ArkillianDragon

IT's been a while since my last journal / art post, but I'm still around Again, I've been very busy on stuff! 

The comic that I was talking about in my April journal is still happening, and I'm working on a lot of concept stuff in between everything else, but it's not goign to be ready for convention season in a few weeks time. It's OK thoguh, cause I'm finally finishing off a Captain America comic I started 3 or 4 years ago after Winter Soldier came out!

The comic is pretty small at 5 pages long, but it's been a HUGE boost to my self confidence, because a lot of problems I had with doing the comic on Silvyr was stamina, and my body having a fear of making a comic and hurting its self again. Working on a short run comic that is only 5 pages long was the perfect length for me to publish something that is actually current, and I can be proud of! So... it's been really rewarding working on this! I hope it sells well too- I'm really due for an ego boost, even if it's off fanart XD

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Speaking of self confidence and ego boosting, I've also cut out sugar from my diet just recently as it was a direct cause of depression for me, and although I'm not cutting sugar out completely since that is near impossible to do, it's made a HUGE difference to how happy I am on average Socially, it sucks ass, but my friends are getting use to not offering me sweet things and using other food alternatives cause they know how much of a difference it makes to me- which I REALLY appreciate. I think when I eventually have the resources to move out of home, I'd like to go totally sugar free, and see if that fixes all my issues. In the mean time, I'm trying Self help books. The one I'm currently working through is The JOLT challenge, a book recommended to me by a friend, and it helped her. She also recommended me "The Mindfull compassion book"- a book on not self hating, cause I'm holding myself back a LOT with self hate. Something I only started noticing I had gotten into a habit of after I quit sugar. I was stable mood wise, but I still punched myself down constantly. I think I've been like this my whole life- specially since my health started to crumble around me.

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In other news, the last month has had a big turn in my life, where I've been investigating adopting my first cat! After years of wanting one, I got permission to get one, and I'm now waiting for the kitten to be old enough to adopt- probably in early December. They're a week and a few days old right now, and and small and squeaky. I'm hoping that getting a cat will help me with my anxieties, and self confidence, and I know that my mother has mourned our last cat for over 10 years. Adopting a cat was a very important decision for me, and I did a lot of research on breeds that were suitable for my life style, making sure that breed had no genetic health issues caused by forced breeding, and finding a breeder that raised their cats ethically and with love, and found a lovely breeder who is passionate about Ragdolls- a breed I super love, and is happy to give me all the information and support I need with adopting



My kitten will be one of these little babies in the photo (pictured with their mother, Celeste), and I'm very excited to meet the kittens after convention season Till then, there's the waiting game, but that's ok. I have a new friend to look forward to <3

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So life has been pretty busy for me! IF you've read this far, please comment on how you've been doing. Perhaps share the projects you're working on right now I'd love to see what people are up to <3

Hey guys! How you all doing? I've been super quiet lately cause I've been very busy, and intimidated by my 15K backlog of notifications to get through  and putting it off for future Killy's problem. I... kinda need to deal with it XD I know that most of it is deviations to look at so... I really hope I don't resort to mass deleting but I may need to T.T 

Anyways, I've been really busy! Since my last journal in early February talking about how I was getting into water colours, I've been doing a lot more water colour art that I haven't posted cause well... I'm learning, and a lot of the pieces aren't going to turn out how I want it to, and that's ok. Just know that I am still having a lot of fun with my colours. I ended up buying an olive green water colour to help with my skin tones, cause I wasn't able to make a good olive skin tone to colour Silvyr with. I'm not able to get a WAY better match- I just haven't scanned anything with the results IT's really bugged me that I'm still VERY bad at skin tones in general, so I think I'm going to make it my next priority, and I'm not sure how I'm going to do it cause skin tones are so affected by local colours versus light I have a few people giving me tips though, so hopefully I can figure it out It's just... very vulnerable being new at things as you can imagine ^^

Since my last journal, I've been rehabilitating a rolled ankle back to health. I injured my ankle late November, and my ankle swelled up like a tennis ball. since then, most of the swelling has gone down, but not gone, so I went for a second opinion at the physio, and found out my arch was gone in my right foot, and my ankle was rolled. Since late February, til now, I've been doing physio work and stretches and heat to strengthen my whole ankle cause it was super weak, and 2 months later, it's strong again, so I'm hoping I can go back to the gym again, even though the puffiness is still there. I'm hoping it doesn't come back, but it seems to flare up if I sit down for too long >.>

Lastly, I'm working on my first comic in ages! Like... to sell! I don't know if it's apparent, but I've been having a LOT of fun with playing my new Dungeons and Dragons character, Silvyr Rose He's the rainbow haired half elf in my recent art and Dungeons and Dragons folder I'm going to do a comic about his journey in the game, or atleast some of it. I just need to translate a role playing game to comic reading structure, and change all of the copyright content so I'm not stealing from the campaign... which is going to be tricky. It's actually easier to start from scratch, but I can't get Silvyr's character to work in a unique storyline without a HUGE amount of world building and reworking of his character T.T It's going to be fun though Stay tuned for art from that

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Anyways- That's all for now! Tell me how you're all doing! I haven't chatted here on DA for ages Who's still lurking around and chatting? Is 2018 treating you well?

So I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I recently in the last month got into water colour. My friend slugette recommended a paper that doesn't fight me when I use it and suddenly, water colour art has become fun, and enjoyable I honestly thoguth till now that I was just rubbish at the medium and there wasn't any hope for me

So, right now I have 3 successful pictures to my name
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I'm treating the water colour a bit like copics for now till I get use to using them, but I'm super proud of myself for how these are turning out TuT

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In saying this, I need to do some studies on skin colour cause MAN, that is kicking my ass big time My pale skin tones are fine, but the Rainbow haired guy (Silvyr) is meant to have olive skin, like this:- 

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and Nakota (long haired guy) is meant to be Shoanti, which is Pathfinder's "American Indian" race. So... he'll have brown skin, but I don't think I'm shading it right  

So, I'm going to do some studies of skin tones. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but it's really highlighted the problem when I don't have swatches to work from like I do in digital art I need to be able to see the colours, and how to mix it. I may need to buy a few colours for my water colour set to do it too cause my blues are pretty powerful. 

If people have recommendations for how to do this, I'd love to hear it  

I've been super quiet here, cause I've been processing the months since my last journal. I went straight into convention season where I had my second Overload since getting back into conventions, and only cried through half of it before getting the courage to ask people why they weren't buying my art. Finding out it was all stuff I could improve made a huge difference to my emotional health- I think I might get through the next convention without crying I then had Armageddon the month later, then Christmas rush happened shortly after, then I went to Hawaii for a holiday and got back 2 days ago... SO BUSY

So the big thing I found out a month ago was that I am super sensitive to sugar. I had a big Thanks giving dinner with my friends, and two days later went to the gym and MAJORLY hurt my right ankle. IT swelled up to the size of a tennis ball, and hurt like hell. 2 days later, I got my legs waxed for the first time. Totally a comfortable experience for me, till the next day where my legs broke out into a horrific rash, blistering raw, skin cracking, inflamed.... I was in tears trying not to scratch them and no moisturizer worked. I was at my wits end, and in a dark place emotionally from it. Then I found out that it was all caused by sugar, and just how much sugar was causing issues in my life. My body is sensitive to sugar addiction, I get sugar spikes like crazy, and it's my PRIMARY SOURCE of depression. For all of December, I axed all sugar, and it was HORRIBLE that first week. I was crying and hating myself and it sucked big time, but after the sugar cravings were gone, I had bliss. That was the first time I had literally no depression in my life, and I was radiating happy... till I went to Hawaii and was surrounded by fruit, wine, and gourmet deserts so I'm back to square 1 but I KNOW HOW TO FIX IT NOW.

OK, so basically, now that I know what is causing my depression, and how to fight it, it's solved a big problem that I'm having with art and that's self confidence. I'm no longer hating myself and my art as long as I'm sugar free, so now I can plan on how to improve my art better. I have a list of things that I want to improve this year, based on my feed back at Overload from potential customers that I missed out on (and rightfully so):-

Colour pallet variation- The strongest complaint about my art wasn't anything more than the colours of the pictures didn't appeal to them, and I totally get that. Before I learnt colour, I was mostly a washed out / grey scale artist, and getting into colour has had me over compensating with too much colour. I need to learn to vary my pallets more, so I'm going to do some pallet studies. To be honest, I feel like it's the next step on me learning colour anyways, now that I feel that I've gotten use to using colour at all finally. Still not ready for fundamentals, but I think I'm ready to do studies finally, so that's a priority for this year

Bring back the emotion to my art- This was an unspoken thing, but my art hasn't excited people since I stopped drawing Green Lantern. I don't know what stopped me being emotional with my art's story, but it's dead inside, and I don't finish a lot of my art because of it. I applied for a Voltron zine, and didn't get in. When I asked what I can do to fix it, they said that my art was technically great, but I didn't have much fully realised art. My art was all WIP, or half assed pics (not their words- I'm interpreting what they said, which was super polite and nice which I appreciated cause I was very vulnerable at the time), because I was depressed, in a large fandom where I felt that no one cared, and I forgot that it doesn't matter what others think as long as I have heart. I want to do that this year- work on getting the heart and excitement back into my art. Hopefully it'll be a natural process after I'm free of sugar again

Make a comic to sell- This one is the hardest, and least important for me to achieve, but if I can, I want to achieve it. I keep telling myself that I'm a better artist than I was back when I was publishing comics where I wreaked my health finishing them and I am, but I only have sketch comics to prove it. I need to get out of the past, make a comic of any length than I can sell, and get myself emotionally back into the game. I don't know how people want me to post comics here as DA isn't great for comics, but that's something I want to do Make comics, to build myself up to making a comic to sell for Overload this year. I super miss making comics, and I think I've had enough time to heal to get back into the game

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Is anyone else making art goals for 2018? Do you have other goals I should consider? Do you want to give encouragement? Comment below- I'd love to hear for you all TuT I miss being active on line, and hope to get back into being an active poster again with fresh art that people want to see again

I've been pretty quiet this year, and a big part of it was New Zealand having a bad winter. I think I had a couple of weeks this winter where I didn't have a horrible cold. It's been really brutal. I have been posting art that I can post here, so I haven't been inactive, but I have been drained of energy. We're coming out of winter now though so hopefully that will change!

So, next month I'm going to do the Inktober challenge for the first time, and I also hope to get myself into a habit of drawing more cause I notice that art is REALLY difficult right now cause I'm on so many social medias. I need to pull back a bit, and do a bit of art every night again  

This weekend is Overload, and I'll be selling along side slugette , Atarial , The-Nai , and Nadea, which is going to be a lot fun. I hope I can get past my fears of selling at conventions so next year I can come back in full force <3

I'm going to try to do more water colours in November onwards too cause I REALLY want to learn that medium. IF anyone can give advice, I'd love to hear it!

Anyways, just an update journal so people know I'm still around and doing stuff You guys are probably seeing a lot of Voltron stuff and yeah- I'm on a few Voltron Discords so that has been keeping me busy XD 

If you want to see more Voltron stuff that I can't post here, I have a dedicated Tumblr for Voltron art now spacekilly.tumblr.com/ . Come follow me and say hi! I'll be opening requests soon  

That's all for now! Comment on how you're doing, cause I haven't been able to catch up with people effectively- I miss you all