Category: Blog Posts

Personal Update: Birthday Contemplation, Death of the Art Career?

I celebrated my 43rd birthday this past Nov 7th! Another jog around the sun has made me more contemplative than ever.

To be quite honest, it’s been a rough year for my husband and I. Things have been extra stressful ever since my husband was laid off in February of this year. We thought surely he’d pick up work within a few of months, but the extreme layoffs in upper level tech have meant crickets for job opportunities.

This reality has made the future of my art career an uncertain one. We simply cannot survive off of my income and savings alone, with the art industry looking as bleak as ever for so many reasons (AI art, inflation, layoffs, the list goes on). I’ve returned to accepting freelance work and am trying to return to working conventions, but I’ve also met crickets so far and shows take the risky investment of table fees, not to mention the health risks that made me quit cons in the first place.

The long of the short of it is that if by the end of this year, if our situation doesn’t change, I’ll be re-assessing this career path (after 10+ years of working at it) and likely pivoting into a different industry altogether.

This place may become even more quiet as my pace slows down to accomodate my schedule as I study to earn my A+ cert and move into more consistent helpdesk work that I can do remotely since we share one car.

January 2025 will be the deadline for me to decide what to do as we near the annivesary of a whole year of unemployment for my husband. If anyone is looking for Technical Account Managers or Sys Admins, drop me a DM!

We have a couple of months before that dreaded deadline…so let us hope against hope that things start looking up!

A Little Bit of Happiness 

Thankfully this post isn’t all doom and gloom. On my birthday, I was so blessed that even with all this extreme stress, my family went the extra mile to help me feel special with a ramen lunch at a new place that just opened up nearby, cookies and cream mousse cake, an art book, and a video game I had been looking forward to for years (Dragon Age Veilguard!).

Even with all of this going on, I’m so lucky and loved! Where there is ramen, there is always room for happiness.

(I made my old Shadowrun character, Aurora, into a sarcastic Elf who loves to smash things. It’s been therapuetic to play her right now.)

As hopeless as the post no doubt sounds, I’m never going to stop making art. There are too many stories I want to tell and cool characters I want to draw! Hopefully, I can keep on sharing that journey with you all, even at a glacial pace.

No matter what happens in this next year of life, I want to thank everyone, old and new, who has stuck with me here or moved through my life at various times to give me hope and succor. The little bits of support have meant the world!

Much love, friends. Stay inspired and keep up hope! There are still good things and people in this world.

<3 Ang

Project Status: CASSIEL’S SERVANT Art To-Do List

I wanted to check-in as I’ve been silent for a little while thanks to a busy, busy month. I’ve been off toiling away on the Exalted Art Challenge, launching my 2025 Birthstone Goddesses Calendars, and finishing up my readthrough of CASSIEL’S SERVANT so I can finally approach the much-anticipated task of creating my own cover for it!

Art To-Do List

The ultimate goal for my Patreon’s focus right now is to draw cool art for books I love, while also making cool stuff for my Illustration portfolio. With that in mind, here’s what I’m hoping to achieve for CASSIEL’S SERVANT:

  • A Variant Wraparound Book Cover – (Planning)

  • Two Full Page Interior Illustrations – (Planning)

  • An Enamel Pin – (Sketched)

  • Sticker Designs Using the ‘rejected’ pin designs – (Sketched)

I absolutely adore the illustration work I’ve seen for special editions of books like Tran Nguyen’s work on the Subterranean Press editions of Phedre’s trilogy, which included a custom wraparound cover and interior illustrations in a gorgeous tome signed by the author.

Tran’s cover of KUSHIEL’S AVATAR from Subterranean Press.

The interior illustrations of KUSHIEL’S DART from Subterranean Press by Tran Nguyen

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These kinds of illustrated editions always get me so excited and inspired! I had to try doing this for myself and figured I’d take you all along for the ride. I’m nowhere near as amazing as Tran, but I hope I can bring something unique and full of passion for the story to my own renditions of art for CASSIEL’S SERVANT.

My Final Thoughts on CASSIEL’S SERVANT

I went in expecting a re-tread of KUSHIEL’S DART, which is one of the much-beloved Fantasy classics I hold sacred as a formative inspiration. I wasn’t sure we could learn much from a retelling of DART, but I am so happy to be proven wrong! Joscelin’s meditation on his religious upbringing, his tactical POV, and unique perspective made for an intriguing journey and fresh perspective.

For my full final thoughts on CASSIEL’S SERVANT, as well as a chapter by chapter discussion of my journey through the book, check out the Book Club thread on my Discord server here!

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Now, it’s time for me to get busy planning and sketching! In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear what illustrated editions you like best? NAME OF THE WIND also has a gorgeous edition by artist, Dan Dos Santos, if you haven’t seen it!

Project Status: Birthstone Goddesses – New Calendars Launch!

Hoo boy, who has an ADHD Muse this month because they’ve been running between projects that got delayed and overlapped with other planned projects? (Hint, it me!). The Birthstone Goddesses, which were this Patreon’s previous theme, still had a lot to give, especially because they were specifically created to make calendars!

After much blood, sweat, and tears, I’ve refreshed the first calendar with 2025’s dates/holidays, as well as created two NEW calendars featuring the Masquerade, Little Gems, and Visage collections from the Birthstone Goddesses series!

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I’ve filmed a little tour of all three you can watch here. Give it a watch and let me know which calendar you’ll choose!

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I’m printing these calendars with a printing partner so that any profits made from them will directly support the artist. There is no publisher as a middle man, so getting one of these lovelies means you’re directly supporting me!

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Find them in my shop here.

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This launch wraps up the final FINAL chapter of the Birthstone Goddesses. I hope to still revisit them for an art book, gift bundles, etc at a later time, but for now, I’m just about done with what I had endeavored to achieve with them as a body of work.

Thanks for all of you who were here throughout that years-long adventure! Your support over that time really warmed my heart and kept my husband and myself going.

Enjoy the loveliness and may my shining gals guide your year with inspiration and elegance! Maybe we’ll see them again someday once my muse circles back around to future gemstone-themed offerings.

– Ang

Art Fight 2024 Collection

(Patrons are getting an early peek at this vid before it goes live elsewhere. Enjoy!) The dust has settled and 2024’s Art Fight has ended! It’s always a fun opportunity to practice my skills and draw some unexpected characters, all while bringing a smile to another artist’s face, which is my favorite part of the experience!

(Don’t remember what Art Fight is about? See my 2023 wrap-up which was my first experience in participating and includes an introduction to the event and how it works. The tl;dr is it’s an event where artists trade art of their characters and ‘battle’ in teams.)

My Attacks for 2024

I had a ton of fun this year trying to keep my style loose and energetic. All of them were rendered in Procreate on the ipad, which seems to be my main digital painting tool of choice these days.

Scissors for AnnaCoryKulikova

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Zhenlin for MissSunnySweden

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The Seraph of Promised Silence for Hamsandlich

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Kai for CherryFlash

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Valerian for DungeonDelves

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Ray for Viday

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Goku for Erdending

(My first time drawing a monkey and they have such fun anatomy quirks!) 

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Attacks on Me

Here are the Attacks featuring my characters by other talented artists participating in Art Fight this year!

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Aurora by AnnaCoryKulikova

 

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Aurora by Erdending

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Rabs by MissSunnySweden

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The Crucified Dreamer by DungeonDelves

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The Crucified Dreamer by Viday

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The Crucified Dreamer by CherryFlash

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Kalara by Hamsandlich

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Don’t forget to check out the video at the top of this post for timelapses of how I created my pieces. If you’re an artist who needs a pick-me-up or to work through art block, I highly suggest this event! It’s satisfying to do an activity that’s lighthearted with no other lofty aim beyond making another artist happy and drawing some cool characters.

And now to return to our regularly scheduled programs!

The Usual Reminders

[Cover Art & Sketches] Revisiting “Kushiel’s Dart “

Now that I’m about to enter the part of the CASSIEL’S SERVANT novel that crosses over into the events of KUSHIEL’S DART, I wanted to revisit some of the work I created for DART during my first time creating my own cover art and sketch explorations for a novel.

I’ve already shared a deep dive into the development of DART’s cover, but I wanted to revisit some of the old character sketches here as well. Enjoy a trip down memory lane, as these were done 10 years ago!

 LEFT: My very first try at drawing Joscelin! Inspired by his first meeting with Phedre, the main character of DART. Now that I’m reading CASSIEL’S SERVANT, I’ve learned why he was so cranky at the time. I love this old design, but I may simplify the wrappings on the sword and daggers even more to emphasize the Cassiline devotion to utilitarianism. I’ll be exploring equipment concepts in a new post soon.

RIGHT: Grainne, one of the twin Lords of the Dalriada, Gaelic-inspired warriors we meet in DART. I’m amused that even back then, graphite felt suiting for drawing art for this world.

An assortment of characters we meet early on in DART. Looking back on this, I feel like I very much had the distinguished actress, Maggie Smith, in mind when envisioning the discerning Dowayne of Cereus House.

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Now, back to reading with me and teaching myself new video editing software so I can keep bringing you fun storytelling snippets like my recent try at narrating Elua’s origin myth  from SERVANT that was shared on my socials.

Did you all enjoy this audio+visual format for Elua’s sketch? It was a lot of fun for me to make and I hope to explore more narrative imagery in this fashion.

More art soon!

– Ang

Ang Plays Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Dancing with Demons!

(If the above embed ever breaks, you can watch my stream recording here.)

Dusting off my Twitch channel to play games I find artistically inspiring! Check out my first impressoin of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, a new release from Capcom featuring a dancing shrine maiden, her faithful guardian, a corrupted sacred mountain, and a beautiful Japanese-inspired aesthetic.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it! Hope to stream more art and games in the future.

Art Fight 2024 Begins! + Character Art Feature

It’s July and that means it’s Art Fight time! I participated for the first time last year and it was such a wonderful experience that helped me reconnect with other artists and a sense of optimism during all the chaos and social media shakeups in 2023. After that event, I swore to do it again this year.

(I made a video about last year’s experience and how it works, for the curious.)

The time has come once more this July! If you would like to participate in an event where artists trade images of their characters, check out Art Fight. You can find my profile here. Feel free to share yours in the comments, if you’re participating as well! Perchance I’ll have time to Attack you, if something catches my eye and I have the time.

I’ll be participating when I can, but can’t promise I’ll be able to respond to each Attack. We’ll see how it goes! I’ll share a compilation of art made for the event once the month is through.

Here are some of the fun portraits I did for last year’s Art Fight event (which you can see what other folks did for me here):

This year, I’ve added some new character art, as well as a new character to choose from, both rendered by the amazing Sam Hogg.

First up, here’s newly added art of Ramah, an exiled prince from my story project, Song of Exile. After a failed rebellion against his tyrannical father, he spends his days in exile honoring his mother’s legacy as a healer. Until the day years later, he is called by his ex-wife to return once more to tend to the gravely ill king, only to be drawn further into facing his family’s tarnished legacy and the simmering violence of a coup.

Then we have Nils, a mortician-turned-monster hunter who is a new character choice for attackers to choose from for this year’s Art Fight. Nils uses his skills as a former mortician to retrieve the bodies of fallen hunters. It’s the job nobody wants, but he doesn’t mind so much.

Nils is from another story idea inspired by my D&D adventures with Blood Hunters.

  Are you in? Go team Stardust! See you in the art trenches.

– Ang

June 2024 Update – Adventures in Quitting Adobe

The Experiment Begins

Hey, friends & Patrons! It’s been a time of change and transition as we settle into a new pattern of digesting books so that I might create art inspired by them. Since the last update, I’ve cracked open Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey and have been immersed in the Cassiline warrior monk’s origin story! It is, so far, full of gorgeous floral imagery and reflection on Terre d’Ange’s philosophy of love, honor, and one’s own place in interpreting dueling philosophies.

Feel free to hop in on the Cassiel’s Servant book club topic over on my Discord and discuss the book with me as I read and react and hopefully have art to share soon once I’ve let it simmer in my mind a little longer.

In taking on this experimental reading and arting exercise, I realize I’m much less of a sketch on the spot person and more of a sketch after pondering what scratches at the muse most person, at least for this style of introspective character memoir. Cassiel’s Servant is shaping up to be more spiritual and surreal in nature, image and themes-wise, which makes for a more challenging foray in creating art inspired by it.

I’d like to break myself of the habit of pondering so much on WHAT to draw and learn to play more, so I’m going to attempt to do better to force myself to just doodle what comes to mind along the way as I read. That’s half the fun of why I chose Story Sketcher as my Patreon’s focus for now. Time to push comfort zones and get myself drawing and playing with art more!

However, Cassiel’s Servant is also a 500+ page chonker of a book, so I’m also going to have to pace myself unless I end up taking too long to actually get anything done or spend too much time stuck in minutia rather than attempting the grand design that will be drawing my own cover for this tale, which is the ultimate goal!

Software Shakeups

In other news this month, I’ve only just barely started adjusting to the big social media shakeup when Adobe also decided to be the absolute worse this month with its sus content management terms.

To be honest, I had been considering dropping them for a long time now because the $60 a month price tag was already a lot, especially when my husband is still on the job hunt and my income as an artist has taken a hit from all of the world’s shakeups right now and record low sales for my shop, aside from that.

My software replacement choices so far (for any who are also similarly plotting their Adobe escape):

  • To replace Photoshop’s painting capabilities – Clip Studio Paint EX, Procreate
  • To replace Photoshop’s photo editing capabilities – Affinity Photo
  • To replace InDesign and Illustrator for vectors and book layouts – Clip Studio Paint EX, Affinity Designer
  • To replace Adobe Premiere and Rush – DaVinci Resolve (A free program)

As of this writing, the Affinity Suite is still on sale for 50% off, for anyone still hoping to get in on that! They also have a free trial you can dig for on their site if you want to test them out first. Clip Studio Paint also goes on sale quite often, so just wait for any major holiday or seasonal change and they’ll generally have a sale.

As for video editing, DaVinci Resolve is quite powerful and I was able to get the hang of it in a few days. It has a maddening default setting of starting each timeline at 1 hour, which you can change in the preferences, but other than that, it’s FAR more approachable than Adobe Premiere and I was already able to put together a video of my art using it!

Life Happening (TM)

Not gonna lie, it’s been rough for my husband and myself since February when he lost his job. Spring storms dropped two trees on our house, which ate through our emergency funds. The maximum level of stress involved has slowed everything down for me.

We’re currently eating into life savings to see us through and I’m very close to opening up emergency character art commissions, which Patrons will get first dibs on, followed by my newsletter followers, if things don’t start looking up by the end of July.

So here’s hoping we get some good news soon? A few interviews have gone well so it’s all about waiting right now!

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Hoping to have more visuals to share in July as I settle into a pattern of reading and drawing! The process has been more challenging than expected, but I’m determined to switch gears and keep things moving around here.

Hope my US friends enjoy their Independence time off, if they got it! I’m going to have good foods and company and hopefully find a little peace amongst the chaos.

– Ang