2025 April Roundup

It's hard to believe my birthmonth has already passed again! In April, I completed my 39th year of life and started working on my 40th 🥳🎉✨ The month was full of exciting developments for Studio Mikarts, as well, so I hope you'll enjoy reading about them in this roundup post!

Patreon

I sent two batches of rewards to Studio Mikarts Patreon members in April. March's rewards were delayed until I finished the ink lines for my onomatopoeia bees illustration, so they got sent at the same time as April's, which featured the first Pets Out of Context drawing I've done in over four years! You can read more about these rewards—and sign up to become a member!—here.

A big development for Patreon in April was deciding to shift from monthly rewards to quarterly. I am grateful to my patrons for agreeing to this change, since it comes with lots of benefits for all of us, including:

• More time to create my best illustration work, which means more interesting rewards for my patrons and more satisfaction for me!
• Patrons still get a reward equivalent to their contribution, so one-postcard members now get three postcards, and three-postcard members get prints!
• Even with upping everyone's rewards, the change ultimately saves time and money, which will go towards making more artwork instead!

This change has also led to the creation of a new membership tier and the reduction in the monthly contribution for all of the higher tiers 😄 To learn more about these updates, and to support my work by becoming a patron, click here!

deviantART

The piece I uploaded to dA in April was this chibi caricature of Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes 🔎 It was a thank-you gift to my very first Twitch subscriber, Exie, who has now been supporting me for over two years!

View, fave, and comment on dA.

You can commission me for a chibi caricature like this at any time! You can order via deviantART or on my Square shop.

Artstreaming

We had another fun month of artstreaming in April, though it was only two weeks long due to my birthday and preparing for the Spring Vegan Market. Here's the recording of the last illustration stream of the month, wherein I started and finished my Pets Out of Context Sora drawing:

Pets Out of Context: Sora 1

Twitch is another opportunity to support my creative work. When you subscribe to my channel, you get ad-free viewing, cute chibi emotes, and more!

Charity Fundraising

Our charity of the month for April was Rowdy Girl Sanctuary. This was our first year supporting them so I was ecstatic when Studio Mikarts member, Wolfaxe2, donated 1.5 times the goal to our Twitch fundraiser! Wolf, you're the best!! 🎉✨

On top of the Twitch fundraiser, I always make a separate donation based on my unique viewers count for the month. The formula is $0.10 per viewer, minimum $10, maximum $100.

We had 13 unique viewers in April which meant a $10 donation (plus processing fees) for a total of $25 raised for Rowdy Girl Sanctuary!

Thank you to everyone who supports my fundraising efforts by joining my livestreams and donating to my fundraisers on Twitch 🥹💕 Together we're having fun while making a real difference for the animals of the world!

Gryphia Progress

I made steady progress on my manuscript again this month! I spent most of the days working out new details that were absolutely essential. Without those details, I wasn't going to be able to create a cohesive and immersive experience for the reader. Now I have a wealth of new information to draw from not only for this novel, but for future ones, as well!

Creating an illustrated novel is a long and difficult process. If you believe in my work as a storyteller and enjoy seeing my monthly progress updates, please become a patron, subscribe on Twitch, or even buy me a magical coffee! Every bit of support helps keep me writing 💖

Other News: Spring Vegan Market

The biggest professional event for me in April was the Spring Vegan Market! I joined twenty other vendors offering a huge variety of goods and enjoyed a beautiful, warm, sunny day meeting market-goers and potential new audience members.

Sales weren't too good at this market, I have to be honest. But I got to meet one of my long-time patrons face-to-face for the first time, which made it all worth it 🥰 I also spent the following week considering what I could improve for next time and I'm excited to test out my ideas! I hope I'm selected to vend at the Summer Vegan Market so that I can do so 😁

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That's all for April's roundup, I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for reading until the end. Until next time, may you remain happy, healthy, and safe ❤️

2023 Japan Adventure - Part 16: Akita Exploration

Welcome back to my 2023 Japan Adventure blog series! Last time, we enjoyed the guided excursion into Akita that was provided by our cruise line, Silversea. This time, I'll share our subsequent self-guided exploration of the area.

Wednesday 23 March 2023 - Akita Exploration

I was way into Pokémon GO at this time (I played the whole way 'round Japan, getting lots of new PokéStops!), so I was stoked to find this vending machine holding a promotional event! 🤩

Inside the Akita Port Tower Selion, there was a scale model of the tower!
The real thing is the tallest building in the northern Tohoku region 🤯

From the observation deck at the top of the tower, we could see our ship! 🛳️

Our home at sea for two weeks, the Silver Muse, in Akita!

At a Selion restaurant, we got to try an Akita specialty: kiritanpo (きりたんぽ) 🤤

These naturally vegan snacks were made with pounded rice and slathered in white miso! YUM!

Next we visited the Selion Rista, which is a sort of indoor botanical garden and recreation space located right next to the tower.

We were late for most of the flowers (they seem to bloom very early since they're indoors!) but there were still a few beautiful displays like this 🌼

A view from the upper level of all the lovely greenery!
There weren't many people, so we nearly had it all to ourselves.

I enjoyed my walk through this quiet and refreshing space 🌳

Here's another one of those artistic manhole covers that I enjoyed spotting all over Japan!
This one is from 秋田土崎港 (Tsuchizaki-Minato, Akita).

With our last bit of time before all aboard, we enjoyed a seaside stroll back to the ship, along a pathway studded with various statues and monuments.

I couldn't find any information online about these monuments, but they are easy to find in person, since this area is part of the walking path from the cruise terminal to the tower 🚶‍♀️

Akita's epic farewell performance featured namahage taiko drummers!

The view of the area as dusk fell was magical ✨

The tower is regularly lit up at night. We got to see the green version!

The grand finale, set off as we cruised out of port, was a fireworks display! 🎆

After an excellent day exploring, it was time for dinner!

Getting dressed up for dinner was a hassle, but the result was fun!

Vegan pizza! 🍕 If I could do this cruise again, I'd order this more often!

After dinner, we enjoyed dessert from the Arts Café and did the daily crossword puzzle before heading back to our cabin to rest up for our next stop: Aomori! I'll share more about it next time, so please look forward to it. Until then, may you be happy, healthy, and safe 💖

2025 March Roundup

Spring has sprung here at Studio Mikarts! In fact, today promises to be more like summer, hot and cloudless ☀️ Thank you for taking some time to catch up with me this fine day! Here's what I got up to in March.

Patreon Rewards

I decided to delay sending Patreon rewards, since I was very close to reaching a nice, reward-worthy stage in my onomatopoeia bees illustration. I just need to finish cleaning up these lines and they will be sent as postcards to all my Pen Pals and Writers! Here's the last round of work I did on it as of today:

Animal Onomatopoeia: Bees, Part 13

Patreon is the best way you can support my creative work. If you love what I do, please sign up for as little as $5 USD a month 🥰

deviantART

The piece I'd like to feature this time is the chibi caricature I created of my friend's OC, Kara Di'ren. I don't chibify humans as often as other animals, so this was fun practice!

View, fave, and comment here!

Did you know you can commission me for your own chibi caricature? I can chibify pretty much any animal, real or imagined! Just click here to learn more.

Livestreaming

I kicked off March with a special event: a Suikoden launch party! It was part of the Suikoden Day celebration of the Suikoden I & II HD Remaster release. Suikoden is my favorite game ever, so I had the best time during the launch party 🥳 Day one was fan art, day two was Suikoden I, and day three was Suikoden II.

2025 Suikoden Launch Party: Fan Art Day

Twitch is another platform where you can support my creative work. Please subscribe here!

Charity Fundraising

Our charity of the month was Animal Alliance Asia and in March, thanks to a big turnout for the Suikoden launch party, we set a new unique viewers record of 53!!!

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My donation formula is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, min $10, max $100, so that meant a $10 donation to Animal Alliance Asia 💸

Thank you to everyone who joined me in March and helped make my livestreams more meaningful 💚 I hope you'll join me again this month, too!

Gryphia Progress

Last month, I continued to work through the second draft of chapter two of my fantasy novel. I didn't make much forward progress but I came up with some excellent ideas that will affect the entire story and required further revision of chapter one to incorporate.

This project is purposefully slow-going and I am really excited to continue working on it every day so that I can one day share it with the world 😄

Other News: Media Cull & Reorganization

As a way to earn some money for future travel adventures, I undertook a massive cull of my media collection! This included my books, games, music, and video. A nice side-effect was getting to reorganize what I kept ✨

My otome and CD shelves, with Kiki 🐈

My Harry Potter & Co. and Tolkien shelves, with Aoife 🐕

It was great to earn some money and make some space by selling things that I no longer wanted. It also meant that the things I kept get to shine all the brighter!

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And that's it for this roundup. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading until the end! Until next time, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe ❤️

2023 Japan Adventure - Part 15: Akita Excursions

Welcome to the next entry in my Japan Adventure series! These posts recap the days my husband and I spent in 2023, cruising around mainland Japan, and our time in Osaka before and after ✨ Last time, we departed from Niigata and sailed to Akita! A lot happened during our single day in the prefecture, so this post will focus only on the guided excursions that were organized by Silversea. Let's go!

Wednesday 23 March 2023 - Akita Excursions

As became my wont, I took another photo of the beautiful morning sea 💙

"Welcome to Akita" at the Akita Cruise Terminal!

This unmissable landmark is Akita Port Tower Selion 😮
More about it in the next installment 😉

Our ship was welcomed with an awesome performance of traditional music 💖

A delegation of stylish and friendly "Akita Tourism Ladies" greeted us, too 🖤

It wouldn't be a trip to Akita without meeting some of the namesake dogs 🐶✨

A huge theme in this area is the namahage 👹 In front of two massive namahage statues, this sign states their UNESCO designation as intangible cultural heritage. Also captured in this photo was something I loved seeing all over Akita: wind turbines!

Our first destination was the Mt. Kanpu "Panorama Sky Park" Rotating Observation Deck (寒風山回転展望台) in Oga. We took a tour bus up the mountain.

At the top of the observatory, you can sit and literally watch the world go by, as the seats revolve around the room 😮 There are several maps which point out visible landmarks. This was one of the few opportunities I had during this trip to simply sit and sketch the scenery 🖊️✨

There was much more to see inside the observatory, which is also a museum. These included a huge kokeshi doll, a dugout canoe, and this 3D map of the area!

I loved this adorable sculpture outside the building. It's called Namahage-kun (ナマハゲ君) which in this case can be translated to something like Little Namahage.

Our next stop was the Namahage Museum (なまはげ館), also in Oga.

The museum helpfully offers an English information pamphlet ✨

There were tons of cool exhibits, including this room with screens displaying a variety of videos, installed in these wooden posts 🤯

Part of the museum included a namahage experience inside a traditional thatch-roof house!

We were offered tablets that let you choose your language and read about the experience before it unfolds. This is an incredible feature!

An exhilarating and unforgettable experience 👹✨ I highly recommend it if you get a chance to visit the Namahage Museum!

I learned that the straw that falls from the namahage's traditional coats after their visit is considered lucky for study if you tie it around your head 🤓✨

My husband, Sean, posing with some namahage 👹

And my pose!

One of the most breathtaking exhibits was this room full of namahage!

Our next and final stop was only a short distance away: Shinzan Shrine (真山神社)

At the shrine shop, they had namahage masks you could don for photos!

Namahage Sean 👹✨

I adore the lion-dogs (こまいぬ) at Shinto shrines. Today I learned the Japanese name for them means Ancient Korea Dog 🤯

That's it for this post but not for our adventures in Akita! I'll be back soon with part 2, including our self-guided exploration of Akita Port Tower Selion. Please look forward to it and, until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe~❤️