Hello everyone, I hope you had a lovely start to the year! I can't believe it's already February. It doesn't help that after only three weeks of truly wintry weather from the end of December through the first half of January, we are once again experiencing mid-spring temps 😲 I have no sense of time because of this! But my work schedule for 2024 has been carrying me along nicely, regardless of how weird everything around me feels. Here's what I got up to in January!
Patreon Rewards
I'm trying something new this year! Instead of sending Inktober or Chibi Friday drawings as rewards when I can't get my main illustration finished in a single month, I'm sending a work in progress (WIP) reward featuring the current progress on my main project. This gets me much closer to what I always wanted these rewards to always feature: my main work! And I think it'll be fun to compare the WIP to the final piece; I hope my patrons do find it so!
Please consider supporting my work by joining my Patreon! You can choose from postcards or prints or you can ensure all your contribution goes to the studio by foregoing physical rewards. All members get access to printable coloring pages, our members-only Discord server and the custom emoji there, as well as other digital rewards and studio updates.
deviantART
One of my closest friends used the chibi gift certificate I gave as a birthday gift to chibify her sweet little pup, Missy 💕 The piece was livestreamed on Twitch, and you can watch the recording on YouTube!
Click here to view, fave, and comment on deviantART! You can commission me for a chibi caricature like this while you're there, too!
Livestreaming
My new streaming schedule has been working wonderfully this year! I am now streaming WeThFr for two hours at a time, two days of illustration plus Chibi Friday. Here's my final Chibi Friday stream from January, featuring digital work on our third custom Twitch emote/Discord emoji, Happy Ranger!
I hope you'll join me on Twitch; we have a lovely group of people in the chat, lurkers are very much welcome, and subscribers get access to these cute custom emotes! It's another way you can help support my work and have fun making art with me, too!
Charity Fundraising
Our featured charity for January was Veganuary, an organization that supports people as they see what it's like to eat vegan for a whole month. They send recipes and information to participants each day in January and continue to support with weekly emails throughout the rest of the year!
My formula for donations is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, minimum $10 and max $100. In January, we again got fairly close to our record of 26 set in June of 2022, with 23 unique viewers! This meant a $10 donation to Veganuary 💚
Our charity for February is Vegan Outreach. I hope you'll join my livestreams and bring your friends! It would be so exciting to reach more than 100 unique viewers and get to make more than a $10 donation!
Gryphia Progress
My updated work schedule for 2024 has been paying dividends and nowhere more richly than in my Gryphia illustrated novel project! I made very little progress last year, being completely derailed by my Japan adventure in early spring...
In stark contrast, with only an hour of writing work scheduled each day, I have not only finished chapter eight this January, I reached 3,100 words (of a 4,000 word goal) for chapter nine. With only twelve chapters in the book, at this rate I will most certainly finish my first draft and begin working on my first revisions this year!
Other News: JLPT N3 Results
Finally (I am sooo rushing this blog post right now; I want to post today but it's almost time to livestream!) I wanted to announce here, since I shared in earlier posts my JLPT goal for 2023, that I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test at the N3 level! I'm now certified in my intermediate Japanese skills! And the most amusing part of my results is that the section I was most worried about, listening, I got 100% on 😆
I've been asked if I'll now attempt the N2. While I do intend to eventually, this year I'm taking it easy with just 20 minutes of Japanese study per day. My plan is to finish my intermediate textbooks and start on my N2 study materials. Once I feel confident I have enough knowledge to pass, I'll sign up for the next level of the test 😎
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That's all for this roundup post, I hope you enjoyed it! (I'm finishing it up post-stream, hee hee.) Thank you for reading to the end. Until next time, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe!
