It's a project that started as a side thing to do while giving me a break on commissioned stuff, and it's kind of come into its own over the last week or so - to the point where I think I might be able to keep it going and maybe make something Etsy-worthy.
Goodness knows I need some success on Etsy; I've sold a grand total of one keyring in the last few months. I don't really mind - it's a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing at this point. A $4-$10 every 6 months set-it-and-forget-it, mind you, but something that I can just have in the background from day-to-day.
I've also got a few doll commissions in the pipeline that I'm really excited about.
So I have this D&D thing nearly to the point of being done. So what do I do? Stop doing it so I can write about it, of course.
I've sent myself the pictures of it all, but they're taking a while to come through; in the meantime, here's a little breakdown of January and February this year:
I went ahead and dismantled the trampoline, brought it inside and ... re-mantled it for the boys to have something to burn off energy while it was cold. It's a hit. They spend about an hour and a half every day bouncing all over it.
It was pretty cold there for a solid week. 8 inches of snow over the course of about three hours one morning gives you a good idea of how quick the weather around here changes. We loved it. I got a few nice shots of the field and the trees before we all came outside and then the boys and I built a snowman, and poured some honey onto the fresh snow and made honey snow treats... That's the best name I could come up with. Wifey sat inside after getting the boys bundled and had a nice time watching. She doesn't much like the cold.
More time spent indoors was used to focus on art and creativity, which is always a hoot. The boys have very different styles; #1 is very much tidy and straight-forward, whereas #2 paints himself most of the time. Here's a Bulbasaur from #1. They're getting pretty into Pokemon right now. Which Dad here absolutely loves!
Wifey continues to be pregnant.
I got some more (dirty) halves from one of the banks I frequent. They hold onto a lot of their halves for me, since they don't come through near as much as I ask about them! Small town branches are the best. These fellas are from between '65 and '69, so they have a 40% silver content. Probably around the $3.50 mark for silver content - 50 cents apiece from the bank, of course...
I made the inaugural sale on my Etsy account. The Scarab keyring. One of my personal favourites.
I cleared some space between a couple of the buildings on the property. Not a lot of space, but it felt so good to get something done!
We found a dog. Or he found us. We only held onto him for a week since we're just not equipped for a dog right now. It was a fair cost to take him for that long. He was a good boy. I called him Daxos, but I doubt that's his name. No-one claimed him, so we took him to the local shelter. They're confident they can find him a home since he's so chill. Obviously been around people a lot; we just couldn't keep him.
Related to the project I'm working on, since this was the first sheet I did. I looked at the sizes for D&D, Pathfinder, etc. Tabletop RPGs. A medium creature takes about 5' (in game) square space, with a 5' reach. That translates to about a square inch/inch, respectively at the tabletop scale, so I wanted to use those sizes and that scale and make some paper/card cutout characters for a cheaper tabletop experience...
The first batch was pretty good. I was very happy with the result and had a great time doing it all. Through this first process, I went from my usual biro and paper approach to penciling out a rough shape and then taking to it with a Micron. The smallest point I could find; the 005. I do believe there's a 003 out there, but I haven't been able to track that down yet.
Then I moved onto watercolour to get it all finished off. It was refreshing to work in such small scale! I did another two pages after this - a total of 120 characters. It was a blast, and it led to the next part of the project, which it looks like I'll have to go into in another post, since this is pretty long already. I'll do that soon.
Last but not least, I got my first herp of the year in February! Of course, it was a Rough Earthsnake - what else would I find?! Chill fella in the flowerbeds at church. Boy #1 is getting bolder and bolder with handling things like this, too. That makes me happy.
Signing off now. Got a few more things to talk about coming up, and I'm super excited to be working on some illustration work that I can't share right now.
Now that I've shouted into the void a little here, I can move on and get some more drawing done.
Peace.
