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!
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| View, fave, and comment on dA. |
You can commission me for a chibi caricature like this at any time! You can order via deviantART or on my Square shop.
Artstreaming
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!
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 😁
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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 ❤️
