Look at the beautiful piece I commissioned the talented @irishyuri to draw! Based on the ending of my merwenthur fanfic, because that scene kind of wrote itself and I ended up liking it a lot, actually. So, if you've read and liked it, here's a lovely visual to go with it <3 (If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it. You know, just in case you want to check it out).

Kinda an offshoot of thoughts from my last post but man I think being online and posting my art since I was a kid has definitely done something negative to my brain chemistry and how I see the art I create. In a lot of ways I've definitely changed for the better over the years, like when I was a teen I remember always trying to bargain what kinds of fanart would get me the most followers like I was buying stocks in visibility, and now as an adult I'm happy that I've grown out of that and value my original art a lot more. However I feel like that energy has been redirected to different places, like I'm not necessarily expecting tons of engagement online from just my original work but now I'm extremely hard set on drawing things that will "advance" me in some way whether that be my portfolio or my ability to make it into art shows or generally anything that I see as a pathway out of normal day job life and into an ~art career~.

A lot of the time against all reasoning I'll genuinely see more value in artistic output than my own health (after all I can always rest AFTER my massive projects are done!) and I don't think a day goes by where I'm not thinking about what big project I can finally finish that will get me to a place where I feel "successful". It would be nice to pin these feelings on just personal goals unrelated to my general life but I think the hard reality is that I want to accomplish these things because I want to become an artist as a career so I don't have to work low paying jobs that suck away my energy and free time while not giving me enough to provide for both myself and my partner. I want to have income from art jobs and gigs that allows me to survive similarly to how I would at a typical job while simultaneously pursuing a craft I love. Like...it feels so much different than when my teenage brain just wanted engagement online because I feel like my personal comfort and happiness relies on the amount of hours I can pour into detailed comics and illustrations and animations and all of those things take so much time that I have so little of.

I love making art so much! I love creating characters and paintings and animations and most of all I love it when anything I make can positively affect another person even in the smallest ways! I just wish so much of my self worth and future didn't hang on how many hours I can pour into my work and how monitizable that work ends up being.