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tj-caris

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Final Month

1 min read

If you like take this next month, for however long it's 2023 somewhere, to make any last requests or commissions from me. If no one wants anything I'll finish one more Helena picture and finish some abandoned WIPs, but if people do I'll leave it open until the New Year rolls over and spend whatever time it takes to get through it.


I do reserve the right to turn it down if it bothers me too much.


I will keep the gallery up, though I can't promise anything about dA itself.


I figure I'll be back someday, but I'll be doing something else. Either this will shift to a fanart account or else I'll be doing something that's not drawing. (not prompting, not that.)

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Untitled

3 min read

Very early into the first art class I ever had the teacher took what I was working on and made a point of showing it to the class while telling everyone that it was an example of "what not to do."

I don't really think that was exactly incorrect, but it seems fucked up to do that to a young high school student - not entirely sure if that was freshman or sophomore year. Took around a decade for me to try taking another art class and the main things I got out of that one were that pastels and charcoals are not exceptions to the fact I hate having grubby hands and physical paint stumps me worse than digital.

Honestly still surprises me when anyone wants something from me, be it request or commission. I think for the time and effort put in I'm surprisingly awful, I constantly have to erase entire errant lines on the computer. Hell, when I see an indie video game with art that I feel I could probably match I tend to react "No, if you want people to pay for your product get an artist better than me."

I honestly have no idea why this little bout of insomnia has me writing this thing. I don't feel like I truly pushed through a lack of talent, but I know I've put in less effort to learn than I could have, found it really easy to get lazy for long stretches of time.

I've been trying to put together a schedule or plan for expanding what I can do art wise. I think I'm close to it, but I don't know if I can push through on it. I recently looked through a bunch of my old art and awful as it was there was honestly a lot more ambition there in a lot of ways and that has me feeling something - not sure what, but something.

I would like to say I intend to have something by sometime next year, "we'll finally have things like one super buff lady throwing a city bus at another and then they break more shit punching each other through lobbies and shit" kind of thing, but there's a lot more I'd like to say too. I finally got my post-apocalyptic story out, or I finally got a fantasy series up online, or any number of things.

I think I'm just trying to process things for myself now that I've gotten further along. I doubt I can chase two goals at once, but what if I tried breaking it up like college classes? 2 hours of drawing tj-caris stuff on Mondays and Wednesdays, drawing more general audience stuff on Tuesdays and Thursdays, writing an hour on Saturday and Sunday? Try and find a place to learn other stuff like 3D programs in there somewhere. The output would become insanely slow for sure.

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Untitled

2 min read

Ever feel like you've kind of given yourself too much to do? I feel like I'm always forgetting just how long everything takes.

I want to get those Estella pictures colored and finished and move on to the next character, but I also have some fanart I want to do - the unfinished/not-detailed picture I asked for feedback on and got Starfire, like Biker Babe Zelda based on Age of Calamity DLC, Fire Force's obvious pick, maybe a Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy from the Hulu show, and some more. I also want to get some sequences done for my SFW account.

I've been writing more or less everyday and I might share a site for it soon, but I'm a fairly slow typist and revising is a long process in its own write so I don't know if that would be truly soon by most standards.


I would also like to go back to commission work too, but I'm honestly not sure how to find the oldest conversations and figure out who still might want anything to do with me after I had a long bout of burnout followed by 10 months of barely daring to draw anything sexy thanks to altered living arrangements.


Meh, I don't know why I'm suddenly feeling out of sorts again. Maybe because I've been doing housework and yard stuff all day and feel like I've neglected all things creative for the first time in a while.

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So this was a little odd to tabulate, and then I got a couple late responses - thankfully they were simple dedicated comments and I didn't have to go tabulating splits at the end.


If I go by how often topics were mentioned I get this:

lift – 4

workout – 1

speed – 4

breaking – 9

balance - 2

contortion - 0

domination - 6

lethal – 5

Ehh... nonsequiturs - 5

However, some people brought up two or more things and it seems kind of unfair to just count everything as a full vote, so once weighted there's something like this:

Lifting: 2.5

Work out: 0.25 (Biggest surprise, that Lisa pic did well and I was into the idea of drawing Lana doing 1-handed push-ups with a bus on her back. Oh well.)

Speed: 2.75

Breaking: 8.5

Balance: 0.75

Contortion: 0

Domination: 4.5

Lethal: 5

Off topic: 5.75 - one of which was just generic praise.


On either metric breaking things just ran away with it, and I'm making myself take a stab at a car for it, but it might be a little bit before I'm done with it. Lethal action comes in second because it had a stronger tendency to be the sole topic brought up while nonlethal domination had more people mentioning it, it tended to be diluted.

So I might make the next physically dominating one slightly ambiguous as a compromise?

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Something off

2 min read
I don't know, I know I'm strange and difficult a lot of the time, I think there has to be more mental issues than I know about. I was honestly kind of excited to be making things and intending to build up to bigger projects and it seemed to be going well.
Then a handful of people came around asking commission stuff in a pretty small window all at once and I just... had some kind of short-circuit? Nothing's been offensive or unreasonable or anything, just things I don't feel any excitement for. If I was better at prioritizing things I'm pretty sure I could be done with it all already and back on my planned path, but my brain just isn't cooperating.
I don't want to do these things all that much, and I don't want to put my own things ahead of people offering to part with money so that I draw this particular thing I want to see and I just... end up not doing any of it.
What I've heard about Executive Disfunction sounds pretty apt, but you know, shouldn't be self-diagnosing...

Just I could be further along, the time I have and such, there's just no reason I shouldn't be producing stuff just fine, but there's just some mental hurdle that makes no sense to me.
I don't know, maybe I should take a month off or something... ? I've already left someone hanging at least a week, but the damned thing is that this isn't the first time it's happened. I keep just spinning out over things that shouldn't do that to me.

I don't have anywhere I'm going with this, I guess I just wanted to write this, whether I'm trying to figure it out or just order my thoughts or something, I really don't know.
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