Ches★Shoppe Makes it Debuts at Otakufest 2019!

by on September 6, 2019

The Ches★Shoppe made an appearance at Otakufest 2019 last weekend! August was a really long month, as I scrambled to get it together in time for the show; and then the scrambled later as Hurricane Dorian made its approach towards Florida. Stores were packed as everyone did what they could to prepare for the worst. I think it was the first time in awhile since we Floridians have taken an oncoming storm seriously.

Fortunately, the latter didn’t happen!

Unfortunately, I was so mentally drained from the whole ordeal that I forgot to take very many photos; but I did at least manage to snap some pics of my new displays at con. Check them out below~

Ches★Shoppe treasure Ches't at Otakufest 2019!
★ Check out the other photos★
 Comment 

VVoid Wed NES: Set 1

by on January 30, 2019

Welcome to a very special edition of your regularly scheduled Wed Nes Day!

A while back, while attempting to make headway on some project, I was cursed by creative block; as my kind tends to be from time to time. Nothing special; the usual unrealized creative exhaustion that comes at seemingly arbitrary times. My inability to put thought to paper was both maddening and frustrating. I could spend a paragraph ruminating over the little details and all the possible causes; but the short and sweet is that I wanted to draw but my soul just wasn’t having it. So I gave up.

Map of the Void #1

Staring into the blank scrap of paper before me, I picked a spot, and put brush to paper. Only this time, I wasn’t really trying to draw anything; I just wanted to practice pure technical skill with the tools I had on hand at the time. I started with one mark; then another; and another; I worked until the sheet was “complete” and no more marks were needed.

I thought it looked pretty cool in the end, so I attempted another.

After the first few, I approached these without the mentality of trying to draw anything in particular; I was simply practicing technical skill with my favorite drawing tools.

Map of the Void #10
For those of you that appreciate a vague sense of scale.

I honestly really dislike abstract art on it’s own. Too many so called “artists” use the term “abstract” to describe their art in place of ever actually developing any real art skills; and it’s demeaning to those artists that work hard to really improve in their craft. That said, Abstract art has tons potential as a design element in practical applications as well as in therapeutic uses for people with anxiety.

For someone with artist block it can be a good way of channeling unfiltered creative energy into something productive when your hands will let you do little else.

That’s it for this set! I was originally only going to post 5 in this first set but since Void begins with V and VVed Nes has TWO V’s in it I opted for the 10. You can catch a new set of these here every 5th Wednesday this year on the gap between night and morning.

The Void hour if you will.

 Comment 

Sunday~Monday: Everyone Likes a Good Butt

by on January 14, 2019

It’s late but here you go! Jake and Chloe showing off those tushies.

Who likes short shorts?
Who likes big butts?

There you go. A Short Sunday Post for Short Sunday Shorts.

A post as short as these dukes hugging Chloe’s cheeks because I’m a little distracted at the moment. More butts to come in the future.

 Comment 

Wed Nes! A Look Inside the Smaller Sketchbook!

by on January 9, 2019

So! Until further notice, I’ll be queueing up one page from Big Sketchbook on Sundays (1 page for the 1st weekday) and four from Little Sketchbook on Wednesdays (4 pages for the 4th weekday).

I started drawing in this book near the end of 2017 but this is definitely my 2018/2019 book. You can catch my older sketchbooks here on every other Thursday.

The ice-breaker page! Nothing says don’t worry about it like some marker swatches and a doodle of everyone’s favorite ever-grinning and mischievous felidae.
My current marker selection.
Playing around with a very inky rolling ball pen. I considered resigning myself to filling any empty space in my sketchbook with a big crying Ches★.

Webs and Swatches and Look A Cat!

I used to use Copic markers for a while until I decided they weren’t really the marker for me. There are so many colors to choose from and I feel like I spend too much deliberating over what colors to choose. I don’t have that problem with Faber-Castell because their palette is much more selective than Copic so I can be more decisive while working on sketches.

Death and an Early Map of the Chaos Megalopolis.
Look! A Cat!
Death, made of Dust. Always wears a welcoming face.
The great walled megalopolis, Chaos City, and the land that surrounds it.

And here we are!

I actually drew that picture of Death last week to avert the shame of having a blank page when today rolled around. It was only supposed to be a quick doodle but I got carried away. But that’s just how drawing works sometimes.

 Comment 

Sun, a Day in Space: First Post of 2019!

by on January 6, 2019

In keeping with the theme of Time taking no breaks in 2019, here’s the 2nd page of my current sketchbook. I wanted to start this year’s posts last week but between car troubles and insomnia wearing me out, I just couldn’t make it happen.

In the future, long from now
The World, Orbyss, crumbles to pieces
Land, Sea, and Sky become one.

That’s it!

Just as the 2019 year rolls in blunt and bothersome, so does this page outta my sketchbook. Also, really late. Back in October I came up with something I call Interstellar Mage Punk. You’ll hear more about that later but for now, this is me pondering the world in that part of The Timeline.

* * *

Edit (01/07/2019): Ultima Thule

I wanted to include this in the original post but time was short and I really wanted to make my original deadline. On January 1, 2019, the space probe New Horizons successfully completed a flyby of planetary object Ultima Thule; now officially, the furthest object in our solar system visited by human spacecraft.

A Boomerang (or wiggle stereograph, as the Wiki calls it) of (486958) 2014 MU69, or Ultima Thule for those of you that don’t do number names. 2 frames=a 38 minute flyby shot.

“Awesome, a pair of rocks,” you think to yourself, probably.

It’s an ancient pair of rocks found in the Kuiper Belt, one of the outermost parts of our solar system. This is the belt where, just past Neptune, Pluto and two other extant planets, Haumea and Makemake, are located.

Ultima Thule (the names of the big rock/little rock respectively), is a contact binary object; not unlike Pluto and its largest moon Charon. They’ve been in orbit of each other for so long and so closely that they eventually became the single object pictured above.

It’s a formation that probably took many thousands of years to happen. You can go ahead and forget everything you knew about long distance relationships. While 2019 may have gotten off to a rough start, we can take some solace in the fact that it also began with humanity taking a small flyby peek at a love story possibly as ancient as our home in the vastness of space.

You can click here to read NASA’s article about the recent New Horizons flyby.

You can click here to see New Horizons’ Twitter and follow for updates on its journey through our cosmic neighborhood.

 Comment