Another week of sketches I’ve been cooking up in my spare time to keep myself going during the daily grind.
Mastafran January Weekly Sketchbook Week 2
Category Archives: Sketches
Mastafran Weekly Sketchbook Debut
This week and the future, I’m starting a new task where I scan and show art that I’ve been working on for the past few days.
These are the daily sketches I post on my social accounts as fuzzy phone pictures. When I get the time, I scan them and edit the pictures for clarity or future coloring. Being honest with myself, these end up just being in my computer files and then abandoned as it’s hard to finish art when I hate the coloring process.
Continue readingOlivia the Dragon Knight
This is a short process article about how I draw my Dragon Knight Copic Marker illustration in five hours at Sablecon back in October 2023!
This a throwback to an older Copic Marker style that I rarely use but I can give you insight into the five hour process I spend drawing between sales and conversations with guests
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Simple Art Practice on the Go
To help people out with their New Year’s Resolutions of learning to draw, I thought I’d drop in my two cents on getting started or getting into it.
A concern I find is the lack of time to draw. When I’m always on the go and away from my drawing desk at my day job, having a small sketchbook helps me jot down ideas!
Continue reading2022: A Year In Review
After a packed year of conventions and art events, I’m reflecting on my 2022 year and planning my next one! I feel like I spent more time learning to write than learning to draw. I wrote more blog posts, more promotional stuff and more story things that I’ve been sticking with instead of burying it away in my files.
Despite my feelings that I didn’t get as much artwork as I wanted to be completed, looking back, I had a good run for my convention stuff, doing a convention almost every month and figure out myself as an artist and what I really want to do with my work.
Continue readingInto the Winter Grind
One month left in 2022! Time has flown fast for me! I’ve been trying to stuff as many of my art projects into the month as I can while keeping my sanity!
New Website
The first big thing I can say in November is that there’s now a new website for Blackmask and news of its development! This is a large task that’s been taking up my time. Even if I’m getting things down on this website, there’s still much to learn about self-promotion.
I will say to join the Blackmask Mailing List! It’s a direct way to get news of our progress without missing any of my posts due to algorithms. Now that the website is set up, it’ll be less confusing for anyone who’s been following my website and getting unrelated news.
Continue readingNovember Mini Sketchbook 2022
I made a new digital sketchbook up for sale on my Ko-Fo Page for November!
This is a 62-page collection of my daily sketches through the month of November.
Continue readingConventional Conclusions
This month has wrapped up my convention stuff, so I’m hoping to get more work on art for the rest of the year.
I’ve felt like my schedule has been out of control and my work output has suffered for it. Not only that, but I feel like I do clerical crap more than I draw and while it’s necessary, I hate doing it and I feel like it’s punishment for not doing art.
September & October Sketchbook 2022
I have a new sketchbook on my Ko-Fi Shop for September and October!
Likewise, I skipped a month as I didn’t draw enough in my mini sketchbook that month and I got self-conscious about it.
Now I have a 56-page PDF Collection of my raw scanned sketches! Enjoy!
Continue readingProcreate: The First 30 days
As of writing this at the beginning of March 2022, I purchased an iPad Pro for $799.99 USD, an Apple Pencil 2 for $129 USD, and a copy of Procreate for $10 USD. Here’s my review of the first 30 days of using the iPad and the App!
The last time I used any Apple product is when I had an iPod Touch. I dropped them for an Android phone when it became a pain in the butt to transfer my music files from ripped CDs that I had.
Continue readingMarch Meh-ness
The month of March has been mild. The most I can say is that I celebrated my birthday and trudged forward on small art projects.
As of the 3rd of March, I turned 30 years old, and I’m trying not to get crushed by the anxiety of aging. I covered it up by having dinner with my family and buying myself an iPad and Procreate! Now, I can draw on the go! I’m writing an article about my time with Procreate at a later date.
Conventions
On April 8th, I’ll be at the College of DuPage Convention answering questions and selling art! There, I’ll be selling the finally printed Pizza Man book! So if you’re in the Northern Illinois area, stop by and grab a copy with my stickers as well!
The week after, I’ll be at the Schaumburg Library Convention on April 16th.
More Events
I have a big thing planned in the summer later this year! I’m preparing some of my art for something I’ve never done, before. So, I’ll keep you in the know once everything is arranged!
Writing Blackmask
Most of my art time has been occupied with writing Blackmask as a story. My focus is split between re-editing existing ideas for the demo story and the big narrative of the entire game.
My personal hope for Blackmask’s main quest is that players can choose a level toplayin any order they want, Mega Man style. A connected Metroidvania-style world or an Open World is tougher to design without ballooning the scope even more.
My programmers and I check in on each other in our messages. We’re both doing our best to keep going during our bigger commitments. Adam’s tackling enemy AI next, as there’s not much left to do with Cole’s abilities for now.
Other News
I’ve been doing tiny website tasks to streamline my websites stuff. The Art Page now has all my art on it instead of having separate pages for each category of art I make. If it ends up making loading issues a pain, I change it back, but right now I want my archive front and center
There’s more blog articles in my back burner that I want to finish up, such as my tutorial series on making Incident at the Game Store. There are other articles that I want to write when I make the time.
I’m struggling to keep my focus on one specific art task. I keep dipping so much into different shit that I can’t choose an art direction for myself. My schedule is a loose cloud of “what is currently unfinished that I could finish now?” on my project list.
It doesn’t help that I keep falling into that trap of posting on my socials to say I’m alive on them. My game stuff is in my programmer’s hands. I’m messing about, sketching, and procrastinating on writing a game story. Am I busy or making up meaningless tasks for myself? I need to improve my personal project management skills.