This Was Once An Art Blog

Leah. 30+ character artist and writer. I specialize in sexy pin-ups of fictional men!

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Watercolor commissions are open! Please send me a DM if you’re interested.

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Maka: Key Collectors

Chapter 2, Page 9

Pages 9 and 10 of chapter 2 of Maka are up now!

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Maka: Key Collectors

Cover

35 pages of Maka are now up on ComicFury! Come check it out!

Classmates Ken and Mimi have both been having recurring dreams of a fantasy world. One day, when playing in the park, a mysterious woman named Rei approaches them. She tells them the magic land of their dreams wasn’t a dream after all, but a memory of growing up on planet Maka. Now, Maka is in danger, and it’s up to Ken, Mimi, Rei, and their new friend Costen to save it! While traveling across that mysterious world, they must collect 5 keys to rescue the kidnapped princess and restore Maka to its natural state!

Inspired by 90’s and early 2000’s anime, such as Sailor Moon, Digimon, MegaMan NT Warrior, and Flint the Time Detective!

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Watercolor commissions are open! Please send me a DM if you’re interested.

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Watercolor commissions are open! Please send me a DM if you’re interested.

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Commission of Giyu Tomioka and Kyojuro Rengoku from Demon Slayer!

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My OC, Costen Maka drawn in a simple manga style and a more realistic style.

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Comic Fury is a free, easy-to-use, advertisement free host for your webcomic(s). You can put up your own comics and get a website dedicated

22 pages of Maka are up now!

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Watercolor commissions are open! Please send me a DM if you’re interested.

[idrawprettyboys]

Comic Fury is a free, easy-to-use, advertisement free host for your webcomic(s). You can put up your own comics and get a website dedicated

18 pages of Maka are up now! Join me as I make my childhood dreams come true!

Story description: Classmates Ken and Mimi have both been having recurring dreams of a fantasy world. One day, when playing in the park, a mysterious woman named Rei approaches them. She tells them the magic land of their dreams wasn’t a dream after all, but a memory of growing up on planet Maka. Now, Maka is in danger, and it’s up to Ken, Mimi, Rei, and their new friend Costen to save it! While traveling across that mysterious world, they must collect 5 keys to rescue the kidnapped princess and restore Maka to its natural state! Inspired by 90’s and early 2000’s anime, such as Sailor Moon, Digimon, MegaMan NT Warrior, and Flint the Time Detective!

Here’s an extra blurb I did for the ComicFury forums: Maka is the best because it’s full of carefree whimsy and freedom! An adventure story that isn’t restricted by formulas, it goes where the wind takes it! Full of nostalgia for oldschool anime, it takes you back to a simpler time. The characters are full of life and love for each other, creating a happy family that the reader feels like they’re a part of! Join them on their journey full of unexpected obstacles, play along as they traverse treacherous terrain, and form bonds as they overcome hardship and save a dying world of fantasy and wonder.

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My character, Costen, congratulating me on finding a way to enjoy making comics again! ^w^

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What I CAN do VS What I CHOOSE to do:

Making comics/manga doesn’t mean having to torture yourself by doing things the meticulous, professional way. I choose to make my comics simple and enjoyable to draw! ^w^

When working on “professional” pages, I kept thinking “I hate this! Why would I want to spend hours upon hours on a single page? Every second feels like torture! I hate making comics!” Which made me feel devastated. Making comics had been my dream growing up. It was the thing I loved above all else. What had changed? But then it occurred to me that it wasn’t making comics that I hated. It was doing undersketches, inking, using rulers… the things that weren’t naturally part of my process… the things I did because I was told “real” manga artists do things this way. I thought I had to make manga this way… Until it got to the point that I thought I was going to quit making comics forever. 

And it occurred to me that all I have to do to make myself love it like I did as a kid is to draw like I did when I was a kid. No guidelines, no soft sketching and being afraid of leaving indents in the page, no being super cautious about making everything perfect. The more I tried to be careful with it, the more stress it caused me and the worse it turned out. I realized that once I figured out how to go back to the method of drawing that my child self preferred… my pencil strokes felt so much more confident! Things look better in the first try, even if they aren’t perfect! And rather than dreading it taking my whole life to finish a story, I’m looking forward to drawing it every day! And I even feel sad that it’s going to end eventually!

This has been a total game changer! It’s like I recovered my identity! I had no clue I’d been drawing in a way that wasn’t true to myself all these years. And now I feel like I’m seeing a whole different outlook on my creative ventures. I have a confession. I never wanted to be a fine artist. I never wanted to spend hours on a single picture for it to hang on someone’s wall. What I wanted was to tell stories and create beloved characters, and this simplistic style is just what I need to achieve that!

(Don’t panic, I’ll still draw my elegant illustrations when the mood strikes.)

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This is my character Costen congratulating me for finding a way to enjoy making comics again! And this illustration is my thank-you note to Costen and the other Maka characters for showing me the way! All I had to do was go back to my roots with comic drawing, using a simple anime art style and drawing solidly with pencil, but it took Maka to show me that! It took a bit of practice to relearn how to draw in a simplified manga/anime style that I'm happy with, but here it is! It's nice and easy to draw while still looking GOOD to me! It doesn't feel like I'm trying to draw in a style that's unnatural for me. In fact, I've been thinking that maybe I've been drawing in a way that isn't true to my nature for the past 20 years... But I'm happy to be back!

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My character, Mimi Maka, done with Uni Posca markers and an Uni Prockey marker. The coloring would be smoother if I hadn't tried using watercolor crayons beforehand. I suspect that they're actually water-soluble oil pastels, because they certainly made her dress look oily. ^-^;

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For those of you who haven’t seen, I’m currently working on a manga called Maka that I conceived when I was just 10 years old! I started rewriting it 2 years ago. I now have 180 pages and am in the process of sharing it online!

Maka: Key Collectors

Cover

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Comic Fury is a free, easy-to-use, advertisement free host for your webcomic(s). You can put up your own comics and get a website dedicated

Pages 9-13 are up now!

Summary:

Classmates Ken and Mimi have both been having recurring dreams of a fantasy world. One day, when playing in the park, a mysterious woman named Rei approaches them. She tells them the magic land of their dreams wasn’t a dream after all, but a memory of growing up on planet Maka. Now, Maka is in danger, and it’s up to Ken, Mimi, Rei, and their new friend Costen to save it! While traveling across that mysterious world, they must collect 5 keys to rescue the kidnapped princess and restore Maka to its natural state!

Inspired by 90’s and early 2000’s anime, such as Sailor Moon, Digimon, MegaMan NT Warrior, and Flint the Time Detective!

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Completed another beautiful page of Maka!