TheShadAmyArtistO10

Greetings everyone

Merry Christmas Eve

I hope you all are well and safe this winter season.

Not a whole lot has changed since my last updates - been constantly busy with family and our small business.

I'm being completely honest when I say this - the passed 4-5 years have been overwhelming for me. From quitting a very toxic working situation, running a small business, family and then fighting an internal battle... Then this virus crisis made it all the more complicated.

I cannot stress enough how I've been feeling through these times - guilt, dread, longingness... wanting to quit... and I mean quit...

It was never my intention to take years - I am in disbelief that I am saying "years" - to finish art pieces that I owe from my contests.

I struggle so much with communicating with others due to traumatic experiences. I know and acknowledge that what has passed is passed... It's the process that's difficult. My mind and body respond on instinct with physical symptoms. I feel drained so much of the time.

The upside through all of this is that I have been doing my best to improve my art skills and learn.

I've been able to upgrade my gear and now have what I need to be create art one way or another. It's just a matter of taking the time to actually do it. And that is what I am going to do my hardest in 2022 and afterwards.

I will take some time after Christmas to rest. My hubby and I have had an emotional December because we had to put his dog to rest... It was just his time. He lived a long life - 18-20 years long.

And my dog, Shadow has his good days and bad days... He's also getting old for his breed. We are doing what we can but no matter how much we try to prepare - we never truly are...

I cannot imagine what any of you have had experienced in these recent years... But I sincerely wish you all

It's been an interesting time figuring my way around dA's new layout.

I will admit that I think that the "Green Theme" option was a bit of meh-moment to me. Because I honestly thought that it was going to make the layout as it was before the site reboot. Yes, very silly of me but I was unreasonably hopeful.

The messaging page is where I've been struggling with most. I was so used to having it all in one page from feedback, notes, watch and groups.

I just figured out where my group notifications are and how the layouts of the groups look now. So I was able to make a couple update journals on my ShadAmy and Varian groups.

I'm still sticking to messaging on dA strictly on desktop because it seems to mind itself before.

Whenever I try to send a note or reply to a note on the mobile version, at least on my end, it shows a whole bunch of what looks like coding text.

I definitely hope that isn't what the people who I have messaged in notes last had received.

I need to contact the contest winners from my contests and so I need make sure that my text doesn't get butchered in notes.

I already have bad anxiety when sending messages. I spend a lot of time rereading and doing what I can to make sure my message is clear and not dragging on. So please dA, don't make it worse

Also I just found out that I can like comments now. Which I think is really great. Because again, I have anxiety when messaging due to some really bad experiences. So being able to like comments is really nice in my opinion because then the commenter will know that I have seen their comment and appreciate it. At least that's my perspective on it.

Finding out about these "Fragments" and "Award a badge" features are very interesting concepts. They're still very new to me and I'm still learning, trying to understand their functions.

And lastly, for now, I'm learning about this "Chat" feature.

Hopefully I can try it out with a friend so I can see how it functions. With almost everything being new I'm still very cautious about trying the features. It may sound silly but it's just how I learn.

That's all for now. I'll be sharing another couple pieces that I had made last year soon.

Thank you all so kindly for your patience, understanding and kindness

I hope you all are doing well. Please take care always

This past year I honestly think has been not only one of the roughest but also awakening times for me personal. More specifically with my overall health. I've had some bad, rather scary spells. But I am thankful to still be here.

The journey will still be bumpy but I do think that I have gotten better compared to a couple years ago. Such as learning to seek and ask for help when needed. And coming to terms with things. Finally acknowledging that the experiences that I had had experienced were as bad as I had first was given the impression of... That the first big step for me. And now working my way forward.

One of the biggest "beasts" that I finally had defeated was one that I had carried for over 10 years.

Please keep in mind that everyone's upbringing is different. So what you may think and see as nothing much can be something pretty big to others. Especially overtime when said person deals with anxiety and/or depression.

For my case, I was told by a supposed local artist in my area that the art that I had been making at that time wasn't art at all. I was eleven and creating acrylic paintings of nature scenes at the time.

And I had nearly given up all together at that time. If I hadn't found out about deviantART I probably would have by now.

It's kind of ironic... I've had some of my most painful memories on deviantART yet it was part of the earliest stages of my art journey that helped to keep me going. Meeting and seeing some of the most monstrous people to meeting some of the kindest, true people as well. Goes to show how one must take the good with the bad.

So over 10 years later I finally felt like I could take this task. Especially in the recent 4 years, after doing all that I could to learn and improve my art. I finally convinced myself to create this picture that my Dad had requested me to make for him some time just before the person mentioned above came by.

His request, I had never forgotten it. He describe it as "a nature scene of a pair of Wood Ducks with their ducklings swimming on a lake. Lily pads decorate the water. "

It would always cross my mind numerous times but I would never think that I could do it. Until this year at last.

I will be sharing it into my gallery as well. It is a traditional piece of mixed media. Just about putting all the knowledge that I had learned into it.

I give so much thanks to the Lord for bringing such a wonderful friend and mentor that I have. She and her husband are who've I've been working with whenever able to have both been such great help and inspiration to me. They're like family to me.

I am also so thankful for my hubby, Diego for never giving up on me and being there for me always. And to my parents for always encouraging me.

Some of the pieces that I will be sharing that I had made during my time of inactivity are some short comics that were made during my rough spells.

I've found that writing, drawing, whichever comes first has helped me a help. To express through my drawings. To illustrate what I imagine and feel.

Fighting against one's own mind can be very maddening to say the least... But there is hope. And I'm going to do what I can, when I can, within my ability to make a life worth living. No matter the pace, just as long as I keep going. And keep on learning...

Hi there

My gosh, so much as changed about this site since last year... When I would come on here I would get lost. And I'm still confused to where things are and how to get around on here. But I'll just have to explore and take my time with it.

But what I am most thankful for is that it seems that deviantART has finally and fully updated on both my desktop and mobile devices. It is not lagging as much.

AND - I finally got sta.sh working the way it should be. Which is such a relief to me because it is really handy when sharing work-in-progress pieces with people such as contest winners and commissioners. And doing collaboration work too.

But contest winners are my main focus now.

Since May of last year, I have not drawn anything in CLIP STUDIO Paint.

And since June of last year I've been practicing to use ProCreate on my iPad (my first ever iPad). To my followers who have watched me trying to improve my use of the program on my other art account that is on a different social media platform - thank you ever so much for your patience too.

I will be sharing most of the art pieces that I've made since then so you can see how I've used ProCreate. I joined in a lot of DTIYS (Draw This In Your Style) and actually opened up enough to do some art trades here and there. The first in such a long time. It felt fun again.

Being able to create on a pad that I can take with me into a bag has just being so convenient. And being able to draw onto the screen as I would traditionally with a pencil onto paper has really been a great experience.

But it does have it limits. Being that it is still not like a huge screen I can only get so much details. Plus, speaking for myself only, I find doing shade celling being the best way to shade on it. VS when using CLIP STUDIO Paint I can really go into a lot, and I mean a lot more detail.

So like when doing comics, I have found doing single panels are best with ProCreate.

While doing the more complex comic pages are best in CLIP STUDIO Paint.

I've been thinking of offering the contest prizes that are single character drawings to be drawn digital on ProCreate. But the winners can be the judges of that after I post what I had been able to create during the time that I've been inactive on here.

I hope to reach out to the contest winners of both my ShadAmy contests and Varian contest very soon.

I do sincerely apologize for my lack of keeping up on here. I do hope that each of you have been well and are keeping safe Please take care always

Hi there

It has literally been forever. In this journal I'm going to share as brief as I can of what my family and I have been experiencing since my last update journal ( 9.4.20 ).

Not a whole lot has changed since my previous update journals in 2020. Especially with keeping up with the constant changing of the guidelines that our particular area puts out.

One of the hardest things has been getting supplies. It got to the point that I have to spend hours out on the road to go find the supplies we need for our shop. So I've been working more than ever to help keep my family's shop going.

Then taking my Grandma, Dad and siblings to their various appointments is whole other matter.

Last December we all were looking forward to taking our rest. December being the only time that we actually try to take a break. But we spent it working extra hard.

At our home we were dealing with bad erosion. Thankfully it wasn't right at our house. It was where the water would rise high especially during the fall and winter or whenever a storm occurs.

So we spent the majority of December filling and carrying 300 sandbags.

To describe the layout briefly - the truck that delivered the sand to us could only go to the front of our house which is at the bottom of a hill. We then filled up the bags and spent about a week to get the bags uphill. We did it all by hand. And sandbags are really heavy, especially when they get wet. We didn't have any motor vehicles other than Dad's riding mower. Which we did use whenever given the chance. But being that we had a lot of rain meant that the ground was really soft and wet. So going up hill with it was not a good idea at all for the majority of the time. And it's a steep hill.

Then the next week we had spent taking the bags down to the other side to where they needed to be. My Dad was the one who was stacking them.

And we had numerous others things that we had to do during that time as well.

We were so excited to get this done. It was so cold and the sun would set pretty early so we could only do so much a day when we could. But unfortunately... we had a storm just a day after we had finished and the water was so strong that it knocked down and messed up our sandbag wall.

We faced a lot of storms during that month and so this wouldn't be the first time that this would happen. My Mom and I, as well as friends would try to reason with Dad that this should wait until more proper weather. Then hopefully during a good stretch of fair weather we can properly stabilize and secure the sandbags. And then we can fill in the gap between. But - nope. And ultimately it ended up more scattered than the photo above.

But thankfully and surprisingly because of the unusual high tides that we had had the waves have actually pushed in more sand where we needed to fill. So much so that we don't have to gather much filling for the gap now. It's actually to a point that we could probably just plant our bamboo sprouts and let them just grow out. The bamboo we have grow deep roots and keep the ground pretty well packed together in its roots.

Anyways, afterwards it got to the point that our suppose "break time" was ending soon. And we needed to do our deep cleaning and prepare to reopen into the new year. So we were tired, achy and very unrested

It seems from then on it has just been going, going non stop. Even more than usual. Probably because getting supplies wasn't getting any easier. And still hasn't been up to now.

The other major thing that had happened was that my Grandma had fallen in mid-April. She had completely broken her hip was partially broken and repaired from another fall years ago.

So since then she's been doing her best to recover. This is her third hip surgery. And bless her heart, she is determined to walk again. She has finally come to terms of using a wheelchair though. She uses it for the majority of the time but she still tries to get around on her feet whenever she safely can.

It was quite a time during the first weeks into months of her recovery though. It started out that she definitely needed an urgent surgery. She was taken to a hospital that had enough room to take her in. And it was hours away from home.

So going visit wasn't exactly easy. Especially during that time the hospitals where I'm from had very strict restrictions due to the virus crisis. Thankfully we and the rest of the family were able to call her often to check in on her.

When she was able to leave the hospital and get settled into a recovery place she had her cell phone back. To which I will say that considering all that she's been through and is going to be 100 years old by this Halloween, it is so impressive that she remembers how to use it. So she called us often too.

She's thankfully been back home since late June. And is finally starting back into physical therapy.

It's a slow process but I do think she's making her way. One day at a time.