Oh crap, it's May and I haven't written a new blog post or updated my portfolio on here since February, even though I've been staying busy!!

...I'm not sure where to begin, really. A couple good personal things: first, I got vaccinated back in March! Went with the Johnson and Johnson when an opening came available thanks to a family friend. Also, my birthday was a couple weeks back and I'm now 33. Here's the last self portrait I painted at 32, from a pose I did for figure drawing:

(I should mention before diving further into this: if you subscribe to my Patreon, you've already seen most of this and more, and will continue to see new art and process stuff before anybody else gets to, so please consider signing up for that!!!!

Speaking of which, weekly poses in the new online figure drawing space have been coming along nicely!

It's been a perfect pace for trying new things and playing around without worries about having something pristine looking. I owe a lot of my sanity this year to that group.

I haven't worked on Slimepunk since maybe March. That last comic project I worked on, despite paying well, took a lot out of me and sequential art just hasn't been on my mind much lately. I haven't forgotten about it, though! 

I made a new social justice kaiju portrait recently:
All over the country, cruel new bills keep being introduced, focused largely on trying to ban trans kids from playing sports AND keep them from receiving the healthcare they need. It's terrible. If you live in or near a state where one of these bills is being considered (looking at you, Tennessee), please do something to try to fight it: donate to any local organizations, call your senator, whatever. We can't just sit around and do nothing while these terrible attacks are happening.

On a lighter note: Godzilla Vs Kong came out, I've seen it four times, and did this watercolor painting inspired by the nighttime Hong Kong fight:I may try to do prints of this one for a show this weekend? More on that in a bit.

Additionally, I tried my hand at doing my own little redesign of the king of the monsters for fun after seeing several others doing it. May I present to you Godzilla Rift and his son Minilla!I just love kaiju, y'all. I've also done a King Ghidorah redesign, with more to follow!

Dance classes are going well, and I'm thrilled that my instructor decided we should choreograph something together inspired partly by my work. We've just gotten started a couple weeks ago and haven't done much, but I'm excited about it and have started plotting out some paintings to go along with it, based on certain poses and moves. It's gonna be really cool, I think!

I started on the nonbinary portrait series I mentioned in my last blog, with a self portrait that I already dislike and won't share here, BUT here's the one that followed, of my friend Dan, who's an illustrator and has their own cool kaiju redesign thing going with their fan universe called Godzilla: World of Monsters. They were the one who inspired this whole series idea!I've painted one other person, traditionally, since then, but still haven't heard back from them about it.

(I should mention that something happened in March that was one of the scariest, most stressful things in my life, emotional and draining and stuff, but we got through it, everyone's okay, things are pretty much better now and I don't want to talk about it here)

OH. ONE LAST THING: This Saturday, May 15th, is the second anniversary of JC Punk Flea, a monthly pop-up created by Nik Bang, set up outside their killer shop Projexx. I'll be setting up there! It's my second show this year! I'll be an hour late because it starts at 12 and that's when I get off work! But I will be there! You should come!

Okay, that's enough for now. Other stuff is happening, or will happen, and I'm also in a weird mental liminal space where some MAJOR changes may be happening that I just don't feel like talking about right now. Take care, get vaccinated, and I'll try to post again next month instead of waiting forever again.