Hey everyone! Hope things are going well! Mainly wanted to give a status update on why I don't post much lately. It's also me wanting to say stuff to improve my self-confidence.

I've been feeling demotivated as of late due to a fear of failure on my artwork. It's difficult for me to pick up and start drawing on the tablet. But on the bright side, I'm seeing mistakes and imperfections that I can improve on from before. It's kind of like a double-edged sword since I'm glad I'm starting to improve but now I feel I need to reach higher up. In order to continue drawing, I think I'll need forced to do it on a schedule and that's not particularly fun as a hobby for me when it's forced like that.

Though it's not an excuse to draw less since I spend a lot of free time on playing video games, I also have other stuff going on, similar to the last journal that I did, like maintaining my new garden outside full of broccoli, corn, tomatoes, and lots of wildflowers. I feel accomplished seeing more butterflies and bees there than I could ever imagine before. Also trying some fun hobby programming aside from my career work. Gym workouts are going well.

I have a few sketches, but I feel they aren't good enough to post yet or they're using my deprecated character designs (such as my Audino character) and need fixed up. It's the same fear I have as mentioned earlier, really wanting to put something decent out instead of scribbles that are difficult to make out what they are. I have one or two completed artworks I'll post in the near future, though I wouldn't mind adding shading to them.

I feel doubtful that I'm going to do inks and colors anymore of other artists works, though its what people seem to follow me the most for. Sketching is still the hardest phase for me. I'd like to improve myself in that area in order to be able to sketch and imagine scenarios that I, and my friends, dream of. I want to do my own works that are better than the inks and colors I did before, though it's a difficult yet fulfilling goal for me to accomplish. I feel like I can't improve at the moment without learning to improve my own sketches. I'll still do inks if I'm in a very particular mood though; I have a friend or two that really like the Mewzy inks and that's when my mood usually turns on for drawing them.

I also have two long stories ready though I feel some cringe when re-reading them to myself. I have this habit of adding stuff in stories that feel great to me but won't be of much care to anyone else, such as introducing a new character at the very end, or over describing several characters (such as family trees and bloodlines) not directly related to the story, or introducing a fetish (such as vore) for character background purposes that isn't directly related to the story at all (involving garment usage) that might end up turning people off. I'll proofread them again before posting.

I'm wondering if thumbnails are a good idea to notify what's in my stories because the tags and story titles don't seem to do enough. That will take me quite a while to add though, so I'd need some sort of easy and/or automated way to do so...

If my motivation and artwork improve, I'll consider opening up a couple requests for friends to start off with. I felt bad putting off requests that I already received recently, so I want to be more prepared. I'll look into the couple of requests that I already have and make sure I'm well prepared before taking more requests.

Anyways, that's all I have. Thank you for reading all of that! I'm grateful for any likes and support I receive, even if it's a few of them. It means a lot to me to know that people care <3. It'd be awesome if my drawing motivation improves before my next journal, let's see what happens~

Have a great day!