This week has been incredibly productive. The weather is starting to turn here in Massachusetts and though it has been rainy we’ve had a few breaks of sunny warm spring days. I am so ready. I’m already starting to work on my summertime activity list ☀️

Last Christmas my in-laws sent plastilina clay. I had no idea what to do with clay that wouldn’t harden. This week it occurred to me this would be a good way to start blocking out a fursuit pattern.

Unfortunately a lot of the details were lost when transferring it to pattern via tape. I got a vague idea of what the shapes should be though so we’ll see. My next plan is mock sometime up with cardstock.

The funny thing is, as much as I’d like a fursuit of my fennec fox I’d really, really like to make a goose. My dream is a giant goose puppet a la big bird. But yet I sculpted a fox. 😅 I really want to make a mother goose type character. I also feel like puppetry is under utilized by furries!

I finished Mwako’s watercolor paintings AND a digital painting for Zoeriko this week!!

I had a lot of fun with both of them. This marks the end of my commission queue from back in the fall. 😬 I’m going to take a break for a bit and work on some personal art.

I’m also planning on opening up for a batch of sketches via Ko-fi as an experiment. I really want to keep my sketch price low. For me to feel good about them being $25 I want to consistently be in the 40-60 minute range. I feel really strongly that I want to have a cheaper option for commissions. To that end I did two quick sketches last night. Both were about 45 minutes!

I sat down with colored pencils to try my hand at paper dolls. I have very fond memory of playing with paper dolls as a little girl. It was a fun little experiment and I enjoyed the colored pencil practice.

I’d love to get a new colored pencil set. Mine is missing lots of basic colors. It’s very old. I think when I have a little more money from commissions I’d like to get a new box of Prismacolor pencils.

I started trying to read Redwall for the first time but I just could NOT get into it. So I stole one of Dan’s books. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson.

Dan, my husband, is a huge Sanderson fan. I quite enjoy his work but it’s not my favorite. Sanderson’s main strength is that characters are diverse and delightful. Especially his women. As a girl who has read fantasy my whole life it is very hard to find books in the genre that feature ladies beyond a cookie-cutter heroine.

Yumi is no different. I really enjoy reading about her struggle to fulfill incredibly high and unfair expectations hoisted upon her. She’s also kind and sassy and very girly.

The other main character, Painter, is also really easily to empathize with. He’s very much in his “woe is me, nobody likes me” phase. How much that is true vs a warped internal narrative remains to be seen. He also is clearly in the middle of a massive art block and dude I feel you.

Art and the creative process is heavily featured in the book and I think Sanderson has some interesting things to say about it. Especially the balance between drawing for work vs. passion.

The main fault is the writing gets wonky in places. 😬 Sanderson has said this book was written to practice writing from the voice of another key character to all his books, Hoid. Some of the sections where Hoid comes to the forefront are… awkward. Sanderson just wants to lore dump about his universe and I respect the passion but sometimes I think it needed another editor pass. I feel like the Hoid subplot and passages would be really confusing for someone who hasn’t read the Stormlight Archives. Sad because I’d love to recommend Yumi as a standalone! The Stormlight Archives are miserably long and hard to recommend for that reason.

I’ve recently re-implemented reading a few chapters before lights out rather than sitting on my phone. It’s been nice. I miss getting to read in big chunks but at least I’m making it through my “want to read” backlog. I actually wanted to read the next Stormlight Archive book, Rhythm of War, but the book is too dang big for me to hold. I’m waiting to pick-up the e-book 😅

Lastly from my sketch book. I tried to do some pen sketching but could not find any ball point pens. So I took a deep breath and was determined to fix my fountain pen.

I was really struggling until I found a Reddit post about how to prime fountain pens. Turns out dipping the pen in ink or water really helps get it started. I need to find out if there’s a different way to prime it as I’d like to take it with me for drawing on the go.

Once that was fixed I did a page of tulips and rabbits based. The right page is a final sketch to be a small painting. Can you tell which ones were from direct reference?