#i might redraw that whole piece.. i've been wanting to for a while

[eebie]

btw jsyk ive had this picture as my phone backrgound since you made this drawing. which mustve been like at least a year ago

I think it's gotta be at least 2-3 years old now Holy shit

[leconcombrerit]

This thing had been rotting in my files for a year (minus three weeks but that's basically a year). It was a redraw of one of my first ever pieces for this fandom, and I still find it quite okay if a little stiff in places, so I thought I might as well share it since I don't draw that much anymore.

And then I had second thoughts, which obviously led to me posting it anyway, as you can see, but I realized I've almost made it a point not to draw anything related to Sasi anymore. As in at all. I can't, and I don't want to, and even sharing old art feels a bit 'meh'. It's too directly linked to my long going art block.

What I mean by that is that if I took all the followers I have out there and asked them what they know me or initially followed me for, you might have a fair amount of Lis 2 and the occasional Desert Bluffs afficionados, but you'd get an overwhelming majority of Sanders Sides. Sanders Sides fashion posts even. I was by no means famous for it or anything, but at my small artist scale, it was the biggest success I had.

And it makes it much harder to go back to it at all now. One, because I don't give a damn about the show anymore. Two, because I haven't been properly obsessing over anything in a while (there was a series early this year but given the actual emotional distress I get thinking about it I'm ruling it out). I haven't had real engagement from my own brain, nor real engagement from a broad audience -which makes sense, I'm not posting for anything that will reach a broad audience. But it takes its toll regardless.

Even when I finally finished writing a long fic, I couldn't help but feel 'all this for what ? Ten people or so and two hundreds have dropped it ?'. Which is a bad way to think about stuff you write for your own enjoyment but, you know, the brain gets happy with external validation even if you pretend really hard you don't care.

And so it feels tempting to go back to the golden goose just the time to get the creative juice pumping back, and I try, and I always end up frustrated and angry and feeling even less like making art that before. I'm not having fun with Sasi. Like an old friend you have nothing to say to and yet you have so much to say otherwise, so you get a bit frustrated, you know ? Not sure I'm making much sense, but that's how it feels. I want to have something like that again, but it won't be with Sanders Sides, and I somehow just want if off my radar.

It was left hanging, then lost its spark, and then I stopped caring altogether and I most likely won't even watch the finale when it does come out. I'm over it. I wish I wasn't though, because it does feel like the artistic spark won't come back all on its own this time, and the buzzing community made it so much easier to bounce back and do shit when your brain got wired all wrong.

It sounds like I'm just bawling after love and likes and stuff, and I guess that's part of it, in a way ? Like I'm in no place to do things for myself, and seeing the one thing I used to use to get back in the flow giving me a bored sense of dread doesn't feel too great.

Yet this drawing is still good ! I find it good ! I don't remember everything, but I can tell from the looks of it that I spent a while on it ! It's nice ! I should celebrate that. So I'm sharing it. I think it will be the last piece of Sasi I ever share, though. I'm not watching the finale when it comes out. I don't care about it. I'll just keep doodling my OCs and characters from cool books every once in a while. I'll write little things.

I just really, really need to stop trying to go back to it when it's clearly not working and not even for good reasons. It was a fun ride though ! So yeah. Basically. A whole ass rant for a one year old piece of art. I'm in my bi-annual depresso mood, nothing too surprising there.

[nervarts]

Page 62

I don't think I've ever announced officially (aside from putting it on profile) that I was working on a graphic novel. Well ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the newer pages. I will say it's been ages since I have published an update about the graphic novel. I've been working on it since August 2019. The reason why it is taking me so long is because 2020 killed my muse for it. I got deeply depressed and instead of making pages on a daily basis like I used to, I just drew them sporadically, when I had the inspiration.

Likewise, I had problems drawing more complex scenes like this one (making that crowd was NOT easy.) So I decided to practice a little more on things like drawing large groups of people and perspective. I also realized that as time passed, I made a few mistakes. Like how the kimono is meant to go from left to right instead of right to left 🤦🏽‍♀️ (apparently only dead people wear it that way), among other inconsistencies. I thought I needed to redo the whole thing. Because while the story is vague historically (it takes place between 12th-14th century Japan— just between the late Heian-early Kamakura period), I didn't want to make too many deviations to the point that it becomes insulting to a culture and history that I love. That's the least I want to do. But drawing ALL 62 pages took me forever, so doing them again would undo five years of progress. I might end up redrawing some anyways, but who knows? I want to finish it first, then go through the "editing" process.

I highly doubt the rest of the pages will take me 5 extra years. I want to continue this novel, as it is personal for me. It has been a difficult journey doing this, but I don't want to give up on it. So I will try to draw more pages on a fairly consistent level. I was even thinking of changing the title of the graphic novel. It's called, "Flowers Chasing Horizon". But as you can tell from the scene... it's not going to be a flowery story. I made the title because I love flowers and the story is about two vagabonds of sorts who are escaping from their ghosts, literally and figuratively. Trying to find a place where they can achieve peace. The problem is, I don't know what I should change it to. I'm bad at titles.

I apologize that I haven't given any art for over a month, but this is the only artwork I finished recently. I still have more that I am yet to do, but they are big.

This was done with Micron pens, pencil, and for this graphic novel, the color red plays an important role. I would give context for this piece, but I feel like I would ruin the what's going on. Plus, I want to keep it a surprise too.

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

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