Full Moon (Hi-Res + Extra Thoughts)

This is the hi res (3600 px)! Thank you for your support. <3

A painting for XKadenXx on Twitter! Oh, and no, the full moon isn't for a transformation or anything -- it just helps you see the terrifying skull more easily.

Ahhhh skull face characters. One of my many weaknesses. I went a bit nuts on this one, almost to a fault, trying to make it look at nice as possible. I think I did okay on the character, but my ability with foliage still leaves much to be desired, personally... And, uh, no pun intended there. Trying to still be better about lighting and colors, as well as putting more detail in the important areas while leaving less important areas less refined to let the viewer fill in the details. Definitely feels like an improvement so far but we'll see if I can keep it up.

I love this dude so much, though. Gosh he was so fun to paint. Thank you, Kaden, for being patient with me and trusting me with your fantastic guy! Much love, dude. And to everyone else, I hope you enjoy. c:

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Wew lad. Trying to improve in multiple facets at once is a lot of hard work mentally. I think I sort of succeeded and yet also fumbled at the same time. And gah, I hope no one really notices the tangents I missed until we too late into the process...!!

I feel like this image cements both that I really like rendering out small details and trying to make things look nice, while also lamenting that I still don't feel like I "get" backgrounds. It's very weird to be told that my backgrounds are great when they kill me to look at once a piece is done. Prooobably why I spend so much time trying to make characters look nice instead, or why I like vaguer things like clouds or water. I think my foliage here really brings the whole piece down. It's hard to be proud of that skull and bone and the lighting when... There's so much of -that- going on around it.

And yet there's no real good method at getting better at backgrounds beyond just... Doing them. It's not a matter of study or anything, or at least it doesn't feel like it, but more that I think I don't know how to compose a landscape in a very interesting way. So we get a lot of these images of characters being centered or near the foreground, rather than really IN the space. Maybe I could do some experiments to help with that, but. Who knowsss. Nevermind needing the time to experiment.

Speaking of. Some of you noticed a while back that this is kind of the last thing in my queue right now, beyond some extra things for Guy9. I don't think I'm yet ready to open fully to the public for commissions yet -- I still feel like I'm in a very weird spot of not being skilled enough for higher pay yet knowing I need to raise prices slightly, so I hone in on the "well you're a con artist then" thought process. I'm working on that. But those here, as well as amongst my friends, I might take on some extra work. Just need a few days to get my head straight, try and get some D&D stuff done I've been holding off on out of fear, and figure out flat pricing instead of hourly.

... Bo Bunrham's been on my mind a lot. You ever just watch something and just... Collapse? His newest special, "Inside", on Netflix, has done that to me. A lot of my slowness here on this piece is because of this growing sense of "Is it worth it?" that sort of was then put on a pedestal by that special. That's sort of me with art right now, and why I keep delaying things. I need to make money, sure, but... Between the news in this country, Pride month and my own qualms about my sexuality and how my work deals with it, climate change woes accelerated by crypto, and NFTs invading more and more facets of art... 

Whoof. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to try to try and stick to an ideal, to a fantasy of what I wanted to be as an artist? I always envisioned myself eventually, like when I was 60+, becoming a sort of high fantasy artist. Dragons, D&D, magic, sci-fi, knights, whatever. But with everything going downhill so quickly, it feels like... Do I just say screw it, and start indulging in more pin-ups of what I'm interested in, sexually? Would that alienate my audience? ... Does it matter if it does...? I have ruined my sleep schedule a bit, staying up late thinking about this constantly.

... Maybe I need the weekend off, aha. Just drown myself in Yakuza Kiwami 2. I don't know. I'm scared of both the future, and of myself, I guess, still. It's dumb to admit that at 30, but. Well. Happy Pride Month, after all! yayyy~

wow this went off the rails a bit. Uh. Hmm. Enjoy the... skull wolf? And I'll catch some of you on my Twitch or Picarto streams that I've been doing more. Ya'll have a good weekend, and please continue to stay safe. We're definitely not out of the woods yet, and I want to see everyone when we are.