juani-hokshana

It's been a while since I've been on here. Just the usually, balancing life, down time, and making time to be creative. Which can be hard when you have a full time job and your free time is either spent cleaning or just relaxing. Things are getting better, but most of my free time is not geared towards creative projects. But hopefully that will be changing within the next month or so.

So lately, as my personal life has finally started to setting into some semblance of normal, I've been tackling the ever growing pile of "papers". In reality, there ideas for animations or the starting of drawings that I haven't gotten to yet. And now I'm trying to get to them. In addition to allowing time for me to catch up on video games or watching movies with my boyfriend.

So I had to take a day job. I've been trying for a while to make money with my art in some way. But my problem is that I'm very, very, very shy and its hard for me to approach new clients. As a result, I haven't been as successful as I would like to be. So I got a somewhat part-time job (they have me working 30 hours) to have some steady income. I still want to continue with my art and hopefully when I'm not so worried about money I can take a bit more risks and work on being less shy.

Now for almost a year I was going to this Figure Drawing thing near where I live. Just a nude model that would pose and a group of people would sit around and draw. It's only run two nights during the week, and my new "job" has me working evening shifts on those nights. Now, I could use a break from this drawing thing. As I said I go to it religiously. Most of my drawings are posted there. I just don't know if I should request my boss to give me that night off to go to it. I just really don't know what to do.

I just finished up a horrible week where everything I tried to do, I couldn't because there was something wrong. Either something broke or I was missing supplies needed to work on it. But it's over and I was able to fix all my problems.

Its a good thing that I uploaded some new images, because lately all I've been working on has been the drawings I do at my figure drawing event I go to. This is a good reminder for me to work on something new. Or at least finish up a lot of projects that I'm in the middle of.

As I've gotten older, I've really gotten into manga. Well, comics all around. My local library has a great selection and I've been renting them by the bagful. While I was there I found this neat series called Bizenghast by M. Alice Legrow. I enjoyed it all around, and loved how unique the artwork was.

Now I love reading the artist bio. I find them to be neat incites. My favorite is the ones for Dragon Ball Z. So when I was at the end of the first volume of Bizenghast, I read the author's statement. And it was very rude. The artist wrote that this is their first published work and the characters are very close to the author. And if you are to cosplay "Dinah", do it right or don't do her at all. Then I find out in volume two that Legrow does cosplay herself.

I understand someone who does cosplay wants her characters to be represented correctly. But not everyone is as accomplished seamstress. People learn by trying and making mistakes. Also, when a person cosplays, they are a walking billboard. Think about it. Even if its not of good quality, people will still come up to that person and ask who they are.

I personally don't have any fans (outside my parents), but I understand networking and basic marketing. Never say no to more people being exposed to your work. The more exposed, the more who are going to buy, which in turns allows you to continue doing what you love to do. And don't tell people not to cosplay your characters, then have at least a few pages of two of your books with the author cosplaying herself.