2017 sucks.
It's been inordinately rough so far and I seem to be hemorrhaging leisure time, friends and money at an alarming rate.
So that's why i've not been posting much of my own art in the last year; it's cos I work 60-70+ hours a week and really don't feel like i'm getting much payoff for it. I mean, all I really do is work and sleep and work, over and over.
....
....
....
....
this is just turning into a rant, so i'll end it here.

and by "pronouns" I mean "tits" :P

Seriously, though. for those that don't follow me on twitter or Facebook, I started the whole 'gender transition' thing a little while ago so this is just a PSA to come out and ask people to switch to female pronouns with me :)

Surprisingly often I get asked what the stripy arm&leg warmer things are, that Garr wears; and why she wears them ALL the time.
Do they cover up obscene tattoos?
Do they hide evidence of shameful avian heritage?
Are they just housing for for elaborate cyborg libs?
Do they have Bluetooth?
etc
etc
etc

Would anyone actually be interested in knowing what and why they are?

Sooo i'm on telegram now, it would seem!

Feel free to add me and if you want to chat or RP or anything :)

http://telegram.me/garrwolfdog

Sooo what would you all like to see me draw next?

1) 'Raf pin up.
2) female 'Raf pin up.
3) Garr cock shrink themed pic
4) An atempt at some sort of action theme pic? maybe with cyber punk stuff or something.

Starting a new contract on Monday morning.
It's paying right at the bottom of my asking price but that's still not too bad. and I reeeeeally didn't want the stress of job hunting on top of everything else.
Hopefully it'll be good, if nothing else, it's got a nice short notice period, so I can always job ship if need be.

Got my 'go bag' ready for the early morning and a list of gyms to check out on my lunch break. Lets just hope I have better luck with people paying they're invoices this year!

Yeeesh, job hunting is a tough way to spend the days.
So, my break is over and it's time to find a new contract. Which is going reasonably well; been talking to LOADS of people, have a few promising leads and even got a few interviews.
The tough bit is having to put together a whole new persona for each phone call and improv your way through it all while trying to work out what their ideal candidate is and how you can incorporate that into the new character. it's exhausting at the best of times but doing repeatedly for 8+ hours a day is reeeeally draining.
It's kinda fun though, getting to play through each persona's hopes and dreams for each possible job that comes your way (To properly sell it to them you need to fake some real emotional investment). Often when you hit the 'end call' button it's like cutting a puppets strings and you collapse as the fatigue hit you.
Right now my favorite persona is the one where I ask them £500-£600 a day and they treat it like a totally sane thing to ask for; I wonder how far I can push that until someone says "no".

Hopefully i'll be able to nail down one of these prospects before the end of next week. If I can snag one higher paying ones it'll be a great boost to my career and will really progress my plans nicely.
Fingers crossed.

I was diging around some old filies and found a bunch of awesome old pics I commissioned ages beck but doesn't seem to have online anywhere outside of my data vaults. They're all from around 2005 to 2009, so I guess I must have only posted them to LiveJournal or something.
I'll post them on here in the next day or so. art needs an audience and all that! :)

Not going to ruminate too much on 2015.

Career stuff when well, but I nearly had breakdown due to the long hours and stress. need to work on that whole "work-life balance" thing; Which bring it's own difficulties... working on it. I played well with the dodgy hand I was dealt but made some bad calls.

Relationships,. could have gone better. Cass and I are doing great, but after being violently assaulted several times (once I was nearly thrown in front of a train; Oh boy!) and getting fuck all response from all but a handful of people (seriously, they can be counted on one hand), I did a dramatic re-evaluation of relationship with people. Soooo, yeah. keeping a lot of people at a polite distance now.

A couple of health scares with the animals, but everyone is doing well now. Hopefully less of that in 2016!

So 2016.
Make more money! Greed is good and all that! I've had some downtime time to recover, and i'm ready for more! Deal me in.

In 2016 I'd really like to build some decent relationships with people again. I'm not entirely sure how to that as i'm not entirely sure who I am outside of "work" these days. 'work' is the wrong word there; it's more the driving hunger of which 'work' is the result, but... well,.. yeah. I'll muse on that another time.

Anyway. Happy new year!!! Let do this!!:D

Sooo which do you prefer to see in a pic, Tf or TG+TF?

So, the last month or so i've been aggressively 'not working'. Which is kinda great, but honestly i'm having a hard time with it. This is entirely my own fault.
I put self on a kind of sabbatical until the end of the year, due to my whole 'career focus; thing actively killing me (apparently working 50-80 hour weeks for 5 years without a real break isn't healthy: who knew!?).
so, i've mostly been drawing and playing a lot of Destiny (apparently i'm in the top 20% of PvP players now. top 2% for the Iron Banner events). Which is fun but it's kinda making me realise that I don't have much else going on these days. I'm really not sure what to do with that...

5 years ago, getting a job and more money was a life-or-death kinda MUST. and I did whatever I had to make it happen. And it worked worked!I went all-in and i've been doubling my income every year. Definitely no complaints there! but burnout is bitch and now i've stabilized things a bit more, I can't carry on the way I have been. Hence the ~£20,000 gift to myself of a few months off work.

But breaking successful habits is hard. especially when you don't want to break them. and breaking those habits isn't what I want, or really need. I need to find a new balance so I can be me; both non-career me and "crush your enemies and see them driven before me" me.
Not an easy ask. but i'm starting to see how it could be done... I think.

Come the new year i'll get back to playing with with whatever mercurial spirit it is that moves The City. but for now i'm going to just cash in some of my winnings and sit out a hand or two. I've played well and deserve the down-time.

I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.

So, I packed away my Waccom tablet last weekend. aaaaand i'm feeling kinda weird about it, to be honest.
it's not that i'm "giving up drawing" or anything. it more just that I don't have the time to draw anymore. and, perhaps more worrying, I don't really have the motivation anymore.
Having an audience was always a big part of the fun of drawing, for me. but these days I find myself with social circle that's basically non-existent. People i've known for years have drifted away to the point that only 3 people actually asked if I was ok, after being attacked a few months back.
but anyway....

I've not drawn a damn thing in almost a year and my tablet has just been gathering dust; always ready to go (photoshop loaded and everything) but never used.

aaaand it's just kinda driving home that I don't know what i'm doing anymore. all I seem to do is work, commute, go to the gym, and sleep (badly).
i've been in this depressive slump for along time now and i'm not sure what to do about it. It feels like there's less and less of me to do anything about it.

sooo,. yeah,... tablet is packed away. maybe i'll put it on ebay or something in a few months. we'll see how I feel.



I need a fucking holiday.

Well, my previous client left the contact renewal to the last moment and someone new made me an better offer. Which I turned down. so they came back with an even better offer!
after a quick meeting and some negotiation I managed to get an extra £480 (about USD$748) a week! It's been a while since I had raise that significant; but i'm certainly not complaining.

So, this is a new high for my income, and I guess it means my decision to go freelance, and my "fake it till you make it", strategy has been a success.
The problem with "fake it 'till yo make it" is that no one tells you what to do once you HAVE made it. And there's really no framework to work within; no working your way up the ranks or hoping for those above you will kick you down a raise or some perks. There really is very little that you don't have to make happen for yourself. and they definitely don't teach you this stuff in school! and though I learned many useful and pointless things at school none of it touch on an industry that didn't really exist back then; hell, even now we're mostly making it up as we go.
It's scary.
Scary, in no small part because... I still feel like I have no idea what i'm doing.
I guess that's the other side of "The one trick worth knowing".

eh, This is a win! a big win. I wonder, what's next? :)

:(

Anyone out there playing ESO on the PS4 EU server? :)

After a week or so of hustling, I got myself a new client for the next few months :D
Even better they're not way out in the desolate blasted hellscape of Zone 2 (seriously, if you're not withing walking distance of a gym, a Starbucks & Pret, you're basically fighting wildlings)
No massive pay raise this time which is ok, for now. But should be good fun :D

Working all day at GarrCreations HQ tomorrow. Hard to beat that commute.
It's weird finding myself with nothing more to do, professionally, than hustle up new business. Even weirder that I don't feel more anxious about that.
I guess i've earned some time off, after my most recent client I could definitely use some downtime (not exactly a bad contract per se but there was something or someone there that was just soul draining. no idea what that was all about.). I've got a modest financial buffer, so that's not an immediate concern, but... I dunno. I guess i'm just feeling a little daunted at having such free reign again.
Part of me wants to just take a week off.
Part of me wants to just dive into the first thing that I can drum up.
Part of me just wants to sit back and see what comes of things i've already set in motion.

It's rare that I find myself with so little idea of how things are going to play out in the immediate future. and even rarer that I don't know exactly what I want from it all.
Weird, huh? I feel like i've achieved the goals I set myself and just don't know what I want to do next.
do I aim for more of the same? or something new?

Anyone out there on PSN and play Destiny or anything?

Woo! finally set-up a dedicated art computer (an old Alienware laptop and Cintiq tablet, basically). soooooo who know, maybe I'll actually draw something again soon XD

I dont' care.

I use FA for free and if it goes tits up theres plenty of other art sites i'm already on.

There's people who's art business relies heavily on FA, who i'm sure are now learning some harsh economic lessons; if you're not a stakeholder in a system you're going to get screwed by it. you're going to need to figure out how to deal with that.

I've been letting my "draw everyday" resolution slip a little" but to balance it out, I just upped my income, comfortably, into 6 figures.
*does the 'I AM AWESOME' dance*
that'll teach managers to annoy me!!!

2015 is here!

So I guess a list of goals is in order, to right the shortcomings of the last year; it's always good to have plan, even if it doesn't survive contact wit the real world.

Social:
- be more social! I really failed to be social last year. Due to on e reason or another I think I only actually 'went out' or met up with friends 3 or 4 times in total. Need to at least go out for a pint once in a while.

Fitness/health:
- Through illness and/or stress I kinda dropped the ball when it came to fitness in 2014. So, i'm going to aim to drop 10kg and get bellow 20% body fat again.

Art:
- Draw SOMETHING every day. I didn't get much time to sit-down and draw last year; which sucks because I rather enjoy drawing. but i've got at least 1 device with a stylus that can export .psd files, within arms reach at all times. soooo, yeah. no excuses. going to at least work on a sketch for a few mins or something each day.

Home:
- BATHTUB!!! It's been several years since I last had easy access to a bathtub. Showers are great in the morning and all, but it's not the same as relaxing in a long warm bath. So, now I own a house and have a reasonable income I want to get the bathroom sorted out before next winter.

Financial:
- Add another £13000 to my income. In 2014 I managed to almost double my yearly income. Which is a good start and I've got every intention of building on that in 2015. Adding an extra £13k to my cash-flow should be achievable; anything more is just more awesome.


So, there we go. 2015, lets do this! :D

Today in my last working day for the year. Now I get a, reasonably, well deserved break.

It's been a rather odd year; not exactly gone to plan but i'm not complaining. I've managed to turn my somewhat self-destructive tendencies, to MUCH more profitable ends. Turns out being a manipulative bastard that doesn't play well with others IS a good thing!
I've definitely hit my financial goals; nearly doubled my income over the last 12 months, and ending the year nicely in the black with things under control.
I've become self-employed and it's really been working out! today a bunch of project managers at my current client gave me abottle of champagne for "being awesome"; it's hard not to feel good about that :D

I didn't really set myself definite fitness goals but i've done reasonably well keeping in more or less the same shape and fitness level as before.
however, my social life has been basically none existent, i've been dealing with shockingly high levels of stress and i've not had the energy or time to draw or have much of hobby.
Life's thrown a bunch of stuff at us and i've taken more than a few gambles, but hey! i've won more than i've lost by a significant margin.
It's good to have hard data to show how awesome you are XD

Probably a wild stab in the dark but does anyone out there have an invite to Google Inbox that they can spare/ trade? :)

Probably a wild stab in the dark but does anyone out there have an invite to Google Inbox that they can spare/ trade? :)