hiiiii everyone. long time no see huh? i have been under the biggest art block partially fueled by being super busy with work/life/school... hence my absence here. but i am still around! i check devart just about every day.

the good news!

- i got two grants for college! yay free school! this is huge because i am super broke lately and it really helps to not have to worry about paying for my education. on top of that, since these are grants and not loans, i never have to pay them back! aaaand whatever they gave me that wasn't used for tuition, i get on a nice big check at the end of the semester! super happy about that. this semester i'm taking history of photography (online course), humanities: contemporary culture and the arts, and technology in education. so far i'm enjoying these classes!

- my awesome boyfriend helped me upgrade my computer recently. we replaced everything. it runs super smooth now and it's awesome to work on. i even found a really nice wide flat screen monitor at an estate sale (of all places) for just $55! it looks amazing. i finally reinstalled photoshop onto this thing and it's just great to be able to use it without it super lagging. it only ended up costing me around $400 total to completely transform my computer too! i also received a bamboo tablet as a birthday gift this year and i've been playing with it a bit, but it's taking a lot of getting used to. years and years using a mouse just makes me go for the mouse instead i guess. it's great to finally have a tablet though!

- most of you don't know, but my car is a big hunk of a beater. 4 years ago i had an accident where my neighbor across the street hit my passenger side as i was leaving my driveway (and then of course blamed it on me) but the cop didn't put either of us at fault "because we're neighbors" or something... sooo i never had the money to fix it. the damage caused led to a lot of little problems, like my a/c not working, my window being stuck open unless i pushed it back in (a hassle for me), not having a front turn signal on the right side... etc etc. there was also a big crack in the windshield that happened when i was out of town once. plus the car was just old. it finally broke down enough (as in the brake lines rusted out and it's pretty much not drivable) where i had to replace it. fortunately i saved up a lot in the hopes of eventually getting a new (used) car, and i did! and it's awesome, and has working a/c! howeverrr this leads to the bad news...

the bad news!

- i am epically broke right now after buying that car. it was definitely a necessary purchase and a good investment, but i'm hurtin'. i still haven't sold my old car either. in addition to that, i still haven't paid off that medical bill i was asking for commissions to help pay for, and now i have debt collectors after me :S i have no choice but to pay it off soon, so i'll have to dip into my savings again, and then i'll be even more broke. sigh. gotta pay the bills.

- speaking of commissions for raising money, i don't know if any of you remember when i was needing help paying vet bills for my cat zappa (which was super helpful by the way, thank you!) but i regret to inform you all that he passed away about a month ago. the kidney disease just all of a sudden progressed really fast and he died at home, in my room. i stayed up with him all night because he was in a lot of pain and couldn't move, and when i finally fell asleep was when he passed. it was very stressful emotionally for me, but it's over now and all you can do is move on. so i wanted to mention it because a lot of people chipped in by commissioning me so i could help with the bills, and it meant a lot to me. the vet's office even sent us a card where all the vets signed it and wrote things about zappa in it, it made me cry! all the vets there knew zappa because we often brought him in for his treatments (since i'm a wuss when it comes to needles) so it was really cool to get that card.

other things!

- i am going to try and get myself back into drawing. gotta get rid of this art block! starting tomorrow i'm doing a 30 day drawing challenge thing so hopefully that will help. i will post some of the drawings here and the others either on my sad little sketchblog, or i'm thinking of starting a tumblr instead. not sure yet. either way, i'm excited to do this.

- a lot of people have been asking me about nine lives lately. i'm a bit lazy and haven't responded to most, but i guess i'll mention here that i do hope to eventually start it up again. it's just a matter of not having the time to work on it. i'm going to test out a faster way of doing pages so that this hiatus stuff doesn't keep happening, and i'm going to revamp the website at some point as well. so, there you go!



i believe that's all i have for now. see you soon!