Tag: Personal Posts

A Big Career Shakeup + Where to Find Me Online

I haven’t been as active online as I used to be and I wanted to discuss that with you all here.  This year started with medical challenges and a house move which set me back a good deal.  Alongside all of that life chaos came a lot of external change in the world at the same time.  Generative AI arrived en masse and it’s given artists like myself a lot to contend with.

In a short span, I’ve found the entirety of my art from DeviantART and ArtStation fed into generative AI databases without my consent.  I’ve seen cover art, card deck illustrations, and TTRPG resources created by AI instead of hiring artists.  It all adds up to my conclusion that even if generative AI becomes ethically sourced, my prospects as an artist have (and will) drastically shrink as time goes on.

I haven’t been as active because I have been reconsidering everything about my career and whether being an illustrator was viable anymore.  It’s been a time of mourning and, frankly, paralyzing depression, as social media platforms fall apart around me at the same time, the reach and communities I lovingly built for years crumble due to ownership changes and the embracing of unregulated tech.

Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom.  My husband and I have been blessed with the help of Patreon and my husband’s work that now allows me to be choosier about my jobs and that has led me to my current decision to pursue projects that only align with my personal tastes and to focus mainly on my own personal projects from here on out.  It’s taken years to gain this freedom and honestly that’s been overwhelming as well!

I’ve wanted to be a lot of things in my time. Illustrator, comic artist, concept artist, etc.  There have always been a million tempting paths.  With my own mortality hovering so much over my head lately, I want to dedicate the rest of my life to telling those stories that live inside me that only I can tell while I still have time to do so.  Now, it’s a matter of wrapping up old projects and forging ahead with the new!  I’m currently preparing for all that positive change, which I’ll talk more about later.

Where to Find Me on Social Media

With all the aforementioned chaos, I’ve left many social media platforms and art communities that plan to use my art for AI training without my consent or that have changed for the worse and I wanted to keep you all up to date about where to find me.

Find me now on:

  • BlueSky instead of Twitter/X – If you need an invite, let me know and I can most likely pass you a code when I get new ones each week!  You can still find all of my art brand accounts on Twitter for now, but as soon as BlueSky comes out of beta, I’ll be leaving Twitter permanently.
  • Instagram / Facebook – I’m still on Meta platforms for now, as it is one of my oldest communities, but their plan to train their own AI on user posts worries me. Currently, I’m hoping they will clarify their uses of my art more adequately or I may be looking for an alternative for these platforms as well or leaving them entirely for Discord, but that big decision’s a ways off yet since FB is still very core to my art biz.
  • Discord – This has become where I spend the most time lately!  I frequently hangout on my personal art server, which is open to all of my fans, with a special private section for Patreon Patrons.  If you aren’t already connected through Patreon where you can claim your Patreon server role, you can join as a regular member with this invite.

    I also curate a Video Game server and an Exalted RPG Artists server, so feel free to join up and hang out there as well!

Where to Find Me on Art Communities

I’ve also had to leave places like ArtStation and DeviantART, my main haunts for going on 20 years now, for other sites that are more staunchly against unethical AI.  This has been another blow losing the communities I felt a part of for years, but I’m hopeful we can all make new connections and rebuild in these new, more supportive spaces!

Cara.app – A replacement for ArtStation with a lot of amazing artists from the game and TTRPG industry there.

Inkblot – A replacement for DeviantART showcasing lots of different media, from art to comics and more.

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Have any of you found new interesting places to be online?  Tell me about it!  I’m currently looking for new places to be that are more supportive of artists with strong anti-AI stances.

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That was a LOT, but it feels good to all these thoughts out somewhere.  Thanks for sticking with me through all of my chaos lately.  The advantage of having to start over in new places is that I can celebrate my new work and rebuild myself more efficiently, which is proving to be exciting!  With my long-term projects wrapping up after the Goddess calendar, I am very keen to show you all what I’ve been plotting in the meanwhile.

Stay strong, arty friends!  See you folks around the interwebs.

♥ Ang

Our New Home (Finally!)

It’s been a long journey, but we finally made it to the new house!  Consider this the pre-tour, since right now all of our stuff is currently in a ‘thrown on the floor’ state.  We got very lucky finding this place since our first contract fell through, leading us to take a peek at this house instead, which was incorrectly listed, making it quite a lucky find!

We learned a little bit more about the place, which has had some custom renovations which made us fall in love with it.  In particular, the garage has been converted into a fully heated and insulated workshop where the previous owner used to make bullets.  Now, it’s the perfect studio space for me!  

It’s SO much space, enough to have a corner for my computer desk, a nook for traditional painting, another corner for model photography, and a dedicated shipping/fulfillment station to help with future crowdfunding endeavors.  We have literally combined about 2 and a half rooms worth of art junk into this one giant room!

The view from the studio! I love these shady trees in our front yard at the end of a quiet cul de sac.  All the sunlight and windows were the major reason I fell in love with this home in the first place!

The reading room, which will also double as the guest room!  I’ve been collecting art books for years and I’m ecstatic to finally have a space to fully enjoy them.  On the left, my mannequin is putting in work scaring people for Halloween.  She’s already made one set of delivery folks immediately walk out of the house and ask questions because she scared them hah!  Sorry, guys. Not an axe murderer with a wrapped-up torso. Just an artist with display things!

My other favorite place in the house is the sun room overlooking the pool, which almost became the studio, if not for the easier to clean tile floor of the workshop.  A part of the reason why we got such a good deal on this home was the fact the pool was a horrible mess we were going to have to have to fill in because it cost too much to repair and it absolutely tanked the home’s appraisal.  As you can see, however, by some fluke of fate and red tape at the real estate firm, it was actually repaired before we moved in, much to our shock and surprise!

Honestly, after the hell that’s been our past few years (from cancer to COVID to shoulder surgery and the unrelenting burnout of it all), we’re happy to see a little kindness from the universe!  We’re going to enjoy the rest of 2022 settling into this new place for the holidays as I work towards tentatively relaunching this Patreon in early 2023.

In the meanwhile, I’ll still be sharing smaller endeavors here in the blog, like the sketchbook posts and the fruits of my NaNoWriMo story in November.  I’ll have some compilation posts soon!

PHEW!  Thanks to everyone who has chosen to stick around my Patreon to support me, even if I don’t have a lot of new material to share lately.  It’s done me good to take an extended break and I look forward to returning fully to my ongoing projects next year with renewed vigor!

Cheers!

♥️ Ang

Jan 2021 Digest – COVID Diagnosis

I’m afraid I won’t have much to share from January, as this month began with massive anxiety during the riot in the Capitol and has ended with my husband, Kevin, in the hospital with COVID and pneumonia.  It’s a trying time for us and I’m not sure how much work I’ll be able to do while I focus on Kevin and keeping myself healthy.

The bright side is that while Kev is currently hospitalized as of this writing, his prognosis is good and he will hopefully be able to come home in a few days once he is able to strengthen his lungs and come off oxygen.  Meanwhile, I have tested negative, but will be sequestering at home just in case I was exposed after my test samples were taken.  We made sure to don masks here at home as soon as Kev started feeling ill, which I think helped a lot!

We’re unsure of where he picked it up, as he had only been going out for medications and work and had been wearing a mask whenever possible.  We had also opted to cancel cons for the remainder of this year as well.  This is a prime example that it should not just be one person who wears the mask, but the people around them as well.

I hope I have some better news to share soon and that Kev will be able to be happy and safe at home again soon!

Coming in February

It may be a thin month for new art while we stabilize our situation, but here are a few things that I still want to happen in February:

  • A new angel-themed coloring page for my Patreon Digital Library.
  • The price of my lowest tier will be going up to $2 to offset the fees that are eating into what I take home as a Creator. REMEMBER that if you are currently pledged at $1, you can stay at this tier! You will only be required to pledge $2 if you leave this tier and need to re-pledge.
  • A Special Offer is coming for the month of February! I’ve already laid the groundwork for offering a reprint of my Lady of Eternity hard enamel pin for everyone who missed out on her. Stay tuned for a post with more details on how to snag a free pin if you’re pledging $10 or more!
  • Finish up the Exalted Art Challenge!  I’ve been delayed on this because of everything going on, but if I can concentrate enough, I want to wrap up the final topic by the middle of February.  The birthstone Goddesses await my return!  I may end up shelving the last bit of the Challenge for another time if I can’t wrap it up by the middle of February.

Digest of January’s Posts

Rewards Added in January

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Please keep us in your thoughts!  I hope to return in February with more positive news and inspiring things to share.

♥ Ang

July 2020 Wrap-Up – Big Milestone, Big Burnout

Cross-posted from my Patreon blog

July has ended and it’s been a strange mix of some great milestones here, but also an acknowledgement of my continued struggle with burnout.

To start off, Kev and I packed up the FINAL Kickstarter order after a year and change of consecutive Kickstarter campaigns dedicated to the Birthstone Goddesses enamel pins!

It’s been amazing to see how fans, new and old, have turned out to support this pin series’ creation.  The pins are complete and I am so happy with them!  That’s one big project milestone for the Birthstone Goddesses complete:

(The entire series is now available in my shop!)

Now, we can sit back and get some much needed rest!  This year-long journey has shown me what my limits are as a one-person business and that I just can’t do this all by myself without sacrificing my well-being.  It shows me I can only do two Kickstarters a year at most, and that it’s super important for my creative wells to not sacrifice so much of my time painting to business upkeep, promotion, and project management.

It showed me I was very bad at taking time off as well!  It just wasn’t possible. The last few months I kept trying to take time off, but there was always something in Backerkit that needed setting up, ads to design, proofs to approved, and Kickstarter things to promote before the next deadline.  

So now for vacation take three (or four?), I’m losing count!  Now that there are no more Kickstarter things until next year, I’m taking some ACTUAL true and proper time off!  Reading this article on artists defining and struggling with their burnout really made me pause and think about some specific strategies for myself to set better resting habits!

Our creativity is a muscle that can be strained and it’s a skill they don’t teach in school.  I’m giving myself permission to have fun in August, do non-art crafty projects, and play all the video games!  And THIS TIME I will not have to worry about unavoidable Kickstarter deadlines encroaching on that all-important rest time.

Coming in August

I’ll still be sharing a new coloring page and new art.  I’ll be meandering with fun art, like Anko’s 6 Outfits Challenge, finishing more portraits for my charity drive, and sharing more creative journey posts here, for a little while.  The Birthstone Goddesses are entering their final phase for me and there’s a lot I want to tell you all about where we’re going from here, once I’ve rested a bit!

Digest of July’s Posts

New Rewards Added in July

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I hope you all won’t mind seeing my continued art diversions here for a little while longer!  The Birthstone Goddesses will return momentarily, but as I’ve been going full steam ahead on them for 6 years (wow!), it’s important that I let it rest for a little while to finish off the final phase with a bang!  I’m planning some very different illustrations to be included in the art book and I am SO excited to get into something that’s less Mucha and more ME.

More soon!

 ♥ Ang

June 2020 Wrap-Up – This Month Was the Longest Year

Hey, all!  June has been extremely challenging and I don’t even know where to begin.  There are so many difficult topics to cover here.

To start, I’ve had a bit of fallout this month from posting the portrait of Kev and myself in support of Black Lives Matter.  Having to describe to people, especially close acquaintances, how this is not a terrorist movement, how ‘all lives matter’ is a dismissive statement, etc. has been exhausting (and only a fraction of what my husband has to deal with 24-7, every day of his life).  But honestly, this discourse has been long overdue.  I’m going to keep explaining and going to keep working on the charity portraits because it is important we keep speaking up and discussing difficult topics!  It’s a discussion that needs to be ongoing and ever-present beyond the hashtag trend.

Speaking of difficult topics, I also have to discuss the fallout of Noah Bradley and Sam Flegal, both who have admitted to sexual misconduct publicly this month.  As someone who helped promote Noah’s resources and classes, as well as someone who was heavily involved for years with One Fantastic Week where Sam participated as a co-host, I have been shaken to my core.  I’ve lost two major communities for networking and sharing professional practices with other artists in the span of a couple of weeks, which is nothing next to the pain of the victims that have been coming forward risking their careers and friendships to speak out.

I hope that anyone who ever saw my recommendations to these communities here was never hurt by any of their actions.  I don’t know what will become of these communities that were such major touchstones for many of my fellow artists and myself, but I do know the wildfire spread of people finally being brave enough to speak up is ultimately going to make us stronger and the community safer.

I also want to do my part here to help others, to provide alternatives for those who need them right now, which is why I’ve re-invigorated my side project, The Muse’s Library, so that I can return to more actively providing art biz advice, stock art, etc.  We desperately need more variety in the voices putting out this material for aspiring artists and I want to contribute to that.  This may mean a shake-up to this Patreon, as I  may endeavor to share more advice articles, as you have seen me do in regards to my Kickstarter etc.  I’m currently pondering how best I can bring that presence here or if it clashes too much with my Birthstone Goddesses endeavors. (If you have thoughts on this, let me know!)

This month has been disappointing and enlightening, for better or for worse.  I don’t know what’s coming next this year, but all we can do is brace, encourage one another, and face that uncertain future together!

Coming Next Month:

I HOPE that after I finish shipping all the packages for the final pins Kickstarter that I can get back to creating!  Now that the coloring page poll has been answered, I’ll continue bringing out new coloring page releases as well.  I hope to share my mini art side trip exploring Anko’s 6 Outfits Challenge also!

Digest of June’s Posts

Rewards Added in June