It's February 1'st so that means I've now been drawing for 9 years, so I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who's stuck by in that time, and especially those who's sticking by right now. ;^)
TLDR first: Queue is closing the 8'th, let me know if you want in, after that it's still possible, but more expensive for a while. And sorry for the long waiting times I might've given you the past year.
An explanation
I've been radio silent for a while now, and I feel I owe everyone I don't chat with regularly an explanation, and if you've been following me, you might've noticed that I didn't post much art last year compared to the other years.
The reason is a mix of burn out and lack of time. 2 years ago I tried living off my art, and it didn't really result in me drawing more, rather I ended up struggling to motivate myself to draw. This lack of motivation didn't really show itself until last year, as I ended in some rather serious economical issues that I was lucky enough that some of you and my family helped me out of in the last moment by paying some commissions in advance.
But that couldn't go on forever, so January last year I got a job, which meant I could stabilize my economy again, and begin working to get my head back in the game and draw. Which gradually worked out, but I still struggled to motivate myself, and often I was too tired to work when I was done working. Due to the nature of my job however, my working hours are very flexible, so I took off every Monday to draw, which for the most part didn't happen, especially the amount of hours I wanted to draw.
Some of you know I have Asperger's, and ADD, so motivational issues is sort of a thing built into me, and worse yet, schedules has constantly been a grueling thought to me to consider.
However, you don't deserve my issues to impact you like this, and by you I mostly mean commissioners and patreons, who have a stake in what I do, and I don't deserve to watch myself burn out just because I have personal issues that I should be working harder to solve.
The Solution
Therefore, moving forwards I've made a schedule, it has been in place since the start of the new year, and I've followed it about 50% since, which is a lot better than the half assed plan I had earlier. This plan consists of me not drawing just Mondays, but Monday, Thrusday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 2 hours each day rather than the planned 8 hours every Monday, and instead I'll work fewer hours on my job, but also work Monday. I didn't want to post about this around New Year, because I wanted to prove that it worked first, and while lot of the art I've posted in January was a backlog from the last couple of month in 2023, I can say I've been drawing a lot more this month than I did in the past few months before.
Commissions
I have a long queue, I've had that for years, and if you've noticed, I haven't changed the prices all of last year, and I won't change them this winter either, as I normally would.
What I'm going to do is close the queue by the 8'th of this month, and open it again once I have caught up to the patreon rewards and the monthly patreon pics.
This may take a while, as I'll also be clearing the commission queue as much as I can in that time, so it's only going to be semi-closed as I will likely keep it closed for the next 6~ months.
In that time, I'll only allow 2 types of commissions:
Express Commissions: At +50% price, you can get a commission and skip the queue. I'll be taking these as the extra money will help me take more days off work to draw and get things taken care of.
Patreons: If you're a patreon, I owe you this for being patient with me, you'll be free to commission me while I have my queue closed.
For my current commissioners
If you have a commission that's being worked on, or is in my queue atm and want another commission, let me know before the 8'th, and I'll make an exception for you, so you can be queued an additional time without any further requirements or anything.
Finally, Apologies
I'm not above my mistakes, and I'm way overdue on fixing the mess I've created. I intend on doing my best to fix it, and I understand if I've lost some of your respect, or if you don't wish to support me any further. To everyone, I'm sorry, that you've been waiting for art that hasn't arrived in several months, or for some of you, a whole year. I don't know exactly how long it will take until I can feel like I've dug myself out of this hole, but as long as I'm in it, it'll weigh on me, and further demotivate me.
Sorry if I've been ranting or rambling, but there's a lot to be said. If you have any questions about anything, please let me know, and if you think you have ways you think I could dig myself out of this hole faster, I'm all ears.
Anyway, if you've read all this, I just wanted to thank you again for following me through all of this, and when I'm done with this mess, I hope to begin drawing more things that interest me rather than having this big a focus on commissions, since I remain more motivated on my own ideas and I want to develop my style more.
As always, feel free to join my discord server if you wanna chat :p