Day 15. I Think This Is The Halfway Point? Anyhow, This Is A Bird Monster. Specifically, Its A Gender-neutral

Day 15. I think this is the halfway point? Anyhow, this is a bird monster. Specifically, it’s a gender-neutral harpy, because abusive parasites who barge into your home and destroy your life needn’t be female by default.

I accidentally took design cues from Yuka Ota’s maw creatures, which I didn’t notice until it was too late. She does really cool designs and work that I love, though, so have a look at her stuff sometime. 

Day 11, and I think my brown paper sketchbook is getting crinkly from all the ink washes. That's okay; I bought it at a hundred yen shop in Nagano in 2008. The prompt was yokai, which is a bad thing, because I am such a huge enthusiast (read: big freaking nerd) about everything yokai that I got distracted in my Mizuki Shigeru encyclopedias and couldn't decide, which is why I ended up doing two of the most stereotypical yokai choices I could manage. This is an uncommonly skinny tengu,  and chochinobake, whom I accidentally gave two eyes to instead of one. Call it unreasonably high expectations, but I didn't manage to pull off my desired image quality here.

I should probably just do a month of yokai next time instead of a monster challenge. It'd get it out of my system. 

Edit: Herp derp, this is 12, not 11. 

The next one. I think this is the 9th? I think so. Anyhow, today was dragon. Here is a man. A dragon man. Actually just a dragon? Not sure. Could even be a dragon woman. I am moderately well pleased with this one. 

Ink, brown paper, some acrylic paint. 

Hey, I took this picture of this pretty lady!

Taken by one of my very best friends on the trip up to Portland. :D myousa

I'll level with the world here; I'm still not doing great. My job has turned into a huge source of anxiety, and I'm at a pretty lousy and stand-still place right now. What I want to do is make art; I don't just want to draw pictures, I want to get back to having a studio and making art and showing it.

I've been in at least two shows a year every year since 2007, and this is going to be the first time since then that I've got nothing. I crashed back from living overseas and getting a master's degree to living in my parents' house and working at a dead-end minimum wage job that isn't helping me get out again.  

I'm not sure what to do, but I do know that I feel like a huge burden on my friends and family at the moment. I don't want to be here and nothing seems to be changing. I am isolated and stuck, and I'd kill for something good to happen right about now. 

Took a break from monsters to draw a mo' different monster. Really, I wanted to draw Schtein from mistahgrundy's String Theory comic and abuse the heck out of some paper with some ink, because those are two things I like.