Have you observed it? An increase. A significant increase in artwork this month. Despite getting covid and being out of commission for nearly a week, despite several days off work for lack of work to do, still I have drawn many things. How? Unclear.

We've got Natashas, often appropriately dressed for summer fun, and Evangeline and Ashley and Asher too. Virginia and Maylea is here too, looking more foxlike than ever. Anyway, look forward to next month when I will be making either more or less art than this.

You might notice that there's a lot more art this month. Funny story, I've been working a different position at my job where I spend hours loading parts into a machine for testing in an environment where I can't have my phone but I can have my drawing supplies. It takes about ten minutes on a good day to finish testing a part, so that's a lot of boredom that translates into a lot of art!

Don't worry, it's probably temporary. Another project I started working on this month is scanning all the art that hasn't been properly scanned over the last few years and organizing it with tags and proper dates. The fruits of that labor are now evident in the quality of the art uploads you can enjoy on this website now.

You may notice some colorful digital images featured in an update that is traditionally just pen and paper. That's because I have started sketching digitally with an iPad and Apple Pencil. They're crude and not up to the standard for what I consider "finished" (just what is up with that Virginia?), but they represent an important step in my artistic progress.

I've made attempts at tracing 3D mockups for backgrounds in the past, and I intend on returning to that, this time using Procreate. I also need to experiment with scanning inked lineart to color digitally in Procreate, since at the moment sketching and inking on the tablet already feels better than coloring. For whatever reason, my techniques that work in Clip Studio Paint and IbisPaint aren't working as smoothly for me in Procreate.

I've been making digital inroads this month. I can confirm that drawing on the iPad feels "right," I just need to get more comfortable with it and with using the tools Procreate provides. Otherwise I feel like I did not make very much art this month. Is that true? Possibly? There's a very specific set of circumstances that makes it easy for me to draw on my lunch break at work, and every time I'm assigned to a different position or my schedule changes it disrupts the delicate balance that allows me to produce Natashas on demand.

Currently, I have the script for the first chapter of Dimestore Novel written out and ready for art. I have events for the first few chapters laid out but I don't want to get into writing the script until I can see how the first script is working out. Once I have a better feel for how things need to be paced out I'll feel better about planning further ahead.

It remains to be seen if the iPad and Procreate will be helpful in getting me from random Natashas to actually drawing a comic. I need to do some test art using 3D backgrounds from Sweet Home 3D, if drawing digitally directly over the pre-made background works for me that will greatly simplify the the process of producing a comic panel, and once I have panels drawn putting them together into a comic page ought to be a fairly straightforward process. Will 2024 be the year Dimestore Novel finally starts to happen? Hope so.

This month did not see a huge amount of art, but I'm proud of what I did accomplish, especially the "cold on the beach" and "daydreaming about reading while reading" ones.

In other news, I picked up an iPad and Apple Pencil, so I hope to play around a bit with Procreate and see how that can fit into my workflow. Hopefully the coming months will see more art and more "finished" art posted here.

When I started writing this post, I wrote "January" in the title. That about sums up how it's going. I've been working a lot of overtime lately, which you think would be good for making art since I do almost all my drawing at work. Except I've also been doing a lot of training lately which throws off my schedule and makes drawing less likely.

Still, I managed a reasonable array of art for this slightly longer than usual shortest month, including a rare fanart of Senshi. Delicious in Dungeon is good. I recommend it.