But maybe I shouldn't have? I feel I got into this years ago for all the wrong reasons. Before I joined FA in 2007, and afterward through my entire university program, I truly felt inspiration left and right to draw new things and continuously learn and improve. Everything I did was not for a deadline, it wasn't to meet a customer's specifications, and it sure as heck wasn't for money. But joining FA planted the seed that I could (with enough practice and effort) make at least some semblance of an income from drawing. So I set out to become the best I could be. And that's where the problems began.

I found myself in an increasingly large pool of talent far better at this than I was. Every line placed with anatomical precision, every stroke of paint seamlessly blended to a fine sheen, every color chosen to near perfectly mimic lighting and shadows. The more I chased down these styles and techniques I saw, the more I saw my own lack of performance and the less I became inspired to do anything at all. How long would it take me to be "proficient and speedy" enough to start taking commissions for what I drew/painted? I saw no end to the tunnel at all, and every huge breakthrough felt like moving less than a nanometer toward my goal. And with that, my inspirations and ideas to draw depleted in tandem. Everything I envisioned in my head never even came close to translating to paper/canvas at all. I hated my lack of skill, and moreover I hated how far off my personal art style was from my intended Disney-esque design style... and it felt like I had zero way of course-correcting.

Art went from being fun, to being a loathsome chore I had no more interest in whatsoever.

So maybe I should simply take my original approach and do things for my own enjoyment, and not care how it looks or who sees it, nor who is/isn't happy with it. Watching TV or online videos doesn't really do much anymore for relaxing, what with the internet and modern media's hellfire incessant hyper-fixation on all things political. I just miss the days of coming home from classes/work and drawing simply to relax and escape. And if something I did just so happened to be somewhat to my liking, I might post it for a small bit of engagement. That's how it used to be.

Maybe I should do that again.

Thanks to the help of a few artists I've been talking to this past month or two, I've noticed a rapid amount of improvement in my art skills. I'm finally able to get things to look closer to the refined Post-Disney style I have in my head (see  aerosocks for style examples). Needless to say I am finally becoming quite satisfied with the way the art I produce looks now. It's been a long 8 years, but better late than never.

Expect to see more works in the future! I'll probably be using Twitter a lot more for the sketches I do that I don't think are completed enough to post here. Definitely expect to see promotional materials and some preliminary works revolving around the Webcomic. I'm still working on that, and progress is ramping up significantly!

I also wanted to bring it to everyone's attention that I will be slowly migrating everything over (except my FA page) to my new username Kaylomei. I feel a name change is reflective of the changes I am making in my life right now. I'll post a journal about that a bit later!

For now, stay safe everyone. The world's a mess right now but things will get better really soon ^w^

After receiving another favourite on a rather disturbing piece of art I've reluctantly kept in my gallery for the sake of preserving my artistic (and mental health) progress, I've decided it's time to make things more presentable. This includes deleting things that I deem low-quality, and things that I drew in the past as vent art, or requests I drew which a large portion of my audience find unsettling.

I hope to finish and add a few more pieces to this gallery in the coming weeks, namely some precursory works for the upcoming Webcomic relaunch. This may or may not include ref sheets for the characters. I still have a few design details to work out before I commit anything to concrete.

There's no simple answer for that, really. For a while in 2014 I began work on improving my art style. I studied anatomy a bit more, but I put most of my concentration and efforts into faces. But then life kinda got in the way when I had to help take care of family. Then family started needing less help, and in mid-2015 I started working again to improve my art. But life got in the way again when finances got tight and I had to drop everything to scramble for a job. From late 2015 to early 2017 I spent most of my free time unable to think about or do much of anything other than recover from what I endured at work. And after suffering multiple anxiety attacks, and being forced into situations that were blatant safety violations, I had to resign. I am now taking the opportunity to get another degree (my first one is useless) and some certifications to hopefully pursue a career that ISN'T retail.

As for art, I've not done very much the past three years. All of it is incomplete at best, and I just don't feel any of it to be sufficient quality to warrant posting here. My understanding of body anatomy is pretty much rock-solid at this point. I still need to do a lot of work with faces though, and I have not even yet begun to touch inking and colouring. I still have a long way to go before I can open commissions.

And to those of you wondering, once I've improved enough I WILL be re-launching my comic The Bottomless Life. It'll be known as The Bottomless Life 2.0, and will be a lot like the legacy strips, but very different in style and setting. I don't wanna give away too much information about it, but I'm quite excited about the project since there's a LOT more to their world than there used to be, and it needs to be explained even if it's in the form of a side-story. I'm also still working on re-designing the characters from the ground up without changing too much. Some additional characters will also be added to the cast. I'll even be launching a Patreon page mostly for exclusive bonus content (kinda like DVD extras) related to the comic, but also for odd-and-end high-quality regular artworks I intend on posting to FA a month after putting it up to Patreon.

So yeah, I might post a few things as I go along the road to improvement, if I feel they're substantial enough to be worth showing everyone. Otherwise, sorry to say it but I don't want to flood everyone with every piece of rubbish I crank out, the way I used to when I first started.

THAT BEING SAID...
... I'm gonna try to be a bit more active on here than I have been. I'm sorry it's taking me far longer than I expected to get better at art.

Not even three weeks after I finally got my car's A/C working again, an accident happened today. The driver side quarter panel took a severe beating. It's pretty much totaled. Probably gonna have to spend every dime of my savings to get it back on the road plus take out a loan on top of that. And that's just my part of things. If I'm gonna get sued (the other driver claims I was in the wrong) then that'll only compound everything. So yeah, in the blink of an eye a vehicle I paid $7,000 for is now pretty much useless if it can't be repaired.

For those of you wondering where I've gone and why I'm not posting anything, the last "good" year I had was 2013. A domino chain of dire, problematic events has happened in the last three years, and all of it has put my work towards art improvement on hold.

So much truth in that phrase...

At any rate, last night my father had a nasty fall and completely broke his left humerus. Had to call over an ambulance and follow it to the hospital. They wrapped his arm in a splint and sent him back home until an orthopaedic surgeon can be called. So now I am officially unsure what to do. This leaves me as the only person in the family able to drive, among other things, much less perform routine daily tasks. And now this leaves our total household income at 0 for the forseeable future.

My dilemma is this: I can't take care of my mother in his place AND take care of him AND get immediate employment through a temp agency. I'm only one person and I can only do so much at one time.

And forgive me for doing this... I REALLY hate having to resort to it, but I may very well need to open an emergency donation jar or take commissions even though I haven't advanced far enough in my studies of new methods and designs. I don't know yet. I really, really don't know.

I'm not really stressed so much as I am confused about why life -insists- on throwing a stream of major (possibly irreversible) setbacks at my family the past couple of years.

Well me Mum's in the hospital with symptoms of a mild stroke and blood sugar levels near 700. So I'll be probably scarce for a while :/

So yeah, an internally-abscessed tooth has been to blame for these problems I've had lately. I kinda almost waited too late to get this tooth removed. It had a prior filling from 7 years ago which had gotten bacteria underneath it through a cavity. It was pretty well inflamed, and took way more anesthetic to remove than it should've. But at least it doesn't feel like I have a knife stabbed in my head every 30 minutes anymore. And my facial muscles are all beginning to relax now that there isn't anything causing them to tense up anymore.

No seriously, that's what it feels like. For the past few days I've been fighting with multiple pain locations across the left side of my face, ranging from the back of my neck to underneath my ear. It's been tolerable until this morning. But all of that pain is gone and has given way to an inflamed tooth that makes my face feel like it's on fire, especially when breathing in colder air. Painkillers are NOT stopping it anymore, and when I attempt to lay down to sleep it becomes infinitely worse.

My head can't make up its mind if it wants to have a neck muscle problem or a tooth problem. Go figure. Either way, ouch. To those of you on my Skype, forgive my total absence the past few days... and unfortunately it may last several more until I figure out what's wrong for sure.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't give a rat's arse what the administration of this site does with their own time and own money, as long as it doesn't personally affect me in a negative way. And so far that has not been the case. Other than an ungodly number of people posting "I'M LEAVING" journals, I have seen no discernible difference in the daily operations of the site Post-Drama. To tell you the truth, I barely even know of the "celebrity-status" individuals centered around all this drama. Nor do I really care to know or know about them, really. They don't meddle in my business, I don't meddle in theirs. And I don't think the site's general populus would even be concerned about any of this if the individuals involved weren't of celebrity status.

That being said, those of you who are leaving: I'm unsure why you are allowing someone else to interfere with your life. I get it that you disagree with what the people involved in this drama have done, but that's not a reason to let it disrupt YOUR life. To tell you the honest truth, the worst thing you can do to a person of celebrity status is deprive him/her of that status, and utterly ignore his/her existence. So that's the route I've opted to take. Pretend these individuals simply don't exist, and I hope others decide to do the same instead of throwing a chunk of their life and memories away.

So if any of you still decide to tell this site where to shove it, I already have an account over at Weasyl, under the same username I have here on FA.
https://www.weasyl.com/~therealist

First of all, my frustration comes from the fact I'm completely and utterly stalled out to the point I am actually digressing both in skill and creativity. And the only thing I feel will help is someone more skilled than me taking the time to do step-by-step training. Alas, I have found everyone more skilled than me is either far too busy to socialize more than once every six months, or they don't want to socialize at all whatsoever. I need training. I don't have any, and never took any in school because I just didn't have the resources. And I sure as hell don't have another $40,000 to go through an art program at a college to do something that MIGHT get me $100 every other week. Not to mention I've been through just about every How-To book out there for art, and I find they ALL skip way too many steps and expect the person to have some sort of knowledge of the craft already.

And really, to tell the honest truth, for years I've really wanted to get to know even one amazingly skilled artist to talk about art, maybe even songwriting, and learn through casual conversation. But as I said it's difficult to talk to anyone of the sort for even five minutes out of six months or more, if even at all whatsoever. The really skilled artists, as a collective whole, seem to shut themselves off from the Online world outside of business interactions. That's been my observation, anyway.

So other than the fact that every time I pick up the stylus to draw I suddenly go blank and have to force out whatever it was I thought about drawing, the main reason I haven't opened commissions yet is that I don't feel I've progressed enough artistically to justify doing so. I've had a lot of debate about this in the past, and more than a dozen people have strongly suggested I open them anyway, but the truth is it takes me too long (6-8 hours on a sketch alone) to get inadequate results to justify charging even ten dollars. I feel it best to wait until I have reached a better, more prolific point in my artistic progression before I take on commissions. As examples, when I reach the point of being able to produce works like these, start to finish, in 3-5 hours:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11413045/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11344278/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11710648/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11453870/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11803179/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11643884/
... THEN I will open commissions. If these artists can do this kind of work in that short of an amount of time, it is physically possible. It's a question of what it takes to get to that point, and how long that will take.

Heard this track goin' over the ceiling speakers at my workplace, held my phone up to one of 'em and ran the Shazam app on my phone to find the artist and title.

And now I love it and can't stop listening e.e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULavCZGz0mY

In light of some recent events elsewhere on the site, I will be implementing new rules as fail-safe measures for any commissions I may accept in the future. I believe other artists should follow suit to protect themselves from being involved in things they are unaware of.
First, I WILL NOT accept textual references of characters. That is, you cannot offer me a text-based description of a character. Textual references make it very easy for a commissioner to describe the appearance of a character that is not their own without my knowledge that the character belongs to someone other than the commissioner.

Secondly, ALL visual references MUST provide significant, documented proof that the character shown does in fact belong to the commissioner. That is, a ref sheet or ref image uploaded by the commissioner must either show the signature of the artist for that ref, or provide a link to the original posting of that image. This way I can verify with the original artist that the character in that ref does or does not belong to him/her nor anyone else he/she may know that isn't the commissioner.

Thirdly, ALL visual references must have been posted a minimum of 60 days. That will nearly eliminate the possibility that a reference of a character that doesn't belong to the commissioner will survive being reported and/or removed by the administration of the site.

I apologize for inconveniences this may cause, but after seeing what I witnessed earlier today happen, this is absolutely necessary to protect myself.

Yep. That's pretty much it. Hopefully back to regularly-scheduled art and job-hunting :3

2000+ miles of road to go. That's about the sum of it. See you guys on the other side.

106+ degrees here in Boise the past couple days. Seriously? What the hell man I'm sweating my arse off! xD

How many of you in other parts of the US and the world are enduring a heat wave like us?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnydFmqHuVo

Watch and have fun laughing up your lungs :D

It has been pointed out to me that there are very major flaws in my artwork, particularly in the faces. For example, the cheek fluff that I use is a blatant incorporation of Warner's signature style used in Lola/Babs Bunny. The hands are also horribly off, not to mention the hairstyles. What do YOU see I'm doing wrong? Write long, drawn-out paragraphs if you need to. Cite specific images I've drawn, and point out what needs improvement.

Gimme comments!!!!

Tomorrow I will be traveling to Astoria, Oregon for a better opportunity to gain employment than I'd ever get here in Louisiana. Finally I will be leaving this godforsaken hell-hole behind me. I don't know how long I'll be staying in Oregon... I hope permanently. However, I won't be online for a few days most likely. I'll see you guys once I get there :D

Wish me luck!

- SCH

... find me on the following other sites:

Main Sites
http://www.therealistsarthaven.com
http://www.thebottomlesslife.com

Weasyl (I've yet to post anything here, but will soon)
https://www.weasyl.com/profile/therealist

deviantART (hasn't updated in a while)
http://therealistaod.deviantart.com/

SheezyArt (don't really use anymore)
http://therealist.sheezyart.com/

VCL (never use this anymjore)
http://us.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/The-Realist/

I WANT a Nabyn account, but I don't think they'd accept my art because of the low-quality in comparison to other people's art being reviewed there, not to mention I think I heard they don't accept mature art. :/

I have been working for three weeks off and on (about 12 total hours at this point) with a SINGLE sketch of ONE character with NO background... something that would take any other artist 30 minutes AT MOST to complete... and it still looks like crap and isn't even 2/3 completed.

At this point I've about had it. Nothing I do improves my work at all whatsoever. I watch others draw, effortlessly and flawlessly placing line after line in extreme detail without even hesitating much less using any proportion guides at all. I'm completely dumbfounded and amazed at how this is even possible. I couldn't begin to do something like that even if I had all the art training in the world.

I draw, and re-draw, and re-draw, and re-draw over and over the same lines, trying to place them where they fit properly, and only after hours upon hours of minute adjustments am I finally able to get the line right. Then it's on to the next one, and oftentimes new lines necessitate the readjustment of old lines. On and on this goes, in a vicious, seemingly neverending cycle. I don't know how to break the cycle.

I KNOW what I want to see in my head, but it NEVER translates worth a damn to the paper/canvas in front of me.

Thanks to inaki unexplainedly cutting off all communication with me for over a year, and thanks to a good friend of mine graciously allowing me to get hosting through her, I now have my own domains for my personal art site and the Webcomic! I have already ported everything over from the Dreamchaos host to the new host.

http://www.therealistsarthaven.com
http://www.thebottomlesslife.com

Those domains should (hopefully) be the permanent residence of both sites. :D

... cos if my family's genetics is any indication, I'm gonna be one seriously fucked-in-the-head individual.

SCENARIO:
This morning, I came home from work, put my empty lunch container away, said my good mornings to people and went about my business back to my room. After spending about a minute in the room I realized it was wash day, so I put my work clothes away and went directly back to my room and locked the door. Not ten minutes later I get a knock on my door: "Are you taking a shower now or not?" I usually do that right before I go to sleep to help me relax, and since I've been awake during the day lately the answer was obviously "No, not now. Later on."

Here comes the puzzling part. I was told "But you just came in here holding a white towel and said you were taking a shower!" That was a major Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. As I stated, I'd not gone to the living room nor made any interaction with my mom since I passed through there to go to my room when I arrived back home. There was a rather big argument, as my mom swore she saw me walk into the living room holding a white towel to tell her I was getting in the shower immediately. I asked her what white towel she was talking about and she said it was the one we use in the bathroom hanging by the sink. I had to ask myself why in the seven levels of hell would I do something so asinine as taking the hand-drying towel to go tell her I was gonna take a shower?! It was only after that I actually went into the bathroom and saw the aforementioned towel was coral and teal in color, not white.

Just last week my mom FINALLY threw away the empty soup cans containing three months worth of scrap lettuce and tomato because it had finally all rotten to the point the flies had found it and were swarming the kitchen.

I fucking SWEAR if this severely-degraded mental state is all I have to look forward to when I get older, I don't want to.

Things are starting to pick up for me, as they usually do around this time of year annually.. so there's a good chance some artings will be coming your way soon!

Thanks everyone for being patient with me during my ridiculously-long dry spell here. I'm slowly but surely working on things that will allow me to draw better (hopefully) than before!

- SCH

Much thanks to  dynastygoddess and her hubby for graciously taking me in here on the other side of the state. Basically my house got electricity back for a total of two minutes on the 30th in the evening before it went back out again. Since it's only the street I live on that's dark, we're going to have to wait a while now because they're still working on main lines and that's a smaller feeder line, which has a lower priority on the repair list. I could be here longer than I anticipated.

Regardless, it was a mixed bag really. Thrilling that we were getting live, first hand images of what was going on in the studio... but nerve-racking at the same time watching so much devastation unfold before our eyes. The flooding OH GOD THE FLOODING it's worse than Katrina, but it's not in New Orleans this time. Thankfully it did not flood where I live. Just really dark and more humid than normal (enough to fog up windows 24/7 not just midday) which is commonplace for a week or two after a hurricane passes through.

That's it guys, stick a fork in Louisiana I'm done. I'm officially working on moving to the Midwest as soon as I go back home :P