meeks

The big news from this weekend, of course is that Lorelei's kickstarter project has exceeded its goal! Many, many thanks to everyone who has supported us! We have enough now for a basic print run, but the project is open until February 11, and we can still use all the pledges we can get! Additional funds will go toward shipping your rewards, better quality printing, and book promotion.

Karen obligingly posted a detailed description of Chevenga's armour yesterday in response to my request, and I got a bit carried away trying to incorporate it in my sketch of him from The Philosopher in Arms. It's been a while since I've done a new Story Sketch, and I'm delighted to be working on this one. PA has been nominated for a Rose and Bay award for fiction this year, and is well worth the read, though at 640 chapters, it may take some time to get through the archives!

Speaking of the Rose and Bay, Story Sketches is currently leading in the art category. I don't expect this to continue for very long, but it's still very flattering! Thanks to everyone who has voted for me!

In other art news, I have a Portrait Adoption piece open in ArtRage, and I'm planning to participate in the Amazing Critters contest currently running at torn_world. It also looks like I will have a number of commissions coming in from kickstarter backers, so I'm going to be busy!

Which probably means I should wrap this up and stop avoiding all the admin stuff that's been piling up. :P

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Story Sketches:
updated this week:
Teddy's Terrific Travels
Mother-Tongue

Tips: $10

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Click to get an

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Lorelei has a Dream:
$11058/$9000 (Funded!!)

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you all had a pleasant holiday period.

It looks like it's going to be a busy month here in mikaspace; I did a painting for a friend over the holidays that I have to finish detailing for print, and there are a number of portfolio projects and Story Sketch updates in the queue. There will be two Sketch Fests in January, and I've been invited to do a guest post at poetree later this week.

The weekly icon draw is back on, and this year's first winner is robling_t!

My Inkling fundraiser is still going on, and is now at 35% of the first goal! If you got some Christmas money and want a sketch from me, please do check it out. :)


Here's a list of art posted in the last month:
Mother-Tongue
Creeped Right Out
Igor's Creature
Aurora's World
Hallelujah Dreaming CD cover
Lorelei in Winter
And a few Icons

..and I missed Monday >.< I may go to a doctor if the throat/chest congestion doesn't clear up soon, but I'm not really looking forward to losing most of a day in a waiting room...

This week's icon winners are jjhunter and ysabetwordsmith. Congrats!

Looking over my comments from the weekend, I'm amused by how much of a positive response I got for The lesser of two evils, which took well under an hour, and probably wouldn't benefit from much more work.

I'm hoping to catch up on my reading so I can get to some new prompts this week, I have a print from Sketchfest to send out, and I need to find some time for ePub formatting...

Art from last week:
The Deep Inks (update)
Husband by Hand (update)
Nine paintings from Sketchfest

Tips this month: $5

Happy Hallowe'en to those of you who celebrate it!

I'm pleased to announce that the website coding I've been working on is now complete! The pictures at mikaspace.net are now organized with tags, the Story Sketches have all been uploaded, and images now display on individual pages with user-friendly URLs! This fellow, for example:

can now be found at http://www.mikaspace.net/gallery/sketchfest/bunny-death !

Congratulations to this week's icon winners, clare_dragonfly and laffingkat! I'll be including everyone who left feedback in the past month in the commenter pool and picking two winners per week in November, to make up for all the ones I missed.

Art from this week:
Rin (update)
Restoration (update)

Tips this month: $20

My flight to Montreal is tomorrow, so I'm busy today with laundry and packing and all the little things that need to be done before a long trip. I will be bringing my laptop and wacom tablet with me, and I hope to find some time for art while I'm there, but the presence of other humans is always distracting, so my posting schedule is likely to be even more sporadic over the next three weeks.

Art from this week:
new icon
henchmen's hitch (update)
faerie wedding (update)

Tips this month: $65

I'm making a slight change to the way I deal with sketch refinements as a perk. The current structure was based on the way I was taught to work in school...we were only ever asked to share sketches, studies, and finished pieces, and few people ever saw what happens in between. There's no reason you shouldn't, though! So, instead of treating the current targets as discrete stages, I'm going to work up to them incrementally, with one round of work for every $15 in tips I get for an image. The first five sessions will be used to bring the picture from sketch to finished value study, after which I will start either inking or colouring. I think this system will give me more freedom to do as much work as I can during a given session instead of worrying about whether I'm doing 'enough' or 'too much' for a particular stage. I still end up doing the same amount of work at the end, but patrons get to see the effects of their contributions sooner :) All other perks are still active.

Speaking of which...wyld_dandelyon has won an icon this week! Congratulations :)

I'll be posting an update to Wanted: One Gnome in a few minutes, and I'm working on revising my call for prompts to reflect the new perk structure.

Art from this week:
Diapering Dragons (update)
Rin (update)
Require:Cookie banners
One new icon added.

Tips: $10

It's 17C and raining today! I never thought that would make me happy, but I'm really not a hot sunshine person :P Warm sunshine is nice, but I like long sleeves!

Anyway, this week's icon winner is aldersprig, and she's managed to announce it before I did, LOL. That's what happens when I get distracted before posting :P Help her choose a subject here.

I posted a sketch for stryck's Starlit Rays last night, and it's already just one commenter away from a cleaned up version! I also received a tip for it early this morning. Thank you! You guys are awesome :)

Art from this week:
Teddy's Terrific Travels (rough sketch)
The Henchmen's Hitch (rough sketch)
Sketchfest stuff (seven paintings this month!)
Starlit Rays (rough sketch)

Tips: $20

I am so glad I don't live somewhere warm. It's only 22C outside, and I already felt like my brain was baking in the sun when I went out today ^_^; I'm probably one of the only people who prefers having to wear multiple layers of clothing...

This week's icon winner is minor_architect, who is also one of my newest prompters. Congratulations, and welcome!

I got a tip for my sketch of Molly and Hel! Many thanks!

Diapering Dragons is still ahead in the poll. I'll leave it open until the end of tomorrow in case anyone else wants to vote.

Art from this week:
Molly and Hel (cleaned up sketch)
Wanted: One Gnome (rough sketch)

Tips: $5.00

Looks like crossposting still doesn't work...the following is copied from my journal on Dreamwidth:

Hmm...seems like yesterday's status failed to crosspost to LJ, which was having a sick day of its own :P For those of you who may have missed it, the combination of failed sleep, low air pressure, and misaligned vertebrae meant I wasn't feeling at all well. I finally fell asleep early yesterday evening and slept through the night, so I'm mostly better now, and my visit with the chiropractor later should clear up the rest.

Last week was extremely busy for me in terms of non-art posting; I think I spent more time typing than I have since High School, and I hope that those of you who were following along at crowdfunding found the articles and discussions as enjoyable and informative as I did! The constant stream of comments and replies kept me from getting much drawing done, though, so I'll probably have to mute my e-mail notifications if I'm going to stay involved.

This week looks like it's going to be just as busy on the art side: I've got a few icons to draw, including one from our latest winner, siege! I also have a Story Sketch request from new prompter, magenta_girl, some more work to do on without fail (which tops this month's count at 11 linkbacks), clean-up on Molly and Hel (which has now received feedback from six people!), a sketch of Wingback Marsh Deer from Torn World to finish, and a gift painting for my aunt and uncle. Oh, and that dragon I'm sewing. O.o Time to get productive.

Art from this week:
shine on (cleaned up sketch)
six paintings from sketchfest

Tips: $30.50

I'll be posting a refined version of my Shine On sketch shortly after I finish this status post. It hasn't changed dramatically from the rough version, even after all the time I spent on it, and I realized that there are actually two reasons I've been struggling with it.

The first, as mentioned in previous posts, is that I am very sensitive to changes in air pressure; in my weather induced fog, I kept second guessing myself: sharpening edges and darkening shadows only to hit cmd-Z and undo it again, trying to find the right balance of detail and softness to avoid losing the compositional focus and sense of depth that I had established. The second reason has to do with visual processing.

Those of you who have worked with Photoshop and similar tools will probably know that while it can give precise colour values for each pixel of an image and be used to manipulate them in a variety of ways, it is less good at identifying what those pixels represent. In other words, even with a top quality, high resolution photo, you can't tell it, for example, to 'select all trees'. Each new version of the program gets a little bit better at performing this sort of task, it's not always reliable, and takes a fair amount of processing power. Seeing can be a bit like that for me. My eyes can take in visual information well enough (better still if I have my glasses on :P) but I don't necessarily understand what I'm looking at. When there's a lot of detail, like in a forest, my initial perception is something like the 'scribbly foliage' I had in my first sketch, and it takes conscious effort to go from there to really seeing trees, ferns, leaves, etc. and I can only really focus on a little at a time. It should come as no surprise that what I find difficult to observe, I also find difficult to draw, so it's no wonder I have so much trouble with scenery!

In other news...I returned from my break on a Thursday, so I decided to extend the latest 'week' until yesterday. In light of the extra days, and the number of comments I've received since then (over 90!) there are two free icon winners this time. Congratulations to rix_scaedu and ysabetwordsmith!

This is already one of the longest status posts I've ever written, but I would like to mention that the crowdfunding community is being featured in the LJ Spotlight this week, and there are already a number of interesting new posts up there today :) I'll be participating in discussions there throughout the week, and I am writing a post about my Story Sketches project that will go up on Friday. Come discover new projects, promote your own, and ask any questions you might have!

Art from this week:
diapering dragons (cleaned up sketch)
shine on (rough sketch)
icon post updated

Tips: $30.50