouds:

here’s portrait study number 5! I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my progress so far with this exercise and am having lots of fun playing with new brushes 😊 #procreate #artstudy #digitalpainting

got tired of my old profile pic so I made a new one 😌 #art

ya girl engaged in jobless behaviour and finally got the Legendary Defender of Ascalon along with Dhuum’s Covenant 💀 #gw1 #guildwarsreforged

Still struggling with overwhelm so I challenge myself to stay consistent by making at least one post a week and have zero expectations of the outcome for now. I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by the encouragement I’ve been receiving from everyone so far, thank you all so much, I love you 😭💕 #art

stop using AI to do your research. it hallucinates too often. if you want an answer to something, post something arrogant on the appropriate subreddit. something like: "this item performs 10% better than everything else. only idiots deny this." this will bait nerds into doing your research for you.

struggled really hard with this quick study and reworked it three times, so I don’t know if I broke the rules I set for myself (not spending more than 3 hours on each one) 😭 this one ended up taking exactly 2 hours 😅 #art #artstudy

intensely grateful I don’t have to be anywhere today and can hide at home in a snowstorm with a cup of hot tea and my iPad to draw and read with. I legit haven’t seen a snow storm like this in my whole entire life 🌨️🥶😵

my submission for the Throne of Eros fanart contest! I managed to finish it on time 😭 I really loved the slightly modified outfits the chibi models got for the ice skating game and really wish we got the full sized version! #loveanddeepspace #rafayel #恋与深空 #祁煜 #恋と深空 #ホムラ

some important advice i always give to new artists just starting out: "it has to be perfect if it's not perfect, i, shen comix, will personally kick your ass"

so uh…does anyone have any tips to spot AI soundtracks on social media??? 😭😩 I’m just doing my best to avoid any cover art that looks like AI when I compose my posts and reels.

I didn’t expect my last post to get the views that it did, thank you all so much 😭 here’s another quick portrait study because I’m having a hard time getting back into making original work 😭

…tried resizing some PNGs in Affinity and nearly lost my mind 😩 I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to free myself from Photoshop jail 😭😭😭

This year I want to get good at blocking in paintings more accurately without relying too much on lineart so I’m going to work on a bunch of studies and see where it gets me 😤

yooo I’m back on social media, what did I miss?

The other weird thing is people like to conflate a follow-count with an artist's level of skill or prominence, and that's just an incorrect metric. Some of our most skilled and well-regarded colleagues have modest followings online. Developing a following online is a whole other skill.

The lack of algorithm on Bluesky tells me that we were fools to accept it elsewhere. We all now talk about how Musk uses it to suppress dissent on twitter, but he hardly invented it. Letting someone else set parameters for what you see is maybe the most poisonous thing that social media normalised.

…disappeared because I was / am busy with packing to move at the end of the month 😩 I miss drawing 🥲🥲🥲 I’ll be back in July, hopefully stronger and and a little better 🥹

a huge thank you to the lovely queer opera kids who saved Eurovision twice in a row 😮‍💨

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