Last weekend, I decided to eradicate my years-long upload backlog totalling about 200 images across nearly 150 posts in one fell swoop.

I don't have an exact date targeted right now, but I want to be done with this by the end of the week at the latest. I'm about halfway there as of posting this; there'll be a lot going up all at once when I'm done, so this is just as much a heads up as it is a warning. You'll be seeing a lot of me for a couple days.

Those of you subscribed here will have seen most of the art going up publicly since it'll have come up here months, if not years ago now. But I still hope you're excited for the news, cause it already feels like such a load off to have gotten all that upload work done and dusted.

It's been a hot minute since the last Art Appraisal, and this one's gonna get a bit meta (go figure).

For CFz's online con in 2020, I took the plunge and did something I'd been wanting to for a very long time: I hosted a panel.

Finding a topic to talk about was a difficult task, and while I don't recall what other options I considered before settling on the one I went with, I know that my hesitation stemmed from feeling like I didn't have any "expert" insight that I could share - nothing I was especially good at that I could tap into my experience and knowledge of to impart to those attending.

So, perhaps rather appropriately, I decided instead to talk about the difficulties that I've dealt with as part of my work. I would host this talk barely half a year after I launched this site, and had also just spent a substantial amount of time grappling with Picarto, which seemed like plenty of material to go off of for an hour long show.

(Video Link) What I ended up with was a rather tell-all series of recent-at-the-time stories about something technical, something logistical, and something creative that I'd been dealing with in my career.

The video is quite long, but I strongly urge you to watch it through before reading on; especially if you're an artist yourself.

I hope that the talk is of some use to you, or that you at least found it interesting to know a little more about what goes on backstage, at least when it comes to my own operations. My intention was to give more transparency in this way, and if you think you know someone who might find it helpful, please do pass it on to them.

With some upcoming changes to my pricelist that have been overdue, I felt it best to make a quick update post regarding patron commission and YCH slots on the site during the transition period.

When I last opened the priority queue, about 5 months ago, I decided to leave it open indefinitely to give more time for folks to grab a slot. The intention was to keep it open until December, when I would then switch to the public queue once or twice before updating my prices. Obviously that didn't happen, mainly due to a good amount of demand and important life stuff slowing me down a little when clearing out my queue.

With that just about done, I'll be closing my patron-exclusive queue and pausing any new YCH slots for the time being, until I get the public commission queue sorted out. I'll extend the closing dates of any affected YCH slots (just the one, currently) accordingly based on how long this lasts.

Regarding that, while I don't intend to make the queue exclusive to non-patrons, I will be giving them precedence given that I last opened my public queue about 8-10 months ago. Feel free to submit a request, but I'll probably ask that you hold off until the next priority queue opens up.

If you weren't aware that the priority queue was open and have been waiting for a chance to commission me, please let me know and we'll sort something out before I update my pricelist. I plan on improving the system to make it a bit more functional, since it currently has some limitations. At the moment, it relies on a single blog post to notify folks whenever it's been reopened, which isn't ideal.

In the meantime, feel free to let friends know that the public queue's finally about to open if they're interested in getting a commission. I plan on launching via Commissio's notification system first to reward those who've been following me there (which everyone should totally do), and then reopen a second time with a more visible announcement.

I'm sure a lot of you have heard the news by now that I have my first stream at the new studio scheduled for this Thursday the 21st, at 6PM CET. As you might have guessed, this comes as a result of things having settled considerably since my last blog post here.

Shortcake has since been cleared of Covid thanks to a supplementary test we booked over the weekend - about halfway through our mandatory quarantine. I also tested negative, meaning that I managed to keep away from the infection and we can both rest easy now. Since then we've been getting around to enjoying each other's company properly for the first time since she moved in, which has helped my mental health tremendously.

In the meantime, we've both been working hard to make the house we're renting together into a home. With a lot of the heavy lifting done and dusted, I've been able to shift my focus back onto work as I'd originally planned last week; hence the celebratory inaugural stream planned for later this week.

Once again, I want to thank you all for your immense patience with me during these trying times. It's stressful enough as it is to stay afloat while managing my time and energy between all that's important to me; knowing that I have all of your support to lean back on when things don't go my way is so tremendously reassuring that I can't even begin to describe it.

I promise that I have every intention on making good on what this site was meant for and get back to doing what I love, for you all to enjoy. I'll be back with more real soon.

Thanks again.

Hi all. I hoped not to ever have to make this post, but here we are.

This past week has been pretty busy just in general, with me going full force getting my new place liveable and my work equipment set up, but it quickly got very chaotic over and above all of that.

My mom tested positive for covid earlier this week, which was a shock cause the only reason she got tested was for some unrelated, routine hospital interventions. We would've completely missed it otherwise, cause she was pretty much asymptomatic. She's perfectly fine, and has since tested negative - literally 4 days after the first test. It's bizarre, but it's what led to the latest thing.

Shortcake (one of my partners) and I went in to get tested together as a precaution. My test came up negative but hers was positive. We had to fast-track her moving in with me (we planned on getting it done over the course of the next 2 weeks) to protect her parents, and we're now under enforced quarantine. She's doing perfectly fine, but we're taking some measures to reduce my risk until she gets past it.

Needless to say, things have been thrown into a bit of a tailspin. We're minimizing the time we spend in the same rooms, at the very least until we get some more sanitizing supplies. As a result, the time I have access to my just-finished work setup is limited and even then, keeping distance from someone living in the same house does tend to slow things down.

TL;DR: Covid's gotten in the way of plans, so my hiatus from streams has been extended and art production will be slow to say the least. I hate that this keeps happening but my plans continue getting upended despite my best efforts. Thank you for your patience and understanding.