I’m faking the cover image. I did not finish any illustration project this month… TvT
I know it’s a recent feeling but I think itkind of sips over to the whole month. I didn’t have a very nice time. It started off well, doing a very nice voice session for Zavi’s part in the animation film and just after that, met up with a fellow fur in town. I went to see Mad Max Fury Road and Furiosa back to back which was a very great experience! The first one is one of my favourite experiences I remember at the theatre and reliving it with some movie-loving people to talk of it after was exhilerating.
And while I did have a weekend to meet with my family and relax some, it would be the last time I really felt relaxation this month. Things are not going well in my living place, keep getting frustrated and feel alienated by flatmates kept adding constant pressure on me. I don’t feel much comfort or community here and would rather be somewhere entirely else, but since it’s my main space to work, that did a toll on my productivity. And two weeks ago, I had to pick up a notch, because deadlines were creeping in. I had two very big school works to get done until Saturday and thankfully, managed to work them all out in time, but the uncertainty if I succeeded with them is still nagging me, hopefully not for long. Yesterday was another big deadline. Next month, we’re having a fair at school, where we present our finished works and I have the opportunity to sell some of my merch. Of course, I too this as opportunity to make some more designs and order them so they hopefully arrive in time. This week ended off with a lot of uncertainty and I can’t help but just move on and see what comes from it.
Another thing was that I somehow thought myself, it would be the best time to make backups and completely refurbish my Mac and Smartphone. A weird bug had caused me to delete most my phone data and I couldn’t make a backup of most of it, so I lost pictures from a year as well as my financial infos since 2018, which was a real downer for me. I now completely switched back to windows but the whole thing is quite unstable feeling, literally had to remove malware from my drive just a few days after I backed up all my data on it…
But now I want to talk about a few things that actually cheered me up a bit.
At the end of last month’s reflection, I mentioned, I was doing two gifts. One of which was this one.
6 years ago, I found Majin Banzai’s art on deviantart, which deeply inspired me to develop my style in a more bold, rough and sharp way, very much like you see in this portrait. It was a new great wonder for me, looking at her art hurt me in a good way but I kinda lost track of her work the past years until I noticed her streaming on twitch (which I never check out normally) and I though, yeah, sit in there for one hour before I go to bed, why not?
For three hours, I was following her stream and watch her work and interact with the community, and it ignited that spark in me from so many years ago. I completely lost touch to artists that inspire me from a distance. You know like those great artists you watch youtube short documentaries about. I was only ever used to being inspired by my friends over on discord. Cheering each other on and looking at work in progress pieces that maybe only a handful other people see despite we live on different parts of the planet. I had this feeling I described before with the interactivity of Banzai’s stream. And I had this epiphany, that nothing matters more in art for me, than getting a small group together and draw. She told me, this gesture made her week when I shared it to her, sleep-drunk at 2 am and that’s all I could ever hope for.
It sometimes is dark, watching AI take over everything lately, making you feel worried about the future, worried if that one hobby you just started to turn into a career after a decade of practice is crumbling in its foundation. But moments like this make me forget all the worries, they make me feel connected and taste sweetness and be hopeful about the future. That no matter how desolate everything around you may seem, you still hold the power to make someone forget the desolation around them as well.
Awww just makes me all sentimental now TvT
Anyway, I wanted to show at least a couple of designs I finished this month:
It is the first time I got to make some keychain designs. And from the handful I own, I knew one thing I had to make sure was there should not be some single outreaching design elements that make me scared not to break something off. The design should be solid and stable, which I accomplished with adding some background elements to help with extremities. Also could experiment a bit with front and backview but nothing wild. Will def brainstorm some nice ideas sometime in the future. Really looking forward how they’ll turn out.
I did do some progress with the Con Book illu of Zavi and Tobias and it’ll take some time out of art fight this year sadly, but can’t change it. Everything is sort of seeping into the event for me, which is sad but expected. I just hope I can finish some attacks this year and make it a good one still.
I’m feeling exhausted right now and should get some rest.
I wish you all a very nice month of July!
Sincerely, Souvillaine