I don't actually go back and reread previous monthly posts when I'm writing a new one. I bring this point up, because I'm not actually sure if there are times where I repeat myself. Even if I do, I'd say that whatever point I do end up repeating would be an interesting thing to view later on. I mention this, because I want to put a disclaimer in place to say "I'm probably going to repeat myself in this post, so hah."Also please disregard how poorly I type sometimes. Thanks!

Another month where I question "what is a sketch" all over again. Most of the pieces I've worked on for July I decided to try something a little different in the process. The process I used for July's "sketches" has 3 steps. These steps mainly concern the line art phase, as coloring is merely a simple matter of grabbing the color and filling in the space, like a coloring book. In every drawing I ever do, I have placement sketches, to, well, place the objects I'm going to draw onto the page. After I've gone through multiple placement blobs and indistinguishable shapes, I make a new layer and try to give whatever I'm draw more of a refined shape. It still has a bit of blobby-jankyness to it, but that's OK. Then, finally, once everything is in a place and I can tell what it is, I "quickly" go over it with a finer line. The second and third parts of the "sketch" process are where I'm currently lost. Someone else might say "hey that's some nice and CLEAN line art!" to which I would cringe a bit, because when I drew it, I had the intention of leaving it as a "sketch." I DO have a section of art labeled for "clean line art," but I don't actually do it all that often. Clean line art is a very concentrated effort for my part. I'm pacing back on forth on the thought of "well, maybe I should just go back to carving sketches?" Ultimately, the reason why I'm having such an issue with this 'identity crisis,' is that it takes a lot of time to do some of these sketches. I feel like I shouldn't be spending 3-5 sometimes 6 hours on a single piece labeled as a "sketch." Pretty much every "sketch" I've done this month had also been colored, so maybe that's were some of the time slips through. And maybe also reference finding. Bah.

Speaking of sketching, I've started up a "weekly vote (NSFW!)" type thing. Every week, I'll pick 5-6 choices for people to choose (you get 1 vote, I wish it were multiple, but eh.) and by Friday of that week, I'll hope to have the [flat colored sketch] finished! New votes will be every Friday, and votes will run until Monday. At the moment, it is mostly NSFW oriented, but There will be some SFW variants, or non-furry choices to choose from occasionally. So far, I've done 4 votes, and 4 drawings early / on time! Woo!

Along with the new "sketching" woes and votes, I've picked up on one of my other projects I've been wanting to get to for a while, which is comic making practice. The first comic I'll be doing is NSFW furry related, called "Eyes on the Prize." It's about two squirrel thief sisters named Kieran and Ladrei, to which they sneak into a castle and steal some booty. Were it only that simple, heh. The comic layout is not actually a traditional one, but rather a sort of "frame-by-frame" comic. One page will dedicate a whole picture, as will the next, and the next, a sort of sequential piece. I do have a plan for a traditional comic after this one is done, and I'm honestly dreading it. Sometimes I think back to my much older comic "Old as Ice" and I wonder how I even dared to try that. And yes, I actually still have plans/wants to completely redo that. New Old as Ice (heh) will have some character rearranging, some new ones, but somewhat the same story. But that's for another time I think.