Another update type post! I just want to ramble about art and D&D and other nice thingggggs!
So recently I've really gotten into Dungeons and Dragons. I played for the first time earlier this spring before I moved, and now I'm playing semi-weekly with one group and occasionally with another! I wouldn't have guessed that D&D would have such a major role in my hobbies here.
I created a new character today and happened to have a free hour before the rest of the party arrived, so I did a little doodle of her. Meet Eilis, the human bard!
Which brings me to the other topic I'd love to riff about for a moment: art. I don't know what has happened these past few weeks, but it's been so amazing and super healing. I've been in a sort of semi-artist's block state for the past few years, where any sort of drawing that didn't involve a bunch of reference photos and the possibility to use ctrl+Z a million times made me so anxious that I didn't really do almost anything that diverged from my normal "style" of realistic/comicbooksy characters with well-defined outlines. But recently I've done a lot of work to feel free again, to not feel fucking terrified of drawing on paper or just doodling random things and experimenting different styles. Some really helpful things along the way were
- John, an artist guy I met at an anarchist hangout place here, gifting me with an empty sketch book and checking that I've doodled something in there every time we meet (- still so grateful!)
- the 24-Hour Comics Day, hooray insane deadlines!
- the project my team did at Hack the Screen - it allowed me to try out different drawing styles
- generally being away from my usually "life context"; the people, the family, the identities I didn't even realize were no longer of service to me.
I just feel super grateful, and like I've started to recover a major part of myself. The thought of making art is starting to make me feel excited again the way it used to when I was a teenager. I'm really pleased with how "drafty" the sketch of Eilis looks. And I feel like I've finally had a breakthrough with coloring and shading, more intuitively choosing colors that make an image more vibrant than just flat. Yayyyyy <3333333
(I rarely do rambly, personal posts on this space, but just wanted to share. Thanks for reading. <3)