Hi there! If you're reading this, you're probably looking for information about my plushie commissions:

Commissions are currently: Open!

General:
☆ 100% computerized, custom embroidery - I develop all my own patterns.
★ My plushies are approximately 12 inches (30cm) tall, not including horns or manes.
☆ I use minky fabric - the gold standard for soft, luxuriant plushies.
★ Both canon and original characters available.
☆ Created in a smoke-free, pet-free environment.

Pricing:
★ I accept payment through PayPal.
☆ 12" tall pony (mare or stallion) - starting at $350.
★ Unicorn characters, add $50.
☆ Pegasus characters, add $50.
★ May cost extra for characters with complex or difficult features.
☆ Price does not include shipping.
★ Pricing available upon request for special requests or projects (larger plushies, etc).

Payment and Conditions:
☆ Half payment is due before materials will be ordered or work will begin.
★ First half payment is NOT REFUNDABLE once materials are ordered!
☆ Second half payment is due when plushie is completed.

To inquire, note me here or on DeviantArt at: https://www.deviantart.com/wdeleon
You can also catch me on Discord: Winston#2894

I find myself without any high-priority projects at the moment, and kinda uninspired to start any on my own. Just kinda been sitting around waiting for the next quarter of school to start, playing too much WoW, etc., etc...

Obviously, that's boring. It's doing nothing to practice or grow my artistic abilities.

So if anyone wants to do an art trade, now's a good time! Just send me a note and ask, I'll let you know if I'm interested.

Also, given the lack of anything to work on, From now until the end of Valentine's Day (Feb. 14), I've decided to have a sale on commissions: 25% off everything! Note me for those, too. I take PayPal, see my profile page for prices (keeping in mind that those are my normal prices, take 25% off of those during this sale).

I'm hoping I actually manage to sell some soon! Truth be told, I don't get a lot of commissions... A situation I'd love to change, but I guess it all depends on demand and market forces and intangible variables like people's preferences for art styles and whatever else. Well, whatever, I'll see how this goes over.

No, I'm not leaving FA. Drama is drama is drama and in the furry community it always has been and always will be a constant of life. It's pretty much just whatever.

But since so many other people are migrating there, I'd like to remind folks watching me that I have an account on Weasyl. Actually, I have for a while now. I've liked what I've seen of it so far, and I feel pretty confident in recommending it as an alternative / backup to FA at this point. Even if you really like FA you should maybe just go get a Weasyl account anyway on principle, since diversification is always a good idea and you shouldn't really put all your eggs in one basket, of course.

You can find me on Weasyl here:

https://www.weasyl.com/profile/winston
https://www.weasyl.com/profile/winston
https://www.weasyl.com/profile/winston

I guess there's also Inkbunny, but I'll be honest, I don't like it that much and I don't use it very often.

Because everyone else is doing this shit.

1. What are you attending?
Rainfurrest 2013

2. Staying at:
Probably the Hilton? It's sort of complicated, and depends on certain things.

3. Arrival and Departure:
Probably showing up Friday afternoonish or Saturday morning. Dunno yet.

4. Mode of transportation:
Car.

5. Rooming with:
One of my friends.

6. Con Plans:
See artwork. Attend panels. Meet up with my friends (hopefully if I find them there).

7: How can I find you?
Recognize me walking around.

8. Do you do free art?
I dunno, maybe if you really want. I suck at sketching, though, perfectly honestly.

9. Do you have prints/Cds?
No, not planning on being there to sell anything.

10. Will you be fursuiting? if so: What suit(s)?
Nope.

11. Will you be going to parties?
I doubt I'll get invited, I don't think I know anyone who's big into parties.

12. Will you be performing?
Hahahahaha no

13. Smoke?
No

14. Drink?
Maybe like one. Probably not, though.

15. Gender:


16. Can I hug you?
Preferably not just out of the blue. I kinda need to know you at least a little bit to be comfortable with that.

17. Can I talk to you?
Absolutely!

18. Will you be at any panels?
Probably will, once I know what panels are happening. I'm horrible at planning :P

19. Can I touch you?
What I said about hugging.

20. Can I buy you drinks?
Sure, if you really want.

21. How old are you?
31

22. Can I snuggle with you?
Errm... Awkward. Please don't. When we reach that kinda point in our relationship, I'll let you know.

23. If you're pissed off, should I approach you?
I won't be pissed off enough to be unapproachable. I'm pretty calm, usually. Even if I do get fired up, it's not that I'm angry, just feeling intense about some aspect of the situation.

24. Are you nice?
I think I am! Kinda shy, though, which a lot of people I think interpret as distant or disinterested, but I swear, I'm never trying to be rude or mean.

25. Cliquey?
I would like to see my friends, and if they happen to show up I'll probably hang with them for significant periods of time. But they're pretty cool, there won't be a stupid high school clique mentality making the group inaccessible. I think we take pretty much all comers.

26. How tall?
5'10"

27. Can I Take pictures of you?
Knock yourself out. I ain't nothing to look at, though.

28. Will you get anything commissioned?
Not sure? Maybe a small chance, but I sort of doubt it. I'm not a big commissioner.

29. How can I get your attention?
Jump. Flail. Scream bloody murder. Or just walk up to me and say hi. Whatevs.

30. Can I ask you to dance at the raves?
I doubt I'll show up to any raves. TRICK QUESTION.

31. Can I stalk you?
Please don't. Making problems disappear gets expensive and my money is limited right now.

32. Can I buy you breakfast, lunch, or dinner sometime?
Yeah, sure. I like food and hanging out with people whilst eating food.

Yep, I'm open for commissions. For serious this time.

Check this out:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10678404/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10678404/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10678404/

Of course, that's for that pose / character body type, if you'd like to commission something else, contact me, maybe we can work something out. I'd look forward to it.

Check it out here:
http://tweedle-derp.tumblr.com/
http://tweedle-derp.tumblr.com/
http://tweedle-derp.tumblr.com/

I guess tumblr's all the rage these days, so I guess why not? Seems a little more interactive with the "audience" in some ways than deviantArt sometimes comes off as, so it should be fun, I think...
... especially since I turned on ask. We'll see what happens with that.


EDIT: Actually, you know what? This thing hasn't been updated in a long while, and I've sort of lost interest in it, honestly. I don't know if I'll come back to update it or what. You can look at what's there, but it probably won't be anything very new you can't see somewhere else. I might just shut the thing down at some point, I don't really know.

Which one do you like better? The deep green tones of summer, in http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6792100/, or the red-oranges of autumn in http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6792115/ ?

I thought it'd be an interesting experiment to see how the ambient lighting and the color of the season changes both the technical aspects of creating and coloring the image, and the subjective visual impact it ends up having.

Leave a comment with your thoughts if you'd like.

Working on http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5941087/ got me thinking about where I've been going with my artwork and technique (since it was an update to http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5405731/ created partly to see just how much I've changed). Overall, I think I like where my style is going. Generally speaking, in the last few pictures I've created line art has been developing to become smoother and sharper with better straight lines and cleaner and more even curves, which is where I think it should be. Coloring work has been tending to use larger soft round brushes and trying to use single rather than multiple passes for much smoother color and shadowing and environmental lighting gradients than I usually used to. I've also been getting better, I think, at creating and using a more realistic visual sense of texture where it's called for.

Backgrounds are something I keep going back and forth on. I used to really like to paint full, detailed backgrounds, but right now, I think I'm starting to drift away from doing that. Overall, I just find them not really that fun to do, and actually, on the second one of Tangerine the vixen(http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5911508/), it was pretty frustrating, I ended up tossing it and recoloring the entire image over again from bare line art. Aside from that, it seems like I keep finding that using a simpler and less complicated background of softer shapes and colors ends up being more visually pleasing and often a better compliment to the characters I'm trying to draw because it doesn't contain a panorama of extra complex details to distract viewers with. Some pictures call for fully developed backgrounds by virtue of what the picture is supposed to be, to create the atmosphere or environmental scenario and immersion that creates a context important to the depiction, but drawing them "just because" is something I think I'm aiming to get away from. I really love how the background in this one turned out, and it ended up being super easy compared to almost any other background I've used before.

That also leads to the subject of speed. It typically takes a long time for me to finish a piece of work, and I haven't made much headway on getting any faster the whole time I've been creating digital art. I'm not that worried about it, because all I really care about is achieving quality, but I see certain ways that I could pick up speed and I should probably work on it at some point because being faster would ultimately let me create and finish more of the images I get ideas for.

So that's how things are going for me artistically.

I thought I'd write something here regarding one of my pictures (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5569841).

After I posted it on another site that I frequent, some of the reactions expressed in the comments I received were discomfort from some and, to at least one person, the sense of it being something sad. I'm actually glad that this is how it was received.

Graphic photographs taken in time of war show us the unmasked reality of violence. It shows us what soldiers have to do, for real. These images shock because they don't match the entertainment industry glamorization of violence in fake blood, anonymous expendable "bad guys", and clearcut moral lines.

I remember, vividly, as a kid watching something on PBS about the Vietnam war. They played the (in)famous clip of the captured VC being executed in the street by being shot in the head with a pistol. When I saw it, I was taken completely by surprise - something was glaringly different between this and the fake staged violence normally seen on TV. The difference was night and day. It made me almost sick to my stomach. This wasn't an actor "good guy" fake-killing another actor "bad guy" anymore, it was one person actually killing another, caught on video by happenstance.

There were also some things said about the "victims who deserved what was happening" premise being unappealing. I hadn't drawn this with the concept in mind of whether or not she deserved it... I don't think that a combat death (as opposed to an execution, although it may be hard to tell, outside of knowing the exact context, which is happening here in the picture I drew) is ever really a matter of what any particular person involved "deserves", only on what circumstances, often outside their control, dictate.

As was commented, it is sad. That's part of what I wanted it to be. I like this character (Mariko Setsugen, the one doing the stabbing here), enough to feel like I owe her a truthful and complete depiction, and I got tired of hinting at her violence and decided to just place it in the open. This is, honestly, more true to the vision I have of her. I wanted to draw a direct look at the reality of what she is and the things she's done.

There's a lot of glamorous "lookit me I'm so full of AWESOME because I walk around carrying weapons and looking all smug and badass!" character portraits in the furry fandom. I'm tired of hinting at a glamorized suggestion of a violent nature without ever a look at the reality of the ultimate consequences of what that's leading to. I'm tired, as strange as it may sound from someone drawing furry art, of art that's visual and conceptual fast food - looks pretty but has no underlying exploration of any meaning and no sense of reality.

So I drew a sad death, because sometimes that happens. I'm sorry for any discomfort anyone may have felt, if anyone did, but that was part of the point.

Obviously, I'm new to the community thing here.

That's not to say that I haven't been around, though. I've enjoyed furry artwork for a long time, everything from the great professional artists who can make a living on artwork all the way down to the newb amateurs just doing their simplistic first drawings.

To be honest, though, for years I've shied away from formally joining most online communities. They have to grow on me over time and I have to find myself coming back to them frequently for me to want to set up and account and join. I've seen FurAffinity linked back to by a lot of people in my various travelings around the web, though, and it seems like a nice place.

So, I decided I'd try sharing some of my own artwork in return and we'll see how well it goes over. I'm by no means a professional artist, and maybe not always even a good amateur artist, but I like to try and contribute back to communities that have given me a lot of enjoyment.

Hi everybody!