Hello! This is the first blog post I've written for 2021, and I thought I'd have posted something sooner, but I've been working since the year began and only recently have had time open up for this.

The first big thing I did shortly after the year began was decide to move online figure drawing away from Facebook, to a more private space where we could post nude poses without worry. Weekly poses have resumed, alternating between nude and non-nude, and I've been greatly enjoying it. Being off of social media also means things feel more like an actual community, we can actually hold conversations and things in a way that just wasn't possible in a Facebook group. I love it. It's something that's really holding me together so far in 2021.

With more poses and more art coming in, the Defining Bodies Instagram has been pretty active too, getting our work out there to more people!

I also kicked off the year with a couple of wonderfully fun commissions: KAIJU PET PORTRAITS.

I think I need to pivot away from mutant portraits and start trying to do more of these.

Between working on those, I picked up a really killer gig on a comic with my friend Danny Djeljosevic, who I did BattleARC 2088 with. That's where most of my time went for the past month. I drew and colored 12 pages over the course of 5ish weeks. I don't know if I can talk about it or even show much, but here's a random panel:

We got half of our payment up front before I'd drawn anything, and will get paid more once it's all done and submitted, pending approval! It was a lot of work in a short time, but worthwhile. Having just finished it over the past weekend, I've been spending most of this week trying to catch my breath.

Speaking of being out of breath: my goals this year aren't all that ambitious, but one of them that I personally really wanted to focus on was learning to dance. Why? Uh, I'm not sure I can explain it. I want to be a more flexible person, more graceful. I want to move more intentionally and expressively.

I have a dancer friend I was going to talk to about it, just to get an idea of how to start and things. As luck would have it, she just recently got a job teaching a number of dance classes at Night Owl Circus in Johnson City! I immediately signed up for two of those classes, dance body and dance improv. At this point, I've taken five classes total with her, one a week, and it kicks my ass every time. I'm slow and creaky, I feel old and uncoordinated, I struggle to keep up, overthinking moves every step of the way...but I'm really into it! It's honestly another of those things holding me together this year, especially when I was up to my neck in work on the comic and couldn't do much of anything else, dance was a welcome break away from that. I plan to keep at it for as long as I can.

Oh, here's a big thing: I have an article up on them. called How Do I Know If I'm Nonbinary? It's my first professional writing gig, and it happened thanks to Samantha Allen, who recently took a job as an editor there and convinced me to write the piece! It's a really personal thing to write about, one that I hope will help others who are questioning their gender identity or those who know people trying to figure things out. I'm really really proud of it.

Work began in December on the next issue of Slimepunk, but it's had to sit on the sidelines while I handled all these other things that I was actually getting paid for, haha. I'm slowly getting back at it, but with another project lined up to work on before long, it may get set aside again. So it goes!

I've also made the first few steps towards kicking off a new personal project, portraits of nonbinary people to illustrate that we can dress and look however we want. The idea hit me while working on the article for them and after seeing a friend complaining about how they don't really see themselves reflected in nonbinary art. I'm starting with a self portrait, of course, but the people I've reached out to so far have been excited about participating and I'm excited about getting to paint them!

...Is that it? Yeah, I think that's it. So much in such a small span of time! I think I need to get some rest. You should too, if you've been overwhelmed with things.