• (update:Late April 2015)

i have MANY comments, watches, favorites, to reply to. not just on this gallery but on my other furry art spaces (see links below) its all the same stuff though, just reaching out to all spaces now since so many people left FA or prefer other sites. i haven't used devinatart in years but may again go there some day...

• (check my links on my front page for other galleries. i am on furraffinity, sofurry, weasyl, and inkbunny)

at any rate, sorry for being behind, when i get time i will spend a few days doing nothing but sorting through all the comments i received. many since i re-uploaded a bunch of old arts and unseen stuff. i also am hosting a public art jam now. it is small but we just had our second session last weekend and its been six people strong so far so i consider that a success. plus i have folks who are reserving a seat next month so it excites me to be out and about and drawing again.

i also recently met some local artist furs who are nothing but creative and productive every day and it makes me feel both lazy and inspired. i think it has helped spark my creativity.

• as for the status of my writing projects... well... i have that one which was very personal and had some unfortunate irony, as i was writing about a hypothetical death in the family that suddenly and unexpectedly happened for real less than a year after i started writing my novel about it O_O.... so.. it was "complicated" getting back into it... to say the least. eventually i realized i was becoming stagnant and spinning my wheels so i paused it. put it away for a rainy day. upon meeting the folks above i had started to develop a new idea. within 2-3 weeks i was well on my way to designing and plotting a web comic which had a variety of mixed art and writing formats in one. though it was very ambitious and i was so hypnotized by visions of completion that the story suffered. so in short... in a month or two i created a project out of thin air then also put it on hold.

and then...

• (MY NEW PROJECT)

Ok so this next project is the "keeper" i have been looking for. while i adore my past project pursuits there was always something small lacking. this new project confronts head on many of the very real things i have been facing in my life in recent years. in the course of seven years i lost my beloved childhood pet, followed by three family members one after the other. first my aunt to cancer, then my grandmother after a year long battle with a horrid stroke, then all of a sudden and far before his time...my own father. so it has been rough and there has been so much on my mind that its been hard to focus. so that is what i mean when i say "face it head on".

Translated... it means that it has directly inspired my next project, though it is not about it. i think that other works were subconscious or a conscious effort at dealing with some of these very real feelings and thoughts, even though it is hard to trust how i think and feel since i am not quite my old self, and never will be that person again. However; the key is the balance between subconscious and conscious efforts. i think my subconscious wants me to express myself in my art/writing. Though i sort of need a highly fictional context. a guess you could call it anything but a "happily ever after" but more like "the hard fought path to one". that is the simple metaphor i feel, sort of my own way of telling myself that "however i feel at this difficult time in my life, in the end it will all be alright".

So in the story i need to put a character who mirrors some aspects of myself, through a difficult journey and test him to the brink before some kind of resolution is made. i am tired of things that are "supposed to be fine" when they are not, or pretending they are just so that i can move forward. Thus the character journey will be exactly that. sometimes for things to truly "be fine" you must yell and scream and fight and claw at what pushes you down, in order to rise up. Just to be clear though it is not about that directly, it just starts with something very real, but from the first few pages it is clear there is something rather scary and supernatural going on. it really hits the ground running and explores topics of undead things, witches, and magic. If you could bring someone back you lost would you do it blindly or conciser what consequences it could have on them or your own soul. Not to mention when you awaken something, you may not be able to control what comes back.

I will leave you with those vague and open ended notions, and i will tease you by saying "it is not exactly as you would expect". At any rate... i am not here to give an actual story synopsis, just want to let you all know that " i am more or less ok, and moving forward in positive directions".

So... looking forward... here are some small goals that will effect my social interactions online

• i will eventually get to my gallery build up and help reach out, reply, and meet some new folks who were nice enough to comment or fave stuff i uploaded .... months ago .... (sorry for delays)

• i will also occasionally get on skype more, and also do some more flash-art jams, and also try to be more social here. ... though i will be spending almost every second of my spare time developing my project so i can either socialize or work and i need to get a lot of work done ^_^. i am not the best multi-tasker.

• i will also be occasionally drawing stuff from this journal page, if you want to contribute to my idea jar just comment your idea and it "may" inspire some art.
  http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6552655/

• though it wont matter if i dont do more of these random art jams so you can check on "this" journal page for updates about when i will be drawing next, ( it will be a day or morning before and i will poke folks on my skype list too. i use "join me" so space is limited. but if you want to watch me draw live, check back here.
  http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6651620/

(sorry no links on sofurry, inkbunny, or weasyl yet... it would be too confusing to have multiple idea jars so for now it is just on furraffinity because it is my MAIN social networking hub.)

• obvious i will be working around the clock on my new project in most of my spare time. this will make be busy and sometimes i need to be offline to concentrate as i suck at multitasking. But through working on it, i will start to have some stuff ready for uploading eventually. the rest of the years is devoted to art study and production of my story. before i have actual concept art generated that is project related i will have plenty of scrapy imperfect things i can upload here. anything a bit better or more polished will belong on my other gallery. i have streamlined my link system as it was a bit to chaotic. so if you want to find other art or my rough story stuffs (whenever either end up posted), please visit my other galleries. you can find them through "Dial's" writing page. i want to encourage some traffic and so my other art will be linked.

• Just to clarify...
  "Mint" is my social and scrap art site, which now has a link to "Dial" my causal rough writing site. "Dial is also my authors page for my main project but does not link back to here to "Mint" it links to my more professional art page. and i also have a project work page which i will link when i am ready. for now the project link page will be rather hard to find as without art on it, no one will have reason to visit it. i just needed to secure a common project gallery name for my story and by sheer luck it was available on all four sites! So in the future you can expect me to link to that project site when ready. it already links back to "dial" and my other art gallery ( not mint). but until there is artwork, no one will visit it and there will be nothing to see there anyway beyond some project data in the journals which i posted. For the rest of the year i will be quietly working offline on my writing and art for that project. by years end i hope to be better at speed painting environments and objects. i want to learn how to draw fast yet minimal, with real depth of shade but without the need for lines everywhere. ... if that makes any sense?

i think there was more i wanted to say today but it has escaped me, this is already getting a bit long for the causal viewer to care to read, but this journal is only for those who know, and/or are interested in me and what is going on.

take care fuzzies and wish me luck as i start my brand new project and jump back into its long creation process. in a year or two i hope to have something truly amazing and some well practiced art skills to illustrate it with.

---

PS:
i recently discovered "Smooth McGroove" over on youtube....
check him out.... bloody brilliant!
https://www.youtube.com/user/SmoothMcGroove
I am currently listening to an mp3 playlist i created of his work... so cool