I finally finished it! After 42 (yes, 42!) livestreamed work sessions,
amounting to at least 85 total hours of work, I've brought my onomatopoeia
bees to life 💪😎
This is the eighth entry in this series, which will eventually be published as
an artbook. My goal is to use beautiful illustrations of rainbow animals to
teach onomatopoeia in both Japanese and English. The other animals so far are
cats, frogs, crows, mice, owls, dogs, and cows. All of them are created using
the same tools and methods, starting with sketches, then a final ink drawing
on manga paper (AquaBee brand, so apt for this particular piece!) which is
digitized and finished in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint.
First batch of quarterly (versus monthly) Patreon rewards!
Last week, I produced and sent
Patreon rewards
featuring this piece! It was the first time I got to make full-size prints, in
addition to the usual postcards, so it was a special milestone for Studio
Mikarts 💌✨ I also added the piece to
Fine Art America, where you can order prints on every surface from canvas to metal, and on a
variety of goods like iPhone cases, towels, and ornaments! Please join my
Patreon or make a purchase from my FAA shop to help support my work 💖
That's all for now, thank you for reading. Until next time, may you stay happy,
healthy, and safe!
I'm taking a new approach to blogging! Instead of monthly roundups, which
haven't always been easy to stay on top of (evidenced clearly by my current
three-month backlog 😅), I'm going to start posting in the moment and each
post will focus on a single topic. I've been changing a lot about my workflow
recently, which also changes what I have to share here, anyway. In other
words, no more monthly roundups! Instead, I plan to share things like finished
artwork reveals and Patreon reward announcements whenever they're ready. The
only regular monthly post I plan to make is this one: my charity fundraising
report 💸
Just yesterday, I finished making my donations to our June and July charities.
Each month, I choose a pro-animal charity to feature on
Twitch. I run a fundraising campaign on my channel to which viewers can donate, and
I also make my own donation based on my unique viewers count for that month,
which means you can help make a difference for animals without spending a dime
👌
First I'd like to share the donations made by Studio Mikarts viewers. Once
again, the amazing Wolfaxe2 came through with a $15 donation to our May
charity,
Food Empowerment Project
🥳🎉 This is the second year Wolfaxe2 has donated, too! Absolutely epic, thank
you so much!!
The rest of Studio Mikarts fundraising for this period comes from my
unique viewers count. Here are the viewership numbers from May, June, and July:
We had 32 unique viewers in May.
22 unique viewers in June.
And 11 unique viewers in July.
It makes sense that the number was so low in July, since I had hardly any
time to livestream 😬 The short of the story is, I had to serve as a witness in
a criminal trial, which took time away for preparation—and to keep my stress
levels down—and then I got sick afterwards! (I tried to keep the stress in check
but it obviously wasn't enough...at least it's all over now 😮💨) But regardless
of the low number, I always donate at least $10 (or equivalent currency) so I
made those donations to all three of our charities!
Food Empowerment Project
had their annual school supply drive for children of farm workers going when I
donated, so our funds helped a very specific group of people this time!
My donation formula is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, so once we finally top 100
in a single month, I'll be able to donate more than the $10 minimum (not
including covering processing fees 🤑) so I hope you'll help me out! Just
watch one of my Twitch streams and encourage your friends and family to join!
Click here to check my schedule
and to follow me for notifications whenever I go live.
Here's a recording of the last stream of July, during which I started coloring
my Hallowed Sun chibi using Copic markers:
Our charity of the month for August will be
Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary, founded and run by my vegan athlete hero, Fiona Oakes! I hope you'll
join me during my artstreams, help bump up my viewers count, and make a donation of your own to help the
animals 💚 Thank you for reading and see you soon!!
It's hard to believe my birthmonth has already passed again! In April, I
completed my 39th year of life and started working on my 40th 🥳🎉✨ The month
was full of exciting developments for Studio Mikarts, as well, so I hope
you'll enjoy reading about them in this roundup post!
Patreon
I sent two batches of rewards to Studio Mikarts Patreon members in April.
March's rewards were delayed until I finished the ink lines for my
onomatopoeia bees illustration, so they got sent at the same time as April's,
which featured the first Pets Out of Context drawing I've done in over four
years! You can read more about these rewards—and sign up to become a
member!—here.
A big development for Patreon in April was deciding to shift from monthly
rewards to quarterly. I am grateful to my patrons for agreeing to this change,
since it comes with lots of benefits for all of us, including:
More time to create my best illustration work, which means more interesting
rewards for my patrons and more satisfaction for me!
Patrons still get a reward equivalent to their contribution, so one-postcard
members now get three postcards, and three-postcard members get prints!
Even with upping everyone's rewards, the change ultimately saves time and
money, which will go towards making more artwork instead!
This change has also led to the creation of a new membership tier and the
reduction in the monthly contribution for all of the higher tiers 😄 To learn
more about these updates, and to support my work by becoming a patron,
click here!
deviantART
The piece I uploaded to dA in April was this chibi caricature of Benedict
Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes 🔎 It was a thank-you gift to my very first
Twitch subscriber, Exie, who has now been supporting me for over two years!
We had another fun month of artstreaming in April, though it was only two
weeks long due to my birthday and preparing for the Spring Vegan Market.
Here's the recording of the last illustration stream of the month, wherein I
started and finished my Pets Out of Context Sora drawing:
Twitch is another opportunity to support my creative work. When you
subscribe to my channel, you get ad-free viewing, cute chibi emotes, and more!
Charity Fundraising
Our charity of the month for April was
Rowdy Girl Sanctuary. This was our first year supporting them so I was ecstatic when Studio
Mikarts member, Wolfaxe2, donated 1.5 times the goal to our Twitch fundraiser!
Wolf, you're the best!! 🎉✨
On top of the Twitch fundraiser, I always make a separate donation based on my
unique viewers count for the month. The formula is $0.10 per viewer, minimum
$10, maximum $100.
We had 13 unique viewers in April which meant a $10 donation (plus processing
fees) for a total of $25 raised for Rowdy Girl Sanctuary!
Thank you to everyone who supports my fundraising efforts by joining my
livestreams and donating to my fundraisers on
Twitch 🥹💕
Together we're having fun while making a real difference for the animals of
the world!
Gryphia Progress
I made steady progress on my manuscript again this month! I spent most of the
days working out new details that were absolutely essential. Without those
details, I wasn't going to be able to create a cohesive and immersive
experience for the reader. Now I have a wealth of new information to draw from
not only for this novel, but for future ones, as well!
Creating an illustrated novel is a long and difficult process. If you believe
in my work as a storyteller and enjoy seeing my monthly progress updates,
please
become a patron,
subscribe on Twitch, or even
buy me a magical coffee! Every bit of support helps keep me writing 💖
Other News: Spring Vegan Market
The biggest professional event for me in April was the Spring Vegan Market! I
joined twenty other vendors offering a huge variety of goods and enjoyed a
beautiful, warm, sunny day meeting market-goers and potential new audience
members.
Sales weren't too good at this market, I have to be honest. But I got to meet
one of my long-time patrons face-to-face for the first time, which made it all
worth it 🥰 I also spent the following week considering what I could improve
for next time and I'm excited to test out my ideas! I hope I'm selected to
vend at the Summer Vegan Market so that I can do so 😁
🌟🌟🌟🌟
That's all for April's roundup, I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for reading
until the end. Until next time, may you remain happy, healthy, and safe ❤️
Welcome back to my 2023 Japan Adventure blog series!
Last time, we enjoyed the guided excursion into Akita that was provided by our cruise
line, Silversea. This time, I'll share our subsequent self-guided exploration
of the area.
Wednesday 23 March 2023 - Akita Exploration
I was way into Pokémon GO at this time (I played the whole way 'round
Japan, getting lots of new PokéStops!), so I was stoked to find this
vending machine holding a promotional event! 🤩
Inside the
Akita Port Tower Selion, there was a scale model of the tower! The real thing is the
tallest building in the northern Tohoku region 🤯
From the observation deck at the top of the tower, we could see our
ship! 🛳️
Our home at sea for two weeks, the Silver Muse, in Akita!
At a Selion restaurant, we got to try an Akita specialty:
kiritanpo
(きりたんぽ) 🤤
These naturally vegan snacks were made with pounded rice and slathered
in white miso! YUM!
Next we visited the Selion Rista, which is a sort of indoor botanical
garden and recreation space located right next to the tower.
We were late for most of the flowers (they seem to bloom very early
since they're indoors!) but there were still a few beautiful displays
like this 🌼
A view from the upper level of all the lovely greenery! There
weren't many people, so we nearly had it all to ourselves.
I enjoyed my walk through this quiet and refreshing space 🌳
Here's another one of those artistic manhole covers that I enjoyed
spotting all over Japan! This one is from 秋田土崎港 (Tsuchizaki-Minato, Akita).
With our last bit of time before all aboard, we enjoyed a seaside stroll
back to the ship, along a pathway studded with various statues and
monuments.
I couldn't find any information online about these monuments, but they
are easy to find in person, since this area is part of the walking path
from the cruise terminal to the tower 🚶♀️
Akita's epic farewell performance featured namahage taiko drummers!
The view of the area as dusk fell was magical ✨
The tower is regularly lit up at night. We got to see the green version!
The grand finale, set off as we cruised out of port, was a fireworks
display! 🎆
After an excellent day exploring, it was time for dinner!
Getting dressed up for dinner was a hassle, but the result was fun!
Vegan pizza! 🍕 If I could do this cruise again, I'd order this more often!
After dinner, we enjoyed dessert from the Arts Café and did the daily
crossword puzzle before heading back to our cabin to rest up for our next
stop: Aomori! I'll share more about it next time, so please look forward to
it. Until then, may you be happy, healthy, and safe 💖
Spring has sprung here at Studio Mikarts! In fact, today promises to be more
like summer, hot and cloudless ☀️ Thank you for taking some time to catch up
with me this fine day! Here's what I got up to in March.
Patreon Rewards
I decided to delay sending Patreon rewards, since I was very close to reaching
a nice, reward-worthy stage in my onomatopoeia bees illustration. I just need
to finish cleaning up these lines and they will be sent as postcards to all my
Pen Pals and Writers! Here's the last round of work I did on it as of today:
Patreon is the best way you can support my creative work. If you love what I
do,
please sign up
for as little as $5 USD a month 🥰
deviantART
The piece I'd like to feature this time is the chibi caricature I created of
my friend's OC, Kara Di'ren. I don't chibify humans as often as other animals,
so this was fun practice!
Did you know you can commission me for your own chibi caricature? I can
chibify pretty much any animal, real or imagined! Just
click here
to learn more.
Livestreaming
I kicked off March with a special event: a Suikoden launch party! It was part
of the Suikoden Day celebration of the
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster release. Suikoden is my favorite game
ever, so I had the best time during the launch party 🥳 Day one was fan art,
day two was Suikoden I, and day three was Suikoden II.
Twitch is another platform where you can support my creative work.
Please subscribe here!
Charity Fundraising
Our charity of the month was
Animal Alliance Asia
and in March, thanks to a big turnout for the Suikoden launch party, we set a
new unique viewers record of 53!!!
✨🎊5️⃣3️⃣🎊✨
My donation formula is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, min $10, max $100, so that
meant a $10 donation to Animal Alliance Asia 💸
Thank you to everyone who joined me in March and helped make my livestreams
more meaningful 💚 I hope you'll
join me
again this month, too!
Gryphia Progress
Last month, I continued to work through the second draft of chapter two of my
fantasy novel. I didn't make much forward progress but I came up with some
excellent ideas that will affect the entire story and required further
revision of chapter one to incorporate.
This project is purposefully slow-going and I am really excited to continue
working on it every day so that I can one day share it with the world 😄
Other News: Media Cull & Reorganization
As a way to earn some money for future travel adventures, I undertook a
massive cull of my media collection! This included my books, games, music, and
video. A nice side-effect was getting to reorganize what I kept ✨
My otome and CD shelves, with Kiki 🐈
My Harry Potter & Co. and Tolkien shelves, with Aoife 🐕
It was great to earn some money and make some space by selling things that I
no longer wanted. It also meant that the things I kept get to
shine all the brighter!
🌟🌟🌟🌟
And that's it for this roundup. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading
until the end! Until next time, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe ❤️
Welcome to the next entry in my Japan Adventure series! These posts recap the
days my husband and I spent in 2023, cruising around mainland Japan, and our
time in Osaka before and after ✨
Last time, we departed from Niigata and sailed to Akita! A lot happened during our
single day in the prefecture, so this post will focus only on the guided
excursions that were organized by Silversea. Let's go!
Wednesday 23 March 2023 - Akita Excursions
As became my wont, I took another photo of the beautiful morning sea 💙
"Welcome to Akita" at the Akita Cruise Terminal!
This unmissable landmark is
Akita Port Tower Selion
😮 More about it in the next installment 😉
Our ship was welcomed with an awesome performance of traditional music
💖
A delegation of stylish and friendly "Akita Tourism Ladies" greeted us,
too 🖤
It wouldn't be a trip to Akita without meeting some of the namesake dogs
🐶✨
A huge theme in this area is the namahage 👹 In front of two massive
namahage statues, this sign states their
UNESCO designation as intangible cultural heritage. Also captured in this photo was something I loved seeing all over
Akita: wind turbines!
Our first destination was the Mt. Kanpu "Panorama Sky Park" Rotating
Observation Deck (寒風山回転展望台) in Oga. We took a tour bus up the mountain.
At the top of the observatory, you can sit and literally watch the world
go by, as the seats revolve around the room 😮 There are several maps
which point out visible landmarks. This was one of the few opportunities
I had during this trip to simply sit and sketch the scenery 🖊️✨
There was much more to see inside the observatory, which is also a
museum. These included a huge kokeshi doll, a dugout canoe, and this 3D
map of the area!
I loved this adorable sculpture outside the building. It's called
Namahage-kun (ナマハゲ君) which in this case can be translated to
something like Little Namahage.
The museum helpfully offers an English information pamphlet ✨
There were tons of cool exhibits, including this room with screens
displaying a variety of videos, installed in these wooden posts 🤯
Part of the museum included a namahage experience inside a traditional
thatch-roof house!
We were offered tablets that let you choose your language and read about
the experience before it unfolds. This is an incredible feature!
An exhilarating and unforgettable experience 👹✨ I highly recommend it
if you get a chance to visit the Namahage Museum!
I learned that the straw that falls from the namahage's traditional
coats after their visit is considered lucky for study if you tie it
around your head 🤓✨
My husband, Sean, posing with some namahage 👹
And my pose!
One of the most breathtaking exhibits was this room full of namahage!
At the shrine shop, they had namahage masks you could don for photos!
Namahage Sean 👹✨
I adore the lion-dogs (こまいぬ) at Shinto shrines. Today I learned the
Japanese name for them means Ancient Korea Dog 🤯
That's it for this post but not for our adventures in Akita! I'll be back soon
with part 2, including our self-guided exploration of Akita Port Tower Selion.
Please look forward to it and, until next time, stay happy, healthy, and
safe~❤️
