If you're curious about these two, they're the nonbinary leads to my book! My best friend and I have been writing the Tales From The Night Garden series for about two years now, and the first book, Lemon Balm, is planned to come out on Halloween!
We have a Backerkit put together for it, so please check it out if you want to know more!
From Artemis Quinn and Auden Eris-Everen - Get Ready for Lemon Balm (Tales From The Night Garden, Vol. 1)
step one of creating a vampire story: make up a little freak who wants to bite people. step two: add guilt. step three: make up a little freak who wants to be bitten. step four: add guilt.
I think I like the large lump of month-long prompts for the QueerPrompts post more than I like doing it daily here. I'll keep them in a draft and post at the end of the month, I think.
If you want to see them day of, then I also do them on bsky and threads.
Hello everyone and welcome to the first monthly check-in! Before we launch into the blog post, how are we all feeling? Have you gotten your coffee? Drank some water, eaten a bit today? Let's settle in and get cozy!
Now that you're settled, let's jump right into the goals for April, and then we'll recap for March!
April Goals
Top 3 Goals -- The top three goals for April are pretty straightforward, and lean into some of the bigger projects I'm already working on. Dracula and Tales from the Night Garden are heavily on my mind right now, and Wax and Wings is in the perfect position for us to get started on the concept art involved for the unnamed Hades and Persephone project.
For Dracula, I need to finish reading the novel and annotating the portions that I need to pay attention to. Once I finish that, I can start working on some of the character concept art. My heavier handed goal is to get initial character sketches ready for Johnathon, Mina, and Lucy before the end of the month.
For Wax and Wings, Tiffanie and I have started talking about the concept work that we're doing for the unnamed Persephone and Hades project. For this, I'd like to refine some symbols that I started to put together for each God/Goddess, and get started on some temple design stuff (both ruins and in-tact temples). I'm really excited to dive into this, it's a really fascinating project!
Tales From The Night Garden has been both a drawing and writing project for a few years now, and I'd like to make more art for the series. Some of it is needed for the books, but some are just self-indulgent drawings of my favorite characters. If the books do well, we're hoping to release an artbook as a companion eventually. If this is a goal, then around now will be when I really want to start pushing to make more artwork of the characters and important places. So, my first push for that, is to do a drawing of the main characters -- Acanthus and Cypress-- together, as a couple. I haven't drawn them together since 2023, so it's time to draw them again.
Other Goals for the Month -- I have several smaller goals throughout the month that I can do in a few hours instead of several days, so I'll bullet them out here.
I'll show the sketch below in the March recap, but I'd like to finish the "digital watercolor" painting that I started last week. That shouldn't take me too long.
Youtube has been going steady with 2-3 shorts per week, but I'd like to get a longform video up once a month, which means that I need to work on a long-form video for this month.
I've been making (and hitting) a goal of writing an average of 3 hours a night each month since January. I didn't hit that for March, but I'd really like to hit that for April. That means my goal for writing hours this month is 90 hours total. That should be do-able, so long as I am mindful about my other goals and free time.
I'll be at the 4th Annual OAC Artist Show at the Gibson on April 12th, from 6pm-10pm! If you are local please stop by, show me and other local artists some support and have a fun night out on the town! I'm hoping to do some drawing while I'm at my table to try and show off my skills while I'm selling my prints and stickers.
Something I'd like to get started on when I've got a bit more time, is a gouache journal. I want to get better at using it as a medium, so I'd like to start doing studies and stuff like that. I have a lot of fancy notebooks that are completely empty, because I used to bullet journal and now I don't really take the time to. The paper is perfect for gouache, and so it'd be a great way to both use the journals and get better at painting in the medium. As an added bonus, I can record footage for Youtube and make a video of the process, as well.
The last lower-tier goal I have on my list is to re-imagine the cards for my Gothic Esteem tarot deck. This is a deck that I've had in mind for a few years now, but never sat down to actually plan out the cards. I'd like to get started on that project around some of my other, higher-priority projects; this will move to a higher priority once I have some of the cards actually concepted. So, this month, I'd like to start working on a list of what each card could be in this deck.
Phew, that's a hell of a list! The thing about this list, is that it's not limited to this month. Anything I don't finish this month will roll over to next month, so long as I can get some work done on these during this month. But, I'm pretty sure that's about all that I am looking forward to this month! With that, let's start talking about March.
March -- The Good
Top 3 Goals Completed! -- This is one of the biggest, and also one of the most empowering 'Good' happenings of the month.
The first goal was to finish my commission examples last month, which was the most daunting and important to do. With these being done, it gives me the option to add my commission details to Ko-Fi, and share my details a bit easier for potential clients to see.
The second goal was to get started on my illustrated version of Dracula. I not only started the project, but I finished the first drawing, which is a title page for the interior. This puts me slightly ahead of where I wanted to be on this project going into April.
The third goal was for the "digital watercolor"/texture-heavy digital pieces. I had an ambitious goal of two, but I'm happy with having one completed. I'll try and complete the other as a lower-priority goal in April. I'm really enjoying this look, though, and I think I'm finally starting to find where my style lives when I try to go more exaggerated and stylized. This is good, because I'm trying to push more into that realm.
Ultimately, I'm really pleased with how much I was able to finish for the month of March, especially around some more intensive obligations that have started.
Wax and Wings-- The Wax and Wings project officially launched this last month! Tiffanie and I are ecstatic to share our journey with you all, and to jump into this project headfirst. You can follow the project on Youtube.
OAC 4th Annual Art Show -- I'll be tabling in person at the OAC art show on April 12th! Currently I'm working on getting a couple of new merch items for that, as well as refining my display for the table. I'm really excited to be tabling at a market again, and I can't wait to be surrounded by a bunch of awesome artists again. If you're in the area, you should stop by and say hello! :)
March -- The Bad/The Ugly
Writing -- Unfortunately when it comes to writing, a lot of things have been put on the back burner or subject to delays. I try to write for three hours a day, and this is the first month since I started tracking my writing time that I've been significantly under that goal. I've been busier in other areas, which is a main part of this, and also my energy levels have dipped a bit since I haven't had time to properly rest.
On the bright side, we've started to work on Aloe again! This may be back to a pausing point, but we did get about 40 pages added to the draft, which is fantastic! I've also been working on short stories and unrelated projects in the meantime. A Pirate's Moon, Acanthus' story, is up to about 100 pages in the draft and has gotten to a pretty intense point in their story, so I'll likely be focusing on that for my April writing project.
Lemon Balm is still in edit limbo, as well. We haven't been able to get the next chunk to our editor quite yet, but we're still hopeful for a 2025 release! We'll see where this month takes us.
I believe that's about all, for now!
What's everyone else working on this month? Let me know in the comments below! I'd love to hear about what you have going on, and maybe we can hold each other accountable this month :) Have a great day, everyone! Drink your water, take care of yourselves, and do what you can.
Note: If you'd rather, you can have these updates sent straight to your email if you follow me on Ko-Fi or Patreon.
March 29: If you took a picture of your book, what setting would you choose for the background?
A book nook with a window bench in a bay window at night, the moon filtering in. Fairy lights and pillows decorate the nook, with a blanket partially skewed off of the bench. Cozy, ethereal vibes.
March 28: Free Friday, or, a show/movie like your story
I'm gonna opt for the free Friday. Here's a few messy fountain pen doodles from 2023 of Acanthus and Cypress, while we were writing the first draft of Lemon Balm.
This is the title page for the illustrated Dracula book I'm working on, the start of a fun new self-indulgent portfolio project. I haven't gotten far, the next step is to finish reading the book and start with the concept art.
It's a good time to become a Patreon/Ko-Fi member, just saying 😉
The Dracula project will likely be paywalled until the project is mostly completed and ready to put up on Kickstarter, so if you want to follow this project, you can join as a member on Ko-Fi or Patreon and see the illustrations as they're finished 🙂
Links beneath the read more.
Vamp's back with an update, I wonder what's happening with Conquer Thy Fear Studio?
Pro artist, writer, and actor! I do a lot of bookish things!
Cypress would probably forgive someone when broken and bleeding on the floor from their actions. Acanthus, however, can hold a grudge for a very, very long time.
