Taking time in art

Quite a depressing week last week, ORZ.

Also, I’ve been thinking…

I seem to improve more with taking my time with drawing, lol.

Such a simple. method but it was something I found great difficulty to do because of a certain….pressure?

the pressure of having to be fast and post everyday or else yknow people are gonna ditch you, or think you’re dead or inactive. It’s a social media phenomenon of having to post a drawing everyday I think?

Obviously this is from personal experience, take note but I still remember my deviant art days and I wouldn’t say dA was a “social media” at least, on how current social media is like. Yeah, it was a social networking site for artists, writers, photographers and their likes but it didn’t have the late stage capitalist culture of what current social media is now if that makes sense?

Because back then, many artists didn’t post frequently. There were artists who did post like almost everyday but it wasn’t something that was the standard. People understood that art took time to make and people were willing to even wait for a monthly artwork of an artist they followed. I surely did.

But now, there’s this huge pressure, be it hobbyist or professional, that you have to post everyday, to constantly make “content” rather than an artwork to be consumed constantly like some commodity.

Many artists give tips that are often along the lines of “DRAW AND POST EVERYDAY.” Which isn’t bad at all but of course, what kind of art exactly will you be posting everyday?

Everyday would lead to burnout and compromising quality mostly.

Not saying that simple, rough doodles aren’t meant to be posted and that only polished good art are the ones that should be online but I’m talking about a problem that is deeper which is this need for instant gratification..which has a load of negative consequences for the art and artist.

Art takes time. That’s how it is. The entire artistic process takes time from introspection to the drawing or painting itself.

and even I succumbed to that pressure.

Part of why my improvement was delayed was because I didn’t take time to reference and double check.

Sometimes until now, like referencing for example takes quite a lot of time and I often just wanna blitz my art, “oh my god I’ll just half ass this and just fucking post this cuz this is taking hours” and in some days I do blitz it but if I wanna improve, I’ll have to be patient even if it means not being as quick as before.

And yes. To anyone still reading my blog, that would mean, less frequent drawings …as of now, sorry. (That’s part of my grinding.)

Doesn’t help when some artists are like:

Srsly.

I mean ofc some artists are that fast and heavily skilled but I often wonder if many who do that lie or exaggerate, lol.

Sketch my ass. I’ve gone on a rant back then about those sketchbook tours and how a lot of ‘‘em are supposed to be titled portfolio sketchbook tours because it’s deceiving and selective . I think the same thing applies here too, same with speed paints, etc.

The problem generally with art is you almost often see the final results so people vastly underestimate how difficult it is (looking at you ai “art”. bros) . And even in Timelapses which are sped up, like the ones I post here make them look like they’ve been produced so quickly when it’s not like that in reality. What ends up happening is having unrealistic expectations and this overemphasis on final results which can become huge drawbacks and foster an unhealthy way of thinking about making art. I experienced the same shit too hence why I’m very critical of those, lol.

I mean srsly, remember the time when sketchbooks were meant to be….for sketches? Like mostly loose sketches and where a lot of mistakes can be seen …because it’s a fucking SKETCHBOOK haha.

Hell, even I’m guilty of doing the same “only showing final results” too. I unfortunately forget to post process pics here due to forgetfulness and anxiety .

Although……writing about this subject…reminded me to post more wips and process pics here.

Anyway, I went on a tangent but yeah, I’m a very impulsive and impatient person so it’s been a pain in the ass to be slower than usual, taking your time has its drawbacks as that would mean seeing more mistakes the longer you work on it.

But I think it gets easier with time. The more familiar I get with referencing and taking my time, the less I need to double check.

Also some draws.

This will be a short comic.
This will also be a short comic, lol.

Ohhh and I dreamt of this scene below the other night haha.

Gods, it was such a nice dream. Rarely do I get my OTPs in my dreams. How I never wanted to wake up, haha.

Why did the delivery man ring the bell. Dude disturbed my fantasies, lol. What was gonna happen next ORZ…

I blame Rin for getting me into this series again after so many years huhuhu. It’s ALL HER FAULT.

And this ship..is a ship I only started shipping heavily last year, haha. My otp next to kai and Irene and saya and kaori.

Hagi and Gie or hagie, for short, takes first place this year though, lol.

So many comic projects, so little time, ugh.

2022 Art Summary : Slowly Getting Back on Track

So in the midst of writing this blog post, the speakers outside were playing corporate Christmas songs which are annoying af. And John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War is Over) started to play. Gods, I know that it’s an antiwar song but the friggin’ guilt trip of the first two lines lol.

“So this is Christmas. What have you done?”

Wallowed in my goddamn misery.

As if I needed to feel more guilt about not having much progress this year. >__>

Anyway,

January -> April : Extremely depressed, crying spells almost everyday, Commissions

May -> June: “Normally” depressed, dabbled into drawing random OCs, painting in my personal journal, Commissions

July -> August Playing The Sims 2 to feel better and enjoyed the lore of the series, drawing OCs, Commissions

September : Got into Blood+ again and got so invested in the Schiff particularly with Gie. Also started shipping him and Haji seriously that I started to make a doujin. Commissions

October: Finished the doujin, the first ever since 2020! Commissions

November: Drew more often, rambled …ranted constantly, grieved, got introduced to Noein, lusted after Karasu, shipped Tobi and Atori, Commissions

December: Commissions, got burnt out.

2022 was a super rough year for me, lol. ‘Greeted me with a friggin’ funeral.

Continue reading

More than a decade later…

So I’ve been editing some scanned photos of my old artworks as I’m decluttering and I realised one of the sketches was Irene.

damn, I’ve always loved her character since, haha.

I was feeling sad seeing those more than a decade old sketchbook images of mine. Thinking about it, my mind during those years must have been so cluttered. The drawing from 2010/11 above has heads on top of heads. Unfinished heads at that, lol.

Gods, was I so disorganised.

I didn’t even put dates on most of my sketches back then, haha. (Hence me being unsure if it was drawn in 2010 or 2011..either of those years) That’s how unserious I was with art.

And yet I compare myself with those artists I see who suddenly had such a big improvement in 1-2 years which led me to feeling more sad than the usual nostalgia sadness because I end up regretting about the years I wasted by not taking art seriously up until I joined the ygo fandom.

But of course, it would be terribly unfair for me to compare myself to those kinds of artists. I don’t know their circumstances.

Continue reading

perfect.

I’ve been confiding with Rin about my anxiety with art since last night, haha. I get paranoid for example if it’s the good composition, or if the values are right, blablahblah.

This is what happens when I study too much on the technicalities and spend the day scrolling through pro artists works at ArtStation and IG and comparing myself with how good they are that I kinda suffered from terrible anxiety with drawing.

bleh. It’s my fault.

Scroll only for a few minutes, but I may have ended up scrolling more than that, ORZ.

Continue reading

coloured old sketches

Hello.

I’ve been working on the remaining commissions and I wanted to experiment on colouring, specifically, soft colouring as my style has already been leaning on to very saturated and warm colours. It isn’t bad of course, it’s nice that I’ve gotten more familiar with that kind of colouring style but I’ve missed using soft colours and textures.^^;;

The idea of scanning my old sketches and digitally colouring it came when I was searching for my thumbnails for this citron comic strip I plan to draw soon. I tend to use paper pads (A5) for that and I found a little stack of papers filled with old concept art, house plans and some sketches in my drawer. Since they weren’t exactly “instagrammable,” or aesthetically pleasing sketches (for me, lol), I thought of doing the good ol’ tradition of scanning and inking/ painting over the scanned drawing.

//has a flashback when ipad pros and affordable screen/ monitor tablets weren’t a thing yet and digital artists who didn’t like the hand-eye coordination of a pen tablet due to the initial, awkward, unnaturalness in drawing had to resort to scanning their trad work, tracing over and painting them digitally instead. because a cintiq was too fucking expensive and only pros and rich ppl could afford it at that time and even now./// ahhh…why do I miss those dark times? Am I envious at the younger generation of artists having to not resort to that and having a convenient ipad pro and the wide availability of cheaper monitor tablets while I struggled with having to get used to digitizer tablets back then? shutyourmillennial/genZ mouth millie./////

I must be getting old. fuck. >_>

Yeah, I know, my attempt at foreshortening on Green’s (Pokemon Kanto) left arm here sucks ass, lol. (How did I manage to overlook this big mistake while drawing it?)

I didn’t bother changing that in the “retouched” work unfortunately. I wanted to mainly experiment on colouring rather than anatomy today so I just traced over that and coloured it. Maybe I could redraw the entire thing some time.

And right next to Green is White Wizard (Monster World) Ryou. I used a Pilot Eno light blue pencil and a prismacolour col erase blue pencil with that sketch. This was actually traced over for a trad watercolour drawing last year but since I was such a novice with watercolours at that time (until now actually lol), I failed in a sense that the colours were dull and I forgot to dry them so different paint colours leaked to various areas of the picture.

I may have gotten carried away with colouring. I told myself, just a simple base soft colour sketch look, no need to polish it and add details but I eventually made it…fairly detailed. Not super detailed but pretty detailed. I need to stop doing that, really.

Perhaps it’s me compensating for the fact that I barely made any “decent” or “detailed” illustrations for the past five years before I dabbled into commissions. Most of my art were ygo sketch doodles or messy paintings and it’s a regret of mine because when I was in the process of opening commissions, it was very difficult finding a “polished” and good looking illustration to show to clients. So now, I’m making more detailed or slightly polished works so that I can attract more clients in case I’m gonna open commissions again. At least, be able to show them what I’m capable of.

Ehhhhh..

(:3 」∠)

I shouldn’t beat myself up for that, though. I only started getting serious with gaining some lil’ income through commissions or donations last year and the previous years were just me doing whatever, whenever and just…going wherever the wind takes me, yknow? (Couple that with my self-sabotaging behaviour before too.I was a friggin’ mess holy shit, lol. )

TLDR: ‘Experimented with colours from some old sketches and I need to do more simplistic and low level works. Not everything that I draw has to be ~pretty~, and polished. Unfinished ones can be appealing too imho.

Resuming

Hello.

I still don’t feel 100% well since I have a bit of a hard time breathing and having some light-headed episodes but I resumed doing the remaining commissions today. ^^;;

I feel like utter shit, falling quite ill and depressed for the past few days because I felt useless. I didn’t get to do much but Rin insisted that I should stop with the negative mentality of counting how many days I didn’t do x or post x. It’s true though that I tend to always look for how long something “should” take. 😦

ehhhhh

…I always have this fear of being seen as “lazy” or tardy because I like being efficient and punctual and wanting everything to go according to my plans. That’s why I hate falling ill or any other unexpected events such as depressive episodes and stressful tasks /sighh//

Delays are the worst.

But yes..I am resuming on finishing the remaining commissions I have left. Some are very detailed so I’m sorry if I’m going to take a bit longer than the usual. OTL

I might have to CLOSE commissions temporarily because aside from having some commissions that I need to finish, I want to be able to draw personal projects again without worry. As I said previously, I want to do AUU Chapter 7 , TSOU, Mirror! Pup comics, other comic and illustration stuff. Unfortunately, it’s hard to focus on them when there are some commissions that I need to finish, gahhh.

I really wish I was good in multitasking but after some blunders, I eventually realised that I can only do one thing at a time. ^__- \

But y’know..it feels good doing commissions. I tend to draw ygo a lot so I find it super fun when people ask me to draw their OCs or chars from series I’m not familiar with. It’s a good change of pace and exciting playing with different colours. :’D

It also led me to reflect that I should put more effort into illustrations. So hopefully this year, I can make more original and non ygo illustrations.

I do apologise if lately, I have been unusually idle and inactive for this month. I wish I can draw so much and post so many comics and illustrations but life and physical conditions have been getting in the way.:C

Anyway, it’s wayyy past my bedtime and my eyebags have eyebags already so if this post doesn’t make any sense, blame it on my lethargy, haha. I’ll edit them tomorrow or smth..I’m so tired.

Goodnight.

warmups kul elna things 1

These are warmups from yesterday before I resume doing commissions so my stuff won’t be as rusty as before.

I’m trying to finalise design of TKB’s mum. I don’t really have a name for her but I don’t think she needs one in the Ancient Egypt AU lol. I just need her character for some scenarios and comic ideas I have that revolve around Kul Elna. ^^;;

I was thinking of TKB resembling his mother a lot aside from his eyes. ^^

Her design was inspired by Nubian and Ethiopian colours and fashion which are quite colourful compared to Ancient Egyptian fashion. The latter often consisted of off white and or cream-ish robes/dresses with maybe some non white accent . I wanted to emphasise the “foreign-ness” or Ostracism of the Kul Elna people from the average Egyptians by having their clothes be very colourful compared to the rest of the Egyptian community. You can see also see that her clothing is tattered. Kul Elna didn’t look like a bustling and rich village to me. It seemed to resemble a ghetto or a slum area (remniscent of Upper Egypt it seems ?) so I think they were poor and because of prejudice (I mean literally no one seemed to bat an eye on why a village was deserted lol) they didn’t get any job opportunities and some resorted to stealing.

(It’s really a very grey area for me with Kul Elna’s reputation for being a “village of thieves” as they were descended from Royal tomb builders.Like how did it come to that? So many questions I want to make a story on. )

For some reason, me and Rin really can’t visualise how TKB’s dad would look and I joked that maybe we can just rip off YGODM Mr. Bakura’s design and just put dark skin on him like what they did with Atem and Priest Seto, lol. And this scribble came up.

It…really doesn’t suit him, haha.

It’s just a random joke though. That would be quite unoriginal andTKB’s mum’s design has the same fringes and hairstyle as Ryou and his dad anyway so we can’t really use that lol. I was thinking in the story that maybe TKB’s dad was killed before TKB was born and his mum had to raise him as a single mother. Not sure though…

…hmmmm…

I’m still brainstorming ideas with Rin. I’d like to make more comics on TKB’s childhood and the community of Kul Elna itself before the massacre happened. I think there’s so much more to tell about a village of “thieves.” (apparently pfft….I really don’t understand why Takahashi would give this kind of backstory to TKB and let him and his people go to hell in the end like..wut kind of fucked up justice system does YGO have that Akhnadin, the one who perpetrated the massacre gets to go to the friggin afterlife and TKB is destroyed and goes to hell? ) then again these kinds of things happen irl sighhhh. ‘So depressing but rich and powerful people often get away with things that the poor cannot. they just fuck em over again and again

It’d be nice to tackle classism, poverty, prejudice and racism in this AU. I’ll have to find more time for it though gahh..fuck. ORZZZ

Hmmm

I was thinking of scheduling my wordpress or social media posting to MWFSun this year if possible. Not everything will be images ofc, it could just be ramblings or updates. It’s good to have a routine and update a few times a week so I thought of that today . ^__^b

Anyway, I have to thank the people who commissioned me. I’m so grateful to know there are people willing to pay for me to draw for them. >v< ❤️❤️❤️!!!

You really have no idea how it helps me build more confidence with my stuff. Rin told me it’s an achievement to open commissions esp since I had such low self esteem with my works that I kept moving the goalposts when it came to opening one and now that I actually did and even have some people wanting to commission me, it’s a big deal for me and…encouraging, ehehe. ^//////^

I’ve been taking note of the commission ideas, jotting down emails and thumbnailing them during the weekend so I didn’t get to be as active online as I’d hoped to. ORZ

I’m also currently working on this short p citron comic I’ll be selling in my kofi store for just 2 USD. The store isn’t open yet lol but I plan on putting a few comics (ebooks) and stuff to sell there sometime this year. 😀

Not sure when it’ll be done. I have to balance it with finishing the commissions too. Perhaps it’ll be finished next week.

Welp,

I’ll post more updates. And I will also have to start with AUU chapter 7 this Feb。 _(:3 」∠)_

So many projects…. But I think can do this! ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN❗❗

COMMISSION PAGE | KO-FI COMMISSION PAGE

E-mail : millekuu@gmail.com

Hello,

So, following up on my post last year, I’ve decided to start taking commissions. If you’ve ever wanted me to draw one of your original characters, an image in your head, or characters from anoth er fandom, now you can have me draw them. I’ll draw many things ranging from SFW to NSFW. (´∀`)♡

Although when it comes to NSFW, as stated above, I’m pretty conservative when it comes to YGODM, haha. I’m in too deep with my ships that I really can’t draw them with other ppl, sorry. BUT I can draw other series’ characters or OCs. ^__^

You can commission me HERE, which is my main commissions page or on my Ko-Fi commissions page.

My main commissions page has a Terms of Service page so it’s best to read it first before you commission me and it has a less confusing arrangement and structure compared to my Ko-Fi commissions page, lol. Ko-fi tends to rearrange my commission choices so it can be quite confusing and messy. The pros of it though is that it’s much more straightforward with payment so it’s a good alternative. 👍

So…yeah, after like five years of just drawing casually in the fandom, I finally opened my first commissions as milliekou LOL. My regret is that I posted a lot of casual work through the years that I don’t have plenty of “polished” samples to choose from. But that’s fine. I’m gonna update and draw more polished stuff in the future.

I can only do seven slots at a time so once they’re full, the rest will be on a waiting list. I’ll contact you and reply if there’s a slot available. 😀