Hey all.

Just a quick update. I moved up to BC, I have a lovely job that keeps me busy a lot doing admin for two electrical companies. I really enjoy it! My three month eval's coming up and I finally have a steady place to stay, a newish car to climb mountains, and Lordbob got to come over and visit me from his home in the UK for three weeks and we had a really nice time.

It's been crazy, work is busy and I feel.. different. Don't really play games right now, not sure I really want to. I mean, I finally am in a place where things happen. Taken up sailing here. Finally not having to look for a new place to live every two weeks is nice. I'm in a nice neighborhood 10 minutes walk from the shore. Fingers are crossed that I can work things out for good but we will see.

I haven't had a lot of time to process how I am emotionally, but maybe that's a good thing. I pulled out my drawing tablet today. Hopefully I can start working in some time in the afternoons to keep drawing when I have nothing else to get done- but it's going to take me awhile to make this setup feel comfortable to get a lot done.

Thing are better in some ways. I hope you've all been okay.

A lot's happened the past couple of months.
I graduated and received my industrial engineering degree.

My fiancee cheated on me. His new girlfriend contacted me. Turns out he'd lied to her a long time, but ultimately I was the one who got screwed by the both of them, I still think she's manipulative, but it's also not my problem to deal with. I'm moving on and away. Glad at least that I'm no longer a part of that against my will. It will always hurt, and it's fucked with my trust a lot, but I'm doing my best to take healthy steps forward.

A few days ago, my Canadian work visa was accepted. So I'll be moving to BC for at least a year to work, maybe more. Fingers crossed, I'll find a way. That ultimately made this situation much easier for me to accept. I at least don't have to lose everything I loved.

I may not be able to make anything for people for awhile. I'm going to be staying with some amazing friends until my job is secure and I can get a new place. Job prospects are looking like I'll be making a very good salary though so I should be pretty cushy in a few months if things are going well.

I'm going to still try and work on art a bit and I'm planning to bring my tablet, but I doubt I'll turn anything substantive for awhile. I have maybe a week until I leave though and I'll probably post up some things if I can push myself until then.


Wanted to say thank you to the folks in the past and present who have been here with me and my art. Really hope I can start taking commissions again in my free time soon. I know the next time I can, I will be in a much happier state of mind and life. So thank you so much for being here with me.

Hey everyone, long time no see! <3

So- I've been out of the country for awhile without much tablet access. so I am sorry I wasn't able to take new commissions. I'm in the final stretches of university, and I'm currently working on getting my Canadian Residency finalized. Nonetheless, the drawing itch has been very present and I've suffered for long enough.

Some of you deserve very individual apologies. I did make sure everything paid for was finished before I left but I know a lot of folks had lots of ideas I wanted to play with. I hope you know I am really sorry for that. :( I had tried to borrow a tablet but my fiancee's company had run out, and I was pretty busy so I decided to wait. I will be here for a long stretch and if you want anything please let me know and I'll make sure anyone who contacted me before gets discounts and lots of my attention.

I've missed so many people here and I've been drawing like nuts since I got back. It may take me a week or so to get 'warmed up' so I will see if I can do some freebies for people. I also have some storyline ideas and I might ask if people might lend characters to me for long term story/art projects.

I'm keeping my previous trello list up just so I can keep tabs on people who had contacted me before about possibly getting a commission.

I've really missed many of you guys and hope I can doodle for lots of you soon!

EDIT: Also- FORUMS! I saw that the FA forums kind of imploded. I did find the Phoenix Corvidae forums that came out of that, but is there any other good forums with lots of furries/artists on it?
I used to to the FAF to look for good characters for specific art pieces on rare occasion. Kind of bummed that they are gone. :(

I got a pretty nasty bug on Tuesday from class that's slowed me down a bit. If it were just a cold I could have worked through it but it's come with a lot of really tiring symptoms so I took Thursday night and Friday to sleep. Seems like it may be getting a little better. Just thought I would let you guys know and I'm really sorry. I hate to make you wait. Feel free to note me if you would like to chat or know how things are going. <3

Hey guys!
Just letting everyone know I'm closing commissions for a bit!
I have a big exam at university next week and I want to make sure everyone who wants a commission is getting a fair amount of my time.
Anyone who's already contacted me, you're golden! I just want to put all my focus into what I've got right now. :)
Going to get everyone squared away who's contacted me, and once that's done I'll open them back up again. As soon as I can!


You can still note me though if you want a commission. I am always willing to talk with you about them and get details.

Thanks again soo much to all the wonderful people who for the first time ever have made me have to close commissions. Ugh!
I feel so lucky and yet I also feel so bad that I have to do it too.

Thank you so much to everyone who has commissioned me lately. I really absolutely am humbled by it and your kind words mean a lot to me. You guys are like fuel and inspiration to people like me. :)

So on that note! I've noticed the time it takes me to complete commissions is longer because of my week schedule picking back up. Don't fret though. Getting them done is a very high priority for me. I put everything else aside to get those done and put aside enough time in my ETAs to not burn myself out. So far at least. :)

So I hope you will understand, I may make less progress during the week so it may take longer. I just hate to keep people waiting but if you ever want an update or want to talk you can always toss me a note and I can update you on what's going on, no problem. :) If I feel like I've been quiet on you for too long I will probably just toss you a note anyways.

Also, I keep my Trello obsessively updated, and I keep commissions prioritized by who is next just in case you want to check that too.

I don't think there's much to say or comment about on this journal really but I wanted to let you all know.
Thank you all again for being so kind. :)

Saw this on Artist Beware today. Thanks a lot to Snobahr for pointing this out.

There's been a change in paypal user policy recently:

8. If you violate the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, then in addition to the above actions you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal's damages caused by your violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. You acknowledge and agree that $2,500.00 USD per violation of the Acceptable Use Policy is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal's actual damages considering all currently existing circumstances, including the relationship of the sum to the range of harm to PayPal that reasonably could be anticipated because, due to the nature of the violations of the Acceptable Use Policy, actual damages would be impractical or extremely difficult to calculate. PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing Balance in the offending Account or any other Account you control.

TLDR: If they catch you dodging paypal fees with the gift option when you're paying for services, there's a risk they will charge you $2500 USD per violation. This is a lot of money, but paypal can't be arsed or be sure how much you'd dodged. One thing is for sure- they really want people to stop doing it..!

I'm sure this is used for one big reason. One is that in recent years the IRS has REALLY been slamming the book down on online tax evasion. I know in recent years on Second Life, if you didn't declare your sim donations on your tax returns you'd lose your sims! and a lot of people opted to lose them.. because a LOT of people made tons of money that way, I promise you.

Therefore, using invoices is a really good idea. Thanks to all the people who have comissioned me recently who have allowed me to play around with invoices- and if anyone needs help figuring them out, A_B is often helpful in handling questions and I'm more than willing to help out.

Be safe ya'll.

Hi guys!

MY EYEBALLS:
So I appear to have scratched my left lens of my eye last night. This happens sometimes and it's a huge, painful bitch- I am a wizard (Identical twin? Born on the same day as the Weasley Twins? Same height as Hitler? Wizard.) and like my twin sister (and wizards), I sometimes fall asleep with my eyes half-open and that appears to cause some irritation for some weird reason! If you ever scratch your lens, take my advice and keep it closed and still for as long as you can- even if it means going back to sleep. It takes about a day to get totally healed.

The millions of tiny scars in my eyes aside, I am not expecting any of my commissions to be late but we will see. It's hard to draw with one good eye and I'd rather deliver a good quality piece a day late than a piece done with no depth perception, but that's all up to those people who need them. :)

--

FERAL ARTISTS:
I nee some suggestions of good feral artists- perhaps someone who could take colors and patterns from a very old character and make something new.

-Feral,
-Looking for a natural look (not comicbook or cutesy really.)
-Not looking to pay out the ass (I am not paying 100 dollars for a cat pic lol.), However I do my best to pay and treat other artists well.
- Would love to find an artist who i can do a fictional redesign and would be comfortable with full artistic freedom.

So, if you know of artists who are good with character development and natural looking ferals, please let me know! I'm down for commissions or trades so don't hesitate to name drop. :) I'd also like to just know of some great feral artists too regardless if they meet those criteria I listed.

Hey guys!
Just letting everyone know I finished my semester! I should have a lot of time to work on commissions and I already have some folks I'm getting ready to do some special things for. I am still recovering a little bit from the Finals Week crunch and I'm a little burnt out mentally from industrial engineering statistics logistics wargharbl, so I hope you will understand. There is a little bit of recovery time involved there for me in the form of naps but I dont expect that to take more than a day.

Another thing I want to mention is that I fully intend to handle paypal payments through invoices from now on. This used to not really be a big deal, but I am fully willing to deal with a tiny chunk of my comission revenue chipped off by that and I just feel like it will make things so much easier to deal with for everyone, on top of it just being the right thing to do from a legal standpoint. No worrying about that on your side or mine. I've never dealt with these before though so I hope you guys will be patient with me!

I have been doing a lot of drawing but I havent been posting as much as I've been making but I hope to go through and toss down anything that seems okay.

That's all. Hope you guys are having wonderful weeks. :)

So, a girl friend of mine on DA had a ton of her RL pictures (non-sexual) favorited by someone. Naturally when something like that happens you often pop on someone's profile and check out what they like, or if it's art you say thank you or whatever. Or you're just curious about who that person is. I often look around the profiles of people who fav my stuff because I'm curious what it is that they seem to like about it or what they're like.

She was then greeted by a picture of his dick, as it was his featured image.

It didn't really bother me much at first but the more I thought about it the more bothered I got. This guy apparently favorites a ton of pictures of totally unsexual RL pictures of women (one of the pictures of my friend was of her and her mom) I get the feeling this guy gets his kicks off watching his profile views increase thinking these girls hop onto his profile and see his dick.

It feels a lot like when someone texts you an unwanted dick pic.

At the same time, I don't think you could report that as inappropriate or something because some people consider dick pics as artistic nudes. He doesn't post anything else on his gallery. It's just like two pictures of his dick.

Do you think I am overreacting or do you think this warrants doing anything about that? I just feel like this guy is getting away with this gross behavior because its an art site? I don't know it's such a grey area. There's being okay with sexuality and artistic nudes and then there's stuff like this and I don't really know how to feel about it.

Hey guys, this is just to let people know I'm still here and alive, I ma just absolutely exhaustively busy with university right now.
I'm sure a lot of you are going through the same since it's getting around the end of spring semester for most unis!

I have been drawing a little bit but nothing completed- I have been running logistics warehouse simulations constantly the past few weeks and I barely have any time to do anything but my classwork unfortunately. :( It's both interesting and angering and a lot of work.

Hope you guys have been doing well. I got 11,000 pageviews recently and I'm very excited about that, so thank you all so much. <3

I have one or two longtime adopts I plan to find new owners for soon and I would really love to get some more trades on the way when I have some more time.
Hope I can get back to work soon and good luck to all of you approaching finals weeks. :)

Has anyone found that they get very little input on their Weasyl accounts?
Maybe It's because I don't use mine as often, but I don't know!
I'm just wondering what kind of input people usually see from Weasyl? If you seem to get decent pageviews or comments or favorites or anything comparative to your pageviews.


The thing is, I am wondering if it's mostly that the artists went there but not a lot of other furries moved there, so it's mostly just artists posting up art and not as many people viewing other peoples' art? I am thinking this because I know that Weasyl has a higher traffic ranking than SF, but I get substantially less feedback from people on Weasyl than from SF.

I could be completely wrong and if so I am just trying to figure out what the deal is kind of. Let me know what your experience has been? :)

I'm a little art blocked in that I have a crap-ton of great art ideas but no motivation or 'muses' to start or even think of what to do. Usually music or nice pictures helps. My brain is such a fog right now. Maybe i will try meditation for a bit.

Anyone wish to share some of their music/ art/ stories / anything that has inspired them in the past? I could really use the help and thanks for anyone who offers to try. :) You can link me youtube videos or anything you want that's inspiring you now or has before.

I have been steeping this thought for a bit, thinking up some new stories where I want to involve other peoples' characters. I've been thinking particularly about how people assign weaknesses to their characters. I don't want to go much further about my thoughts in that regard but I am genuinely curious of the answer from as many people as I can. How people pick them, what people consider weaknesses, and how in depth those weaknesses go for a character people are particularly fond of.

So tell me- what are three weaknesses that your main character has?

I would really love to hear them out. Feel free to explain them if you want! Even if you can't think of three.

..and call it a closed species.
Surely.

I could really use a few virtual hugs.

My work on SF keeps getting low-voted. I think I'm just going to stop posting there. Just sucks. I'd love to learn to improve but low-voting my work and getting no feedback doesn't help me at all. Not to mention it could just be some basement troll messing with my ratings.

I also had some random aquaintance from high school (IE, I havent seen them in 8+ years) just leave me a passive aggressive message like, "Hey I'm not evil so I don't ignore my friends. Just seeing how you're doing!" despite the fact that I havent seen him in 8 years.
I told him I don't ignore my 'friends' either.
He immediately turned it into a normal conversation asking me how my MAN was treating me? I fucking hate that- like if all you're going to do is try and see where my relationship status is, you're not trying to be my friend. I told him I was GREAT, ready to get MARRIED and leave the COUNTRY. After that he totally stopped talking. Fuck that. Ugh.

Hi everyone,

So I've been gone due to a number of reasons, good and bad. I didn't like where my art was going and I hadn't been very positive about the art community. Recently I have been updating my SF account instead. I have enjoyed the atmosphere between writers and artists and the ability to sort storyline in thanks to their character development tools. Other art sites have set up their sites to put writers and other art off to the side - but they are the people who often need artists, and artists often need them too. My music commission from  marluxia7912 was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever bought, but most people don’t ever look at the music category here because it’s not right in front of them.

When I see a character without a story, I find it hard to become a fan of that character too. It’s important to me that people develop more than appearance. I started to feel like everything was so porny and superficial. Characters should be more than just pretty anatomy. I think the problem is that the characters and storylines are pushed aside on art sites so much. Each category should get the same viewing potential.

Despite that I really enjoy SF, I really hate their easily abusable ratings system and the DDOS attacks take the site down like every two days now. I feel pretty bad for them about that and I’ll still continue to support SF and that may still be my stomping ground. I might switch accounts here (to  reska ), but I will see if I can start putting my art up more again. I hope I can enjoy it again and I hope you can too.

RAMBLING ASIDE, Thank you to my friends who came to talk to me about this and encouraged me to start drawing again. I never really could stop, but you took away a lot of my doubt. Those people are getting some art.

TLDR: I’m going to start uploading art again.

I just want to say that while I wouldn't leave FA, and I have been a fan of Zaush's work since I was 14 years old, the reaction by FA users towards a possible sexual assault as I've seen it has been absolutely depressing, disgusting, and infuriating to me. I've gone through the journals and most peoples' responses run along the lines of "I don't care! It's not my problem? AHAAHAH who gives a shit" Seriously, this is the kind of thing I see.

I've been in the fandom since I was 8 years old. Shit has happened to me that has caused me to stop going to cons and meetups, one of those being a fear of someone in the fandom who had done things to me. It makes me very uncomfortable, but what's worse is that people would react that way towards someone's misfortune, their possible manipulation and pain, and say they don't care about their sexual abuse. It's very likely they tried to pick themselves up and keep going, and perhaps they even enjoyed this site, and then that person starts working their way into their life again. Imagine how it would feel. Does it affect you? No, it doesn't. Does it warrent you telling people you don't give a shit that someone may have abused a girl? No, that's totally rude and tasteless and unecesary. You can definitely not care, but if you don't know anything about what happened, you don't have any right to mock someones' sexual abuse by acting like it's not a big deal and tell everyone it isn't.

I've said my part in it I guess.

Hi folks.

I have been super busy lately, as I am about 2700 miles from home in Vancouver BC Canada right now. I always fancied myself as a mountain girl and I've gotten to be with my SO, do some winter camping in the Canadian Rockies, and meet all the wonderful folks he works with in developing virtual worlds.

I also faced one of my biggest fears, which is that I was once mishandled by border patrol officers who acted very inappropriately towards me several years ago. I had to go through a secondary screening and I most likely will always have to do so because of how that one officer treated me, but luckily I got through it.
My advice if you ever have to speak to border officers is to be shamelessly honest, know how much money you are bringing with you in cash and cards, always have proof of a return flight, bring any papers you can to prove you plan to leave the country. They will also check your phone text messages. If I had not prepared all my information this way, they would have turned me down. I saw a woman from Poland sobbing because they turned her away that night I came in. I thought that was my fate too, but the officer I spoke to was very understanding and helped me out a lot, all because I spared no detail in explaining things.

I get back on January 6th, and while I will be starting school that week I am also planning on starting quite a few comissions that I've discussed with people. Thanks to all of you who have been interested and were willing to wait. :) If anyone else is interested feel free to note and I can give you an ETA.

I've also been playing Starbound a bit. I know  druuchi plays but if any of you other folks play, let me know!

You've probably seen me tossing out freebie art left and right, lately, and I've absolutely loved it. Art's the best stress relief for me. I've really enjoyed doing work for a lot of you guys and having you tell me you liked it.

The point of me doing so many freebies was to update my comission examples and test myself to see how long it would take me to complete work, something I previously felt very slow at. Now I've found I can get 3-5 small comissions done or 1 large comission done a day, which is awesome to me. :)

I've spoken to a couple friends and thought for awhile and I've come to the conclusion that I really have to stop doing this as much. I don't think I'll ever sell anything and feel like my art has any monetary value if I just keep giving it away. It makes me start to question my skills sometimes and whether people like it because it's good or because it's mediocre/ free. I don't entirely know.


So for now, I hope you guys who have been following my work and being vocal and talking to me will understand and still support me even without these. I'm going to focus on finishing up Reska's 7-8 other sisters and finding people who would like to take on their roles.

It's crazy, because I actually feel like it's going to drive me nuts to not work on things for people constantly- and that's a good thing.. but I got to, and thank you guys so much for helping me.

Edit: the winners of the raffle were  trixcision and  foxers :}
Thank you guys so much for volunteering yourselves to be test subjects in my work, and I really encourage you to check back and participate in more of them. :)

Random burst of inspiration- I want to draw a cool skoopy Ouija comission and I plan on putting my char/ my guy's char in, but I need two other couples.

This is gonna probably be a full colored comission for perspective practice. It may take me awhile to get it finished since it's midterms week- i dunno how crazy my schedule will be.

If you'd like to be a part of it, leave a comment with two character refs.
1. Characters have to be owned by two different users. One pairing per pair(? wtf) please.
2. Characters can be friends or love interests. (I dont want to exclude you singles out there.)
3. No super complex/tedious characters please.

That's it. Gimme links to your refs. I will pick people by appropriateness/ randomness.
Keep in mind that if you've gotten art from me before, I try to pick people who haven't gotten art yet. You're more than welcome to post though. After awhile I'll pick and let you know! :}

Thanks for your requests everyone. For now I have a pretty big list and I've already started sketching. List is closed now. It may take me awhile to respond- just know it's because I don't want to end up distracting myself. I will respond as soon as I finish some things. These may take me some time depending on how complex they get and I may not be able to get to everyone, but know that I really appreciate your time. :)

I thought I'd take a few free lineart pictures for folks. I need some good examples for comissiony stuff. I might not take as many as I did for the icons though I don't think they will take any longer unless I decide to color them for you. It's really hard for me to leave a good lineart uncolored. :)

So, I'll give you a little guidance on what you could request from me with these. Leave me an idea in this journal.

1. You can give me a ref of your character. If you have a pose idea (i really like to practice perspective) or a prop you want used, let me know. If not, tell me to use some artistic discretion.
You could also request a couple picture if you want, but just know that this might take me a bit longer and try and keep the poses simple.

2. Explain off a character idea you have and toss me some refs of animals or whatever else that you think would help me draw them. Maybe these could even work if you've ever wanted your own adoptable or something.

If you've asked me about requests or art trades lately. I haven't forgotten about you guys <3 don't worry. I just want to do a lineart or two that might help me get more comissions before I start doing them. Since I've felt bad lately, this will help me feel better. After this Im'a note-love you so hard.

Just wanted to give thanks again to those of you who requested icons from me and comissioned them. I think it definitely helped me improve on them.

Yesterday my ex got in my face pretty condescendingly because I'm a furry and I'm an introvert. The introvert thing does frustrate me often. I don't tell a lot of people that I'm a furry in RL. I do make friends/ enjoy making friends who are furry, it's been a part of my life since I was 8, people I consider brothers and sisters to me in the fandom that I grew up with, and the fandom helps me pay for school in a small way. If someone is close to me, I will eventually let them know. It's not the first time someone's used those two aspects of me as an insult, but it's just frustrating and makes me feel let down. So, I'm a little in the dumps and I can't motivate or get myself to pick up the pen and start working on things.

Luckily all my requests and comissions are completed for now. I will try to open up lineart or possibly animated icon requests this weekend if you guys would like that.

I think it's also going to make me feel a lot better to work on some more of Reska's sisters, and get in touch with some of the folks who have expressed interest in being one or people I feel might fit with some of them. We'll see. :]

But thanks to everyone who as of late has been leaving me comments and looking at my stuff and talking to me. That stuff is really reassuring to me and boosts my confidence and motivates me to keep working on stuff, which also is a great de-stresser. :)

I can tell that a person's YCH auctions were traced off of a youporn video. Right?

So, I've had a concept for awhile to make a group of other artists/ buyers together who are willing to come together to help artists who need a brutally honest opinion about what their prices should be. It's easy to get an estimate from a friend but friends are more likely to tell you what you want.

I rarely know an artist who hasn't started out wondering what they should really be charging from an outside perspective for what they make. I'm hoping that perhaps I can get a group of cool folks together who would be willing to honestly and fairly give price estimates for the work people do, and not get hurt when they might have to be a bit critical. Hopefully if we go through with it though, the final say would be reviewed, anonymous, and completely to that artist's discretion to follow.


I could see this being helpful because not only would it help artists improve, it could also help to prevent many artists from underestimating their talent, and when artists undercharge for really good work it can bring prices down for every other artist as well.

What do you guys think?