I Noticed That This Raised Some Questions, Lol. I Did Waffle On It For A While But Yeah There Was Some

indigogrim replied to your post: Stuff like this is pretty livejournal ...

The more you practice performing and sharing your art with people the easier it gets.

Thiiiiissss is what I'm talkinbout tho? One would assume 10+ years of trying would be enough to tell if such a thing is gonna work out or not D: I'm reeeaally reaching right now trying to decide if it ever got any easier during that decade of effort and fffffnnnnghmaybe? BUT worth it? That I am even less sure about. Cos when I draw something and I finish I'm good. It's like welp, got a thing out of my head, done, satisfied. Might show a friend or two if they're online at the time. Its a little easier with fanart because fangirling and FEEEELS. But meeeehhh? WHY should I continue to push for it, is what I want to ask. I never got much reason other than because people wanna see? And that's not motivational enough?... sorry...? The inspiration to others thing is but again only sometimes because that's not whyyyyy I do this, so when I struggle to share and can't, then I just feel ashamed and as I said, I'm done with that. 

adrhaze replied to your post: 

You can always become a secret artist with a pseudonym and just keep yourself in the shadows while letting your work speak for you. The masked artist! Or maybe an agent? It works for banksy and a lot of writers.

I have totally considered a pseudonym! At least for writing, if I ever actually finished anything fff. For visual art I don't think Banksy is a good example, being mysterious brings EXTRA attention... (besides doesn't he have an entire crew helping him out...?) Musically I sure love Daft Punk's thing but man how much harder would it be to start doing something like that nowadays? Anonymity is kind of impossible. I'm already probably as secret as I could even be :C

Thing is though, I love musical theater best. Like I LIVE for Cirque du Soleil shows (only time something has ever made me cry just because it was so beautiful), and I did a lot of that stuff when I was a kid. But you really have to put yourself out there for it. Collaborating with a bunch of people to create something thats so many kinds of art all at the same time that no single person could pull off is just the greatest feeling. SO its easier when its a group thing too, a cast and crew can be a really supportive kind of artist family. I made costumes and props and magic tricks, I danced at festivals, I played in band etc. Stopped doing all that stuff publicly when I was 15ish for mostly angsty teenager reasons, though one year I did audition for a musical and that was the last damn time I sang outside of the shower or alone in the car and let me tell you I was ASTRONOMICALLY outside of my comfort zone there, woosh. (but I admit I wasn't satisfied doing ONLY crew cos I gotta daaaaance) After that I would say... a lot of things happened that made life a little bit tougher and I had to lean on my art for emotional support. I don't feel like sharing stupid life story stuff but I mean, maybe some people can at least relate to the idea that you might need oh I dunno, a stable life (one where you don't use up all your energy just trying to survive, for whatever reason. I mean this very broadly cos everyone has struggles) before you can do extra stuff like art. And art is usually in the category of extra stuff. When I had enough spoons left in the day to draw I still wouldn't have enough to deal with the kind of ridiculousness artists online tend to have to deal with. I hope I make sense.

Things are better for me now though which is a big reason this nonsense is on my mind actually.

This time I WILL apologize for not posting cos I am SUPER proud of this and worked SUPER hard on it, its just that as soon as I finish a thing (which is rare in itself, UGH), I immediately move on to the 5,462,000 other Things. It sounds so terrible to complain about having too many ideas but I can’t keep up and I at least try to get them all into my sketchbook but then have a hell of a time picking a thing to work on, tho if I HAD to make an excuse its because I’m teaching myself lots of new things these days and a lot of it is experimental and failures LOL

Learn by doing ;p

Anywaaaay, I am obsessed with gigantic posters and that combined with fangirling was all the motivation I needed, apparently. (obviously I won’t be selling prints of this, sorry, its fanart) I have a hard time explaining all the stuff I do to add Rainbow to my art so uh, its a lot of strategic outline coloring and layer fx and filters?? Photoshop frickin *~magic~*

I kinda miss livestreaming cos I love to chat about ART but I don’t have the patience to draw at my desktop when I can doodle on my tablet PC at a coffeeshop… And I have been spending a lot more time with my soldering iron rather than my tablet pen, sooo.

I started using the internets to teach myself hobby electronics a little less than two years ago and struggling with whatever random 101 sites, blogs, tutorials, and instructables I could find. Slowly piecing together info that is never presented in an incremental-increase-of-difficulty way because its not class... It's always a continuous struggle to find information that is at your level when it is pretty much always going to be something you've already sort of learned, and therefore less useful, or something way too advanced and HOW do you fill in the gap, its always there at every level as you learn more things

I think it's useful to point out that I'm not really a self-taught artist. So while there is a TON of stuff I taught myself (particularly digital art/photoshop/coloring), I had the benefit of classes in the fundamentals (lifedrawing, construction drawing, figure drawing, etc) and that makes it SO much easier to expand from a solid knowledge base. So I'm sayin it is not the case here, while I learn to make gadgets and it is taking FOR EVER and driving me up all of the walls. But I want it so badly.

Then Adafruit put up their revised learning system site and I s2g every time I have a neat idea for a project but not sure how I'd make it, they put up a relevant tutorial basically the next freakin day. This has been happening without fail for SEVERAL MONTHS! I LOVE ADAFRUIT AND ADAFRUIT LOVES ME BACK

I always have a cosplay/props/gadgets wishlist that is miles long and an ever-expanding list of ways to make things blinky, beepy, and/or animatronic and going NUTS because I don't yet have the skills to accomplish what I want to do (which is everything), learning a skill is HARD, harder still if there are parts of it that are not interesting but sort of a necessary evil- which for me is programming, I hate it so much, its so painful, ughhg uugghhh it hurts, I have not studied this hard to learn something I dislike so much EVER but there is a blog I like called HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT and that has stuck with me all this time. It's how to get what I want and I'm not gonna let my hatred of programming actually stop me from typing up terrible buggy code and uploading it to a microcontroller to make leds blink and animate and change colors because I love lights and I love COLORS. Join me!

LETS PUT LEDS IN THINGS

HOW DO YOU ART SO GOOD?! Also why you no been on for like a year?

I was on the fence about answering this XD; BUT I got a bunch of new followers recently (HI THERE) so I figure I will give it a shot. tl;dr guys.

That’s.. kinda related to the second question. It’s hard for me to articulate why I am such a freaking hermit. It’s not shyness… a lot of it is sensitivity because my relationship with art is SO personal. People can dislike me IRL all day long and it’s not even an issue cos FFF they dont KNOW me. But if they don’t like my art its like OMG I’m giving you a peek into my BRAIN, that IS me, it just got personal, time to throw down. When I say I peaked early, I was a fairly active artist on the internets when I was a teenager and got a LOT of attention I wasn’t able to handle well. The pervasive attitude that artists are sort of visual candy dispensers with a duty to share everything they do makes me reeeeaaally uncomfortable. I don’t draw for attention. I draw because I have stuff in my head that has to come out, and because creating makes me whole (I say creating instead of drawing here because I also love to make stuff, dance, sing, play music, I wanna do EVERYTHING).

I feel weird saying “I don’t draw for attention” because there’s a sort of implied diss that I don’t want to be there. Attention is actually really valuable! Motivational encouragement, constructive criticism, etc, all great stuff. I have made a lot of amazing friends through sharing art, and I totally love talking about it all the damn time, it’s often the medium that gets in the way with me. I like realtime chats best. I’m gonna sound like a cranky old lady now but it took me way too long to figure out tumblr and I miss IRC >:( And in my crankly old lady old age I just don’t have anything to prove to anyone and fucks are no longer given. I draw what I want, when I want, and share when I feel like it. SORRY NOT SORRY.

I’ll be honest, it’s only because once in a while someone tells me that they are really inspired by my art that I make the effort to share. But I forget often, and the fact that I can go thru really long periods without drawing much at all… well. Gushy fangirling is about the only thing that will bust down that wall these days. I used to feel guilty about this but it’s just how I am.

I’m a lot happier answering more specific asks about art tho XD Composition? Design? Style? CLOTHES? Lighting/Materials? Color theory? COLORSILOVECOLOR? Gimme.

moroccan table, a set on Flickr.

Painted this last summer for a dear friend. Only just now took the photos off my camera ffff.

Um. Some fuzzy fox people. Yup.

Costume DUMP because I had to move and put most of my stuff in storage so I don’t know when I’ll be able to resume work on this :C Also cos I was CUTE

The fiber optic HAIR is 110% of the reason I wanted to cosplay her in the first place. DREAM WIG, still can’t fully believe I’m making it happen… tho uh. You know how no amount of planning can replace what you learn by doing and gaaawsh there are. Many. Things. I would like to do differently. And I’m nowhere near done but also too far along (and too over budget) to start over, eeeeegh.

It’s a 168 neopixel led matrix controlled by an arduino pro mini. Also have a few attinys to control a servo (wiggly robot antenna 8D), and some sound-reactive led circuits, and just, so many other things I have been banging my head against desk all year tryna make this stuff work, tbh the biggest challenge has been figuring out how to power it properly, and uh, safely…?? I learned a LOT about how batteries work this year let me tell you

Final outfit will be visible from SPACE

I really like the look of that Naroth fellow! Why don't you tell us something about him?

Naroth was born into a very superstitious tribe that took his red eyes and hair as a bad omen and tossed him and his mom out because she refused to sacrifice him. They were taken in by a surly desert dragon who raised Naroth as his own after his mom died of heartbreak due to exile or something equally pitiful. He's a very talented warmage and specializes in casting spells in song/chant form but due to having a strict slightly brainwashy master/apprentice upbringing by a dragon he is really socially and emotionally stunted. His sidekick role to Errikan is a typical cold silent loner, but really brutal in battle.

It's truuuue

a super good friend of Ru and i created this amazing poster. she even got it signed by SPG - and look how BIG IT IS

and by created, i mean she art’d this. seriously. for real.

working on a color based battery life indicator, just got the colors mapped to analog input yaaaaay