2024 October Roundup

It's my ideal kind of day at the moment; the sky is overcast, the wind is picking up, the leaves are whirling about, and I'm enjoying being bundled up snug against the cold 🥰 October was unseasonably warm and I started to worry we weren't going to enjoy any real autumn weather at all! Here's what I got up to during those slowly cooling days.

Patreon Rewards

I finished the illustration and setting up the digital file for printing, but I was derailed by being subpoenaed as a witness in a court hearing and didn't actually send Patreon rewards until November. They feature my most recent Maginaturalist's Sketchbook piece: Da.

Patreon is the best way you can support my work and help me keep creating 🥰 You can sign up to receive illustrated postcards, prints, both, or neither! Please click here to join us today.

deviantART

The only piece I submitted to dA in October was Da, the rainbow serpent of West African myth. I created it using ink on vellum-finish sketchbook paper, with digital refinement using Photoshop.

Click here to view, fave, and comment on dA!

You can also support my work on dA! Instead of physical rewards, you can get printable coloring pages and chibi caricatures 🖼️✨ Click here to become my first supporter there!

Livestreaming

I had to skip a lot of streams in October due to various things, including preparing to sell my work at the very first Boise Vegan Market, taking a weekend off to watch a Seattle Reign away game, and the subpoena that I mentioned earlier (being a witness is SO STRESSFUL 😬) but we still had fun during the times I was able to go live. Here's the recording of the last stream of the month, which fell on Halloween!

Twitch is another place where you can support my creative efforts. Become a monthly subscriber and you will receive exclusive Discord server access, cute emotes to use all across Twitch, and custom subscriber badges! Click here to visit my channel and subscribe.

Charity Fundraising

Our charity of the month for October was Palomacy! I choose them every October because it was the first full month I spent as a pigeon's guardian 🕊️💕

We only had 15 unique viewers in October, which makes sense, but also isn't bad considering I was only able to stream on five days! My formula for these donations is $0.10 USD per viewer, with a $10 minimum, so that meant $10 for the pigeons.

If you'd like to support Palomacy and all the birds they help, you can click here to make your own donation. Thank you on behalf of pigeons and doves everywhere~!!

Gryphia Progress

It's been slower going recently but I have made headway in editing my first draft! In October I got into chapter seven, which means I'm more than halfway done with this first round of editing my illustrated fantasy novel 😄

Other News: Vegan Market and Studio Upgrades

At the beginning of October, I was ecstatic to vend at Boise's first Vegan Market! Not only was it wonderful to sell my work in a setting surrounded by others who care as much as I do about making the world better for animals, I hope by being present as a vegan illustrator I helped demonstrate that veganism is not just a diet, but a lived philosophy that touches every part of our lives ❤️ Here are some photos from the event!

Me at my booth!

The monitor was hard to read in the daylight 😣

Pin-back buttons and magnets.

Giclée prints and greeting cards.

Giclée prints and postcards.

More giclée prints and postcards!

Also in October, my wonderful husband helped me by getting a couple key studio upgrades! The first was a new computer chair for my desktop PC workspace. The chair I had before was super old, worn out, and aggravated my chronic lower back pain whenever I used it. This new chair, on the other hand, fits my body perfectly and my back pain actually lessens when I use it, because I can finally practice good posture!

The chair matches the aesthetic, too!

The other upgrade was a new laptop!! At the Vegan Market, my five-year-old laptop struggled mightily to do what I was asking of it (run Photoshop, connect to the printer, and print greeting cards and prints to replace the ones that were selling) which inspired my husband to get me a new one 🥹 He had already tried getting better RAM for the old one, since the machine had been struggling for a couple years, but to no avail. That said, happily, my younger sister took my old laptop after I did a Windows reset. Her previous laptop was even older and less capable, so we both ended up with upgrades 😄

Kiki helping unbox my new laptop 🐱

I decided to make it Suikoden themed!

My laptop in its new home, at my drafting table workspace.

That's all from me this time. I hope you enjoyed this post, thank you for reading to the end! Until next time, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe 💖

2024 July, August, September Roundup

What a summer I had this year 🤯 I'm still playing catchup after a string of medical emergencies and illnesses that struck our household from the end of July through to mid-August. So let's cut to the chase! Here's what I got up to over the past three months, written with all brevity!

Patreon Rewards

In July I sent Baba Yaga rewards 🧙‍♀️🧹 You can read more about them here.

And in August I sent Cabyll-Usige rewards 🌊🐴 Find out more here.

September's rewards featured the Summer Gryphon illustration that took me several months to complete! Read about them here.

Patreon is the best way to support my storytelling efforts, and you can get sweet rewards like these postcards in the bargain! Please click here to join us today 🥰

deviantART

The image I submitted in July was a chibi caricature of Creamy Kitty, who had recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

View, fave, and comment on dA!

I submitted the Cabyll-Usige illustration in August, the third entry in my Maginaturalist's Sketchbook series.

View, fave, and comment on dA!

In September, I submitted my Summer Gryphon, the final entry in my Seasonal Gryphon series!

View, fave, and comment on dA!

You can support my work on deviantART, similar to Patreon, except instead of postcard or print rewards, you can get chibi caricatures! Please click here to join 💖

Livestreaming

The final Twitch stream in July was only one hour long. By this time, the medical emergencies had started and impacted the amount of time I had to share with everyone. It was still a good time, focused on my chibi baby bok choy subscriber badge!

I was finally able to resume my normal streaming schedule in the third full week of August, and in the following week, I started using my completely revamped visual and technological setup, including my new Logitech Reach camera! Here's the first stream featuring all that hard work 😁

It was so exciting to finish my Summer Gryphon piece in September! This livestream covered the last round of work on it.

Please consider subscribing to my channel on Twitch. It's another way you can help Studio Mikarts!

Charity Fundraising

July's charity of the month was The Rat Retreat, which I feature in July because that was the month in which I adopted my three sister rats, Minerva, Nymphadora, and Bathilda 🐀🐀🐀 Before I get to my donation, I want to thank our wonderful Wolfaxe2 for once again donating the entire amount to our Twitch fundraiser!!!

As for my own donation, it's based on my unique viewers count for the month: $0.10 USD per viewer, min $10 and max $100. We had 21 in July!

So that meant a $10 donation from me, and a total of $20 to The Rat Retreat~!!

August is the birthmonth of one of my heroes, Fiona Oakes, so I chose her organization, Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary, as our charity that month 🥳✨ Once again, Wolfaxe2 showed up big time and donated the full £10 to our Twitch fundraiser!!!

Our unique viewers count for August came to 21 AGAIN, which was awesome considering all the time I had to take off due to the aforementioned medical emergencies 🤒

This led to a £10 donation from me, which combined with Wolf's contribution came to £20 total!

And in September, our charity was Best Friends Animal Society, chosen because September 22 is the adoption day of Kumo, Chappie, and Aoife, whom all came to us from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah 😻 (September 22 is what I call Everything Day, because it's also the northern autumn equinox, Hobbit Day, Sora's rescue day, and my wedding anniversary!) Super exciting for our fundraiser this time was having two donations that, on their own at least DOUBLED the goal, which means we more than QUADRUPLED the Twitch fundraiser goal 🥳🎊🎉✨ Thank you very much to bickman2k and Wolfaxe2 for helping the animals so much!!!

I was also pleasantly surprised by our unique viewers count in September, since I took two weeks off from streaming (one for my anniversary and another to prepare to sell my art at Boise's very first popup Vegan Market in October!). It was the highest of these three months, at 24!

This meant another $10 donation from me, for a grand total of $55 raised for Best Friends Animal Society!

Our charity of the month for October is Palomacy, chosen because October was the first full month I spent as a pigeon's guardian 🕊️💕 Join me on Twitch, and bring your friends to get the viewer count up! Consider donating to the fundraiser while you're there, or making a donation directly 🥰

Gryphia Progress

To hasten this blog post's completion, I will just share three photos--one each from July, August, and September--showcasing my slow-but-steady progress editing my first draft of my illustrated novel!

I am now into chapter five of twelve, so things are moving along nicely! Once the markup process is done, I'll start my first rewrite 🖊️

Other News

As I've mentioned above, I had a whirlwind summer. At the end of July, my husband was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. About a week later, my big dog, Aoife, was attacked by the neighbors' off-leash dog, requiring over $1,500 in medical care, plus intense at-home care while she recovered. In the next week after that, our cat, Kiki, came down with a UTI and needed multiple emergency vet visits. With all these hospital visits and the extra stress of caring for everyone, my husband and I both ended up contracting COVID-19 😱 I was extremely sick and utterly miserable. But I didn't need to go to the doctor, for which I was grateful! It can always be worse! By September, I was feeling better, so I get to end this blurb with happy news! September 22 was Everything Day, and it went splendidly! Here are some highlights from the day:

Everything Day is September 22! It includes my wedding anniversary 💖

It's also Hobbit Day! This is my Tolkien collection.

It's the adoption day of Chappie and Aoife!

And it's the rescue/adoption day of Sora and Kumo, respectively!

Kiki wasn't forgotten; she enjoyed patio time in her new playhouse!

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And that's it for this roundup post, three months in one! I'll try not to get so behind again, but, as this post illustrates, sometimes things happen 😅 Thank you for reading all the way until the end and please stay happy, healthy, and safe 💖

2024 May & June Roundup

Happy summer, everyone! 🎐🌞⛱️ I'm technically supposed to be enjoying my week of summer vacation at this very moment, but I really wanted to get caught up on my blog, so here I am, typing away in my cool, garden floor studio, while the sun bakes everything outside. I had a busy June and couldn't get around to writing my May roundup post, so I'm doing double duty with this entry 😎 Here's what I got up to over the past couple months.

Patreon Rewards

At the end of May, I finished my 2024 Birthday Gryphon illustration and was very pleased to send it to patrons who are signed up for physical rewards. This was the third iteration of the piece that they received, the previous two being WIPs, so I hope they enjoyed watching it reach completion over the course of three months!

Click here to read more about this piece on Patreon.

In June, I started a new black & white illustration series: The Maginaturalist's Sketchbook. The story is that of a maginaturalist wandering the world, capturing all the magical beings she encounters in her sketchbook. I'm using my encyclopedia of magical creatures, drawing the first entry for each letter A-Z, with the intent of cycling back around to A and repeating the process until I've drawn the entire encyclopedia! The first entry in this series was June's reward, the Á Bao A Qu.

Click here to read more about this piece on Patreon.

If you're not already a member of the Studio Mikarts Patreon, please consider joining! It's the best way you can support my work; the funds help pay for things like my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (industry standard for illustration), my cloud backup service (keeping my art files safe in case of disaster), and my Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators membership (my main connection to the storytelling industry). You can support for as little as $5 a month, and can choose to receive only digital rewards, or get both digital rewards AND postcards, prints, or both! Thank you for helping make my dream career possible 🥰

deviantART

I've uploaded several pieces to dA in the past couple months but the two I'm featuring here are extra special. First, a chibi caricature I finished in May, featuring me with Sean Astin! You may remember the story from April's roundup (^^)

Click here to fave and comment on deviantART!

Next, for June's piece, another chibi caricature! This time it's the dog of the daughter of the winner of the Palomacy auction item for one of my caricatures (I hope that makes sense) 😆 Her name is Moo Latte~ This piece is extra special since it helped Palomacy help more pigeons!

Click here to fave and comment on deviantART!

deviantART is another place you can support my creative career. You can commission me for one of these chibi caricatures or you can sign up for a subscription, which is somewhat like Patreon, but instead of postcards or prints, you can get chibi caricatures! And the tiers also start at just $5 a month ❤️ I don't have any members there yet, so this is your chance to be number one!

Livestreaming

I have so much news to share here! First off, at the beginning of May I received the wireless keyboard and mouse that I purchased with my birthday money. These peripherals have been gamechangers! Worth every penny 💖 Now, for example, I can type in the chat with ease, look up reference images on my secondary monitor instead of my phone, and raid another channel smoothly at the end of each stream.

They fit perfectly on my Sympathy Kiss mat 😍

At the end of May, I decided to increase the length of my streams to three hours. There were many reasons for this, two major ones being my desire to get more illustration work done in a month and feeling good about streaming three hours a day, three days a week, three weeks a month 😁 Here's the recording of that first three-hour stream:

As June progressed, I got two more Twitch subscriber rewards finished. A chibi broccoli subscriber badge and a "cute" Ranger emote. The emote is also available on the Studio Mikarts Discord, which is exclusive to Twitch, dA, and Patreon members. Twitch is another place you can financially support my work and get cool rewards like these, so please consider joining us there!

A WIP image showing the finished icon and started emote.

The last stream I did in June was actually my 100th Chibi Friday!!! ✨🎊🥳🎉✨ Not only that, it was extra super duper special because it was the Palomacy Moo Latte piece!! Best of all, the auction winner was able to join the stream live and made it fantastic by chatting with me almost the entire time 🥰 Here's the recording:

Charity Fundraising

May's charity of the month was The Vegan Society. Once again, my awesome supporter, Wolfaxe2, donated the entire amount of £10 to our Twitch fundraiser! 🥰

💖 Thank you, Wolf~!!! You're the best!!! 💜

On top of that, perhaps due to streaming for an extra hour each day, we beat our unique viewers record for the third time this year!!!

Of course, 34 is still well away from the minimum of 101 that we need to make my donation greater than $10, so I hope more and more folks will watch my channel and bring their friends! My donation formula is $0.10 USD per viewer, min $10, max $100. To make it simple, I let that translate directly into a £10 donation to The Vegan Society.

And June's charity was Animal Alliance Asia. We didn't break the viewers record this time, but it wasn't far off!

That meant a $10 donation to them, as well!

If you'd like to make your own donation to either of these organizations, please use the links above! I, the animals, and everyone working to change the world for the better will thank you 💖✨

Gryphia Progress

In the past two months, I purposefully abstained from working on my Gryphia novel. I finished the first draft in April and have been letting the project cool so I can come back to it with more objectivity and freshened creativity. This is that time! I'm super stoked; I've had so many ideas for my fantasy world over the past eight weeks and I'm raring to put them into action! 🤓📑🖋️✨

Other News: SCBWI Summer Conference

My longtime readers will know I've attended the SCBWI Virtual Summer Conference since 2022. I've signed up again this year, which will be my third time. I've entered the illustrators portfolio showcase again, hoping that the third time is the charm 🤞 Here are the pieces I entered into the showcase!

"Autumn Gryphon" mixed media, 2024

"2024 Birthday Gryphon" mixed media, 2024

"モー Moo" mixed media, 2023

I haven't garnered any interest in previous years, but if the same people are looking, perhaps they will notice that I am continually producing new work of high caliber, year after year. I hope the editors, agents, and art directors will find my work compelling and reach out to me this time!

Wish me luck! 🙏🙏🙏

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That's it for my roundup of May and June! Thank you for reading until the end 🥰 I'll be back again soon, perhaps with the next entry in my Japan Adventure series? Until then, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe~!