I'm either going to be back before new years, or not until closer to mid-January, so digital art may be slower than usual. I'm going to have a lot of down-time that isn't in front of my computer though so I'm going to bring my sketchbook to hopefully get in the habit of sketching/doodling more often :3 I've noticed how much that helps with consistency and speed recently so I'm trying to make it something I do daily rather than just a few times a week.

I'll post more updates when I get more info, have a nice holiday season everyone!

-Kaicha

I have decided to change the headshot commission slots to be completely 'Pay What You Want.'

I'm going to stick to the aforementioned 3 slots, comment below if you'd like a slot. You can either send me a note with your character refs and an expression you would like, or you can choose to leave the information in the comment if you already know what you want.

This is for Fully Shaded Headshots, this can include accessories like glasses, hats, piercings, etc. Doesn't matter to me. These will be SFW since I am unable to work on any NSFW material given my current living situations (that should clear up in about a week but for now everything will be clean.)

You don't have to worry about payment until after I'm done, and the only remaining rules for slots is that they're first-come first-serve!

-Talo/Kaicha

Current Slots:
- Moss Possum
- Hamstamp
- (Empty)

So the short version is my parents now know about my living situation with my boyfriend. Unfortunately it is not going well. Luckily my grandmother convinced them to focus on school with me so hopefully I will be allowed to do that and not have to worry about them being too in my face about everything.

I am still accepting headshot commissions from my last journal http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8391463/ The only commission I have received is NSFW, which I cannot work on while my mother is still around (she leaves the 11th or 12th, pretty sure she just wants to see me try to get an internship or a coop at this year's career fair before she leaves), therefore I am looking for some stuff to draw while I wait for her to finally leave me be.

I spoke with my sister and my Aunt about things and they agree that my graduation is the most important thing, so although this will not be an easy task, I will be ignoring anything my mother says to try to spark controversy. I believe that she is doing this to fuel her desire to stay here to try to change me and ruin my relationship. I refuse to let her do that, so as much as she tries I will just ignore her, keep my head held high and continue to focus on my school work in an attempt to be successful in my last few classes here before I graduate.

-Talo/Kaicha

I had to get ready for school recently, and since my mother has been staying over during her visit, I can't really keep working on that WIP for my boyfriend... so I decided to open a couple commission slots for headshots! Some friends think I'm good enough and I believe I'm consistent enough to start taking commissions on, but I wanna start small first just to see if I can keep it up.

Comment below if you want a slot, but since this is my first time opening commissions back up I'm gonna do a special and have these be sorta pay what you want. The minimum is gonna be $10 but they will be fully shaded headshots. Just give me an expression and I'll do my best to get you something you like!

Maximum 3 slots right now, first come first serve. I'll get back to you on payment after I double-check my paypal.

Thank you all again for your support! It means a lot to me ^v^

-Talo/Kaicha

I know I've been pretty quiet, and that's normal for me on this site to come in for a while but then stop. I'm trying to cut out these bad habits. I'm going to a cognitive behavioral therapist to try to fix my negative thought patterns. I get in my own way so much with everything... I just wanted it to stop ya know? I'm tired of it. I want to be productive and improve, but consistently instead of just in these, short, explosive bursts of mindfulness to bettering myself and trying to be happy. This awful cycle I have going gets in my way with art, games, school, you name it. Things are starting to get better, but not by a lot yet since I haven't been doing the therapy that long.

I hate to bog down my page with personal stuff but I felt like I should let ya'll know what the deal has been. I got back to working on that belated b-day present for Bryan, since my mother comes down on Thursday for a short stay. I wanna try to finish it before then.

-Talo/Kaicha

I took some time to think it out a bit more. Art problems seem to just stem from the fact that I learned to write kinda strangely when I was a kid. Pile that on top of the fact that I didn't really start drawing anything til I was 17 and you got 10+ years of bad habits to break with the way my hand moves with a pen. I also took some time to be more patient with my practice recently. I started a quick headshot for a friend that I'd never gotten around to. I only spent like an hour on it but I was able to confirm to myself that I am improving, I just have to not get so impatient with myself when I draw. I also made sure to go back to doing some things that worked very well for me in previous drawings (i.e. mapping out eye sockets, cheekbones, muzzle shape, etc.) I'm going to try to practice basic shapes more too (maybe devote 20/30 mins a day to it until I'm confident that I can draw proper symmetry). I'll post it when I'm done, it might just be a sketch or something simple, but I'm enjoying the practice. I'll probably keep to more simple pictures for a bit, maybe work on various head angles. Deviating from the original plan of practicing with the headshots was a a bad idea I think. I gotta get more consistent with this stuff. Anyway that's just my rambling on the matter. TLDR I'm glad to get back into the swing of things, and I'll try to be more venturous once I've gotten sufficient practice with some of the things that I'm not as proficient at as I once thought.

PS- I also now realize that I got a bit ahead of myself when trying to learn new stuff. My art process has been taking longer and longer because I'm constantly trying to learn new things, without thoroughly practicing the things I just learned recently. So I keep piling on more and more stuff in pictures to focus on, that I'm not good at drawing yet. I spent upwards of 45 hours on my last picture, most of which was trying to get good inking lines, and tweaking anatomy issues... I don't have the practice to back up what I'm trying to accomplish. I certainly won't stop trying to improve, but I can't expect so much out of myself given the experience I lack. Or rather, I'm going to keep my aspirations high, but lower my expectations of myself so I don't get so frustrated.

-Talo/Kaicha

So I've been spending a lot of time learning more about anatormy while I draw, but I haven't really been practicing consistently for a long time. I feel like I set my expectations for myself too high, and because of that I spend inordinate amounts of time on each piece trying to actually get the right proportions and everything. As of late, I've been spending at least an hour or so drawing every day, but I haven't posted anything because I've been impatient, rushing myself and drawing like crap.

I feel like I'm struggling to get my hands to follow along with my head, so I'm gonna take some personal time to slow down a bit, draw some simpler stuff and focus on the fundamentals. I'll get to finishing the last WIP soon since I don't wanna leave that unfinished, but after that I'm probably going to try to re-learn how to draw a little bit. I think a lot of my issues just come from how I hold my pen while I draw. I hold the pen really close to the tablet, and with my hand curled up a bit. I've noticed it's pretty restricting on how I can move my pen around while drawing, so I'm gonna try to hold my pen more upright, farther from the tablet, and curl my hand up less so I have more freedom while drawing.

And if that's not the issue, I'm just gonna make sure that while I practice, I draw slowly and more carefully in order to just make myself more dexterous. I'm gonna dial it back a bit, draw some simple stuff and just focus on practice for a bit, since consistently drawing the lines I want seems to be my biggest issue right now.

If you have any advice on how to practice well, essentially just making my hands more obedient and steady, feel free to leave a comment below. I'm open to suggestion.

-Talo/Kaicha

I might be heading up to visit some family next week. won't have access to my desktop or tablet unfortunately. Just giving ya'll a heads up.

-Kaicha

Reinstalling Photoshop on my SSD that I fortunately got working at the end of last week. I'll see how it goes but I'm backing up my psd files onto the SSD as well, just in case. I'm gonna try to get it working today cause I really wanna keep the momentum from yesterday going. Hopefully it all works out...

UPDATE: Re-installation successful, art can resume.

Had to get myself in order for school and adjust to the new place after moving apartments recently. I appreciate the patience on the headshots, Next one was in progress before I had to drop everything to focus on catching up with school. I even had to quit my job since school was eating up so much of my time. I'm caught up now, so I've been warming up with a personal piece before I get back to the free stuff. Just wanted to fill people in as to my whereabouts.

Enjoy your Wednesday everyone ^v^

Started a new job a few days ago. Been wanting to draw but I've been really busy, and when I'm not busy I'm very tired since said job requires a large amount of physical labor that doesn't work well with my doughy physique =v= I will start drawing again tomorrow after a good night's rest. Thank you for your patience.

-Talo/Kaicha

Like the title says, I was a bit bad about informing my pharmacy to refill my prescription so I gotta wait a day or so for them to call me back. In the mean-time (since I take stimulants) I've been dead-tired so I'm taking a break from art stuff for a day or so, hence not uploading anything today. I'll get back to it as soon as I start taking my medication again, which will be soon.

Thank you guys for the patience ^^;

-Talo/Kaicha

Gonna try to finish up the first headshot today.

EDIT: Mosty done, outline inking is done just gotta finish the process. Taking a break for a bit, but hopefully I'll have this done tonight so I can keep the momentum going and do some more of these.

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Content: SFW
Music: Yes
Mic: No

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Workin on the first of the headshots

Content: SFW
Music: Yes
Mic: Yes

So I was working on the first of the free headshots I was offering from my last journal and I wanted a second opinion on something. I'm not sure if I should go hard on the practicing, and just crank out sketches for this stuff (but in greater quantity) or focus on drawing something nice for people by cleaning it up and inking it. I'm comfortable right now with my ability to ink, so I don't feel the practice is needed as much as just working on form, proportions, and my method for drawing faces. I'm torn between focusing on self-improvement with art, and uploading nicer things for the sake of growing my pages more on art sharing websites. I figure the answer is somewhere in how skilled I am with art, like the better I am meaning I can afford to focus a bit on fostering a following, I'm just a terrible judge of where my own skill level is at any given time. Any advice?

Decided I needed to practice faces more, I thought I was practiced enough but, as I found out while trying to draw a sticker pack for myself recently, that was just with drawing specific angles and species =v=. I wanna broaden my horizons so I'm gonna try to do a free headshot sketch (possibly go so far as to ink it) as often as I can for a little while until I'm more confident in my abilities.

So as per usual with any free stuff that I'm doing for practice, just leave a comment with a character of yours if you're interested in helping me out. I'll pick a character out of the bunch (maybe two or three if I see a lot of good stuff) that I think would be good practice and I'll get back to you with it when I'm done ^v^

-Kaicha

Trying to finish up the otter WIP

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Content: SFW
Music: Yes
Mic: No

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Content: SFW
Mic: Not at first, but maybe later
Music: Hype Music boys :U (possibly electronic later)

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Content: SFW
Music: Yes
Mic: No

Probably just gonna be working on finagling with details, trying to make everything look nicer. Not too eventful but if that kind of process interests you, or you just wanna say hi, feel free to stop by! ^v^
EDIT: How do basketball shorts even work? :U

Come stop by if you wanna say hi ^v^

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Mic: No
Music: Yes

I figure since I got OBS anyway, I might as well stream more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ntm it's always helpful to get a second set of eyes to look over your stuff.

Doin more work on that otter pic from yesterday, come say hi! ^v^

Mic: Off by default but I might turn it on to chat with people, Music: Yes
https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

Doing a gift art for https://twitter.com/The_Alfie_Inc/ as a thank you present for something he drew for myself and my mister while we were at FWA~

Stream: https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne
Music: Yes
Mic: depends on if people wanna chat :3 but will be off by default

Got the itch to art again so I'm gonna start practicing again. May or may not upload what I work on but at least getting the practice in will be good ^^

So I've been working on a piece and I've been trying to adapt a long-fur tutorial to maybe work with feathers for my bird character. It's had its bumps here and there but mostly things have gone well. I was just wondering if anyone knew how I could make this look more.... feather-y? Or if anyone offhand knew any good feather tutorials I could look through to maybe adapt what I'm doing now.

Piece in question: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/22613488/

Figured I'd stream some work on the latest thing, cause why not?

Mic: depends if people wanna talk
Music: yes

https://picarto.tv/TaloMayne

(Taking a break, might start back up again later)