As of writing this, it’s my 34th’s birthday and I’m hanging out with friends to unwind about this rough month of family emergencies. The second month of the year is done, so it’s time to share all the new and old artwork I’ve been scratching up!
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For the brand new year, I’m stepping up to handle my anxious mindset and bolster better flow for my creativity.
Continue readingDespite the ups and downs over this year, I’ll recount the art I’ve done over 2025 and my pitch my plans for 2026!
Back in 2024, I purchased a new iPad Mini after months of not having one. Like with the previous ipad I lost back in November 2022, I wanted a portable means to draw digital and get in more practice. Funny enough, instead of using the iPad as my Procreate machine, I ended up using Pixquare more often for commissions and game dev art.
Like most internet artists, I don’t like drawing backgrounds; but for Blackmask’s development, there’s no choice but to figure it all out. So I’m doing what I can to figure out how to make my environments interesting to draw for myself.
Doing all this helped me drum up cool world-building ideas, that might save development time. A fun idea for the dog folk to have peephole windows in their doors to stick their heads out to greet people.
With my writing for Blackmask, I’m refining the art direction and themes of the various kingdoms in the world. I spend my time on an architecture grind, looking at buildings and histories to match themes I’m going for. I shoot to go beyond, “fantasy version of real life country.” Doing these is part of my daily “frog swallowing” to get myself to draw an environment sketch under a theme, starting with the Dog Kingdom.
Right now, I’m working with the theme of “Freedom Vs. Security” with a Dogs Vs Wolves thing that Cole, my raccoon protagonist, stumbles upon. With this “Walled Garden” sketch, I wanted to use the grated fence to subtly look like jail bars. It’s on the nose when I explain this but, it’s something to lean into.
Sirititus, the Dog society is this authoritarian kingdom under a leader with a simple world conquest motive. While my Rudwulf, wolf clan, tilts toward sword and sorcery barbarian warrior nomad stuff.
The wolves overall have been a struggle to give more to because, they started as typical nomadic raider hordes that my Cole has to fight or sneak around, and I wanted to give more motives to them.
The function of the dogs was first going to be wolves. With some wolves having a more “civilized” society that would be trying own control the territories of other wolves, similar to Romans conquering their surrounding societies.
The big thing between the dogs and wolves I’m pushing is how similar they are with separate “breeds” being a culture divide than specific breeding thing. In the big Blackmask lore, they’re the same to other animals, but dog societies arbitrarily separate wolf societies away for their own ulterior motives.
Through more brainstorming, I continued the theme of the dogs having a higher order they’re obedient to, so I started making sketches beginning to gesture toward a religion they’d have. After all “Dog” spelled backwards is “God” so dog paladins and clerics are a natural fit.
Much of this is in flux and I can’t worry about pondering every tiny societal detail to what’s basically enemy characters who patrol dungeons and fortresses Cole must infiltrate for his own goals. This shit’s ballooning enough, and I’m fighting to not dumpster it all.
This personal visual development grind also got me doing cat themed buildings along with the dogs. The ear shaped rooftops might be on the nose, but it’s a start.
Obviously, the cats have a rivalry with the dog kingdoms, with their own means of espionage and warfare. No matter high an army can build their walls, Cat Warriors will find a way to scale them.
The Lion Knights of Felira are the world-class fighting force of the mighty cat kingdom. Donning armor and maned helmets, they venture into far lands to enact the will of King Lionide IV in the inevitable journey to conquer the world for catkind.
The Lion Knights are a blended force, with the majority female lions, donning maned helmets to look cohesive.
The Lion Knights are a huge thing I want to explore, but there’s still much that’s still needs to be elaborated on. Big Cats and Small Cats can’t fit in a similar category like the canines, so I need to figure out what their motives can be.
Lions making a society makes logical sense as group hunters, but cats in general are more individualistic, so it’s a puzzle to dive deep into what they can do that hasn’t been done a million times. But I’ve done something unique with Foxes, so I can’t give up.
Another batch of Olivia drawings this time in a old school cheerleader outfit. I don’t want to distract myself, but she end up in many of my sketchbooks. Many times, Olivia pops up to cover my unwillingness to draw buildings.
Sketch to see if I still remember how to draw humans. I could stand to go back to do some figure drawings as I’m sure I’m falling into bad habits as a general artist.
My human designs aren’t as creative as my animal designs, yet I wonder if I could still try. I still ache to be a comic artist, but that dream is in the toilet. I can’t think of any ideas that do will for more human designs but it does well up in my head from time to time.
Nearing the end of summer but not the end of my sketching! I’m fiddling about with new coloring techniques and progress on pixel animation!
Cowardly Lion Warrior I scanned and colored from my sketchbooks. I’ve been tweaking my Copic Marker Digital Brushes to push into more trad-looking artwork. I still use modern convinces like, Clipping Layers and Lasso tools, but I’m pushing myself to hate drawing on the computer less as I go.
At 33 years of age, I’m still kicking it with drawing cool stuff. This is the rundown of what I’ve been drawing over the month.
Pushing through the doldrums of winter, I made a collection of pixel art, sketches, and drawings I’ve been making over the past month.
As I’m figuring out the last of my commissions, I’m thinking of ways to change up my art output. The chief catalyst is buying a new iPad to sketch in it everyday like my past sketchbooks. It’s been tough as I keep shifting my art attentions around pixel art, digital illustration and general sketching.
Continue readingAs the year wraps up, I thought I’d share some of the tools that I’ve been using often to work on my art and art-related projects! The software I use is the similar to what I’m rocking before, but it doesn’t hurt to drop some new stuff I’m trying out too!
This is a simple 6×9 spiral-bound date book that I use to track my schedule. The pages are set up by week, so it makes it easy for me to plan it out. It’s portable to carry anywhere in my bags.
Together with this calendar, I also use black or blue Pilot G-2 Gel pens for general writing. The color packs are a great start to buy as well. From my daily tasks to my regular maintenance tasks to my annual events, I use various colors to organize the types of tasks I do.
Nice and simple leaves of paper help me with little notes that I need to add. When I fill my notebooks, sometimes I want to add other notes if I don’t have enough space. If I don’t want to erase what I already wrote, so I can use post-it notes. Sticky notes are also fantastic bookmarks for novels and calendar books. If you get them in different colors, you can even organize them by subject.
As of writing this, I have a day job, so I’m always on the go and never at my home studio. I keep having ideas but little time to draw them. With my SketchWallet, I can hold a sketchbook, credit cards, and cash in one spot, so I don’t need to fish for them. When you first buy the wallet, it comes with its own sketchbook from the start. Luckily, it can hold any other 3.5-inch by x 5.5-inch sketchbook inside.
My trusted mechanical pencil that I never need to sharpen! I have other sizes, but 0.5 mm is my best-feeling pencil. All the pencils have great lead capacity, so you don’t need to refill them as much. The side clip is a switch that retracts the tip of the pencil to save your point from breaking or stabbing you in the leg. Not having a large enough eraser can be a dealbreaker for other artists if you erase all the time. The next time might suit your needs.
Using my pencil’s eraser is a pain in the butt because it rubs down too short or pushes down into the lead barrel. The Tombow Mono Eraser is an eraser pen where it stores one long eraser. It’s cleaner to hold in my pocket than a kneaded eraser, and not as big to erase on like a white plastic eraser.
This is a mesh bag I use to stash my Copic Markers. It’s got a good zipper, and it’s sturdy enough to carry inside a larger backpack or by itself.
I got an iPad for the Procreate App and the potential of having a digital art setup to practice on. I wrote a review about my initial impressions along my first instances in the Procreate App! It took some getting used to, but over the year I got used to my iPad. I purchased more brushes for Procreate and I got apps like Pixaki, VisRef, and LumaFusion.
This USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a fantastic partner to my iPad. I can move files around my computer, phone, and pad with ease! I worry that it gets hot enough to be a problem. Even though it has 256 GB of space, I don’t rely on it too much for storage.
I began trying out Kdenlive around June on a lark. I was sick of dealing with Adobe Premiere’s issues, and I wanted to find alternatives. It was rocky at first, but after watching tutorials, I improved my video editing. The fact that this app accepts MKV files is a massive time saver! No more Remuxing VODs and I keep a higher quality video!
This is my personal list of things I currently used over the year to stay productive. It’s not perfect, but if you want something to start, you can try out what I have here. I keep a larger archive of my personal recommended tools on my Supply Page! I update it enough to have info that you can look at for your own art needs.
Things have been picking up for February! I’ve been starting up the con season, doing commissions, and more art! If you want to keep up with my tasks in real time you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram! I’m also cultivating my new Ko-Fi page for tips, so stop by there as well!
Most of Early February was preparing for Northwest Indiana Comic-Con, the first con I’ve had in years due to the plague. It’s nice to resupply and get ready. I’ve been taking on extra hours at my day job to get more money to print and reprint missing things. Luckily, NWI Comic-Con was better than I worried about! My Cat Stickers are a smash hit, they sold even more than my comics!
My stickers have grown with my newest addition to my growing collection of stickers!
Thanks to StickerNinja, you can get a large 5×4 size of my Hipster Medusa stickers!
While there, I took one nice marker commission of a Tracksuit Mafia guy from the Hawkeye show and comics.
His comic-inspired colors were simple enough, though I was worried I’d run out of ink in my Copics.
My next cons are CODCon, and Schaumburg Library Con. All of these before my giant event at Anime Central in April! It’s going to be a big jump for me, and I have a bunch of rethinking of my convention approach to do.
I’ve been working on new digital commissions as well! This Family Portrait commission is another experimental one where I’m doing my hardest to try simple painting. I’ll say that I’m getting faster and cleaner at painting, since I’m not getting lost in the weeds with brushes. I also decided to stick with my stylization and not stress hard about an exact likeness.
This one is more of a likeness drawing, and I get kinda nervous when it comes to commissions where I draw likeness. But my client was satisfied with the sketches, so I’m no longer worried.
The Art experiment continues where I skip the inking process and go straight to colors. The coloring went faster overall because I began the flat coloring at a lower resolution and I didn’t use the lasso tool on my line art.
To break out of my comfort zone, I bothered to look up how the skin varies in temperature. Unfortunately, I got frustrated by the odd in between look of this painting, thinking I was making the face look clownish. I settled for a subtle red splotch in the middle to settle my mind. I’ll figure this out if I do studies in my own time.
This next part is the more tedious part, as I’m painting over my pencil art like a physical painting. Without formal painting training, I’m going off of tutorial videos. Many about basic edge control and blending.
I don’t like the rendering step in the process because it’s boring, and I have no idea how to make it interesting. The rendering is half the reason I don’t like painting. Despite that, I press forward!
I tackled another large commission for a friend. This one was for an icon, which is simple enough for me!
I’m getting used to sketching in the Artflow Phone App on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I draw all my icon sketches on 150 dpi 3 inch canvases because it emulates drawing on a Post-it Note.
She liked sketch number two on the top middle and wanted the Mohawk to be longer, so I obliged.
I ink and flat color in my trusty Clip Studio Paint program! It’s a common step where I use my Lasso and Hard Round Brushes to get down a drawing area. Once that tough part is done, I can plunk down the basic colors I need with a Clipping Mask!
There’s plenty of trial and error with figuring out my lighting. Other than that, I took enough breaks to get out of my own head and simplify what I wanted to do.
Add some detailing to show off the materials and I complete a great looking icon for silly Discord conversations!
If you want a commission yourself, you can check my prices on my commissions page!
Here’s some old art from a game jam Adam and I worked on 2018 about being a liar in an office space. I was messing around with silly designs for office workers. Adam converted my art to pixel art, as I didn’t know about making pixel art at that time.
Other Art I’ve been doing and uploaded to my Illustration and Sketchbook Galleries. A bunch of bird people just vibing. I don’t draw that many birds. There’s too much to draw out there.
Some dog guard sketches that I’m brainstorming for Blackmask. I’m still doing new writing for the game, as I’ve sent so much pixel art for Adam to program. Adam’s shooting for having a playable demo ready for summer, but I’ll keep you all informed.
Monkey Knight Sketches I’m also considering for Blackmask. I haven’t thought about monkeys that much before recently. But now I’m figuring out cool ways to work in Blackmask. Having a prehensile tail is a straight-forward, yet unique way to add some flair to a sword and board warrior.
And finally, some more miscellaneous sketches I drew of people I see around when I’m at work or anywhere else. It gets tough seeing people’s faces with their masks on, so I use my imaginations on many of them.
These posts get long in the tooth, so next time I’m going to make shorter blogs for easier, faster writing. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more of my daily tasks. I’ll be off to celebrate my 30th birthday!
Back in 2013. I took a Freelance Project for Dan Verssen Games that I only know as “Nephilim.” These are some sketches I did for that game.
I had some basic write-ups about the world, and I wanted to do a good job and have lots of detail in the character designs because that was the typical thing in tabletop game art.
That tabletop art informed my choice to put my characters more realistic compared to my general cartoon style.
This is the cleanest my pencil art has ever been, as I draw them on 8×11 printer paper. Looking back to this art compared to my current art, I feel like my pencil sketches have gotten looser because I ink my own artwork these days and I leave the cleanup for that instead.
My earliest art for when I realized that I needed to study animal anatomy more. The bear doesn’t look offensive, but it does look stiff and lifeless to me. I also never paid much attention to fur rendering. My fur rendering is still spotty, but not as spotty as back as.
It’s been several years, and I’ve never gotten word on if the game released or not. My client seemed to have liked the art enough, but I’m indifferent to it these days.
