I'm just going to rant about PhotoShop for a minute. Or thirty.

So I recently decided that SketchBook is holding back my art skills. (Total lie, as you will soon see.) It has a limited number of brushes, layers, and other options. So I decided to try out a different art program.

I opened PhotoShop (because I am completely done with ArtRage, and I was too lazy to go find my Manga Studio 8 disc to download so I could download it on my new laptop), and started doodling.

After a few practice sketches, I buckled down and started rereating a pencil drawing I did the other day. And, I must admit, she turned out pretty gosh darn adorable.

Mira (girl with kitty) at the Myers-Briggs Academy. She's ENFP.

Lineart = success.

I plowed ahead and started coloring, even though I knew I had archery practice in less than half an hour. I got about half of the base colors down before it was time to leave, so then I closed the laptop lid--not shutting it down, mind you--and headed off to practice.

AND STUPID ME FORGOT TO SAVE THE DRAWING, JUST IN CASE.

So you know, the impossible happened, PhotoShop crashed at some point during archery practice, and ate the drawing. Now the only thing I have left is the single-layer .jpg lineart attached to this post.

Someday, when I don't have anything better to do, I'll pull this picture up and retrace the lineart and color it. Saving my progress every few minutes, obviously.

Anyway. Enough ranting.

I don't know. And I now see that I forgot to color the brushes.

My style's been going crazy lately. My full-body sketches are either short, round little almost-chibis, or stick people. And I won't even talk about the faces. The only thing that's fairly consistent is how I draw hair...

I see really good pieces of art sometimes, and at first I'm depressed. Why can't I draw like that? Then I study the drawing, pick apart their shading techniques and how they outline and whatever else I've been working on in my own drawings. And then I pull out my pen tablet with a new fire of passion and start drawing.

I think it's working, as I've noticed so much improvement over the last few months that it's insane.

OH. AND.

Etsy store hopeful open date: Saturday, February 7, 2015 (Rain date Saturday February 14)

Yes folks, you heard that right. This Saturday.

I'm hoping to get my ID on Thursday, open my bank account sometime after that, and then get the store up and running on Saturday. If it turns out that we don't go to the license place this week, I'll make next Saturday my goal.