Admin Post: Community Check-In for May 2023

[goss]

Today's the last day of May, and we'd love to have you check in and chat with us. How have things been with you this past month?

Did you sign up for or take part in any fandom activities in May, or have you been working on any personal art projects? Are you currently trying to meet a deadline? Feel free to share upcoming art challenges that have got you excited, any frustrations you've been experiencing, possible goals for the next month, and so on.

Reminder: A Round-Up for the MerMay 2023 Challenge will be posted tonight, and a new monthly challenge will be issued later this week. :)

Comments

[eller]

This past month, a lot of my art has been papercutting work. I created a Swan Lake fanart, a North Sea Landscape, a horse, and a music postcard.

But I also painted some watercolor flowers, like this aquilegia or these tulips and magnolia and daffodil.

And because I like cave art, and the person on Postcrossing whose address I drew also likes cave art, I produced some faux cave art as well.

Also, yhlee bound a wonderful sketchbook for me (YAY!), and I already made some sketches in it.

May was an artistically productive month!

[mific]

Wow, go you! I love the paper cuts especially!

[goss]

Your paper cut artworks came out so well! I'm doing Stone Age art history with my class right now, and your faux cave art is spot on! *g*

[facethestrange]

All of these are so beautiful, I love the cave art and the sketchbook sketches and all the paper art! My number one favorite is the North Sea landscape. ♡♡♡

[apachefirecat]

I didn't take any pictures of it unfortunately, but I actually picked up a paintbrush for the first time since I was a little kid. Painted a gift for my boss who was leaving (and never got a picture of said gift), and started on painting a plain white cat statue I've had for AGES. Almost got it finished, too, before reality started being a bitch again.

[mific]

A good start - what colour (fur) is the cat statue?

[apachefirecat]

She's going to be a black cat, made to resemble a statue that the present's recipient had broken YEARS ago. I just can't decide yet on the eye color. :/

[goss]

Congrats on getting back into painting! \o/

[apachefirecat]

Thank you!

[facethestrange]

Yay for painting again, I hope it's been fun! :D

[apachefirecat]

It has -- and very, very calming. I definitely hope to do more in the near future. :)

[jvcksinn]

Things have been productive this month! Fully scripted + roughed a webcomic (will be somewhere between 75-100 pages when all is said and done), penciled 15 pages, inked + lettered 11 of them. Going to try to get another page or two finished tonight, and will be launching it next week (which I'm very nervous about ngl lol).

[mific]

OMG you've been so busy and productive!

[goss]

Impressive! Congrats on getting so much accomplished with your webcomic this month. :D

[facethestrange]

Wow, that is so much work, GO YOU! :D Good luck with launching your webcomic! ♡

[mific]

The shoaling mermaids were my only fanart. Took a bunch of photos on walks in nice autumn weather here, which I'll post shortly to my journal, and finally made a commemorative tile at a local ceramic decorating place for Possum, my last and best cat. Here's Possum, a gold-grey tabby, and Bessie, my first cat:



And here's the rest of the rogue's gallery. The pics are a bit wonky as it's nighttime, and they're situated where it's hard to photo them straight on.

[goss]

Aww, Possum's tile came out really lovely! And it's such a wonderful way to commemorate them. <333

[facethestrange]

Aww. Your cats are all beautiful, and I love the idea of painting on tiles. ♡

[goss]

A busy month IRL! I took on multiple home and work projects for May month, including making Mother's Day cards for a fundraiser, as well as a Mehendi "booth". So even though I've been doing Art-adjacent things all month, I only ended up having mental space to work on my own personal art when I was able to mark all that other stuff of my To Do list this week.

I was lacking direction for MerMay until I luckily happened upon some wonderful reference photos yesterday. I really enjoyed doing this sketch, as it was more of a study, and didn't really require much imaginative work on my part. *g*

[facethestrange]

Ooooh, that's so cool that you can do Mehendi! ♡

[goss]

I can do a little of it, but I mainly oversaw the fundraiser, with the more experienced mehendi artists doing the drawing. :)

[mekare]

So many creative things happened!

[goss]

Hoping I get to focus a little more on my own art this month. :)

[mekare]

Where has May gone? I‘ve joined a challenge (art will be posted next month) in the DMBJ fandom and was inspired by an animal tranformation plotbunny which led to two art pieces with my very first small dog in watercolour (I've previously done only one canine:a half-wolf from Due South fandom)

A Kun and dog! Wu Xie

the same concept in the woods and in colour

And this week is Pingpang week in DMBJ fandom, so I did an entry for that as well:

My Hero (Zhang Qiling being kissed on a motorcycle).

This one was a challenge because I tried to render leather textures in watercolour for the first time.
Basically I‘ve been too busy for Mermay :-( I might work on an entry this weekend)

[facethestrange]

The tiny doggo is the CUTEST and has the fluffiest fur - I love how detailed it is! ♡ And the leather looks great!

[mekare]

Thank you <3

[facethestrange]

I possibly drew more completed pieces of fanart this May than I've ever done in a single month before? Like, some other months in the past would be pretty close, but I still think it's the biggest. :D Except so many of them are still hidden/anonymous because they're for exchanges. But one already got revealed (Discworld - Polly & Jackrum), and three were for sunflower_auction and not for exchanges (AtS - Lorne, BtVS - Dawn & Spike, Stranger Things - Robin & Steve), so I can share these. :D

[mekare]

Wow, go you!

[goss]

Congrats on getting so much fanart done this past month! :D