generalsnivy

[generalsnivy]

Since Tumblr has fallen to the Dark Side and is selling user data to train AI models, I won't be posting my art here anymore. As a result, I made a Carrd linking to all of my other socials and where I'll be posting my art from now on! (Honestly, the Carrd's creation was WAY overdue. Better late than never.)

As far as this Tumblr account is concerned, it'll be an archive of my past work and it'll remain that way unless Tumblr reverses course with the AI stuff. I may post text updates from time to time here, but not often. My time here may have been short, but I'm thankful that I gave this platform a try, and from my limited use of the platform, it was fun while it lasted. If you want to keep up with me, I am most active on Twitter and I'm trying to be more active on BlueSky. Check out the Carrd above if you want to follow me on my other socials.

Unless things change, my time posting art here is over...for now, at least. I will be posting my artwork elsewhere, though. Thanks for reading and for checking out my artwork! I really hope that Tumblr reverses this decision, but it's not likely considering today's trends.

[generalsnivy]

The land of Kitakami is celebrating a successful apple harvest by holding a festival and, of course, Ogerpon has to join in on the fun as she skips along the apple orchard while holding a balloon and singing a song from her heart, looking as happy as a Spheal rolling down a hill!

If you're wondering where she got the balloon from, she saw it floating in the air at a balloon stall near the apple orchard. Curious, she approached the stall with a look of amazement and wonder in her eyes as she got closer and closer to both the stall and the balloon. There, the human running the balloon stall was handing out a balloon to a child after they purchased one from them when they saw Ogerpon staring at the Applin balloon from the corner of their eye. The balloon was floating high in the air near the stall, blowing around slightly in the wind as the balloon string that's tied to the balloon, keeps it anchored to the ground, preventing it from flying away. After the balloonist finished handing out the balloon to their customer, they went over to Ogerpon and asked her if she liked balloons. Ogerpon responds to the balloonist by jumping up and down happily with a big smile on her face, which indicates to them that she does indeed like balloons very much. Being a nice person, they pull the balloon string attached to the Applin balloon, lowering it down to where Ogerpon could see it better up close, and then offer her the balloon. Her face lights up as brightly as the sun as she happily accepts it and jumps up and down with pure joy. The balloonist then informs her to hold onto it tightly and not let go, otherwise it'll fly away. They then hand over the balloon to Ogerpon and then she goes "Pon Pon, Ogerpon!" as if she is saying "Thank you so much!" as she happily skips along on her merry way with the balloon in hand as the balloonist waves goodbye to her and then returns to work at their stall as a lot of customers begin to line up at the front of the stall.

I finished this drawing 2 days ago, but I just got around to posting it now due to 2 reasons. One) When I finished it, it was getting late, and two) I had some errands to run with Mom the following day, and then we went out later that evening to a local bar.

When it came time to draw Ogerpon, I went to Bulbapedia, as per usual, to download some images of the creature to use as references throughout the entire process. However, Bulbapedia was having problems with their site at the time and I couldn't access their usual image gallery for Ogerpon, or any Pokemon for that matter. So, I had to work with whatever images were available on Ogerpon's front page, which wasn't much. Even so, I was able to work with what I had access to and I love how this turned out! I also wanted to experiment a little bit when it came to the Applin balloon to see how it would look without a black outline, making it look a little more realistic. After sitting on it for a bit, I think it worked out well and it didn't clash with my art style like I originally thought it did when I first drew it. It really started to shine when I drew the environment, making me feel much better about this experiment.

Drawing Ogerpon, herself, wasn't too bad as I broke down each part of her into smaller pieces such as her face, her black-ish hood, the stem on top of her head, her chest, etc, etc. The pose I had for her was envisioned for quite a while, but shortly after I began drawing, I decided to change perspectives and have her face forward towards the camera rather than sideways, like I originally planned. The reason for this change was that I wanted the drawing to focus more on her than the environment she's skipping around in, which turned out a lot better than I expected. I also originally planned to give her a regular, round red balloon, but changed it to an Applin balloon because I thought it'd look cuter, which turned out to be true, in my opinion. As for the apple orchard, it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped as I wanted to keep it in spirit to the one found in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. (At least the branches aren't going out for a nice float here, unlike the ones found in-game.) Regardless, though, it was still fun to put together and make the drawing feel that much more alive and complete. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this drawing and it was quite the challenge to complete as I didn't have access to as many references as I normally would due to technical difficulties on Bulbapedia's end. I haven't had a challenge like this since I drew Koraidon quite a while ago. It was worth the experience, regardless and I had a great time with this one! I am looking forward to drawing Ogerpon again in the future!

[generalsnivy]

I'm going to tell my kids that this is the original Dragon Ball.

This was an idea that popped into my head recently and since 2024 is The Year of the Dragon, I wanted to draw a Dragon-type Pokemon that I haven't drawn for a very long time, and that Pokemon is Dragonite. I've only drawn Dragonite twice up to this point and considering that fact, I wanted to gain some additional experience drawing one of my favorite Dragon-type Pokemon.

Let me tell you, drawing Dragonite isn't easy, regardless of which angle or pose you're going for. The most difficult part of drawing this cute, magnificent creature was its face as I tend to have a hard time drawing it correctly. As for the body, that was a challenge in itself as I have never seen a Dragonite depicted like this, or in a similar pose so, I had to mostly play it by ear and draw it in a way that would make the most sense to me. That's what made it that much more challenging, but fun and incredibly satisfying once I finished drawing it. Regardless of the difficulty and complexity of this drawing, I'm very happy with the way this turned out in the end!

Special thanks to @MitoidTheRodz on Twitter for sharing a new reference image for Dragonite from the Pokemon anime! It really helped me out, especially considering the angle I was going for with them, thus, being able to fix up Dragonite's face from the previous WIP I shared a few days ago!

[generalsnivy]

Here it is! My first drawing of 2024 and what better way to celebrate than to draw some cute aura puppies as they ring in the new year together!

Honestly, drawing these two wasn't too bad, considering what poses I was going for with them, especially Riolu! When I shared some WIPs of this drawing earlier, I was warned early on that Riolu can be very difficult to draw, especially regarding its lower torso and legs. Considering what I was going for with them, I didn't run into too many issues when drawing Riolu. As for Lucario, he took a bit of time to figure out, especially when it came to its snout and its arms. At one point, I forgot to add Lucario's tail to the line art part of the drawing, but I managed to catch myself early enough to add it without any major setbacks. For drawing Lucario's and Riolu's snouts, this Twitter tweet helped me illustrate how snouts are typically drawn on foxes, wolves, dogs, etc. which transitioned over nicely to both Lucario and Riolu with their snouts. After the snouts came Lucario's arms and they were very challenging to figure out as I wanted Riolu to sit on one arm while Lucario was holding something with their other free paw while making it all look as natural as possible, which I think I succeeded in doing so, which makes me feel proud of myself for pulling something like that off. I'm also proud of the way my line art and shading turned out this time around as the added darkness helped with the overall shading process. The line art looks cleaner, in my opinion, and is less shaky as seen in some of my other drawings. Overall, this was a fun challenge and I enjoyed drawing these two very much! I'm looking forward to drawing them again in the future!

[generalsnivy]

Merry Christmas everyone! It’s that time of year again where I share what I got for the holidays this year! This Holiday Haul is smaller than usual due to everything that’s happened this year from the trip to see my sister in PA, to us moving to a new home! It’s been a rough year to say the least! Regardless of the circumstances, it’s not about the number of gifts received! It’s about the thought behind them! My family and I are very appreciative of the gifts we received and we all enjoyed receiving them from each other! Not pictured as I received them early are my new office chair and a new black winter jacket!

If anyone here has received any gifts themselves, regardless of what it is or who it’s from, feel free to share them in the replies! Merry Christmas, once again! And a Happy New Year!

[generalsnivy]

It is surprising to see many Pokemon come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, including those of the same species. Each Pokemon in the world has an average size for their specified species but, every once in a while, there is an outlier where a Pokemon is either born as large as The Jolly Green Giant, (or possibly larger) or as small as a soccer ball/football. (Or even smaller than that.) These are the kinds of Pokemon that need the most love, care, and attention in order for them to live and thrive in this cruel world. This is the case when this teeny tiny Oshawott is born into this world and is being cared for by their trainer who's holding them in the palm of their hands, falling asleep right away. As soon as this Oshawott was born, this trainer knew that they were truly something special and knew that this precious, teeny, tiny, baby needs to be protected at all costs.

After reading up on a tutorial on the basics of drawing human hands posted by Clip Studio Paint's Twitter account, I decided to give it a whirl as I struggle greatly when it comes to drawing human body parts, especially the hands. If the hands look wonky or off, know that I still need a lot more practice drawing human hands. Looking at the final results, they turned out pretty dang well if I do say so myself. (Not perfect, mind you, but better than other hands I've drawn up to this point in time.) Oshawott also turned out great, but when I finished the drawing the first time, I went to bed to go to sleep, and during my sleep, I realized that I messed up on most of the shading as I had the dark shading spots in the opposite parts of Oshawott, which meant that I had to redo ~95% of the shading already done, which was annoying, but thankfully, didn't take too long to redo. (I even added additional shading to make Oshawott stand out even more.) Regardless, the final results were all worth it in the end, even if it took longer than I intended to finish this. It's always worth the experience of trying to draw something new or something that's very challenging to do.

[generalsnivy]

This Kalosian Goodra recently learned that his favorite, beloved grandmother, who was a Hisuian Goodra who was in the hospital due to her age and cancer taking her, slowly, was being moved to Hospis, which filled him with great sadness. To help distract him and cheer him up, even if only a little bit, his friends and family gathered together and encouraged him to help decorate his home for the holidays. It took all day to finish, but everything was looking very festive and it lifted up Goodra's spirit a little. The very last thing they finished decorating was their 7-foot-tall Christmas tree, which was decorated with all kinds of shiny ornaments and they were all wrapped around with red and green Garlin. After everything was all said and done, they gathered around and took a family photo in front of the decorated Christmas tree so that they could share the holiday spirit with Goodra's dying grandmother. Sometime later, he took the picture to Hospis where his grandmother was being kept comfortable, showed it to her, and the two of them chatted for several hours. After a while, he gave his grandmother a big hug, told her how much he loved her, left the photo with her, and then went home.

One month passes, and Goodra receives the sad news from his sister that their grandmother finally passed away a few days prior. Unsurprisingly, this devastated him, and he was rightfully enraged because he wasn't told of her passing right away. The reason why she didn't tell him right away was because she too, was saddened by her passing and she needed time to get herself together and figure out the best way to tell her brother, which backfired massively. Goodra's sister then informed him of where their grandmother was buried and he raced off to her gravesite. On his way there, he raced by his friends as they were going about their business as tears were beginning to run down Goodra's face. Concerned, Goodra's friends dropped everything they were doing and followed their friend to the cemetery where his beloved grandmother was supposedly buried. When he found his grandmother's grave, the only thing he could do at that point was to sit down in front of it and begin to cry. Just as he began to sob, his friends showed up behind him and approached him slowly, without saying a word as they could tell what was going on right away. And so, they all gathered around Goodra, offering hugs and comfort as he grieves and mourns the loss of his favorite, beloved grandmother. As he continued to grieve, a ghostly apparatus in the shape of his grandmother appeared in front of him and his friends. The apparatus then gives a message to the grieving Goodra assuring him that everything is going to be okay and encouraging him not to cry. Even though they won't be around anymore, physically, they will always be with them inside their heart. Although the message was received, Goodra continued to mourn and grieve for his grandmother. So, he and his friends stayed together and kept each other company as Goodra's friends continued to comfort him as snow fell on all 4 of them throughout the night. The following morning, after he finally finished crying, he stood up and thanked his friends for being there for him when he needed them most. They then said goodbye to each other and went their separate ways for now, and then Goodra went home, apologized to his sister for taking out his anger on her, made up, and then hugged each other tightly as they went and spent the day together, reminiscing their happiest memories of their grandmother and how she blessed both of their lives with her presence.

This took quite a while to finish not only due to life getting in the way again, but I also revised this several times in my head before I drew what you see before you. Honestly, it took quite some time to figure out how I could best articulate my feelings into this drawing with my current skill set, which is why I didn't draw this right away when certain events occurred in my personal life, which I'll explain right now. Around the end of September, my grandmother, who was the wife of my 2nd late grandfather, who passed away last year, returned to her home after spending some time in the hospital after receiving treatment for some blood clots in her legs. She called me around the beginning of October before Mom and moved to our new home and we caught up with each other. I heard of what was going on with Grandmom from my sister prior to Grandmom calling me and as we were chatting and catching up, I told her that I was thankful that she was still alive after her ordeal and that I loved and missed her. Little did I know, that this would be the very last time I'd ever be able to speak to her again while she was alive as in November, she was back in the hospital again after suffering from a stroke while she was at home. The reason I knew this was due to the information received from my grandmother's daughter, which was then passed onto my sister, and then was finally passed onto my mother and myself simultaneously. My sister kept us updated and informed as we all live in separate states and my sister was the closest to where Grandmom was being kept. A short time later, my sister informs us that our grandmother was being moved to Hospis, which meant only one thing; it was almost time for her to go. While Grandmom was being moved to Hospis, my sister and my grandmother's daughter put up and decorated a Christmas tree in Grandmom's house and then took a picture of it so that they could celebrate one last Christmas with Grandmom before she inedibly passed on. On the evening of November 15th, 2023, my sister called Mom and informed us that our grandmother finally passed away. As I overheard the news from my room, I went over to Mom as she hung up the phone with my sister and asked her if Grandmom passed away. She told me "yes" and I then went over, sat next to her on the couch, leaned my head on her shoulder, and cried. This entire series of events is what inspired this drawing in the first place. The hardest part was figuring out the best way to express my feelings on this drawing. Even when writing/typing up this story, I began to cry a little bit. Needless to say, I loved my grandmother and it was fun talking to her over the phone during the past 10 years I've been living in Maine. I'll always cherish the memories of spending many Christmases with her, my dad, my sister, and my 2nd grandfather throughout the years while I was still living in Maryland.

Some of you may be wondering, why didn't I go to see my grandmother before she passed away and why was my sister the only one keeping my mother and I in the loop? There are a few reasons: 1) My mother and I live in Maine and my grandmother lived in Maryland. 2) My sister lives in Pennsylvania, in a town near the Maryland state line, which means that she lives closest to where Grandmom once lived. And 3) Mom and I just moved into our new home, which was further up in Northern Maine and we didn't have the money to purchase me a 2-way plane ticket between Maine and either Pennsylvania or Maryland. TL;DR: Financial difficulties and poor timing prevented me from seeing Grandmom off on her deathbed.

[generalsnivy]

A Pokemon Trainer and their Quilava are taking a break from their hard training regimen to prepare themselves for the road ahead. So, Quilava's trainer decided to take out and inflate Quilava's favorite ball to play with as the two of them relax and enjoy the sunshine while taking a well-deserved rest. Needless to say, the Quilava's really enjoying themselves and having a lot of fun while their trainer is watching them happily from a short distance.

I decided to remake an older drawing of mine, which I've been meaning to do for a while! For this remake, I wanted to show off how much I've learned and improved since drawing the original back in March of 2022! This was a lot of fun to revisit and redo with my current skill set!

[generalsnivy]

This is my belated Eevee Day drawing that I wanted to finish by yesterday, but I couldn't do so in time. Regardless of timing, this drawing was one of the oldest ideas I had sitting on my list for a very long time and it took me until now to finally put it onto a digital canvas!

For context as to what's going on here, Bruno the Eevee placed a bet with his teammate, TT the Riolu, to see how many apples the two of them could collect for their client by sunset the previous day. Whoever lost the bet would have to dance the entirety of the Nutcracker Suite while wearing a tutu on stage in front of their entire guild the following day. The competition between them was close, but TT won by 1 apple and so, Bruno had to bare the loss and humiliation as he reluctantly took the tutu, got on stage, and began dancing to the Nutcracker Suite, looking completely unamused by these turn of events and everyone, including his teammates, laughed and cheered as he danced throughout the song.

I originally planned to include mostly half of a human holding his arms as he wore the tutu. But, I could not draw the human's hand holding Bruno's paws properly and after a bit of pondering, I decided to scrap the human's inclusion and change the theme to have it take place in the universe of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (despite me never playing any of the games, I've seen a lot of fan art of the series and managed to get a general idea as to what the spinoff series is about.) Sometimes, thems the breaks and it can also lead to different opportunities to make the original vision even better as one changes their approach and new ideas flood in to compensate for one's lack of skills in a given situation. TL;DR: I need to practice drawing humans much more before I can include them in any serious drawings.

[generalsnivy]

A cute, little Espeon, but it's not AI-generated and is instead, drawn by a human being using a digital tablet connected to a laptop computer that can barely run Windows 10 due to how ancient the hardware is under the hood and is able to use Krita to draw this in a couple of days.

For context as to what's going on, it is best summed up by Glacytale_ on Twitter in their own Espeon redraw here:

As for my own interpretation of these events, an "artist" on Twitter started passing off some Pokemon fan art as their own "art" that they took time to create. When they posted fan art of Espeon, it was found out by an actual artist that this fake "artist" used AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate the fan art of Espeon and they failed to disclose that it was AI-generated. When I dug into the "artist's" Media tab, I saw that they only posted two other drawings at the time that they were called out/caught and after some close examination, they too, were AI-generated. So, to help spread awareness of this fraud of an artist, many actual artists, including myself, have been taking the AI-generated art that this person posted, used it as a reference, and redrew it ourselves to show this person that if one takes the time to learn how to draw properly either digitally or traditionally with a pen, pencils, papers, etc. that they can recreate their AI-generated art properly. It's not that hard to get started on learning how to draw and it's not overly expensive either. The other reason why we were (or still are) doing this, is to call them out for their mistakes and teach them a lesson that using AI to generate are is not ok as it steals from many, many artists to generate their images. Using AI to generate art hurts every single artist, both living and deceased, due to how it was trained, ie; art theft. Worse yet is the fact that as of the making of this post, they are not only continuing to post AI-generated "fan art", but they are practically rubbing it in our faces and seeing our criticism as more of a challenge than proper feedback. (Sounds a lot like a certain Call of Duty developer studio that WARDS our feedback and throws it into a black hole expanding to INFINITY and beyond.)

I intended to finish this drawing sooner, but some things happened in my personal life that really got in my way and have impacted me, emotionally over the past week. Regardless, I wanted to throw my hat into the ring and hop onto this Espeon redraw trend to take my stand to say that I am 100% against AI art generation and the entire system needs to be nuked and restarted from the ground up, using royalty-free and stock images to train it rather than train from all art from all across the internet. Despite the personal issues that I've encountered over the past week, I still had fun putting this together and although it took a while to finish, it was worth it in the end, at least in my opinion.

[generalsnivy]

This 3-month-old Lugia only learned how to fly 2 weeks ago and so, while his parents weren't looking, he flew off on his own, seeking fun and adventure. Sometime later, he was flying and enjoying the sights. But then, a Dragapult appeared out of nowhere directly in front of the poor baby Lugia and scared him so much that he began to fall from the sky. The poor thing was so scared that he forgot how to fly and as he was falling from high in the sky, he began to cry and was calling out for his mommy and daddy to save him, but nobody came. Luckily, when he thought that all hope was lost, he landed and bounced on the back of a giant Lugia parade balloon, stopping his fall and saving him from certain doom. After drying his tears, the baby Lugia realized that this "Lugia" was very bouncy and started to bounce up and down on the thing, not knowing exactly what this thing actually was, nor knowing that this "Lugia" was actually a parade balloon made by humans. For those wondering how it is that no humans noticed that a Pokemon was bouncing on this parade balloon and how did it not fly away, the balloon was anchored down to the ground below and the humans were elsewhere, making additional preparations for their upcoming parade, which was happening in a few hours. After bouncing for a while, the baby Lugia got tired, sat down on the balloon and took a nap. Several hours have passed and the human-organized parade has begun. When it came time for the humans to move the Lugia balloon down the parade route, the baby Lugia woke up and noticed that this "Lugia" started to "fly" forward gently so that he wouldn't roll off the balloon. He then heard the sounds of cheering and saw some small, strange objects raining from the sky as he and the Lugia balloon continued to move forward. Not knowing what was going on, he just sat back and took in the view, enjoying the ride while smiling ear to ear while the humans continued to cheer down below, unaware that a baby Lugia was riding on one of their parade balloons. When both the baby Lugia and the Lugia parade balloon reached the end of the parade route, the humans anchored the balloon down once more and went off to finish the festivities elsewhere. As the sun began to set, the baby Lugia thanked the "Lugia" for not only saving his life but for allowing him to bounce on its back and have some fun after falling onto them earlier that day. He then remembered how to fly and flew back home, where his parents had been searching franticly for him all day, but couldn't find him anywhere until just now. After returning home, they scolded him for going off on his own and making them worry themselves sick. The baby Lugia apologized for his misdeeds and then, his parents grabbed and hugged him, thanking Arceus for keeping him safe while he was out and about on his own today.

I had this idea sitting on my list of ideas for a while due to Mom and I moving to our new home and not having time to draw anything new. I originally wanted to draw this before drawing the prior one featuring a Servine and Serperior after they bought a new home, but I did the other drawing first so that I could have it serve as an update of why I haven't drawn anything new in over 3 months. (TL;DR, life happened and I had higher priorities over drawing.) Talking about this drawing, I was originally going for a different angle when it came to the Lugia parade balloon, but I couldn't make it work, so I took a slightly different approach and simplified it a bit. Regardless, I really loved how this entire drawing turned out; from the baby Lugia to the Lugia parade balloon, it was a lot of fun to draw one of my favorite legendary Pokemon! I especially loved how I handled the shading and highlights on the Lugia parade balloon as they were the most fun part of the entire drawing process. After the background was drawn, I wanted to add something more to it to give a more celebratory vibe, like what one would see in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the form of confetti. When it came to drawing the confetti, I wasn't sure if I should've put it on the top layer above everything, or in the background layer behind the baby Lugia and the Lugia parade balloon, so I went with the latter as it looked better that way, in my opinion. Plus, I didn't want to take away any attention from the details and shading work from either the baby Lugia or the Lugia parade balloon. Overall, this was a fun drawing to do and it was a learning experience for drawing Lugia in general.

I used one of @friday_ferdy's Lugia drawings on Twitter as a reference for figuring out how to go about giving the baby Lugia its facial expression. Here is the drawing I referenced.

[generalsnivy]

Strong Infernape girl [comm for anonymous]

[generalsnivy]

Sceptile! I know the eyes are supposed to look more angry looking or whatever, but I really liked how the thumbnail looked with more lax eyes wahh

[generalsnivy]

the intrusive thoughts

[generalsnivy]

With Eevee!

[generalsnivy]

Rip Melon.

[generalsnivy]

This snake family just acquired a home that they were desperately looking for as the rent for their old home was so astronomically high, that they couldn't afford to stay there and also pay for necessities such as food, water, cleaning supplies, etc. Ladies and gents; you're looking at a Serperior mother with her Servine son as they are now proud homeowners of this lovely 2-bedroom, 1-bath house, located in a nice, quiet neighborhood, where most businesses are local and they're only about 20 minutes away from the nearest major town, so if they need something from a major big brand store, it won't take an eternity to complete a round trip. Let's have a round of applause and congratulations to this wonderful, happy family!

This drawing is also going to serve as an update as to where I've been as it's been ~3 months since I drew anything new and a lot has happened during that time. Back in July of this year, the property we were living at for the past 10 years was bought out by another realtor company and we feared that our rent was going to increase as it has already done so at the beginning of this year by ~$250. After the acquisition, we received a letter from the new realtor company that our rent wasn't going up (right away. More on this in a little bit.) which was a huge relief. However, around mid-August, we received another letter from them informing us that the rent would be going up once more, starting in October 2023, by another ~$300! That's 2 rent increases for this year, which is really, really bad! For those wondering if companies can do that since in several states, there's a law that exists that makes it so there's a cap on how much rent can be raised per year. Sadly, Maine is not one of those states that has this law so, realtors can raise the rent as much as they want, whenever they want, so long as they inform their tenants at least 30 days in advance in writing. As a result of this new rent increase, we would not be able to afford the new rent amount as Mom and I live on monthly paychecks, which are used to pay for expenses such as bills, food, necessities, clothes, cleaning supplies, unexpected expenses, etc. So, we had to spend the last 2 months packing up our home while also searching for a new one that's not only within our price range of what we can afford for a monthly rent payment but also had to include heat as heating is very expensive here in Maine and it is required in order to survive Maine's harsh, hard winters. It also had to have enough storage to store as many of our belongings as possible, and it also had to have washer and dryer hookups. Towards the end of September, we were able to find a place that met most requirements for a much cheaper price. However, the place is a lot smaller than our old home and when we moved in, we had to get rid of/donate a lot of things as we don't have the room for them, which sucked as we had a lot of nice things that we had to give away. Despite that, Mom and I are thankful that we not only managed to find a place before October that included heat, plus most other amenities, including electricity which is a huge bonus as not a lot of places include electricity in the rent. We're also thankful that we have a roof over our heads so we're not out on the streets, which I was fearing was going to happen as there weren't too many places for rent that were within our price range and included what we needed. We managed to unpack most of the house, but there's still quite a bit of unpacking left to do, especially in Mom's room as her room is much smaller than mine. (I had to take the bigger bedroom due to my bed and furniture being so large.) Overall, the past 3 months have been the most stressful and scariest of my life as I was filled with fear, anxiety on top of what anxiety I had already, and uncertainty due to these events. We are slowly settling into our new home and thankfully, we're living in a nice, quiet neighborhood that isn't in the boonies and we're only an hour away from a major town, which is nice. I should be able to get back into drawing like I normally do, but who knows what life will throw at us next? Only one way to find out.