2025 April Roundup

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!

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:

Pets Out of Context: Sora 1

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 😁

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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 ❤️

2025 March Roundup

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:

Animal Onomatopoeia: Bees, Part 13

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!

View, fave, and comment here!

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.

2025 Suikoden Launch Party: Fan Art Day

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!

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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 ❤️

2025 February Roundup

Spring is already springing here at Studio Mikarts. The temperatures have warmed up so much that I had to reduce the number of blankets on my bed in order to sleep well at night. I usually don't have to do that until late March 🤯 The sound of birdsong the past couple days has been so vibrant and energetic 🎵🎶 I'm very much looking forward to the first flowers' blooming 🌼 Not much longer until the March Equinox! But the purpose of this post is to take a moment to look back. Here's what I got up to in February, the last full month of winter.

Patreon Rewards

Last month, I started and finished another Maginaturalist's Sketchbook illustration. This one depicted Gaasyendietha, the Nessie of Lake Ontario. Studio Mikarts Patreon members who are signed up for physical rewards received giclée prints featuring this fiery dragon enjoying a starlit dive into the lake.

Patreon is the best way to support my creative work. Members' presence alone provides social proof to those who might be on the fence about joining, the funds they contribute help with costs such as digital art programs and physical art supplies, and most important of all, their belief in my work helps me keep creating! Click here to become a Patreon member today 💌

deviantART

The only piece I finished in February was Gaasyendietha, which makes it the default choice for my dA feature 🖼️

View, fave, and comment on dA.

deviantART is another place where you can support my creative work. Commission me for a chibi caricature or become a member to get printable coloring pages! Thank you for your support 🤗

Livestreaming

I streamed three out of four weeks in February, having lots of fun making art and chatting with viewers on Twitch 😄 Here's the recording of the last stream of the month:

Chibi Friday 120: Kara Di'ren, Part 3

Check out my schedule on Twitch to see when I'll be streaming this month. The first week of March (starting tomorrow!!) is going to be super special, so I hope to see you there! If you'd like to support me on Twitch, and get cute Studio Mikarts emotes in the bargain, just click here to subscribe ❤️

Charity Fundraising

Each month I use my Twitch streams to raise funds for a pro-animal charity. For February, I selected Vegan Outreach. Excitingly, Studio Mikarts supporter Wolfaxe2 donated the entire $10 to our fundraiser!

Thank you so much, Wolf, from me and all the animals that your donation helped!! 🥰💕 On top of that, each month I use my unique viewers count on Twitch to calculate my own donation to our featured charity.

I had 23 unique viewers in February. Using the formula $0.10 USD per viewer, min $10, max $100, that meant another $10 donation to Vegan Outreach 👏✨ (As usual, I covered the processing fees, as well.)

Thank you to everyone who donates to my fundraisers and visits my livestreams on Twitch. You truly help make my work so much more meaningful 🥹

Gryphia Progress

I'm excited to report that I finished the second draft of chapter one last month! Only eleven more chapters to go 😆

One of my goals for 2025 is to work on this project every workday. I managed to keep the streak going all through February!

As of today, I'm about halfway through draft two of chapter two. This part of the process is super fun, so daily work has actually been rather easy. In fact, I often find myself lamenting the fact that I can't spend more time on it!

Other News: Spring Cleaning

The last week of February was a Rest Week, which meant no livestreaming. I used that time instead to work on some miscellaneous tasks that have been languishing. The biggest of which was tidying my studio!

There's still plenty of tidying to do before I can call my workspace completely organized, but this is a huge improvement! There is no longer anything on the floor that doesn't belong there, which means I can access all of my supplies and tools, without shifting piles of stuff, for the first time in a couple years 😅 I'm looking forward to tidying more during my next Rest Week!

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That's all for this roundup, thank you for reading until the end! It's getting nice and stormy outside, my favorite kind of weather 🤩 Is this a reward from Mother Nature for staying on task and getting this post done in a single day?! 😆 Anyway, I'll be back again soon, probably with another Japan Adventure post! Until then, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe 💖

2025 January Roundup

I'm back again, one day later, doing my best to get another roundup done so I won't be behind anymore! Without further ado, here's how I kicked off 2025 🎊✨

Patreon Rewards

I completed another Maginaturalist's Sketchbook piece in January, featuring Fafnir, the dwarf-dragon of Norse legend. He slithered out to warm patrons' mailboxes soon after!

Please join my Patreon to get cool, illustrated rewards like this and to help keep my creative career flowing 💖 As a patron, you get digital rewards like coloring pages and Discord access, and you can chose from physical rewards including postcards, prints, or both! Every member not only helps by providing funds for things like art supplies and equipment upgrades, but also gives me a huge emotional boost and social proof to anyone who may be on the fence about supporting me. Thank you so much 🥰

deviantART

I uploaded several new pieces in January, but the one I have decided to feature here is a chibi caricature of Steve the Otter, which was made as a birthday gift for my mother-in-law 💐💕

View, fave, and comment on deviantART.

You can commission me for a chibi caricature like this! I can chibify animals of all kinds, including humans, so long as I have a high-quality, full-body photo reference to work from 🎨 There are two places to commission me, just choose the platform you prefer: deviantART or Square.

Livestreaming

After taking the first two (partial) weeks of January off for the holidays, I returned to livestreaming like usual, sharing my artmaking process on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the remaining three weeks of the month. January's final artstream had me finishing another chibi caricature, this time Tiger the Cat, as a birthday gift for my sister 🐈

Chibi Friday 117: Tiger the Cat, Part 2

Consider subscribing to my Twitch channel as another way to support my storytelling career! You get fun perks like custom subscriber badges and emotes that can be used all across Twitch, and I get your financial, emotional, and social backing 🥰 Thank you!

Charity Fundraising

Our Charity of the Month for January was Veganuary again this year 😄 We had 20 unique viewers that month, which is how I calculate what my end-of-month donation will be.

My formula is to donate $0.10 USD per unique viewer, with a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $100, so I just sent Veganuary $10!

As you can see in my email receipt, they have a match going on, which meant that we helped raise $20! But that's not all! My wonderful subscriber, Wolfaxe2, stepped up at the last minute, and donated the full £10 goal to our Twitch fundraiser!

So together we raised over $30 for Veganuary in January!!! 🎊✨🎊✨🎊 Thank you to everyone who watches my streams and donates to these fundraisers. You help make my storytelling work so much more meaningful 💖

Gryphia Progress

I'm going to talk more about my 2025 goals a bit farther down in this post, but one of them is to work on my novel every workday. I'm stoked to report that I achieved that for January!

I'm using this freebie planner to keep track of the days that I work on Gryphia (and the days that are scheduled vacation) so it feels great to have the January spread completely filled out like this ✨

I've continued to work on writing and editing my second draft using Scrivener. It's rather slow going, in a way, but I am constantly coming up with new ideas and refinements, so I am moving forward, even if the word count doesn't always reflect it. Editing has always been my favorite part of a writing project, so I'm having a blast every day!

Other News: 2024 Goals, 2025 Goals

As I did last year, I would like to take some time to reflect on the goals I set for myself and how I did. Here are the goals that I set at the beginning of 2024:

• Career ✒️ I will spend 50+ minutes each workday on Gryphia writing.
• Education 💮 I will spend 20+ minutes studying Japanese every day.
• Finances 💳 I will pay off all credit cards.
• Health 😌 I will meditate every day.
• Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
• Travel 🐮 I will visit a Farm Sanctuary location.
• Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
• Relationships 💌 I will write a letter every day.
• Reading 📚 I will read at least one page every day.

Many of my goals evolved as the year went by. Circumstances change, emergencies occur, but instead of giving up, I adapted so that I could keep working toward my greater aims even if it was different to how I first imagined it. Here are my goals at the end of the year, and my thoughts about them:

• Career ✒️ I will work on Gryphia writing every workday.
  I had to remove the time requirement for this goal, which worked great because then I no longer wrestled with thoughts like, "Why bother working on it at all today, since I can't achieve the full time anymore?" So I continued to make steady progress throughout the year!
• Education 💮 I will complete a Duolingo Japanese lesson every day.
  My streak remains intact at an astounding 1,678 days!
• Finances 💳 I will pay off all credit cards.
  I achieved this and, in doing so, completely revamped my spending habits and overall financial hygiene. This is one of the toughest yearly goals I've ever accomplished but I'm so glad I chose to tackle it, because it came with far more rewards than I expected. My relationship with money is completely different and I'm no longer interested in the impulse purchases that used to tempt (and trap!) me. I'm free now to use any disposable income for things that REALLY matter to me, like increasing monthly charitable donations, saving up for epic vacations, and paying down other debt, like my student loans 🤑
• Health 🚿 I will shower every day.
  I changed this goal because I found myself really struggling to fit in all elements of basic self-care. It may sound like a no-brainer, but I shower at the end of the day so that I can get into bed feeling warm and clean, which means it can be tough when I'm depleted after a busy day, and having to make the decision between showering or getting enough sleep. It's something I'm still working on, but has definitely improved with practice!
• Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
  While I didn't fit this in every day, I'd say I played a game at least 90% of the days, which is still an A grade!
• Reading 📚 I will read a page a day.
  Sometimes I gave myself a bye and just read two pages the next day, but overall I was successful here. I ended up reading a total 7,233 pages, because I'd often read much more than the single page that my goal required!
• Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
  Again, I didn't do this every single day, but it was even more frequently achieved than my hobbies goal. This is an important task because the pet care chores can be unpleasant (scooping poops, especially!) so I tie it to breakfast to keep me really motivated to get it done early!
• Relationships 🍻 I will host seasonal family dinners and Sunday Friends Lunch.
  I had to change this goal because writing a letter stopped being fun and started being a chore. I decided to find a different way to stay in regular touch with my most precious people, and it worked!
• Wellness 😌 I will meditate every day.
  This replaced my travel goal because I realized I couldn't save up for a road trip AND pay off my credit cards, all in the same year. I switched from Headspace to Insight Timer partway through the year, which I like much better! My daily meditation streak there remains intact at 170 days.

For fun, I also wanted to share photos of last year's reading calendar, which I got from Half Price Books, and this year's calendar.

I use these calendars to track my daily reading streak and to mark down what books I finished, which makes for a fun, interactive decoration and a nice memento at the end of the year.

Finally, I want to share the goals I set for this year. They may evolve, as last year's did, but so far they are working well for me, giving structure to my daily life, and supporting my health and wellbeing.

In list form, they are:

• Career ✒️ I will work on my first Gryphia novel every workday.
• Education 💮 I will complete a Duolingo Japanese lesson every day.
• Finances 🏦 I will save up at least $4,000 for my 2026 Caribbean cruise.
• Health 😴 I will go to bed, eyes closed, by 21:50 every night.
• Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
• Wellness 🔋 I will take a monthly rest week from livestreaming and high intensity workouts.
• Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
• Relationships 🥂 I will host Friends Lunch and attend Vegan Toastmasters on Sundays.
• Fitness ⚖️ I will reach 120 lb body weight or 22% body fat by July.

Wish me luck! I have crafted all these goals with the knowledge of how previous years went, what changes needed to be made, and what works best with my circumstances. I'm feeling excited to achieve all these things and more in 2025 🤩

That's all for now, thank you for reading until the end. I'll be back with another roundup post next month, and maybe with a Japan Adventure post in the meantime! Until then, please stay happy, healthy, and safe ❤️

2024 November & December Roundup

I'm gonna try to get three months of roundups done in two days, an ambitious goal, if I do say so myself 😎 To start, let's catch up on November and December of last year!

Patreon Rewards

At the end of November, I sent rewards featuring my recently completed Cozy Christmas Coodlers illustration 🕊️

And in December, I sent the next entry in my Maginaturalist's Sketchbook series, Ea the Mesopotamian sea god 🧜‍♂️

Patreon is the best way to support my artmaking, providing both funds and emotional support 🥰 Click here to sign up for digital rewards, postcards, prints, or all three!

deviantART

On November 9th, I was honored with my second-ever Daily Deviation 🤯🥹🥳 My Summer Gryphon piece was nominated by LindArtz and featured by Malintra-Shadowmoon 💖

View, fave, and comment on deviantART.

Later that month, I uploaded my Cozy Christmas Coodlers greeting card illustration, which was my final full-color illustration of the year.

View, fave, and comment on deviantART.

deviantART is another place you can support my artmaking! You can commission me for a chibi caricature here, or sign up and become my first monthly subscriber here!

Livestreaming

For November's featured Twitch stream, I'm choosing the final round of work on my Cozy Christmas Coodlers!

Cozy Christmas Coodlers, Part 8

For December, I am featuring the final stream of 2024, which was the first round of work on a chibi caricature of Steve the Otter!

Chibi Friday 114: Steve the Otter, Part 1

I livestream art nearly every week on Twitch and it's another place you can support me by subscribing! Lurkers are always welcome, but I love to chat, too! See you on my next stream 😉

Charity Fundraising

November's Charity of the Month was Farm Sanctuary and we had 20 unique Twitch viewers that month.

My donation formula is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, minumum donation of $10 and maximum of $100. That meant a $10 donation!

On top of that, my awesome viewers, bickman2k and ExieTheArtist, both donated $10, so we raised a total of $30 for Farm Sanctuary in 2024 🥳✨

December's Charity of the Month was The Protego Foundation 🪄 We had 11 unique viewers that month, so I donated $10!

Thank you to everyone who joins my streams and donates to the Studio Mikarts fundraisers on Twitch! Knowing that together we're making a difference for animals—while having fun!—gives every minute of live time so much more meaning 🥹💕

Gryphia Progress

The editing of my first illustrated novel made big strides in these months! Working diligently each week since July, in December I finally finished the first round of edits, spanning 222 pages!

Moving onto the next step, I started my second draft. The first was written on my Freewrite smart typewriter, which purposefully disallows editing (so you can just get on with the storytelling!), but now I am in the editing stages, so I am using Scrivener on my desktop PC.

Every step I take in this project is literally the most I've ever worked on a novel, so every bit of progress is exciting! I can't wait to see how far I get in 2025 🤩

Other News: Winter Vegan Market

I was chosen to be a vendor for the Winter Vegan Market here in Boise, Idaho! It was so exciting to meet so many people, especially when they braved the cold to come out (we were very lucky that the rain didn't start until exactly the market's scheduled end 🤯), to share my artwork with new customers and clients, and to help show that veganism isn't a diet, but a complete lifestyle of non-harm 💖💕

Here are some photos from the event, the second of its kind in my area!

I got more modular display grids this time!

Coloring pages, greeting cards, and chibi commissions.

More greeting cards, stickers, pin-back buttons, and magnets.

The wind kept trying to blow my postcards away!

Postcards and prints.

Set up and ready to sell!

I bought these cookies from our neighbors immediately!

Selfie with my new friend, Angie!

Selfie with one of my best friends, Leigha, and her two pups 💕

One unexpected perk of vending this time was getting SO MANY treats from the food vendors! We purchased a lot (last time they sold out super quick so my husband and I swooped in early!) but we also received many gifts at closing time, as well 🥹💖💕 I love being a part of the vegan community! I hope I can vend at the upcoming Spring Vegan Market as well, but even if not, I'll definitely attend as a shopper!

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That's all for this roundup! Thank you so much for reading 'til the end. I'll be back VERY soon with my roundup for January 2025 😆 Until then, please stay happy, healthy, and safe!