2.5 minute speedpaint! [attempt at a short]

Was stuck as to what to draw for this game. I was originally working on a different art piece but it took long and this game is out! I thought it would be a quick doodle but it turned into this :’)

I had to rush doing this piece in the past week and days ahhhh

I also gave up on doing text commentary and I’m not bothered doing a short video either – I had no time and I guess things are falling apart, I need sleep and I’m tired. Stuff it. I don’t want to do commentary if I’m tight on time.

Tempted to skip it altogether since I prefer to talk about the art here!

Shorts is a “if I can do it quickly” thing :’)

Apparently the majority of people don’t watch speedpaints without voiced commentary but I am learning to care less now. I’m already struggling to get my impromptu art and blog and social media shenanigans on time – Leonie, you don’t need more work!! Stop! You’re not really paid to do this!!

I’m reverting back to doing short speedpaints but it goes more than a minute!

I’ll leave fast paced, cut down edited < 1 minute things for fast food shorts/reels, when I have the time and when it works ;P

Edit: well I did it anyway since I have more leeway when I post the short haha

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland~ Magolor Tour Time!

I’ve played the original so I look forward to play coop and playing the new content :0

Magolor…I remember what happened with him!

Leonie reflects and rambles.

Daily “morning pages”, gratitude journals or diary entries of brain dumps doesn’t work for me

It is not a one size fits all thing. It works for some/many(?) people!

Morning Pages

With morning pages it did not work for me when I tried it years ago because I would end up wallowing in my own anxious/negative/neglected/lonely feelings, reliving bad times and the negative things in my life that I cannot change. I’m judging myself according what I think society’s standards of what a successful/competent/independent/worldly/better human and artist “should” be doing.

And how I don’t really want to change my situation for better or for worse.

Made me more unhappy, resentful, reactive, stressed out and always not enough. On what I lack and how I have to always be working on myself when I just want to get by and manage on a day to day basis. On how I’m not working towards the “dream life”. I don’t always want to be constantly growing.

I want to enjoy what I’m doing right now at times! I’m existing & surviving somehow! :0

I am not in a good headspace to be “positive” nor do I want to force myself. No forced positivity for me here!

I do put on a friendly mask when talking and appreciating strangers/people who talk with me though and then that slowly comes off when I feel more comfortable, I’m more blunt, I worry less about how inexpressive I look and whether I’m being socially acceptable ;P

Digressing! It’s meant to be a stream of consciousness on 3 pages of paper so it feels pointless, annoying and repetitive for me. Other times my head is just empty or it’s focused on what things I need to do. It definitely makes you the centre of the universe to the point that you forget the bigger picture or that you get stuck in the victim mentality.

There are definitely pitfalls to journaling and at times it feels pushed as a practice you have to do for mental health/enlightenment/solving your life’s problems whether you feel like it or not :/

Yes I did read “The Artist’s Way” and “Art and Fear” years ago. I don’t remember much now. What stuck with me thanks to my bad memory is that we’re all struggling and managing our own mindset, feelings and thoughts.

It’s a difficult, lifelong journey of mental health care.

Gratitude journaling and “manifesting”

Gratitude journaling where you strive to see the silver lining…I find exhausting if done daily. Sometimes thinking about it works for me. I’ve heard of “affirmations” too which kind of leans towards “The Secret” about “manifesting the life you want to live/person you want to be”. Envision your ideal life and so on.

It’s nice to work towards definitely! It gives people a focus. I am not sure if I have a destination though…I just want to keep doing what I do. But probably not as intense a schedule.

Saying what you’re grateful does highlight the good things in your life at times. One has to get used to doing it and thinking that way. I’m not saying I don’t do it randomly at this blog and in my wandering thoughts! It helps sometimes! I do it to cheer myself up a bit trying to find silver linings, else I’ll always be a sad Leonie :’)

But doing so daily and explicitly feels forced and repetitive for hermit “limited experiences” Leonie. As if you’re trying to brainwash yourself to feel a different way, especially when things are stressful, hard, terrible, hopeless, depressing, heavy or mundane.

I don’t want to play the “fake it until you make it” game. It’s not true to me. I feel like I’m betraying my own feelings and I feel even more jaded and more self resistant.

Sometimes I’m just not feeling it and I’d rather sit with and process those feelings instead. And to stay open minded about positive possibilities, consider negative/neutral possibilities too, silver linings and say “maybe” about things as a stepping stone/baby step instead. Because I’m finding it difficult to pretend I believe something.

Other times I do feel grateful in the moment and enjoy that slowly. But I don’t explicitly name it, I just feel and maybe think it? And say it right then to the person if applicable? I probably won’t write it most of it down though :0

Positive memories diary

And then there’s the approach of only writing it down if you have a wonderful, joyful moment you’d like to remember (like the highlights of social media but it’s only shown to yourself). So one only sees and reads the positive, short entries.

Downside of this is that it glosses over the fact that negative and mundane times have happened and what lessons you may have learned.

Elizabeth’s self CBT approach

To roughly summarise the video:

• first you brain dump tasks, thoughts, concerns, thoughts and feelings
• make a task/to-do list and a “to deal” with list
• sort both according to importance and what to deal with now/short term
• put the rest to the side, the “not right now”
• sort out what extreme beliefs you unconsciously believe in & the evidence for this via your actions (Theory A)
  • examples for theory A: I am not likeable, I am invisible, I am a lonely child to be looked down upon, I am a selfish person, I don’t deserve happiness, people aren’t interested in the real me, I will never find love, I am too alien to find much connection, I am shameful for not knowing “basic things”, etc
  • evidence for these theories
  • note how you self sabotage yourself
• finding evidence to prove the more realistic alternative (Theory B)
  • examples for more realistic theories: we are all flawed and make mistakes, people are busy, people are mostly worrying about themselves to care about you, you do have a few occasional friends, etc
  • putting things in perspective and staying open to other possibilities
  • evidence – what other people have said about you or have done that supports Theory B
• what are a list of your needs? What bad and good things have happened in the recent month or two?
• coming up with action points to manage and meet your needs and to work against the self sabotage
  • examples: manage the overthinking, reaching out and meeting people, being explicit with needs with people (for affection, reassurance, time off, love, etc).

Quite good approach I might incorporate someday! It seems like hard, difficult work to face yourself like this too.

Aren’t you “journaling” right here, Leonie??

I guess so? There’s so many different approaches to “journaling”!

What I do here at this blog is what I call reflecting rambling. I refuse to do it daily.

Just do it when I feel like it, have feelings and prolonged thoughts about something. I have no actual “plan” but I latch onto what I’m thinking about in the moment, brain dump a bit, reflect about it over time and run with it.

And then attempt to proofread my mess.

It’s really for me to vent, to process things and my feelings at my own pace. I can’t do therapy so this is what I do for myself!

Or writing out notes about the things I’m learning at the moment (like the video earlier). I don’t share “actionable” things as often because I don’t want to commit to things I’m not sure about. I do have a physical notepad where I jot down to-do notes and rewriting that often since I adjust according to my mental and terrible energy levels.

Sometimes I attempt to figure out the trigger, what, how and why behind things, ask myself constructive questions to understand myself better, strive to see the positives while acknowledging the negatives, patterns and mixed feelings too.

Or I talk in circles. As I process things half cohesively.

It feels more meaningful, deliberate, purposeful, more topic focused, is more about problem solving and attempting to gain a bit more self awareness and understanding.

Knowing when to reign in and to stop overanalysing/overthinking things that are out of your control are also needed too! Either I exaggerate in extremes due to anxiety and worries or I minimise things due to not checking with my feelings, being ignorant and/or lacking other perspectives. Then I tone my feelings and thoughts down and land somewhere in the middle of the spectrum as I read what I type out :0

All this rambling – we need to do different things to manage our own mental health and that there’s pros and cons for each. I don’t have the answers :<

Managing mental health is hard.

Quitting Pixiv/Pixivsketch & their AI generated work mess

Pixiv has been a mess with AI generated work flooding the site since last year and the filter for subscribers is doing little to help (I wouldn’t know since I don’t check my feeds plus the language barrier)!

Upon reading warnings about pixiv and tweets from people discussing about it, people selling AI-generated illegal sexual deepfake stuff at their pixiv fanbox and how a few pixiv company people seem to be pro AI and are testing pixiv artwork for AI training without consent (from this Japanese twitter account’s profile).

I’ve stopped posting to pixiv for a while now. I was clinging onto pixiv longer than artstation because I guess I was in denial and I was not in the loop with pixiv as a company + how Japanese artists are dealing with all this due to the language barrier :’)

I am so tired that another place has joined deviantArt and Artstation in terms of losing the trust of artists. I am not bothered deleting hundreds of pieces I’ve posted there – I don’t want to waste even more of my limited spare time. I can’t even find a way to delete my account.

So I’ll just stop using and posting to pixiv.

It’s not as if I could reach much people anyway – after many years I managed to reach 96 followers at a snail’s pace so I don’t think I would thrive at pixiv anyway. I don’t make beautiful anime characters and paintings :’)

I don’t know if things will be better and for working Japanese artists but time will tell.

Netflix Japan’s AI generated background art in their experimental short had AI “+ human” without their name to the credits, claming that they’re using AI because of “labour shortage” is concerning. Given how bad the working conditions for Japanese artists and animators are, it does not bring me much hope for the future of artists and animators right now. It definitely feels like things will get worse before people can rein these companies back as they do whatever they want and get away with it – with AI in the art, music, voice acting, writing, software, etc industries.

I hear bad stuff about Shuttershock and how open ended Instagram/s TOS is – I’m just super cautious at this point! I don’t want to lose hope yet but it’s been pretty demoralising in recent years.

Hopefully we’re not in a losing battle to keep things ethical. Trying to not be jaded and resigned here :’)

I hope for the best with the lawsuits that’s going on, this is a long fight and journey 🙁

Halp

Uh I’m at a point where I have a bunch of fanart I want to do but I don’t have the time to do them all :’)

I’m so slow because I’m tired juggling the other work, life, admin, study stuff too :<

I’m just juggling and procrastinating with personal art/fanart and striving to get through tutorials (that I keep talking about since last year) before I lose access in the months to come. I don’t like it when they cut you off from what you bought – I don’t get to do the learning at my own slower pace and it gets stressful, even though it’s a kick to the butt to do it. Why :’)

Subscription based learning is not really helpful for learning at your own pace. I resent it because I’m not really taking things in properly, nor the time to do the homework as I rush through things and video content. Ugh :/

Anyhoo in recent months I’ve been putting more frozen veggies in my diet since 1 serving of horribly boiled carrots and spinach a day doesn’t cut it! I can tolerate peas now wow! Hopefully my gut health and iron deficiency anemia gets better :’)

Take care! I am just doing what I can on a day to day basis! :0

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