catching up on art, fanart & ffxiv

Been slacking on posting stuff here, lmao. Kinda slacking on posting art in general. I’ve been posting occasional pics on twitter but the recent changes on that site have just reminded me that there was a reason I wanted to make this blog my main site. So I need to get back into the habit of posting stuff here first and anywhere else second.

On that note, I spent most of the day reworking the theme for the site and getting something more mobile-friendly installed. I think it’s about as good as it’ll get for now though the written work pages could use some updating. My poor stories are collecting dust, it’s been so long since I last updated them… life’s just been wild the last few weeks. Eclipse season be like that, I guess.

Started playing “Little Nightmares” recently. Absolutely love Six. She kinda gives me evigilari vibes, ngl. Got “Little Nightmares II” shortly after and man, I’m actually a little salty that I had the plot twist regarding Mono’s fate spoiled for me because I don’t think I would have seen that coming at all. Regardless, I’m still holding a candle for Mono & Six to show up in LNIII next year, in some way or another. Hopefully. I actually love them, they’re such an adorable duo.

Picked up a physical sketchbook again and tried making a habit of doing some pencil & ink exercises. I think on the days I did these, I really needed that break from digital art.

Really rough sketches… it’s tough out here without the undo button, man. But I remember a teacher once telling me that it’s good practice to do sketches in pen sometimes because it forces you to be more strategic about your choices and I felt that. It had been a while since the last pencil & ink sketch I had done and the rusty feeling was real.

One thing I notice terribly when I’m using non-digital media is the sort of slanting/warping in shapes I tend to lean toward. I never notice it when I’m drawing but when I step back after being finished or close to finished, I notice it. Eileen’s head looks a little slanted in that third picture, lmao. It’s all stuff that I know if I were using Procreate, I’d select tool & resize/warp to correct but I can’t do that on real paper. So yeah… better line choices noted for next time.

Felt nice to doodle Eileen & Linden again. I think they’re going to be that OTP hill that I die on, lmao. I’ll never not ship those two. They might genuinely be my favorite OC pair out of my entire lineup.

Started playing FFXIV again after… man, I think almost two years having not played it? I logged into Grisaille and it was like everything I knew about all the jobs was just deleted in my brain. No idea what I even left off doing. I had an Emet-Selch minion I don’t even remember getting. So I decided that since I’ve been streaming on Twitch more lately, I wanted to make a new character and start fresh to re-learn the game.

I wanted to re-learn the game using a PS5 controller but tbh, after a few hours with it, I remembered why I use the keyboard and mouse. Kind of a bummer because the controller feels so nice to just get cozy on a couch with and I can’t really do that with a keyboard and mouse. I always feel long keyboard/mouse sessions in my shoulders the next day, too. Guess I just need to make myself take more breaks to stretch during those sessions.

It shouldn’t be surprising that most of my jump back into FFXIV has been screenshotting my new character, lmao. This game is so pretty, I almost want to do an in-character photojournaling blog sorta thing… idk, I’ll see if I can remember to screenshot & write something up from the character’s point of view. Been a while since I did any FFXIV fanfiction.