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2026 Goals and Plans
General | Posted 4 months ago* Be more active in the community – comment more!
FurAffinity is my favourite website on the Internet. I love being part of this community. But I feel like I’m not as active as I could or should be to keep this community alive and thriving. My first goal is to give more comments! I don’t have a specific target number in mind, but I had 403 comments made at the start of this morning. I’ll see how many I’ve made at the end of the year.
* Improve my lineart in both quality and speed
Last year’s Inktober seemed to improve my lineart a lot, and I felt like I jumped several levels of quality over the month. But my lineart is painfully slow and I feel like I’m missing something important with it to shake that beginner quality to it that discourages me from doing it with more of my sketches.
The only way to improve it is to actually do it, and so I’ll try to do lineart for some more of my sketches.
* Practice portraits and expressions
Another thing I’ve shyed away from is portraits. I’ve improved at head shapes a lot in the past year, but details like eyes and hair and open mouths still plague me. And that’s not even starting on expressions… So I’d like to remedy that by putting a bit more effort to practice portraits. At least in the earlier parts of the year. I already have a few good ideas on how to work on those: PMD-esque expression portraits, Discord emotes, stickers, semi-studies of the Violet Evergarden design book, etc… I think it will pair well with practicing my lineart.
* Iron out my characters
Cammy, Oub, and Simm have all had pretty vague definitions to their characters. Part of it is me being indecisive, but another part is me not putting a lot of effort into planning things out properly. I’d like to better define the lines between the characters, their purposes and personalities, etc as I continue to get and make art of them.
* Photography?
It’s less of a goal than it is an experiment, but I’d like to try my hand at photography. I have a camera ordered and on the way (Canon R50, for any who are interested in that) and hopefully I can start playing with it soon. I probably won’t post any of the photos I take, but I may integrate them with my art if I can find something more interesting than “character on top of random photo background”.
FurAffinity is my favourite website on the Internet. I love being part of this community. But I feel like I’m not as active as I could or should be to keep this community alive and thriving. My first goal is to give more comments! I don’t have a specific target number in mind, but I had 403 comments made at the start of this morning. I’ll see how many I’ve made at the end of the year.
* Improve my lineart in both quality and speed
Last year’s Inktober seemed to improve my lineart a lot, and I felt like I jumped several levels of quality over the month. But my lineart is painfully slow and I feel like I’m missing something important with it to shake that beginner quality to it that discourages me from doing it with more of my sketches.
The only way to improve it is to actually do it, and so I’ll try to do lineart for some more of my sketches.
* Practice portraits and expressions
Another thing I’ve shyed away from is portraits. I’ve improved at head shapes a lot in the past year, but details like eyes and hair and open mouths still plague me. And that’s not even starting on expressions… So I’d like to remedy that by putting a bit more effort to practice portraits. At least in the earlier parts of the year. I already have a few good ideas on how to work on those: PMD-esque expression portraits, Discord emotes, stickers, semi-studies of the Violet Evergarden design book, etc… I think it will pair well with practicing my lineart.
* Iron out my characters
Cammy, Oub, and Simm have all had pretty vague definitions to their characters. Part of it is me being indecisive, but another part is me not putting a lot of effort into planning things out properly. I’d like to better define the lines between the characters, their purposes and personalities, etc as I continue to get and make art of them.
* Photography?
It’s less of a goal than it is an experiment, but I’d like to try my hand at photography. I have a camera ordered and on the way (Canon R50, for any who are interested in that) and hopefully I can start playing with it soon. I probably won’t post any of the photos I take, but I may integrate them with my art if I can find something more interesting than “character on top of random photo background”.
Inktober 2025 Post-Month Journal
General | Posted 6 months agoThis journal post is about my experience with Inktober last month. If you just follow me for my commissions, feel free to skip this. Also, it assumes you've read through the posts I did at the start of Inktober and at the mid-point. It was written over the course of a week so
---
Let me start off by saying that I am so ready to get back to using colors and other brushes. ;-; There were multiple times that I wanted to add some color to a piece or experiment with a different brush, but decided against it because I wanted to adhere to my self-imposed rules. While I still believe that was the best choice, I'm ready to go back to normal. I'll likely add color to a few of the pieces I enjoyed the most this month and upload them to scraps or something.
(Likewise, I’ll probably be doing a few studies of artists I enjoyed and body parts I struggled with since I also didn’t do any studies this month as much as I was tempted by them.)
---
Most of what I wrote in the mid-point post is still true. In fact, it covers most of what I learned. But paired with the previous note about being so ready to move on to other things, I think it’s a safe bet to say that I gained the most value from those first two weeks. I’d like to keep that in mind in the future. It might be a good idea to plan my studies around 2 weeks at a time of any kind of intensive work.
---
I think an aspect that helped push me to push myself was that I was actively sharing the pieces in multiple places. I think last year I only shared things in a private Discord server (and even then, only a few of the nicer pieces). This year I was posting each piece to FurAffinity, BlueSky, and at least 5 Discord servers. Knowing that I’d definitely have others see my work was part of what influenced me to not just do studies and to actively try new and interesting things. The things I was making weren’t just things I was okay with sharing but usually things I wanted to share.
There were periods where I struggled a bit more with ideas for each day. The 25th through 28th was the longest stretch. Despite not doing my best work on any of those days, I think there are still aspects I like such as the shine of the hooves on 28 and the attempt at a light-on-dark composition for 27.
---
I think it's pretty clear that I'm interested in doing Inktober again next year. I probably won't do the same format as this year, but it’d be fun to do either something focused on painting or something focused on a multi-page comic. I'll wait until September before I decide what rules will be best for me.
---
I'd also like to publicly reveal something important to me that I've been working on since the end of last year.
After last Inktober, I realized that it was important to me to continue with regular art practice. In 2023 and 2024, I had a pattern of doing a really intense study for a week or two at a time, and then burning out and sometimes not doing any art for a month or two. Inktober was a nice fix because everything was small. I even said as much in my post last year:
I need to keep my goals manageable for now. If I keep picking things that are too large, I'll burn out…
So on November 1st of 2024, I made a new goal for myself: creating and uploading something every day. The results are visible at https://no-restart-only-proceed.tumblr.com/archive. (Ignore that the counter is only in the 70s – there’s a reason I’ll get to in a sec.)
I didn’t announce this at the start because I wanted to get my footing and feel free to fail without embarrassment if it didn’t work out. Plus there’s a sort of magic motivation that I get from doing something in secret that is immediately lost if I tell anyone. The first person I told didn’t know until around December, and then only a few people knew about it until I was over half a year in and would occassionally bring it up in conversation when it was relevant to talking about my art’s improvement.
I’ve uploaded something to that blog nearly every day. There were a few times early on when I would miss a day, and a time more recently where I stopped for a week because I was so sick I had to go to urgent care (hence why the daily count is so low). You can see lots of things there: my Inktober pieces, sketches I did for commissions, studies, doodles, gifts for friends, experiements, humans, furries, digital, traditional, etc. Every day a step to getting better at art. (Well, except maybe June 28th but one cheat day out of over 300 isn’t that bad!) My only requirement for myself is to do something and upload it before I go to bed for the night.
My plan is to continue the blog into the future. 90% of what’s there is a bunch of nothingburgers that I don’t think need to be uploaded to FA. Their value comes in aggregate. If you want to follow it, go for it. But I don’t think you’ll be missing much from me if you don’t. :p
---
Thank you for reading this. And once again, if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
---
Let me start off by saying that I am so ready to get back to using colors and other brushes. ;-; There were multiple times that I wanted to add some color to a piece or experiment with a different brush, but decided against it because I wanted to adhere to my self-imposed rules. While I still believe that was the best choice, I'm ready to go back to normal. I'll likely add color to a few of the pieces I enjoyed the most this month and upload them to scraps or something.
(Likewise, I’ll probably be doing a few studies of artists I enjoyed and body parts I struggled with since I also didn’t do any studies this month as much as I was tempted by them.)
---
Most of what I wrote in the mid-point post is still true. In fact, it covers most of what I learned. But paired with the previous note about being so ready to move on to other things, I think it’s a safe bet to say that I gained the most value from those first two weeks. I’d like to keep that in mind in the future. It might be a good idea to plan my studies around 2 weeks at a time of any kind of intensive work.
---
I think an aspect that helped push me to push myself was that I was actively sharing the pieces in multiple places. I think last year I only shared things in a private Discord server (and even then, only a few of the nicer pieces). This year I was posting each piece to FurAffinity, BlueSky, and at least 5 Discord servers. Knowing that I’d definitely have others see my work was part of what influenced me to not just do studies and to actively try new and interesting things. The things I was making weren’t just things I was okay with sharing but usually things I wanted to share.
There were periods where I struggled a bit more with ideas for each day. The 25th through 28th was the longest stretch. Despite not doing my best work on any of those days, I think there are still aspects I like such as the shine of the hooves on 28 and the attempt at a light-on-dark composition for 27.
---
I think it's pretty clear that I'm interested in doing Inktober again next year. I probably won't do the same format as this year, but it’d be fun to do either something focused on painting or something focused on a multi-page comic. I'll wait until September before I decide what rules will be best for me.
---
I'd also like to publicly reveal something important to me that I've been working on since the end of last year.
After last Inktober, I realized that it was important to me to continue with regular art practice. In 2023 and 2024, I had a pattern of doing a really intense study for a week or two at a time, and then burning out and sometimes not doing any art for a month or two. Inktober was a nice fix because everything was small. I even said as much in my post last year:
I need to keep my goals manageable for now. If I keep picking things that are too large, I'll burn out…
So on November 1st of 2024, I made a new goal for myself: creating and uploading something every day. The results are visible at https://no-restart-only-proceed.tumblr.com/archive. (Ignore that the counter is only in the 70s – there’s a reason I’ll get to in a sec.)
I didn’t announce this at the start because I wanted to get my footing and feel free to fail without embarrassment if it didn’t work out. Plus there’s a sort of magic motivation that I get from doing something in secret that is immediately lost if I tell anyone. The first person I told didn’t know until around December, and then only a few people knew about it until I was over half a year in and would occassionally bring it up in conversation when it was relevant to talking about my art’s improvement.
I’ve uploaded something to that blog nearly every day. There were a few times early on when I would miss a day, and a time more recently where I stopped for a week because I was so sick I had to go to urgent care (hence why the daily count is so low). You can see lots of things there: my Inktober pieces, sketches I did for commissions, studies, doodles, gifts for friends, experiements, humans, furries, digital, traditional, etc. Every day a step to getting better at art. (Well, except maybe June 28th but one cheat day out of over 300 isn’t that bad!) My only requirement for myself is to do something and upload it before I go to bed for the night.
My plan is to continue the blog into the future. 90% of what’s there is a bunch of nothingburgers that I don’t think need to be uploaded to FA. Their value comes in aggregate. If you want to follow it, go for it. But I don’t think you’ll be missing much from me if you don’t. :p
---
Thank you for reading this. And once again, if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
Inktober 2025 Mid-Point
General | Posted 6 months agoIt's the halfway point for Inktober and I'm so full of thoughts that I wanted to write some of it down before I forgot it. This post is partially to share things with others, and partially to reflect on things before the second half of the month begins. I apologize in advance if some of it seems disconnected or rambly. I've tried to organize things as best I can.
I think the best place to start is with the subjects I'm selecting. As stated in my post at the start of the month, I wrote my own prompt list to use since I expected the official Inktober one to be more of a hindrance than a help. The intent was to use a randomizer to select the prompt for each day on the day of, but that didn't last as long as I expected! The first three days' pieces were selected that way. After that, I either picked whichever idea on the list stuck out to me the most that day or it was something that just came to me as I was browsing FA during the day. I figure it's better to go with something I have passion for in the moment than let it distract me as I try to do a not-as-interesting thing just because the randomizer picked a certain word.
One thing that I have to consciously avoid doing, however, is studies. Or at least direct ones. I think every single day has been plagued by my brain telling me things like "you should do a hand study so you can draw hands better for the rest of the month!" or "you should do a paw study so you have a process in place for that!". I have to remind myself that I have limited time each day and the goal is to do things I consider finished. Instead, I've compromised with myself by incorporating the tempting study into whatever I'm doing that day. Inktober 13 (feral Simm)'s pose was partially selected because it would let me work more on the paws I struggled with on Inktober 11 (Oub sitting). Days 6 (squirrel), 7 (Simmsolplush), and especially day 8 (mask)'s hatching came because I wanted to study karanacat's work.
Someone on Discord commented that my pieces varied in styles and vibes. I think it's an excellent thing that I can draw in a variety of ways and get what feels like a consistently good result. But it also reveals to me how little consistency I have in my process of drawing. Take the hands in Inktober 1 (Simm with book) versus Inktober 11 (Oub sitting): I feel like I did the former well but the latter poorly despite both being from high-quality photo reference. There's a lot of factors that could contribute to it but I think it all comes down to having an okay process for the position in 1 but not 11. The same can be applied to a lot of things in my pieces: eyes, hair, paws, fur, etc... Sometimes I can get them right on the first try, but usually I'm stumbling about.
I think the lack of process is clearer to me now because I've been locked in on avoiding gradients and only using two brushes (and really only one since the other is only for sketches). It's easy to get lost in trying to fix a poor sketch using 30 different brushes, but it's a lot more obvious the foundation is missing when you only have line width to work from.
Limiting myself to effectively only one brush has led to another piece of self-discovery: a preference for a certain style and technique. There are so many styles out there that I love to see and would love even more to be able to draw in. Unfortunately, getting good at a particular style requires practice which requires time invested in that one particular way. Along with what I said earlier about a lack of process and how it has led to varied style, I'd like like to figure out a direction to go and I think that direction is to get really good at my linework and hatching.
(If you want a really good example of what I mean, check out Karanacat's work like this piece and this piece. Variations in value are done entirely through hatching unless it's a solid block of black. I'm fairly certain both of those were originally done with a G-pen and then scanned to digital!)
Does this mean I'm going to give up on things like soft shading and color and painting? Nope! I still rather enjoy using those. But I think I'll be putting a bit more emphasis on using hatching and line width.
I really wasn't expecting much at the start of this month. Last year I was consistently 1-2 days behind schedule and only doing really "safe" pieces that mostly came down to "draw this photo or game screenshot". I expected I'd do better this year, but not nothing crazy. I thought I'd have one or two pieces that I liked but that I'd want to quietly brush most of them under the rug and hope no one noticed them.
Instead I feel really proud. I feel like I'm making things that are good. And not just something that was accidentally good but like it's part of a trend of having actually improved. I'm looking at the things I've made this month and thinking "wow, the past three years of practice are finally paying off".
(That's not to say my stuff is masterpiece after masterpiece. I can see places for improvement in all of them. But compared to what I expected from myself? They're wonderful.)
And that pride is coming from other, smaller things as well. I've wanted a feral Simm design for a while. Now it exists and I was the one to draw it.
Yesterday, while doing Inktober 16 (Zoroark Oub 2), I realized that I was using my own art from the previous piece as a reference. I'm having ideas for pieces and my default question is "What day should I do that on?" rather than "Which artist should I go to that will do it justice (because I couldn't)?". ... Well, at least some ideas go that way. I'm not going to stop commissioning other artists any time soon. But hopefully you get what I mean about feeling better about my own work. :p
A few people on Discord have even commented on how seeing me do Inktober and seeing my improvement has inspired them to try art or get back into it. It's wonderful to hear people say that, and I encourage anyone who feels that way to do so! And definitely share your stuff with me. It'd be a great feeling to know that I led someone to starting their own art practice.
So where to go from here? Well... I don't quite know yet other than forward. Only 15 days left and I have plenty of other prompts I can do. I don't know what I'll do for each day, but I'd like at least one or two of them to be something involving humans and something involving transformation.
I'd like to give a thanks to everyone who has shown any interest in what I'm doing. I know that drawing for myself is the most important thing, but it's hard not to get a bit excited when I get a ❤️ react on Discord or a fave here on FA. Also, a special thanks to Kendrakkin, Sketch, and Scarlet-Frost for joining me in Discord VCs on various days to give me art advice.
Do you have questions? Comments? If so, I'd love to hear them. Comment here or @ me on Discord somewhere if you share a server with me.
I think the best place to start is with the subjects I'm selecting. As stated in my post at the start of the month, I wrote my own prompt list to use since I expected the official Inktober one to be more of a hindrance than a help. The intent was to use a randomizer to select the prompt for each day on the day of, but that didn't last as long as I expected! The first three days' pieces were selected that way. After that, I either picked whichever idea on the list stuck out to me the most that day or it was something that just came to me as I was browsing FA during the day. I figure it's better to go with something I have passion for in the moment than let it distract me as I try to do a not-as-interesting thing just because the randomizer picked a certain word.
One thing that I have to consciously avoid doing, however, is studies. Or at least direct ones. I think every single day has been plagued by my brain telling me things like "you should do a hand study so you can draw hands better for the rest of the month!" or "you should do a paw study so you have a process in place for that!". I have to remind myself that I have limited time each day and the goal is to do things I consider finished. Instead, I've compromised with myself by incorporating the tempting study into whatever I'm doing that day. Inktober 13 (feral Simm)'s pose was partially selected because it would let me work more on the paws I struggled with on Inktober 11 (Oub sitting). Days 6 (squirrel), 7 (Simmsolplush), and especially day 8 (mask)'s hatching came because I wanted to study karanacat's work.
Someone on Discord commented that my pieces varied in styles and vibes. I think it's an excellent thing that I can draw in a variety of ways and get what feels like a consistently good result. But it also reveals to me how little consistency I have in my process of drawing. Take the hands in Inktober 1 (Simm with book) versus Inktober 11 (Oub sitting): I feel like I did the former well but the latter poorly despite both being from high-quality photo reference. There's a lot of factors that could contribute to it but I think it all comes down to having an okay process for the position in 1 but not 11. The same can be applied to a lot of things in my pieces: eyes, hair, paws, fur, etc... Sometimes I can get them right on the first try, but usually I'm stumbling about.
I think the lack of process is clearer to me now because I've been locked in on avoiding gradients and only using two brushes (and really only one since the other is only for sketches). It's easy to get lost in trying to fix a poor sketch using 30 different brushes, but it's a lot more obvious the foundation is missing when you only have line width to work from.
Limiting myself to effectively only one brush has led to another piece of self-discovery: a preference for a certain style and technique. There are so many styles out there that I love to see and would love even more to be able to draw in. Unfortunately, getting good at a particular style requires practice which requires time invested in that one particular way. Along with what I said earlier about a lack of process and how it has led to varied style, I'd like like to figure out a direction to go and I think that direction is to get really good at my linework and hatching.
(If you want a really good example of what I mean, check out Karanacat's work like this piece and this piece. Variations in value are done entirely through hatching unless it's a solid block of black. I'm fairly certain both of those were originally done with a G-pen and then scanned to digital!)
Does this mean I'm going to give up on things like soft shading and color and painting? Nope! I still rather enjoy using those. But I think I'll be putting a bit more emphasis on using hatching and line width.
I really wasn't expecting much at the start of this month. Last year I was consistently 1-2 days behind schedule and only doing really "safe" pieces that mostly came down to "draw this photo or game screenshot". I expected I'd do better this year, but not nothing crazy. I thought I'd have one or two pieces that I liked but that I'd want to quietly brush most of them under the rug and hope no one noticed them.
Instead I feel really proud. I feel like I'm making things that are good. And not just something that was accidentally good but like it's part of a trend of having actually improved. I'm looking at the things I've made this month and thinking "wow, the past three years of practice are finally paying off".
(That's not to say my stuff is masterpiece after masterpiece. I can see places for improvement in all of them. But compared to what I expected from myself? They're wonderful.)
And that pride is coming from other, smaller things as well. I've wanted a feral Simm design for a while. Now it exists and I was the one to draw it.
Yesterday, while doing Inktober 16 (Zoroark Oub 2), I realized that I was using my own art from the previous piece as a reference. I'm having ideas for pieces and my default question is "What day should I do that on?" rather than "Which artist should I go to that will do it justice (because I couldn't)?". ... Well, at least some ideas go that way. I'm not going to stop commissioning other artists any time soon. But hopefully you get what I mean about feeling better about my own work. :p
A few people on Discord have even commented on how seeing me do Inktober and seeing my improvement has inspired them to try art or get back into it. It's wonderful to hear people say that, and I encourage anyone who feels that way to do so! And definitely share your stuff with me. It'd be a great feeling to know that I led someone to starting their own art practice.
So where to go from here? Well... I don't quite know yet other than forward. Only 15 days left and I have plenty of other prompts I can do. I don't know what I'll do for each day, but I'd like at least one or two of them to be something involving humans and something involving transformation.
I'd like to give a thanks to everyone who has shown any interest in what I'm doing. I know that drawing for myself is the most important thing, but it's hard not to get a bit excited when I get a ❤️ react on Discord or a fave here on FA. Also, a special thanks to Kendrakkin, Sketch, and Scarlet-Frost for joining me in Discord VCs on various days to give me art advice.
Do you have questions? Comments? If so, I'd love to hear them. Comment here or @ me on Discord somewhere if you share a server with me.
Inktober 2025
General | Posted 7 months agoHello all,
It's once again October and it's time for all of the monthly drawing challenges including Inktober, and I'm once again going to participate in one. Mine will be largely the same as the usual Inktober, but with my own prompt list and a focus on the things I want to improve at.
So expect (hopefully) daily uploads of what I make along with some of my commission backlog as I finish typing out descriptions. The rest of this post will be me talking about Inktober, my plans for it, etc... so if you're just here to look at art then you might not be interested and you can stop reading here. I won't be offended. :p
EDIT 2025-10-01: Oh yeah, I'm going to tag everything with "inktober2025". This means you should be able to find all of my inktober posts with the search query "@keywords inktober 2025 \@lower simmplicity (without the \ in front of the lower - it'll make it a username link if I don't escape it but it still shows the escape character TwT)
I went back and re-read my inktober 2024 post to get some notes on where I struggled the most and what helped. The most important thing for me was keeping the drawings interesting. It was such a struggle that I eventually threw out the prompts entirely in favor of drawing absols. So this year I'll be doing a prompt list entirely my own! I'll not post it here since it's personal to me (a mix of song titles, Pokemon, fetishes, etc) but everything is something I have some interest in drawing.
Along with that, I have two primary goals this October:
* Get better at finishing pieces (not just a sketch but doing clean lineart)
* Improve my technique and comfort with a digital pen
My sketching has improved a lot in the last year, but usually my lineart loses a lot of the magic that the sketch had. I'd like to resolve that so that I have more desire to see things through. To help me save time and remain focused, I've tried to make some guidelines for myself:
* Create one piece per day.
** Pieces do not have to follow the prompts - those are just there as jumping-off points.
* Create digitally, on a greyscale canvas, using one of the 3 brushes I've tagged for Inktober.
** If I can't do it digitally, pen and ink is acceptable.
* Consider it finished and ready when it is inked.
* Post it daily.
* Try to use hatching, line weight, and solid blocks of value more than airbrush.
* Spend 3-6 minutes warming up.
* Spend 5-10 minutes making 3-5 thumbnail sketches.
Last year's Inktober was genuinely one of the best things I've done for my art. I am greatly looking forward to this year's.
It's once again October and it's time for all of the monthly drawing challenges including Inktober, and I'm once again going to participate in one. Mine will be largely the same as the usual Inktober, but with my own prompt list and a focus on the things I want to improve at.
So expect (hopefully) daily uploads of what I make along with some of my commission backlog as I finish typing out descriptions. The rest of this post will be me talking about Inktober, my plans for it, etc... so if you're just here to look at art then you might not be interested and you can stop reading here. I won't be offended. :p
EDIT 2025-10-01: Oh yeah, I'm going to tag everything with "inktober2025". This means you should be able to find all of my inktober posts with the search query "@keywords inktober 2025 \@lower simmplicity (without the \ in front of the lower - it'll make it a username link if I don't escape it but it still shows the escape character TwT)
I went back and re-read my inktober 2024 post to get some notes on where I struggled the most and what helped. The most important thing for me was keeping the drawings interesting. It was such a struggle that I eventually threw out the prompts entirely in favor of drawing absols. So this year I'll be doing a prompt list entirely my own! I'll not post it here since it's personal to me (a mix of song titles, Pokemon, fetishes, etc) but everything is something I have some interest in drawing.
Along with that, I have two primary goals this October:
* Get better at finishing pieces (not just a sketch but doing clean lineart)
* Improve my technique and comfort with a digital pen
My sketching has improved a lot in the last year, but usually my lineart loses a lot of the magic that the sketch had. I'd like to resolve that so that I have more desire to see things through. To help me save time and remain focused, I've tried to make some guidelines for myself:
* Create one piece per day.
** Pieces do not have to follow the prompts - those are just there as jumping-off points.
* Create digitally, on a greyscale canvas, using one of the 3 brushes I've tagged for Inktober.
** If I can't do it digitally, pen and ink is acceptable.
* Consider it finished and ready when it is inked.
* Post it daily.
* Try to use hatching, line weight, and solid blocks of value more than airbrush.
* Spend 3-6 minutes warming up.
* Spend 5-10 minutes making 3-5 thumbnail sketches.
Last year's Inktober was genuinely one of the best things I've done for my art. I am greatly looking forward to this year's.
Art Fight 2025
General | Posted 9 months ago(I'm copying this over from my blog so I apologize for formatting errors or wording things weirdly.)
I participated in Art Fight for the first time this year. It was a good time, and I think I learned a thing or two from it. I'd like to give somethoughts on it the same way I did for Inktober last year.
I had wanted to do Art Fight last year, but ultimately decided against it because I didn't think I'd have the time or skill. It's a scary thought to put your art out there for others. Doubly so when you're making something for someone specific, and especially someone you don't know that well. But I made the commitment to participate this year, and participate I did. Like many art challenges, it's good to have a goal in place so you can track your progress over the month. I picked an intentionally low goal because this was my first year: five non-sketch pieces of which two should be for people I didn't know (neither friends nor artists I followed). My stretch goal was double the total number: 10 pieces. (Spoiler: I didn't meet the stretch goal but I did meet my primary goal!) All of this was announced when I posted my Art Fight card to FurAffinity.
I'd read that the AF site usually goes down for the first few days, and I didn't want to be stuck without ref sheets, so I did some prep work the week beforehand. I got my list of "unknown" targets by checking the "artfight" tag on FA one afternooon and picking a few people who had a record of attacking others last year. I didn't really care about getting revenges or not - I just wanted to attack people who were likely to participate at all and not just looking for free art. Once I had a list of potential targets, I downloaded their refs and screenshotted the character information + rules for each.
I won't go into detail on each attack since that's best suited for the individual uploads. If you'd like to see all of the attacks I made plus the attacks I recieved, you can search for anything I've posted with the art_fight or art_fight_2025 tags. Here's a pre-made search for it (thanks to FA implementing the new search system). Note: At time of posting this, I have not uploaded all of the pieces. PostyBirb is scheduled to upload them all within the next week or so.
There were two major hinderances to my plan:
* I spent about a week or so with my attention split between AF and practicing fundamentals. While the practice was good, especially for doing the values on one of the attacks, it did majorly cut into my time and attention to making new attacks.
* I got very sick early in the month. Not hospital-level sick, but sick enough that I didn't even have the energy to photograph an already-finished piece. I'm only now getting past the coughing fits that it left me with after all the other symptoms faded.[/list]
Overall, I'm pretty happy with my participation this year. I learned that I can get enjoyment from making pieces for others and it isn't quite as scary as I'd originally thought to share your own works. I don't know what my life will be like in 2026 around the time of Art Fight. I'd like to participate again if I can, and bump up my goal to six pieces instead of five.
I participated in Art Fight for the first time this year. It was a good time, and I think I learned a thing or two from it. I'd like to give somethoughts on it the same way I did for Inktober last year.
I had wanted to do Art Fight last year, but ultimately decided against it because I didn't think I'd have the time or skill. It's a scary thought to put your art out there for others. Doubly so when you're making something for someone specific, and especially someone you don't know that well. But I made the commitment to participate this year, and participate I did. Like many art challenges, it's good to have a goal in place so you can track your progress over the month. I picked an intentionally low goal because this was my first year: five non-sketch pieces of which two should be for people I didn't know (neither friends nor artists I followed). My stretch goal was double the total number: 10 pieces. (Spoiler: I didn't meet the stretch goal but I did meet my primary goal!) All of this was announced when I posted my Art Fight card to FurAffinity.
I'd read that the AF site usually goes down for the first few days, and I didn't want to be stuck without ref sheets, so I did some prep work the week beforehand. I got my list of "unknown" targets by checking the "artfight" tag on FA one afternooon and picking a few people who had a record of attacking others last year. I didn't really care about getting revenges or not - I just wanted to attack people who were likely to participate at all and not just looking for free art. Once I had a list of potential targets, I downloaded their refs and screenshotted the character information + rules for each.
I won't go into detail on each attack since that's best suited for the individual uploads. If you'd like to see all of the attacks I made plus the attacks I recieved, you can search for anything I've posted with the art_fight or art_fight_2025 tags. Here's a pre-made search for it (thanks to FA implementing the new search system). Note: At time of posting this, I have not uploaded all of the pieces. PostyBirb is scheduled to upload them all within the next week or so.
There were two major hinderances to my plan:
* I spent about a week or so with my attention split between AF and practicing fundamentals. While the practice was good, especially for doing the values on one of the attacks, it did majorly cut into my time and attention to making new attacks.
* I got very sick early in the month. Not hospital-level sick, but sick enough that I didn't even have the energy to photograph an already-finished piece. I'm only now getting past the coughing fits that it left me with after all the other symptoms faded.[/list]
Overall, I'm pretty happy with my participation this year. I learned that I can get enjoyment from making pieces for others and it isn't quite as scary as I'd originally thought to share your own works. I don't know what my life will be like in 2026 around the time of Art Fight. I'd like to participate again if I can, and bump up my goal to six pieces instead of five.
On Unsolicited Advertising
General | Posted 10 months agoThis is somewhere between a PSA and a rant. Probably more toward the latter because I doubt this will be read by anyone who needs to see it.
FA's Code of Conduct reads as follows (emphasis theirs):
3.4 Do not spam.
We do not allow messaging with unsolicited advertising, promotions, or repetitive content that are unintelligible or intended to clutter pages with unwanted content.
Users engaging in excessive spamming as defined above risk having all comments, shouts, and/or notes deleted and receiving a final warning or permanent suspension.
In other words, don't send people notes saying you're open for commissions. And don't just compliment our characters or other comms or say you just want to talk as a way of leading into "Oh, btw I'm an artist and open for commissions...". It's extremely transparent and you're just hurting your chances of getting commissioned at all. At best, you look like a scammer. At worst, you get banned for being a spammer.
I'm not exaggerating on that last point. If I look through my trashed notes to see who's sent me these kinds of messages, half of them are banned (indicated by the ! in front of their username instead of ~). Interestingly, it seems even more common with the ones that started as "Heya! I love your characters. Want to talk on Telegram/Discord?"
I don't want to leave this to only what you shouldn't do so I'll share some info on what I use to decide on new (to me) artists to commission:
* Most of the new artists I commission at this point are ones that I see post something really cool that is similar to something I already want to get or that inspire me to want to get something like it. Make the things that you want people to commission from you.
* I want a clear commission sheet. I don't want to have to ask you about prices or if you'll draw a specific idea. Read more here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10807756/
* I'll commission things at every price point from very cheap to very expensive (by most peoples' standards). I firmly believe that a good artist is worth their price. The non-art, business-y side of things factors into this. If you look like you can't keep track of commissions or will have to be hunted down for updates, you'd better be either cheap or really good at art.
I can feel the rant-y energy leaving my body now and that last section should really be it's own journal or just deleted entirely. I'll probably delete this soon. I woke up to a scammer trying to get my Discord username via FA notes again with the "Oh, your characters are so cool" pretext so I felt the urge to type something up.
FA's Code of Conduct reads as follows (emphasis theirs):
3.4 Do not spam.
We do not allow messaging with unsolicited advertising, promotions, or repetitive content that are unintelligible or intended to clutter pages with unwanted content.
Users engaging in excessive spamming as defined above risk having all comments, shouts, and/or notes deleted and receiving a final warning or permanent suspension.
In other words, don't send people notes saying you're open for commissions. And don't just compliment our characters or other comms or say you just want to talk as a way of leading into "Oh, btw I'm an artist and open for commissions...". It's extremely transparent and you're just hurting your chances of getting commissioned at all. At best, you look like a scammer. At worst, you get banned for being a spammer.
I'm not exaggerating on that last point. If I look through my trashed notes to see who's sent me these kinds of messages, half of them are banned (indicated by the ! in front of their username instead of ~). Interestingly, it seems even more common with the ones that started as "Heya! I love your characters. Want to talk on Telegram/Discord?"
I don't want to leave this to only what you shouldn't do so I'll share some info on what I use to decide on new (to me) artists to commission:
* Most of the new artists I commission at this point are ones that I see post something really cool that is similar to something I already want to get or that inspire me to want to get something like it. Make the things that you want people to commission from you.
* I want a clear commission sheet. I don't want to have to ask you about prices or if you'll draw a specific idea. Read more here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10807756/
* I'll commission things at every price point from very cheap to very expensive (by most peoples' standards). I firmly believe that a good artist is worth their price. The non-art, business-y side of things factors into this. If you look like you can't keep track of commissions or will have to be hunted down for updates, you'd better be either cheap or really good at art.
I can feel the rant-y energy leaving my body now and that last section should really be it's own journal or just deleted entirely. I'll probably delete this soon. I woke up to a scammer trying to get my Discord username via FA notes again with the "Oh, your characters are so cool" pretext so I felt the urge to type something up.
