I'm so sorry for being out to touch. A few years ago when I started taking commissions, I was on top of everything. But this past year has painted me in a very bad light.

I hate to keep those of you kind enough to help me out waiting. To be honest, I've been so embarassed about my slow performance and scared that I couldn't afford refunds that I laid low. I realize now that most if not all of you would be more than happy to be patient as long as you have a guaranteed good outcome and I stay in communication. I need to stop hiding when I feel I've failed.

I have some bad news. I fought really hard to get off the Cymbalta, and all the money you guys were so generous with went exclusively to the medical bills and nothing else. I managed to gradually drop from 120 mg to 30, but then I totally fell apart. Panic attacks, seizures, uncontrollable crying, thoughts of self harm, the whole she-bang. My doctor ordered me to immediately double up to 60 mg and stay stable. I feel like a horrible failure. I was so sure I could do it if I just persevered and fought through the withdrawals. But such high doses of such an important and incredibly addictive medicine are hard to come off of within a year's time, and once I'm off it I'll have to figure out how to manage the problems I was being medicated for. So, I've failed you and myself. I'm so sorry you used your money on such a futile effort. I'm so disappointed in myself. I was /so sure/ I could do this.

Now I'm back on the stuff, but I finally got insurance through my new job. I'll be okay.

But what of you, my clients? I'm completely committed to finishing all the commissions. Realistically, with my work hours and the holidays coming up, I won't be able to get back into the art swing of things until January. But since you've all been so patient, I can scrape together some cash to refund you if you would rather not wait any longer. No hard feelings. I can't promise I'll have enough to pay back everyone before Christmas, but if you would rather have a refund than the art I can guarantee payment in January.

If I've already started on a piece and you have okayed the sketch, I can only give a partial refund.

My deepest apologies for this whole situation. I was lucky enough to come across so many generous people, and I didn't pull through for them in time. I'm so ashamed of myself. I hope I haven't done damage to my reputation, and I hope this explanation helps a bit.

Lettin' ya know what's up. About a month ago I got a new job in a bookstore, and I'm working 40 hour weeks. Things are hectic, haha.
Still doing commission work in my free time. Sorry for the wait, everything's nuts right now.

In other news, it's my birthday and I gotta work, so boo. But there's a frozen yogurt place next to my store and it sells red velvet cake flavored yogurt, so that's totally gonna be my birthday cake today.

Just checkin' in to let you know I'm still fogging a mirror and drawing (at the same time, no less!).
Things have been a little crazy with my meds, and that sort of squashed my ability to do anything but lie in bed and hate life. I don't want anyone thinking I'm going to take the money and run. I'm not working on any personal art, just commissions. They're my top priority. Please be patient with me, and I promise you'll be happy with the results :)

Here's my commission queue
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1688168/

For my reference and yours, here's my commission list
inking
shading
sketched
base sketch
concept sketches
concept
not started
and a trade for sketched

2007-2010
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4407990/

Today I decided to attack the wall with my face.

Well, I didn't decide to attack so much as I jumped onto my bed and bounced face-first into the wall, but still.
I'm starting to develop a black eye. Which is pretty fuckin metal, but I'm waiting on a call to a job interview soon and black eyes don't look good in a setting like that.

So, today was about 50/50.

The more time I spend on Facebook, the more irked I find myself at one annoying behavior. I hate it when complete strangers add me without so much as a hello. It's one thing if we're acquainted through the art world and have mutual friends. That's fine. I love making new friends! But when I have no idea who on earth someone is, why would I want to add them to my friendslist?

For a while I'd send my adders a message asking for an introduction, but after a while I got tired of it. So I put up a nice little note on my public info saying I'd like to meet new people blah blah, but please introduce yourself before adding me. Within the next five hours I received three friend requests from strangers, none of whom introduced themselves.

I just don't even understand why these people want to add a complete stranger. All they know about me is my little user icon and a few lists of my interests. I entered a modeling community when I was a photographer's model, and for some reason got a TON of goth model friends from Bulgaria and Serbia. I was nice and added them, but now I have a friend feed made up of about 25% strangers who don't even speak my same language most of the time. I just... what? Why?

Time for some nuking.

Due to the medicine withdrawals, I've been having random partial seizures. I live alone in a very cramped room, and need to be accompanied by someone when I'm seizing and falling. So I've been spending a lot of time at my aunt's house lately. I'm still whittling away at these commissions whenever I'm at my place, but it seems everything will be a little delayed. My apologies.

Commissions are my top priority and I have not and will not be doing any personal art until they're done. I'm very frustrated at the moment, because I want to get this art to the customers as quickly as they sent me help.

I'm still working on these commissions. Due to some medical issues, I was unable to do anything yesterday and I proably won't make too much by tonight. But as soon as I get back to my computer, I'm going to be cemented there.

I'm having one of those days where everything that can go wrong does, and everything that could piss me off happens. I want to sever some frayed ties for good, I'm that fed up.
I could go for some junk food, but I've already spent my grocery money on more important stuff. Sigh.
This sucks >:/

I've never done this before, but I'm hoping to pull in a little more money for my meds.
Go take a looksee http://www.cafepress.com/Caishide

I have a few magnets, buttons, shirts, baby clothes, tote bags, and lots of extra fun stuff..
Please help me spread the word!

I'm by no means a prude, but sometimes certain furry porn trends just irritate me. Mostly when I see a nice ref sheet, start looking it over, and then suddenly out of nowhere and for no particular reason, there's a panel reserved especially for a closeup of the character's junk.

Now, I can understand if you buy a lot of porn commissions and there's something unique about your character's dick or whatever. But most of the time, it's just your run-of-the-mill genitalia. So... why? What's the point, other than an excuse to draw more boners?

I just don't get it. Not judging anyone, but I don't get it.

Chuggin' along on commissions. I've found I work better if I sketch on some of them all at the same time, then ink at the same time, etc etc. I just get in moods for certain steps.
Inking takes me foreeeverrr though, because I use the pen tool and I'm really picky about tweaking my lines. I'm always very satisfied with the end results, though, and I hope it shows in my pieces where I didn't ink freehand.

I live in Georgia, and for the past week I've been getting some pretty interesting little daytime visitors on my window screen. They're about mosquito sized, bright vibrant red, with skinny medium length black legs. They're insects, which means they have six legs, and I didn't see any wing casings (though they were on my screen so I saw their undersides mostly)

My "pet" windowsill spiders have been eating very well as of late, though XD

I know there are some bug identification sites out there, but the ones I've run across sort of require a working knowledge or name of the species.

Are any of you biology nerds? Halp?

My boyfriend Frank and I just broke up. It was very messy and very very painful. I may not be as talkative for a little while, I hope people will understand. This in no way, shape, or form will affect my performance on commissions, I won't let it. So please don't worry about that. I just need some understanding that I won't be as active in comments and faving and the like. I'm still here, just too bummed to be social.

I'm trying very very hard not to cry, but my situation with the medicine withdrawals is making that pretty much impossible. I'm miserable.

[Edit] He keeps calling and texting me. He's swinging wildly back and forth between begging me to take him back and lashing out at me. In the past 30 minutes I've been told that he loves me and I'm everything, as well as he hates me and I'm worthless.
You'd think that would make this easier on me, but I hate that I hurt him.

The full story is here http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1605237/

I just wanted to give a huge thank you and a bit of an update to those of you who hired me and those who offered support. I've made enough for half a bottle of my medicine, and I have a doctor's appointment coming up in a few days (where I hope to get a few weeks' worth of free samples). I'm going to work with him to taper down my dose, instead of doing it myself as per my original stupid desperate plan. Apparently what I was planning on could very well have killed me, sooooo yeah, let's not do that.

For my reference and yours, here's my commission list
sketched, inking
sketched
sketched
base sketch
not started
concept sketches
not started
not started
and a trade for sketched

I'm currently open for Pay What You Can commissions. Essentially, you tell me your price range and about what you'd like, and I draw the equivalent worth. Icons, character art, badges, Tamas, whatever!
I'm willing to do quite a bit of haggling, and will probably put a little extra oomph in wherever I can.

I am on a very expensive, generic-unavailable, and highly addictive SNRI medication, and I can no longer afford it on top of my others. Without free samples, one month's supply costs $500 (I'm uninsured). I've decided to get off of it. Because of the highly addictive nature and the length of time I've been on the medicine, I will take a while to withdraw safely. I'm going to try to step down from my dose within a month, so I need to make around $500. I'm kind of scared though, because dosages are supposed to be slowly tapered off for 6-10 weeks, and that's definitely more than a bottle's worth. I'm at risk of more seizures and other nasty things.

Right now I'm in between jobs (left my last one due to sexual harassment) but out hunting every day. Unfortunately, due to my location, all the minimum wage jobs are taken up by students who are out of school for the summer. I'm hoping that will change once school starts again. Until then, I'm at the mercy of my customers.

Please help, even a few bucks will go a long way. I can accept checks, USPS issued money orders, well-concealed cash, and PayPal.
The Paypal address is rdaniel[at]aol.com
Even donations will be rewarded with something.

Thank you so much for reading all of that.
And, if it isn't too much trouble to ask, I would really appreciate it if anyone wants to help me spread the word about my situation and commissions.

(sorry for re-posting the journal, I had to make an edit regarding the time line of me tapering down the dosage and hope that people will see it if the journal pops up again)

I'm currently open for Pay What You Can commissions. Essentially, you tell me your price range and about what you'd like, and I draw the equivalent worth. Icons, character art, badges, Tamas, whatever!
I'm willing to do quite a bit of haggling, and will probably put a little extra oomph in wherever I can.

I am on a very expensive, generic-unavailable, and highly addictive medication, and I can no longer afford it on top of my others. Without free samples, one month's supply costs $500 (I'm uninsured). I've decided to get off of it. Because of the highly addictive nature and the length of time I've been on the medicine, I will take a while to withdraw safely. I'm going to try to step down from my dose within a month, so I need to make around $500. I'm kind of scared though, because dosages are supposed to be slowly tapered off for 6-10 weeks, and that's definitely more than a bottle's worth. I'm at risk of more seizures and other nasty things.

Right now I'm in between jobs (left my last one due to sexual harassment) but out hunting every day. Unfortunately, due to my location, all the minimum wage jobs are taken up by students who are out of school for the summer. I'm hoping that will change once school starts again. Until then, I'm at the mercy of my customers.

Please help, even a few bucks will go a long way. I can accept checks, USPS issued money orders, well-concealed cash, and PayPal.
The Paypal address is rdaniel[at]aol.com

Thank you so much for reading all of that.
And, if it isn't too much trouble to ask, I would really appreciate someone helping me spread the word about my situation and commissions.

I'm on a certain medicine that is also used to treat seizures, and as a result withdrawals can trigger seizures. Guess who's withdrawing :D:D:D ?
Yeah, three days of potential partial seizures. No driving or showering. Complete misery. Fuuunnnn.
I could really use a pick-me-up. But oh wait I can't drive anywhere for one. UGH.

I have a love/hate relationship with artist clones. I'm not really talking about using a professional style, like Disney clones and the like. I'm more talking about artists who are a little too influenced by other independent and small-scale artists.

Usually, the clones gain popularity after their influence disappears from the scene. And then I end up in the position of missing the old artist's work and liking anything that resembles the appealing style while being disappointed by a lack of variety or creativity.

I walk a fine line of judgment since I and most of us in this community cut our teeth using a Disney/Bluth/Amy Brown/JTHM/whatever style. But when someone copies an artist who lacks mainstream recognition, it's kind of... ehhhhhnnn. Idunno. I don't have anything against any artists as people, and I'm still a fan of their work, but I feel kinda flippy floppy about it.

Thoughts?

I'm in a sketch-y and not finish-y mood. Usually when I'm uninspired, I just go grab a friend's ref sheet and doodle. Most of the time I do it for friends, but I'd like to try out some new designs and make someone happy in the process.

had a great idea, and I'm going to shamelessly copy her.

Give me a ref to a character I have never drawn
Post a link (preferably youtube) to a song you think will inspire drawing up your character. No country, please, though bluegrass is fine.

I'll pick one or two people based on my favorite design and/or my favorite song.

I'm going to be uploading a few photos to my scraps. I'm doing it so I can have several profile pics to rotate. Apologies in advance if you're like "wtf r u doin?"

Blah blah lol new layout bickering, whatever. I don't care and it doesn't matter. But that /fucking/ lightbulb on my page, wtf is that? Now creepers can see when I'm online? Greeeat.

Just lettin you guys know, I DO update my scraps fairly often.

I haven't spent much time doing behind-the-scenes stuff around here, so I'm a little behind on some of the things you can do on here.

I have a picture in my main gallery I'd like to have show up as my profile picture (not featured submission). What do? And what are the size restraints?