Community Check-In for April 2019

[goss]

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

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

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New Community Challenge

We will be kicking off a series of themed challenges centered around Creature/Character Design, starting on May 1st. Details will be posted tomorrow. :)

Comments

[yhlee]

I got an iPad Pro/Pencil 2 in April, after lots of saving and agonizing over which iPad to get! I am EXCITE. I am also, uh, trying to figure out how to adjust to digital after being mostly a watercolor/ink trad media person.

I am dying to make Star Trek: Discovery fanart of Emperor Georgiou but I literally have zero ideas other than "head and shoulders portrait," which is too boring to even bother with. Maybe Georgiou with a kitten? Georgiou making a face at ice cream? I'm too terrified to even start.

[goss]

I fully support any and all Georgiou art! \o/ (I still have to watch S2 Disco)

I am also, uh, trying to figure out how to adjust to digital after being mostly a watercolor/ink trad media person.

Good luck with your new media! I look forward to what you produce. :D

[mific]

I've had an iPad for a while, but have been too into trad art to do much with it. I should get one of those Pencils too, to really make it work. Empereror Georgiou FTW!

[yhlee]

I loooooove trad art, but what I love most right now is watercolors, and they are an unholy pain to set up and do things with when I'm out gaming or at a restaurant or whatever. What I really like about the iPad is that I can just pull it out and doodle and there's no water to spill, paints to dry, etc. I still love watercolor in situations where I can deal with the logistics, but it's so nice to have another option. The Pencil is amazing. My daughter used to try to draw on our old iPad with one of those styluses, but the pressure sensitivity makes all the different, and it's really responsive.

[mific]

Yeah, it sounds a lot better than, oh, my finger! Might make me learn how to use Procreate properly. :)

[dray]

Ooh, please say Mermay is loosely included! I love character design challenges.

I managed to get a nice inked piece done but haven't uploaded it anywhere yet. In May I'll largely be prepping for artslam, which runs June, July and August and has the broad-strokes challenge of "do something every day for the number of months you participate." Does drawesome affiliate?

[yhlee]

I had to Google Mermay but yes, I would be excited for that too!

[goss]

Yay! Great to know, since our first creature challenge will indeed coincide with MerMay. ;)

[goss]

Yup, our first creature challenge will definitely be coinciding with MerMay! :D :D

Does drawesome affiliate?

We're just over a year old, and haven't affiliated with any other comm on DW so far, but would be open to the possibility.

[mific]

Looking at the artslam comms, it seems more active on LJ, even though there's a mirror on DW. As it's a longer and mostly one-theme challenge across 3 months of the Northern Hemisphere summer, probably the best thing would be that if anyone's doing artslam, they tell us about it here at Drawesome at these monthly catch-up posts.

And yay for MerMay!

[dray]

Most of us post on the Discord channel and the DW has been a quieter mirror; I'm going to help armaina get the DW resource passed around this year in case people prefer posting in journal format, but rather than affiliate maybe we could snag your help in announcing sign-ups on May 15th? From May 15th to the 31st is our sign-up period so there's lots of time to get hype about the summer challenge. Hopefully if folks are wondering what to focus on, they can work with drawesome's prompts to get their draw-a-day on.

I'll see if Armaina has a post put together to share; I'm not sure if we've got an official ad or not!

[goss]

Sure! Happy to help get the word out about sign-ups. You can always make a post to the comm and tag it under resources: other challenges & comms. :)

[dray]

Awesome, thank you! That makes things super easy and is one less thing on your plate to do.

Appreciated!

[olivermoss]

I have a second water color done. It's for MerMay so I am not posting it anywhere yet. Some of my other watercolor stuff is not going good.

I have some work done on a second MerMay piece.

Last month I sketched Billy Porter in his Oscar Dress but forgot to post it in the round up:


My inking attempts haven't done great yet. Hopefully I will eventually get a finished piece from it.

Not much arting, outside outside of lots of swatching watercolors. I did a lot of photography tho.

[goss]

Nice, love the Billy Porter piece! :D

Cool that you're working on multiple pieces for MerMay, since our first creature challenge will align with that theme. :)

[olivermoss]

Thanks!

[mekare]

I love his eyes!

[olivermoss]

Thank you!

[mific]

Billy Porter! And go you with the photography!

[olivermoss]

Thank you!

I am literally just back from 7.5 miles of walking/hiking for photography. Time to hydrate and splat on the couch.

[minoanmiss]

Omg, MERMAY. I totally forgot.

I had a busy month what with poems and also getting an actual gainful employment type job, but/and illustrating poems for Drawesome was one of the highlights!

[mekare]

Congratulations on your new job!

[mific]

Yay for the job, and the poem illustrations were gorgeous!

[mekare]

April is over and I can’t believe it!

I did a lot of art during the Easter holidays, all of it Guardian except for my spacewap assignment.

I haven’t done comics in ages but it was a lot of fun! These were all done quickly and I had a great time.

silly Kunlun comic

More cuddling in bed because I still haven’t expressed enough feelings about those two.

my entry for the poetry challenge was the most involved piece I’ve done in a while.

Plum Blossoms where I experimented a little bit with Chinese style flowers.

Black Cloak Yunlan where I switched roles/costumes for a prompt.

my second ever nekomimi art . I didn’t really see the appeal of nekomimi before beyond: cats! ergo nice! But now that fic is being written and I’ve watched a fanvid I am on the nekomimi bandwagon!

Girlpower for Spaceswap (Supergirl)

[mific]

You've been busy! I'm still not into Guardian, but I especially like the nekomimi one, with the cats' ears! Lovely work on his face there. And the Girlpower art is so bright and happy!

[mekare]

Ha the nekomimi thing kind of sneaked up on me? I didn’t have an interest in it before at all. I’m glad you mention the face there specifically, I added layers to the point where I was worried I had overdone the shadows.

[dhampyresa]

I think I might be getting the hang of oil painting! It's so DIFFERENT from watercolours, wow. But also it is so much fun because I GET TO STAB THE PAINTING WITH MY BRUSH stab stab stabbity

[mific]

Stabbilty art, heh!
I used to do oils ages ago. I like the ability to blend evenly, but the fumes and mess were a hassle - I've always lived in the same space as where I'm doing art. And then watercolours are more portable too, so I switched to those.

[dhampyresa]

Yeah the fumes are the big downside of oil. Do you do watercolours on the go?

[mekare]

I’ve never worked with oils but that sounds fun.

[dhampyresa]

Mind you, I'm not claiming stabbing is doing oils right, but it' certainly doing oils fun.

[mific]

Bit of a slow month for me, with lots of RL work stuff I had to do. Also I have a couple of writing challenge deadlines hanging over me, which makes me feel guilty about doing art just for fun. Ridiculous, but there it is - the perils of procrastination!
So nothing else in April, other than the two works I did for the poetry challenge.
I have an idea for Mermay and the creature challenge, though, and am working on it!

[mekare]

A slow months happen. Oooh I’m excited for your idea for the creature challenge. <3