10.26.24
time is flying by, the year felt like it was going by fast even before helene but this past month has passed us by SO fast. its been such a weird time. through all the destruction and chaos there's been a bunch of politicians coming through to get their photo ops in and it's made things 100x worse. so many roads are washed out and damaged and then the ones that are still passable get shut down because of the politicians in town, and of course they're not here to help. the only thing worse than a natural disaster is one that happens right before an election...
i haven't been doing much, classes resumed online this week and all of my professors decided that they wanted papers written so i sat down and worked through everything that I had due yesterday. we're back to in-person classes on monday, so i didn't want anything hovering over my head this weekend. i also go back to work on monday and i'm dreading it, part of me just kind of wants to quit already and find something new. i'll stick it out at least until the end of the year before i decide how i actually feel. tbh i'm dreading it all but ultimately i am so grateful to even be able to go back to class and get back to some kind of 'normal'.
last week i did a ton of nsfw sketches, i had this burst of inspiration but now it's kind of fizzled out again. maybe it's anxiety from having to go back to work/school next week, but i'm still chipping away at a few pieces. here's one that i've been working on of alfred pullilng his thong up his coochie...
in case you didn't know, you should definitely be drawing on paint with the lasso tool... it's a lot of fun and my go-to when i feel uninspired and want to just do something crazy and loose. i'll be finishing this pic up sometime soon, something weird happened with the file and i'm not able to use the eraser to get rid of the sketch layer anymore so i'm gonna have to roll with that. it also just looks weird the more i mess with it so idk we might just scrap it...
and here's cohosh taking a little break to stretch out. yes i cropped his weiner out, sorry.... it's on my FA though. i have so much fun drawing my poodle guy, it's been a nice way to just sit down and warm up.
i keep getting the urge to move to the PNW. i keep getting posts on my IG and tiktok pages about washington and months ago i had this really vivid dream that i moved there and had a cute little green cottage. has that ever happened to you?? i don't think i would ever do it because i truly love the south too much. while i've enjoyed all the time i've spent visiting the PNW, i've lived in the south all my life and can't imagine ending up away from it. it was the same thing when i lived in baltimore for a little while, i really liked the area but i couldn't imagine living there long-term. idk what the powers that be are trying to tell me, maybe it's just i'm craving that rainy fall forest feeling while everything feels like its falling apart down here.
anyways this entry has been allll over the place hope youre doing well wherever you are, ill write again soon =]
10.17.24
hello again, figured it'd be nice to get a blog post in after the heaviness of the last one. cleanup is still continuing here, and it will be for a very long time.
it's made me sad to see this turn into a dick measuring contest between neighborhoods and towns as to 'x got it worse so..' when so many things everywhere are still
in ruins. well it seems everyone is 'done' with twitter once again, including myself. this has been a long time coming and to be honest i'm almost embarassed to have
waited so long to pull the plug... and i'll be the first to admit that it was for selfish reasons. twitter was the first place that i felt like my art was actually
getting 'out there' and i was able to have an audience kind of. it was kind of hard for me to let go of it, but let's face it the algorithm has not been kind to artists
for a long *long* time at this point and it was beyond time to just move on to a better platform.
but then there's this idea of 'where do we all go?' i'm all about maintaining personal sites for peak control of your art but for a lot of artists who rely on
commissions for their income it's not a realistic option yet. it helps to have some kind of social media platform to share your work on to get more eyes on it.
bluesky seems to be everyone's choice at this point, i'm on there as you all know @camo93.
unfortunately people want or in some cases need the numbers on their art so they're reluctant to let go of twitter just yet, but if we all just commit to developing
a community these things will come to fruition. there's literally no point to continue posting on a website that promotes conservative bullshit, racism, conspiracies,
extremism, you name it- all while having your content harvested and fed to AI training. and now the block function doesn't even work properly anymore.
this is what i left on my page, i plan on grabbing my archive then nuking the tweets off of there. it felt so, SO good to finally pull the plug on this - it's something
that i've been contemplating for a while now. after the storm happened and we were left without utilities as well as cell service/any way to look at the outside world,
i found myself getting really bitter towards the idea of social media. it felt so amazing to be disconnected and i felt myself begin to realize that the problems
that i have been experiencing in regards to lack of creativity/ideas/motivation largely stems from the model of modern day social media pages as well as twitter itself.
this idea of 'i'm scared to push this idea out because i'm worried people will regard it as xyz' was something that i was getting more and more worried over, despite my
very strong beliefs in drawing whatever the hell you want. it was just always kind of there in the back of my mind, or the disappointment that i felt when i worked for
long hours on a piece just to see it not do well because it was pushed away by the algorithm.
drawing for the sake of drawing and the sake of enjoying the creative process is something that is way easier to say than do when you're attached to the idea of 'i have
to build an audience'. obviously it's natural to want people to see your art, i don't want to come off as some holier than thou asshole like 'heh you're only in it for the likes'
because that's a totally fair thing to want. but when it starts to get in the way of your creative process and your art suffers for it.. well... time to take a step back and
reconfigure/reprioritize. anyways, i just wanted to talk about this some. i've been doing a lot of thinking about my art, what i want to make, what i feel called to create vs what i feel like
i 'should be' creating.
on a different note- i realize there is so much stuff that happened before helene that i didn't tell you guys about! WTF! i did a little plant sale, it was mostly seeds and some
little herbs that we don't have anywhere to plant right now. all the plants at work were really struggling since they went so long without water, but most of them look like
they're starting to bounce back! the plants on my porch however... haha a much different story. i'm trying to nurse them back to help now that water is restored. about a week
before the storm, i got a new tattoo at the studio that i mentioned in my last post. it's strange to think, but while i was laying down getting tattooed i kept thinking about the
beautiful river and how amazing it would be to have an art studio in such a special place like marshall. in the back of my mind i couldn't help but wonder- what would happen if
there were a storm and the river flooded? i didn't realize i would have an answer so soon. it's so heartbreaking to think of all of the damage and all of the loss.
tattoo by baylen levore @ pars fortuna. if you like it please consider helping them rebuild their studio that was destroyed by helene
well, i think that's about all i have for you guys right now. i just wanted to get my thoughts out there about this whole twitter mess - i think if we all let go and commit ourselves to building a better community for artists we can make something where we can all thrive again. i hope you're all doing well and i plan to be back with some fresh sketches and a little gallery update soon!
10.14.24
where do i even start? it's been a long, long 2 weeks. october is here and it feels like fall today, it's sunny and the wind is cool and crisp. first of all, i'd like to say that we are BEYOND lucky - we're safe, our power came back and yesterday after almost 3 weeks we finally got our water back. now with wifi back today, i'm finally able to sit down and write a post about everything that's happened. growing up in SETX on the louisiana border i was used to dealing with hurricanes, i went through rita, ike, harvey and all the little ones that were in between. i remember after harvey i thought to myself that i couldn't wait to move away and hopefully end up somewhere that didn't deal with hurricanes. six years later here i am deep inland all the way in the mountains dealing with helene and all the destruction that it left behind.
i keep trying to think about what i want to say about this, how much i want to say, how much this has effected the people here in WNC- especially the people in rural towns that suffered the most through all of this. it's been so frustrating watching the conspiracies and lies spread and seeing so little about it on the news as it was unfolding. but it's been really incredible watching communities and people come together to take care of each other and rebuild. the destruction has just been so unimaginable, entire towns had just been swept away and small rural communities have been decimated by this storm.
if you're interested in helping people in WNC who have been affected by hurricane helene look into Rural Organizing And Resilience (ROAR), pansy collective, and check out beloved asheville. i would also like to say that marshall high studios in marshall, nc was also seriously damaged by the floods. this is where my tattoo artist has her studio, if you've ever admired one of my tattoos please consider sending some support their way on their gofundme to rebuild. well, it's a long road ahead and i don't know what else there is to say at this point. thank you to everyone who reached out to check on slater and i, we seriously appreciate it.
i apologize for not having the credit to the above photo, let me know if you know who captured the after image of chimney rock.
above is photos of the damage that i took, we drove through erwin on our way to a family member's house.
09.21.24
hi as soon as i sat down to start writing this blog entry simon threw up a big hairball and all his dinner right on the carpet. this is the joy of having a longhaired cat -_- no matter, it's all taken care of now... well, not much going on. work is crazy stressful, but the semester is going well so far. grades have been good, but this might change after my test on monday lol. fingers crossed! i'll also be switching jobs soon, but i haven't decided between two options yet. luckily i'll be able to work some shifts with both jobs to see what it's like and decide from there, i have friends who work at both places so either one would be good =]
in other news, i've made a furaffinity account. you can find me on there under the username cohosh! nothing on there right now, but when i do draw furry stuff it'll go on there. i'll still be posting it here of course, but i wanted to get back on FA after years and years. last weekend, i did a deep dive on olddd old art/artists and i felt very old... but it made me miss the platform a little, or art gallery sites in general.
well, that's about all i have for you... i'll leave you with this quick n messy sketch of a new oc that i've been developing along with slater's new oc boyd who is his older brother. more to come on these guys later...
09.08.24
hi =] how are you? it's starting to really feel like fall over here. it seems the leaves are starting to change a little early this year, everything is really colorful outside right now. lots of goldenrod and mistflower, i think i'm going to harvest and dry some goldenrod tomorrow when i get off of work. it's been nice and cool in the evenings/mornings and classes have started up again for fall semester... it really feels like fall even though september has just barely gotten started. been feeling creatively stagnant- it's a weird feeling, i am brimming with the energy to sit down and create something but it's like the two halves of my brain don't want to co-operate together. still, it's important when you feel like that to sit down and try to just let something out, even if it doesn't look very good. currently i'm sitting here with the window open letting the last of my incense burn down, i just did two separate tarot readings for myself and i feel slightly better about things. life feels all over the place right now, even if it isn't really.
i hope you guys are doing good. i'll be updating the gallery soon with some new stuff, but for now you can take these sketches:
i'm going back and forth on trying to make another character gallery on here.. i'm not sure if i really want to since i have toyhouse right there, but i am time and time again drawn to the idea of setting one up on here. idk...
+08.22.24
hi everybody! it's been a real busy week, feels like the work just never stops coming. got some bad news about some healthcare stuff i've been dealing with and i'm all the way back at square one. it's frustrating to keep dealing with this, but we're starting over and taking care of it =] classes start next week and it's been kind of fun watching all of the new students moving in. i took yesterday off since it was slater's day off and we spent all of it together just out doing stuff. did an easy hike in the morning and then went and did some stuff downtown, topped it off with getting some really good japanese food at the end of the night. my birthday is on saturday, but since slater's working we decided to celebrate yesterday. it was nice to be able to spend some time together =]
other than that, it's been quiet.... busy, but quiet. well, crossing my fingers for this stuff to work out this next time around. it's been suspenseful waiting to hear back for the last few months so to get let down was a huge bummer, but once i can get referred back to another, hopefully better orthopedics place then things will all work out after that. well, i'll leave you with this little preview sketch, i'm working on a selfship commission for a friend featuring dale cobble from longlegs.
+08.10.24
hello everyone hi hi what's new? not much here, savoring these last few weeks of summer before the semester starts here in 2 weeks. lots and lots of work to be done before then. my okra plants are getting ready to produce some okra yayyyy! i wasn't expecting them to get big enough to produce before summer was over. pretty soon i'll have to get the porch garden ready for winter and figure out where to put my patchouli plant inside where the cats can't get to it.
i have a few sketches for you guys:
it's nothing extraordinary, but lately i have been thinking a lot about clive and trying to get those thoughts out onto a canvas where i can sort of sprawl my ideas along with visuals if that makes sense... i haven't had a lot of energy to draw this week, but i wanted to just take some time to be loose and just draw whatever i was seeing in my head. i think i'll come back to the bottom one later on, i've had an idea like this that i've wanted to draw for a while now.
well, that's all i have for you right now. i'm going to try to decide what to do with my weekend now that doesn't involve going to world market and buying a bunch of snacks
+08.05.24
seems like it's all going by so fast, how the hell is it already the 5th?? we're at the part of summer where i normally get tired of it, all the bugs are out and the humidity is killing me. but at the same time, it's like i don't want it to end =[ but i'm excited for autumn, and i'm excited for the semester to start again so i can be done with this summer job. well, it's the same job i have all year round but it's been a really frustrating summer for a number of reasons. the administration has been SO slow to pay us, we'll submit our hours and it'll take over a week for them to get the check to us. last month, we went 6 weeks without seeing a paycheck because of the 4th of july. it's so frustrating, i know the administrative workers are working hard and have a lot on their plate but shouldn't paying your employees be a top priority? U would think...
it's been senic at least!
with the semester starting up again soon, i'm trying to squeeze as much as i can into the little free time that i have. hopefully a few more swims before it starts getting chilly again. a friend and i have been exploring different local swimming spots and it's been a lot of fun. also trying to draw more, it feels like art fight makes it so easy for me to sit down and draw because i don't have to put that much thought into it- pick a character and roll with it. but when it comes to my own art, i overthink it so hard. once the semester starts, it's gonna be so hard for me to get anything made =[ at least when i was taking all art classes last semester, i was still making things. this year it won't be the same, i'm having to slog through the rest of my gen-ed courses this semester so i can hopefully do some more interesting stuff the following years.
and an update for art stuff, i finally have an art tumblr now. you can follow it here! i guess someone had camo93 originally but they had been suspended, i'm guessing it was some sort of bot thing. when i made my new blog originally, i called it 'camo93art' and it Immediately got suspended within 30 minutes of me opening the account, i hadn't even posted anything yet. when i submitted a ticket, i didn't get any confirmation that they had received it so that made me think it had something to do with bots and the similar url just got it auto-sniped. but it seems like this one is here to stay, lets hope at least. tumblr is not a platform that i've ever really prefered to use for art, but i'm really getting tired of twitter. it's so stressful and the transformation that platform has gone through is insane- i had to open a new account because i had been locked out of my NSFW, and the things that they automatically promoted to my timeline without following anyone was really bizarre and insane.
so while i still intend to post art there, i also want to broaden my horizons and find elsewhere to post my things- not that i don't enjoy posting to neocities of course =] but if you want your work to reach lots of people, gotta play the game. though, there's great comfort in posting your art to your own website- you have complete control over how it's seen and how it's presented. want comments? you can install a comment box. don't? then dont.. it's really the best way to do things- unless you want some type of audience to be reached with your work. which, speaking of work...
my boyfriend slater and ihave recently been discussing collaborating on a little mini-webcomic project together. nothing too crazy, but we've been talking about doing something like this for a really long time now and i think we're gonna do some test pages this week. i'll share them here, of course. then there's also the matter of continuing quinn- a few weeks ago i went in and completely redid the website's code and got things running again. a lot of it was really old, and super broken, it was one of the first neocities websites that i had ever made and it really, really showed lol as you all know i lost some of the original script files (not all thankfully) so there's been a lot of combing through and fixing and adjusting, re-writing, tweaking...
but i think if i ever wait for the day where i'm fully satisfied with the story, i'll be waiting and re-writing and re-tweaking forever and ever til i die. eventually it's all gotta just come out on paper and exist as it is. BUT, i have to actually have it there in the first place- so that's what i'm doing now =] just slowly chipping away at it, but only when i feel passionate about it and truly inspired to. i don't ever want it to feel like a chore ever again... i think there's such a big push when it comes to writing stories or releasing webcomics like this where you HAVE to get it all out as quickly as possible but it really just turns into its own burden very quickly
well, that's all i have for you guys right now. don't really have any art to show you guys, i'm trying to make it a daily habit but i'm always overly intimidated by the question of 'what do i draw' which is so funny because as a kid it felt like i had all the ideas in the world but no skill to translate it... now i can kind of sort of draw and all the ideas have dried up =P can't have your cake and eat it too. hope you guys are having a good one
+07.28.24:
hello everyone, it's been a pretty busy past few weeks so i hope you can forgive the quietness around here. not that there needs to be some kind of post on here every other day, but i do try to keep things updated as frequently as i can. no more of those sleep meds that i mentioned last time, i just couldn't deal with the fatigue, it was literally making me feel crazy... so i am back to being sleepless and waking up a bunch of times in the middle of the night =P this week i went down to birmingham and had a great time there, lots of good little book stores and antique shops. good coffee and an awesome jazz show that i got to go to. but after a busy week out of town, it's good to come back home and spend some time just catching up on stuff, deep cleaning the apartment etc.
art fight has been going good, i still plan on trying to squeeze a few more attacks in this year before the competition is over. i took a different approach to things this year and tried some new ways of rendering and i think it was successful =] instead of posting the attacks to my gallery, i'll be sharing them here. here's all the ones i've done so far this year:
sorry about the watermark stuff i'm a little paranoid these days =P well, that's really all i have for you guys today. hope your summer has been going well. we've finally been getting rain here after what seemed like forever without it, last week it was like there was a thunderstorm every single day. well, i'm off to deal with the sunday scaries in the best way i know how (playing some sso) i'll see you guys later!
+07.13.24:
saturdays are days where i just feel really really tired but today is especially sleepy feeling i'm not sure what it is... i spent all of may waiting on my sleep meds to come in the mail and then they did, started taking them and everything was working out pretty well for the most part. i had a few side effects because the meds lower your blood pressure but i was sleeping all the way through the night which is my biggest thing that i struggle with. well when i went to up the dose i started having a little more intense side effects and my blood pressure was dropping wayyyy way low and it was getting to where i was feeling randomly like i was abut to be sick/could barely stand the heat etc etc
so they switched me off of that one to another one and i took it on a sunday night because why not. no biggie. oh my god it really felt like hell the next morning i woke up and i was so tired, but i pushed myself to just go to work and assumed i would wake up once i got to work which is what normally happens. but instead i spent all my shift barely able to move/function etc and when i got home that day i slept for another 5 hours!!! i woke up and i was still so tired. i didn't feel fully awake until 7 or 8 pm almost 24 hours after taking the stuff.
so i tried one more time thinking that maybe it was just a one off. i had to call into work the next day, the exhaustion was crazy. tbh i don't think i have ever been that tired or disoriented inmy life if not in a very very long time... so needless to say i stopped taking that junk i have always had really bad luck with psych meds so i stay away from them but i was willing to try and find something to help me sleep again. sleep hasn't been great this week, went back to the old stuff just so i could at least get one good night of sleep on the weekends and i woke up this morning feeling like i'd been run over so i guess it's just all out of the cards right now. tried all the main stuff incl melatonin and it all just jacks me up in one way or another
so after writing this i will probably take a nap. i have a red bull next to me but i think i'll wait until after my nap to drink it as ihave been known to fall asleep in the middle of drinking energy drinks =P then after that, more art fight stuff. really love art fight, it is the highlight of my summer i think. which is funny, considering how i have never wanted to participate in it before until just a few years ago and irealized it's actually really fun and low-commitment.
work has been sapping all of my will to do stuff, i was waiting to hear some good news before i tried getting started on learning some new stuff i've been wanting to learn but i have realized that is not a great mindset to have and i think i should just go for it anyway. really want to learn blender, i'm not even big on 3D stuff but i think it would be a fun tool to use in my art nto sure how yet. it's also good to learn something new in general
anyways just checking in =] hope everyone is doing well... will be sharing some art fight attacks on here next time.
+ 07.07.24:
woah... hey... long time no see! well, long story short, i just felt like i had nothing to write about. i've also been doing art fight,
it's been good to take a break from worrying about art and just drawing people's characters. it took me years to actually get into art fight, i always thought that
it looked too overwhelming or that it was too much of a commitment. it wasn't until 2022 that i actually joined and ever since then it's been like my favorite part of the
summer. i like how it's as chill or as intense as you want it to be.
you've probably noticed a new theme for the site and some cut pages as well. i might go back in and re-add some pages, but i think for now i want to try and
keep things a little compact. too many pages and things stresses me out i think, so it's better for me to have something small and condensed. the blog
will also now be one condensed page now as well, once it gets too long i'll just archive the pages.
hope you've been enjoying your summer, i did a whole bunch of pride month stuff with friends and i've been taking every chance i can to go explore
and swim. nothing better than finding a good swimming hole with cold mountain water, you can swim until you shiver then jump out and bake in the sun
on a rock until you get too hot... rinse and repeat. that's all i have for you guys right now, i'll be updating the art gallery soon. gallery will
be for finished pieces and i'll be putting sketches in here.