caydett

Hello lovelies!! Me and kennywhaa/tumblr will be sharing a table at the anime north comic market this weekend!
Our table number is G08... drop by and say hi! (this is our first time tabling... please be gentle :') )


We will have large and small prints, postcards and stickers. Kenny will be taking commissions in person. I will also be offering in-person commissions in pencil, ink and marker, which is something exclusive to anime north (my commissions are otherwise closed at the minute).



Here are some of the prints/other goodies I will have for sale (i'm still finishing up a few other things ahahah OTL):


See you guys there!
I'm super excited ;D

Hello!

My friend Azzly is offering gorgeous mini commissions for a very reasonable 20$! go check her out! emergency commissions


-mika

I've been toying with the idea of focusing on an art tumblr for a really long time (which may or may not be apparent because I keep linking to tumblrs and then shutting them down or not uploading things to them and such) and with this latest update from DA i'm even more tempted.

After reading a few journals since the update (particularly Is it Me? Or is Deviantart Dying?I was chatting to some art/writing friends online, and it seemed to be something we agreed upon.
Deviantart seems kinda dead, or like it's dying or something. Or is that just for me ( and the people I've spoken to?). Honestly, I think a lot of the changes they made are responsible.
Disclaimer (because I always need one for some reason). This is my journal. It is my opinion. If you have a different opinion I'd love to hear it. I'm not out to offend anyone (kind of sadly hilarious I have to post these more and more lol ).
I've been here a long time. Well, I suppose I wasn't active for many years. I lived in Japan and Deviantart has no presence there. But then 3.5  years ago I decided to teach myself to paint, so I suddenly became active.
I think a lot of the recent Site Updates to Deviantart have really made things hard for those of us who are serious about artwork ( or maybe everyone?). Usually, it was fairly standard that when you post a new ) from people saying that they noticed the EXACT same things I was noticing, I realized I wasn't making things up.
I legitimately got more traffic on shitty drawings from FOUR years ago than I do on my best drawings nowadays, and i'm pretty damn sure that I haven't become a worse artist. And you know what? It's REALLY starting to frustrate me.

Back in the day I actually used to go out to the new deviations section and actively click on pictures and comment on them, even if I wasn't interested in the type of artwork. Why? Because the way DA was back then made me want to be part of the community and be active and meet new people. I liked to think of it as a 'give traffic, get traffic' sort of situation.

Now there is so much crap to sift through that I can't bring myself to care about this site.
When I submit my own things, almost no one seems to see them. I get no increase in traffic from a normal day when I don't submit... so that leads me to ask myself: what is the point in this site anymore? I do realize as well, that i'm not unpopular per say, so I cannot even fathom what using this site is like for new artists or people still trying to get off their feet.
I am genuinely grateful for the following I do have, but I no longer find myself aspiring to be a better artist because of this site at all. Every time I submitted something before it made me want to draw more and more, and become better at what I was doing. I used to try and get one full picture done every month. Now I still draw things, but I go months and months sometimes between submissions here because I don't care. I remember the first time I ever got 100 faves on something; I was so happy I almost cried. I never get that feeling here anymore. 

To quote one of the comments from the journal; "if you were lucky enough to get popular when DA was still young, you'll be popular forever. If not, well boo fcking hoo." And that is EXACTLY how I feel this site is now.

Yeah I know, wah wah, there aren't enough people patting my back and saying I did a good job BOO HOO, what am I complaining about.
But you know what? I used to really aspire to one day get a DD and be on the front page and all sorts of things. Now? Who cares? I never look at DDs anymore, ESPECIALLY after the update that makes them useless and invisible. And the front page has been absolute garbage for so long that I don't even bother with it. Literally the only things I see on it are porn and drawings from the same 10 popular artists. Oh and a bunch of irrelevant crap that I don't care about because abusing the submission categories is too easy.

It's also next to impossible for me to find new artists that I want to watch, which is another loss of an inspiration source. I'm pretty sure i'm not the only one with this problem, so a ton of other artists out there are losing out on a lot of traffic as well. Almost every single new artist that i've found to follow over the past 6 months has come from tumblr or pixiv, AND I DONT EVEN USE PIXIV SO IMAGINE THAT.
Finding new artists to watch through groups useless too. Groups are so full of junk and you get so spammed that every single one I end up joining I almost immediately unwatch because I have no time or patience to sift through the hundreds of thumbnails I get bombarded with at every turn. Collection feeds are garbage as well. I tried using them but it is SO UNBELIEVABLY FRUSTRATING to open new images in tabs to look at and get sent to the same fucking collection folder full of fucking thumbnails instead of getting sent to the image itself. WHAT IS THE POINT IN THAT. If I want to click on the fucking collection then I will for fucks sake.
So I gave up.

Don't get me wrong, I don't plan on not submitting to DA anytime in the near future... but
I no longer feel like this site is a community at all. I feel like my gallery is just an online portfolio that I can link to people if they need to see my work.
The only thing I kind of look forward to is doing secret santa type events, but I could just as easily find other sites to participate in those on.

Oh well...
I guess this is what happened to myspace? And sheezyart. Haha.

So to tumblr or not to tumblr? It's really rough, because 99.9% of my traffic comes from DA.
I feel that if I switch to tumblr I could possibly/probably eventually get up to the same level I am on here, or possibly better... OR I can stay here and just watch myself fade into obscurity.
What to do, what to do...

In other news at least i'm really happy with school now. And I bought Fantasy Life for 3DS and i'm rather enjoying it so far. So those are good things, at least.

-mika

My apologies for the general lack of proper reference pictures and/or of information, but if you could draw one (or two? maybe? :'D) of the following OCs or characters for me that would be wonderful :'D

www.livestream.com/suikashuu