30 June 2022

2022 June Roundup

It's the last day of June and summer temps have arrived. The sky right now is so bright and blue and cloudless that it's difficult to look at ✨🌞✨ Usually, I open my curtains when I'm at work in my garden floor studio, but recently I've kept them closed to tame the light and block the heat. So it is now. I've got ambient nature tracks playing on my Google speaker, some lemon iced tea at my right hand, and my list of topics to cover in this roundup propped up on my left. I'm excited to examine June and prepare to enter July, especially because I'm going to enjoy a staycation during the week of Independence Day 🇺🇸🎆 So without further ado, let's begin!

Patreon Rewards

My most recent illustration was finished on the 10th and reproductions were mailed to studio members a week later. Over half a dozen postcards featuring my Birthday Gryphon were sent into the world 😊 It takes so long to complete all the handwritten messages that I have limited the Pen Pal, Writer, and Collector tiers to just 10 members each. Once all the spots have been filled, I will open new tiers that replace the personalized handwritten messages with printed ones addressed to the community at large. There are still four Pen Pal spots (a single handwritten postcard every month), seven Writer spots (three blank postcards with a separate handwritten note), and all ten Collector spots (a full-size museum-quality print with handwritten note) available 😄 Check out the images of June's rewards below, I think they turned out lovely~✨

Final physical media work (watercolor and ink on 300 lb cold press watercolor paper).
Final digital media work (Adobe Photoshop).
Postcards professionally printed and ready to be filled out!
💖 Happiness in Your Mailbox 💖

Twitch and YouTube

We're now in the middle of week six of regular art livestreaming on Twitch! I started streaming on May 25th and haven't missed a day yet 😄 I'm fairly confident in saying this is the most consistent my streaming schedule has ever been. As I mentioned above, I will be taking vacation in July, so be sure to check my Twitch schedule to know which days I'll be on! You can click the "Follow" button while you're there, to sign up for notifications whenever I go live.

YouTube uploads of the stream recordings continue, as well. Here is the most recent video posted there, a Chibi Friday first, where I worked on two chibi drawings during the same stream!

Writing Updates

I continue to work daily on my illustrated novel project, which has already been years in the making, with many more left to go. My goal for this year is to finish the manuscript first draft. My goal for June was to finish chapter three, which I accomplished on the 23rd 😎 I've made it over 1,200 words into chapter four already, so I'm feeling good about my rate of progress!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter or Facebook to see all of my writing updates. 

deviantART Uploads

I'm slowly getting caught up posting my art to dA! Eventually (I hope) I'll be completely caught up and there will be no need to mention it in these roundups, since it will be the same art already featured in my Patreon blurb. But since I'm putting in the effort, and I think it's fun to revisit older work, here is my most recent deviantART post. It was my holiday greeting card from 2020, which featured my cat, Bear, who had passed away that year.

Click here to comment on deviantART.

With that piece, I am now only one and a half years behind on posting to dA 😂

Monthly Recommendations

Now it's time for the most unique part of my roundup posts, my monthly recommendations! I've added a new category this time. I wonder if anyone will notice what it is... Also, I thought it might be prudent to mention that I'm not receiving any compensation for my recommendations. They're all just parts of my life that I love and want to share with you 😊

📕 Book of the Month📕

 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase by Douglas Adams

I started using a new book tracking site this week (just so tired of all the little problems with Goodreads; I've been there almost ten years and I'm ready to move on 😩). It's called StoryGraph and has some really cool features! Here's my reading stats page, for instance. Unfortunately, it doesn't have embedding for reviews yet, so I'm just going to copypasta this month's recommended book review. In reality, I am not recommending a single book so much as a series of radio plays on Audible! The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, to be precise! I listened to all six entries this year and absolutely loved them all 🥰 Here's my review for the first one.

5.0 ⭐

It's been ages since I last listened to the radio show for Hitchhikers. Like many people, I have fond memories of listening to it on cassette tape, recorded from an original copy and shared friend to friend, family to family. I don't know who got her into it, but it was my mom who first shared those tapes with me, when I was aged only in the single digits. I've remained a die-hard fan ever since.

The show was just as hilarious as I remembered. The jokes still fly today, even when I've already heard them a thousand times. The acting and sound effects come together wonderfully to make you feel like you're right there with the characters. I really loved the extra documentary episode at the end, too. Not only was it interesting learning about what went into the creation of the show, learning that Douglas Adams struggled with procrastination and perfectionism makes me feel less worried about my own creative efforts!

Click here to see my entire review on StoryGraph 🤓

🎧 Music of the Month 🎧

At Wit's End by Hans Zimmer

Aside from generic playlists that I put on when I'm relaxing at the end of the day or as background noise while I work (like my current ambient nature sounds) all this month I've continued listening to the same playlist that I featured in my May roundup 😆 To make this post a bit different then, I am featuring just a single track from that playlist. It comes from my favorite of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, At World's End, and every time it comes on, I'm so moved I have to just stop what I'm doing and enjoy the magic~

By the way, I've been a huge fan of Pirates of the Caribbean ever since I was a little kid. My parents and grandparents took me to Disneyland several times when I was young and Pirates was always the ride I looked forward to most. I didn't even mind when we had to wait in line for hours, which is saying something, since I'm sure I normally had no better an attention span than any other imp of my age 😅 Even though interest in the movies seemed to die down after the third one, at least among my circles, I've enjoyed all five of them and have been recently entertaining the idea of doing a movie marathon!

📺 Show of the Month 📺

Spy x Family on Crunchyroll

This anime has been extremely popular ever since it debuted this season and I can confirm that the attention is well deserved! While there's surely nothing truly perfect in this world, right now, whenever I think of Spy x Family, perfect is the word that always pops up first 💖💕 It's got beautiful animation, impeccable music and voice acting, lovable characters, an intriguing plot, and a fabulously balanced blend of humor and action. Check out this official trailer:

The only negative thing about Spy x Family is that the first season is already over! The twelfth episode aired five days ago and now I have to wait until October for more 😭

🎮 Game of the Month 🎮

Olympia Soirée for Nintendo Switch 

I haven't had much time to play video games this past month, but when I did, it was often this one 😍 I'm a complete freak for Otomate's visual novel otome games (i.e. choose-your-own-adventure romance games) and this is no exception. Olympia Soirée has all the hallmarks of Otomate's best work: beautiful visuals and music, dreamy voice acting, compelling characters, and perhaps most important of all, a deep and complex story that continually expands in unexpected ways as you complete each character's route. Here's the game's opening animation, which also stands as its official trailer:

So far I've finished two routes out of six, Kuroba and Riku. They were so different and I enjoyed them both, but Riku's was definitely the more surprising! I honestly didn't think I would like Riku, based on his behavior in the common route, but the genius storytellers at Otomate showed me, once again, what they're capable of 😆

Now I'm starting Tokisada's route, and I think I might have given myself some clues as to his past when I looked up his home of Amakusa on Wikipedia. It's a real place with some interesting (and dark) history that explains a lot about his jumpiness and distance...I'm really looking forward to learning more about him during my vacation next week 💚

🍽️ Vegan Victuals of the Month 🍽️ 

immi Ramen

I've been a pescatarian for many years but I've been slowly working my way to full vegan. This year I've finally cut out all remaining animal-based products and for the past month or two, I've been able to maintain a 100% vegan, nutritionally complete diet without feeling deprived of my favorite comfort foods. It's thanks to all the insanely delicious vegan foods that have been popping up and how easy it is to get a hold of them through local grocery stores and online ordering.

immi ramen has become a lunchtime staple for me. I ate so much instant ramen as a kid and young adult, but as we all know, that stuff is unhealthy nutritionally, ecologically, and ethically, so I hadn't eaten it for years. Enter immi ramen. It satisfies the cravings for my childhood noodles but is low-carb, high-protein, high-fiber, animal-free, and DELICIOUS. (Also, no pea protein, which I am mildly allergic to.) I eat it about three times a week, stir frying some veggies while the noodles cook in the microwave, and then adding some yummy cut wakame before slurping away 🍜✨

👟 Workout of the Month 👟

Ring Fit Adventure on Nintendo Switch

In anticipation of the hot summer weather, I switched from running to strength training via Ring Fit Adventure. I was very excited to finish the main story, after years of on-off playing, earlier this month!

Just today I finished another fun but challenging workout. I'm so glad that even after the long and rewarding main story mode, there's still plenty left to do! I intend to keep using Ring Fit for my indoor workouts every Tuesday and Thursday for most, if not all of the summer 💪✨

💸 Charity of the Month 💸

Predator Defense

Predator Defense is another charity for which I have a regular monthly donation set up. I also have my Amazon Smile account set to support them. In a nutshell, this organization helps protect my favorite animals in the world, wolves, other predator animals such as cougars and foxes, as well as domestic animals like dogs, that get caught up with tragic results in the horrific traps set by humans to kill our wild animal cousins. The American war on wildlife is one of the most heartbreaking ongoing tragedies in our history. It's my deepest belief that all animals deserve to live out their natural lives without "management" by self-serving humans. We can coexist peacefully, especially considering the depth of modern knowledge and the power of modern technology. I support Predator Defense in order to help make this possibility a reality 🤍🐺🧡🦊🤎🐶💛

Starting this month, I'm going to use my monthly unique viewers count on Twitch as the base for a new donation system. For every unique viewer in the past 30 days, I will donate $0.10 to my charity of the month, with a minimum of $10 and up to $100 USD!


In June, I had 26 unique viewers, so I've just now made a $10 donation to Predator Defense 🎉✨ This in addition to my usual monthly amount. I will do my best to spread the word about my donation system and I hope you'll join me on Twitch (and bring your friends) to see how big a donation we can generate for next month's charity! Of course, if you're able, please do make a donation of your own to Predator Defense as June's featured charity 🙏

That's all for my June roundup! It took me all day to put together 😆 The sun is getting ready to set, my tea is long gone, and it's perfect timing for my usual evening walk~ I hope you enjoyed reading this post, that you'll try out some of my recommendations, and that you'll look forward to next month's roundup 💖

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31 May 2022

2022 May Roundup

It's been over a year since my last blog post 😱 I was extremely busy with school all that time (I received my BFA in Illustration with a minor in Japanese Studies last December 🎉) and this year it took me a while to decide what purpose to put my blog to, now that I am working full-time on my creative storytelling career. At last, I realized I could use this space to round up all my doings from each month, with a few bonuses for fun 😉 Please enjoy the first of my monthly roundup posts! 

Social Media Highlights

I've been active on Twitter and Facebook, sharing illustration and writing updates nearly every day. Twitter is also the place to follow me for more personal updates on topics like gaming and reading. Here are a couple posts from May.

I'm hilariously behind on uploading my art to deviantART (even though I have a subscription 😱) so this piece, although my most recent upload, is actually two years old! It was a Mother's Day gift 💐

Click here to view and comment on deviantART.

Here also are some WIP photos of the painting being made.




I'm currently playing catch-up with my YouTube uploads, as well. I'm only four videos behind as of today 😂 Here's my most recent upload, a Chibi Friday livestream recording from July 2021, which I finally resumed working on last week!

Speaking of livestreaming, I'm finally back to streaming regularly on Twitch! You can catch the replays of recent streams at this link and you can check out my most up-to-date schedule here. As of today, my general schedule is as follows:

  • Wednesdays 15:00 - 17:00 MDT (GMT-6) Lucky Dip
    (making a single piece of art using four randomly selected art supplies)
  • Fridays 15:00 - 17:00 MDT (GMT-6) Chibi Friday
    (drawing one of my adorable, signature chibi caricatures)

I love chatting with folks while having fun making art, so, if you don't already, I hope you'll join me on Twitch soon 😄 

Patreon Updates

Now that I'm done with school, I've been able to focus more fully on Patreon. We've had six rewards go out so far this year, and a seventh is in the works now! The following images feature all 2022's rewards thus far. Click here to sign up and start receiving yours 💌 You can also check out the public posts there, no subscription required, which include lots of information about my creative process and insights about my creative life that aren't shared elsewhere.






Monthly Recommendations

I'd like to have some fun in each of these roundup posts by offering you my recommendations for the month 😄 These are all things that have inspired, fueled, and otherwise impacted me during the month of May 2022. May they do the same for you!

📕 Book of the Month: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins 📕

I came across this book in a Little Free Library and, recognizing the author from a documentary I saw and loved years back, took it home immediately. I have been an atheist since childhood (I am sincerely grateful to my parents for raising me in an environment that didn't force any doctrine on me ❤️) but I've always been afraid to share that fact, because, frankly, atheists are treated poorly by many people, especially here in America. This book gave me the courage to be myself and the reasoning to back up my beliefs! Here's my review from Goodreads:

The God DelusionThe God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's so much I could say about The God Delusion that it feels overwhelming trying to think of how to fit it in without my review becoming a book in itself. I'll let my star rating (and my reading status updates) do most of the talking. I LOVED this book. I'm so grateful someone put it in the Little Free Library where I found it! If you're already an atheist, this book can still be an eye-opener, as it was for me. If you're a secret atheist, it could give you the courage you need to stand tall and face the far horizon (paraphrased from one of the most powerful passages in the book). If you're unsure about your beliefs, I also recommend this book to you, as it could give you knowledge and direction that will help you make an intelligent decision. As for religious believers, while I personally don't expect those possessed of blind faith to be persuaded by this book (or any other argument born of reason), why not give it a try anyway? You might be surprised at what you learn, or how you feel after you're done!

View all my reviews

🎧 Music of the Month: Mika's Fantasy Favorites on Spotify 🎧

I created this playlist recently because I wanted a collection of all my favorite fantasy soundtracks to listen to while I work on my writing and illustration projects, which are currently both soundly in the realm of fantasy! This music is especially good for writing, because the instrumental nature of most soundtracks ensures there are no lyrics to confuse with the words being taken from one's mind and written on the page. That said, I have included a couple favorites with lyrics, but they're so few and far between that they serve as a nice break rather than a distraction 🎵😌🎶

📺 Show of the Month: Moon Knight on Disney+ 📺

I didn't have any idea what to expect from this show going in, but I've since been completely taken by Disney+'s Moon Knight! I've watched it six times now, twice in English, twice in the Japanese dub, once in English with closed captioning, and once in the Japanese dub with Japanese subtitles 😍 I could write a whole blog post, even a book, on all the reasons why I love the show so much, what's so interesting about it, why I keep watching it again and again, but I want to keep my fandom under control 😅 so I'll just say that I relate VERY much to the main character and his struggles with childhood abuse and overcoming the repercussions as an adult; I LOVE the exciting Indiana Jones-inspired plot (some of my favorite movies as a kid; Last Crusade is the best one 💖); and the way the show isn't perfectly clear about everything, nor does it tie up every loose end, has absolutely sparked my imagination. I spend hours thinking about this show and analyzing it. It's extremely fun to deep dive and come up with personal theories about it. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend it, not just because it's a great show, but because you don't have to watch any of the other MCU material to enjoy it. It's completely independent in that way! Now, I only hope there will be another series in the works soon 🙏 

🎮 Game of the Month: Touken Ranbu Warriors for Nintendo Switch 🎮

I only just started this game last weekend but it's already everything I hoped for and more! The original Touken Ranbu game has been available on mobile platforms for a while now, and I've loved the concept for years, but I just don't like playing games on my phone (I do play Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom but both games are constantly frustrating me, lol). Having a console-based Touken Ranbu game, and in the Warriors family (which I have loved since Dynasty Warriors way back on the Playstation 2 ❤️), has allowed the concept of 'famous historical swords brought to life as beautiful men who defend the true flow of history' to enter the realm of game genres that I enjoy playing! I've been very impressed by how they managed to combine many of the main gameplay elements of the original mobile game with the general hack & slash concept that is the foundation of any Warriors game. It's the perfect way to relax on the weekend 😎

👟 Workout of the Month: Yoga Master on Nintendo Switch 👟

I wasn't sure what I was going to write here until, just today, there was an update to one of my favorite fitness games, Yoga Master! They have released version 2.0 for Nintendo Switch, which cleans up some minor quality issues (like typos) and almost completely overhauls the visuals! The game was already nice-looking before but now it's GORGEOUS 🤩 I play Yoga Master every weekday morning before starting work, usually doing the custom program I created. It's an essential part of my routine that helps me wake up, mind and body, and stretch out any soreness (especially my chronic low back pain). This game also has some DLC that adds a meditation feature! I use this at lunchtime three days a week for mental and emotional health 🧘‍♀️ Ironically, although this is technically a game, I don't use the gamified features. I just use it like a personal yoga and meditation coach!

💸 Charity of the Month: Idaho Humane Society 💸

Finally, I'd like to wrap up this and every roundup blog with my featured charity of the month. Idaho Humane Society is an organization so important to me that I have a monthly recurring donation set up. We adopted our lovely Kiki-cat from them, through a local PetCo adoption center, as well as my three pet rats who have since passed away. Idaho Humane Society helps make my community a better place not just for the humans, but for the animals who live here, too! If you have the ability to lend your support as well, visit this link to make a donation! There are other ways to help, such as volunteering and buying wishlist items, too 😸 The animals and those who love them will thank you!

Me, Bathilda, Minerva, and Nymphadora 🤍 July 2011

That's it for this month's roundup post, the first of its kind. I hope you enjoyed it! I'll be back next month with another roundup of writing, illustration, and everything else 😄✨

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11 September 2020

みかのノート：秋のくれ

Mika's Notes: The Autumn Sunset

This is the first post in a vein I've long thought about entering, but until now I never felt like it could fit into my main blog. Many of you already know, but in addition to writing and illustration, my passion lies in learning the Japanese language and everything else about Japan. Today, these three passions came together as I completed a part of my current Drawing II assignment.

I created a matte medium transfer print using a magazine image and a piece of sample Yupo paper. Looking at the list of prompts I was given (we have to use one per drawing in this assignment) I chose "text & image" and then looked up a Japanese haiku in a little book I love called Classic Haiku: A Master's Selection. The poem had an English translation, but, as an upper-intermediate student of the language, I wanted a more literal equivalent and, as an artist, I wanted one that still fit the original 5-7-5 syllable pattern. I wanted to write the original plus my own translation on my print, so my drawing homework turned into a Japanese lesson!

Of course, I am no expert and still have a long way to go in my understanding of the Japanese language and the history and culture of haiku, but I did my best based on my current knowledge and I will now share with you what I learned and the decisions I made as I penned my final translation of this poem.

かぎり有
命のひまや
秋のくれ

The above is the original Japanese as written in my source book. Breaking it down, here are what all the words mean in English:

かぎり　limit, [archaic] death

有「ある」　to exist (inanimate things)

命「いのち」　life

の　(possession indicator)

ひま　free time, leisure time

や　and

秋「あき」　autumn

くれ　sunset, end

Now, there are many more meanings to these words, but using the English translation in my source book as a guide, these seem to be the poet's intended meanings. So the most extreme literal translation of this haiku might be something like this:

there is a limit
to life's leisure and
the autumn sunset

The way I translated it for my assignment is this:

there is a limit
the leisure time of life and
an autumn sunset

But after I finished the little sketch (one of 55 I have to complete for the assignment!) I showed it to my Japanese tutor who reacted in a surprising way. She said the original poem is really dark, like someone writing about dying. She studied haiku in school, growing up in Japan, so I took her words to heart and began musing about a better way to achieve my translation goals while still invoking the true mood of the original Japanese. This is where I ended up:

there is a limit
to life's little leisure and
the autumn sunset

My source book used the phrase "fleeting life" to get the point across, but "fleeting" is only an implication in the original, rather than a word literally used in the Japanese version. Inspired by that choice, I decided to add one word in my translation which isn't in the original: little. Its addition not only helps meet the seven-syllable requirement of that line, it makes it smoother ("life's little leisure" just rolls off the tongue!), and gives a stronger suggestion of death, by pointing out that life is short, and leisure time even shorter.

🌟🌟🌟🌟

I may have mistakes or misinterpretations in my translations, but based on my current knowledge, I'm very happy with my first attempt at translating a classic Japanese haiku! I hope you found my notes interesting, if not informative, and I hope you'll look forward to more Mika's Notes entries here on the Studio Mikarts blog!

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23 July 2020

Pets Out of Context - Part 2

My project for this month is coming along, although I'm struggling a little to balance it with my school responsibilities. Summer classes are hard! Figuring out how to cope with multiple responsibilities is never bad practice, though. Not to mention having something creative to do outside of school is refreshing (I'm taking art history and Japanese culture classes, so not much art creation going on right now). Here are the drawings I completed since my last update!

Click here to visit the Patreon-exclusive post revealing the photo behind this drawing.

In case you missed my last post, what I'm doing here is going through my pet photos, choosing ones that seem like my pets will look interesting or funny without the support of their context (i.e. their environment), and then drawing just my pet and seeing how it ends up looking! So, with the drawing above, removing Kenshi's context made him look like a round head with a couple of paws underneath 😆 Kenshi was my dog all the way from high school until just a few years ago, when he passed away. This sweet-faced pose reminds me of all the good times I had with him 🧡

Click here to visit the Patreon-exclusive post revealing the photo behind this drawing.

My next drawing features my handsome prince, Bear, who recently passed 🤍 This is one of the most successful pieces from this experiment, because it ended up looking like he's breathing fire! I decided at the beginning to make the photos a Patreon-exclusive reveal, as a digital reward for Studio Mikarts members, so if you would like to see the secret behind this or any of the other images, just click through one of the links below the drawings, and you'll be able to sign up!

Click here to visit the Patreon-exclusive post revealing the photo behind this drawing.

Next is another drawing of Sun! This one didn't turn out as engaging as I expected, even though something very specific and cute is happening in the original photo! The thing I'm learning the most while doing these drawings is that I'm not really able to predict, just from viewing the photo, how successful the final drawing will be. Maybe I'll get better by the time I finish all eighteen drawings for this month 🤔

Click here to visit the Patreon-exclusive post revealing the photo behind this drawing.

The tenth drawing in this series features Kiki, our only female cat, who is very spunky. But this drawing doesn't show that side of her! With this one, I was hoping to capitalize on the perspective to get an interesting result, but in the end, what I found most compelling about it was the way her fur pattern came out. I must admit, I'm pretty proud of being able to capture it using nothing but black lines on a white background!

Click here to visit the Patreon-exclusive post revealing the photo behind this drawing.

Here is the third appearance of our recently-departed prince, Bear. The photo behind this drawing was taken when he was in his prime, the pinnacle of big and fluffy! It's been so long that I completely forgot that he used to look like this 😮 So far, folks have had some guesses as to what's got Bear in this position, but no one's gotten it right, hee hee...

Click here to visit the Patreon-exclusive post revealing the photo behind this drawing.

The final drawing in this post was completed just yesterday. It's Kiba, the black Manx's second appearance! This is based on another older photo but Kiba's looks haven't changed as drastically as Bear's did. He's a naturally small, short-haired cat, so the changes he's undergone as he's aged aren't as obvious 😅 I love how the final drawing makes his body look smaller than his head! Or maybe like he has the body of a perching bird XD

🌟🌟🌟🌟

I realized I'll have the perfect number of drawings at the end of this project to spread them out evenly across three blog posts, so that means there's just one more Pets Out of Context post on the horizon. I'll be moving onto another project next month, but there's always the possibility of more drawings in this style later on. Please look forward to the final six drawings in a couple weeks!
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