So where have I been?

Well, been where I've always been, really. I mentioned I wanted to do more experiments with pencils, and I did, but before I had gotten too far, all of the time that I had in front of my tablet during lockdown came to an end at the conclusion of March, and I found myself back in the office for 8 hours a day. While it's not an overly-strenuous job, it certainly takes up a lot of the mental energy I require to focus on my art and I found myself needing to depress at the end of the commute during weekdays. It was around that time that the weather was getting better, so my weekends were focused on getting outside and doing all the urban exploration I wanted to do while things were locked down.

Before I knew it, it was October and I hadn't really done much in terms of art in the past few months. Then the other guy at work quit so I had to take up part of his load and left me feeling even more burnt out than before, to the point where I came down with the first cold in like 3 years. Mercifully, not COVID, but it's just another "thing" sapping my energy.

Ultimately what I need to do is find a routine of doing at least some art exercises on a regular basis, just to keep in practice. I've picked up a couple art courses off Gumroad to keep me motivated and working, so I hope to be delivering a little more artwork in the new year.

Posted using PostyBirb

Here's wishing everyone a Happy New Year! Despite all the doom and gloom from the pandemic, I can't say that 2021 has been a total bust, at least art wise. I apologize for not posting as much in the Fall, but a combination of Diablo II- and Diablo III-related... distractions, kept me from finishing off some of my older works as I had done earlier in the year. That said, I've been getting back into sketching with my new tablet and I've learned a lot about its capabilities along with the brushes I use in Photoshop. My hope is to get into a routine of sketching and maybe doing some flats in something of a more regular rhythm, maybe get something out every couple weeks, or weekly if I get quick enough.

I'm also looking to up my social media game, which every artist under the sun seems to have down pat at this point (or at least on Twitter :3). I hope to be more active on that social media... network, let's call it... or at least showing off more of the other artists whose work keeps me inspired to carry on.

Hope the New Year treats us all better than the last year did. And as always, thanks for enjoying my work. It means a lot. :)

Posted using PostyBirb

Apologies in advance; this is one of those frank, introspective journal posts. I'm sure the relationship a lot of people have with any artistic endeavour is fraught with the ups and downs of anything in life, but there are times I wonder if it's worth that kind of emotional whirlwind. As I look back on my latest work, I feel a sense of pride in the accomplishment, particularly when compared to the artwork I was making earlier in my artistic career. I doubt I'm that much different than any of the thousands of artists around the world who dabble in something creative, feeling elation one moment and discouragement the next.

And yet... I can't help but feel that something's changed about me. I'm not the man I was even 10 years ago, let alone 18 when I first started drawing these characters. It's hard to believe they've been kicking around my head for so long, certainly long enough to see the ascendancy of an entire cottage industry around commissions and YCHs begin in the furry community. No shade on the pros who do this for a living; I love to do that... I just don't know if I ever can. Even if I had the ability to grind out sketch after sketch or stream online (another feature absent when I first started), I doubt I'd have the energy to keep up the pace. My day job is a daily grind and compounding that with three decades of slowly progressing liver disease... well, I'm not exactly the most energetic of people, to say the least.

Physical and artistic limitations aside, I also worry that there really isn't an audience for what I do. My characters skirt the line between real-life and fantasy, and my art style centers more on the "anthro" side of "anthropomorphic", with a facial structure closer to a human's than the more anime-eyed cartoon style that the more popular furry artists have adopted. I like to go for as much realism as possible in the constraints of the fantastical element, perhaps even to my detriment. It's a thought that's crossed my mind.

Frankly, there's a voice in the back of my head telling me I've lost the drive I once had for my art. But at the same time, I've devoted more time to it than at any point in the last 3 or 4 years, I'd say. So why the conflict? What do I feel I need to prove?

Perhaps there's something deeper at play here. If I cast my mind back to when I began in 2003 on DeviantART, it was a relatively new website then. Furries almost felt like a novelty; there were plenty of us of course, but starting out, you gravitate towards those of your own skill level. I had quite a few folks who commented on my early works, but I don't think any of them remain active users, let alone artists. I suppose that it is simply a reality of the onward march of time; for some, the fandom was a passing fancy or a phase. Yet for me, it has remained steadfast, waning on occasion, but I keep coming back to it... feeling like I stand alone among giants, the big names that I follow on my new account that put out incredible art week after week, some even multiple times a week. It is folly to compare oneself to others, particularly professionals who have worked hard to build their talents, but as I look about me, it's little wonder I feel so discouraged at times. It's like I've lost touch with the community itself; forgetting that I too started scribbling on loose sheets of printer paper, dreaming of fantastical characters getting into naughty shenanigans while living larger-than-life. I need to reconnect, to find others who feel the same way and nurture their talent and creativity the way others did me all those years ago.

I need to trust the process. It's a phrase I've started to tell myself more and more, especially as I started learning guitar a few years ago too. No matter how bad something might feel midway through the design, by the end, you'll end up with something that looks really nice, so keep at it. Put in the time. It's worth it. And that's what I'm gonna continue to do: trust the process. Build up a portfolio I can be proud of, put my new tablet through the paces, work at building speed, then focus on the pieces that really matter, all the while connecting with the broader community. I have a few with some references set aside for layout that I plan on getting to at some point, hopefully within the next few months, but for right now, I've been grinding out the process on a few of the older inked works and sketches that I liked, combining my trusty cuts method with cel shading. It's a little time-consuming and unfocused and some of the lighting can be a pain, but I like what I've created so far. Right now I'm backgrounding and working out the lighting for a few of those images, but once they're in place, the finishing touches come pretty quickly, so I think it's safe to expect more art over the summer. Trusting the process. That's the name of the game.

Thanks to whoever reads this. It's just something I had to get off my chest. See you guys around the gallery!

First post of the new FA account. Welcome to the new Katamount FurAffinity page. I had registered this account three years ago as indicated on the main page, in anticipation of the change of branding. The old name just... felt a bit strange. Katamount suits me far better.

About four years ago, I took stock of my artwork and where the faults were. I concluded at the time that I had a pretty good grasp of colour, but the lineart and anatomy was lacking. As such, I had posted a whole bunch of black and white nudes of my characters (which was admittedly fun) to my art sites, but with my focus on lines, I almost felt... scared to invest the time into colouring them. Colouring images had always been the most time-consuming aspect of my art and I don't do so well with sunk-cost (despite it being a fallacy). So the art remained uncoloured. But in late 2019, I made a New Years resolution to start colouring stuff again.

I began the year with this, one of the first images I had coloured in some time. It almost feels quaint given what happened later.

We all had high hopes for 2020, didn't we? It's amazing how quickly we were disabused of any hope, between the Australia wildfires and the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, felt like everything was going to hell already. I had actually tried making an extended chibi comic for Valentine's Day, but it took far longer than I thought. I still considered working on it and putting it out in March as a belated thing (or even setting it aside until next year).

Then COVID hit Toronto. It started with the NBA and the NHL, then theatres shut down. My office followed shortly thereafter. I've thankfully remained employed, able to the vast majority of my duties from home.

So, I've spent the last nine months in the comfort of my own home. Seems ideal for creativity, right? Well, yes and no. I'm a man of regular routine. Disruptions to that routine, particularly in the unpredictability of the early pandemic meant it was difficult to actually sit down and focus on art, particularly colouring. But I had started playing guitar again more regularly in November of 2019, and I could practice guitar licks for 15 minutes at a time over the course of the day. With the help of Yousician, I went from barely being able to strum Greensleeves to perfecting the riff on Seven Nation Army within about three months. Realizing the need for a better guitar than the $150 Squier I'd been using, I bought the Gibson SG I posted on Twitter (which not only sounds amazing, but I still can't believe the deal I got for it) and zeroed in on power chords. I was able to get a high score on American Idiot within a matter of a few days practice.

Guitar is certainly fun, but I'm hardly a pro player and with the pandemic, it's not like I've been able to find other people to play with. So what of my artwork? Well, once it became clear that this was the new normal during the summer, I realized not only that I needed to adapt to the situation, but also that it presented a good opportunity to experiment with cel shading in addition to the "cuts" method I used for shading previously. I'll be posting some of the results over the next few weeks and I hope you like them.

So what're the next steps? Well, I hope to post more content. It might not all be finished, but I'd like to get faster and maybe use some of my colouring techniques on sketches. Moreover, I'm going to overhaul the galleries on various sites and move my Hentai-Foundry and FurAffinity galleries. So look forward to that.

I'm not going to say I'm looking forward to 2021, because, well, it'll be more of the same for the time being. But I wish the best for everyone this holiday season and see you next year!