See previous posts for the previous 4 weeks!

MarchHotel26 day 21 figure drawing

Sometimes you just want to do more figures to relax and get into the zone…

MarchHotel26 day 24 gesture session

MH gesture drawing session a few days ago
I am very tired :’)

I was struggling to stay awake :<

I do miss doing gesture drawing sessions but not sure how to best squeeze it in

#MarchHotel26 colour comp study

I want to do more of this quest in my own time! I kept feeling like I’m doing the minimum and not learning as much because of it.

#MarchHotel26 “art style applied to a portrait” study

I also want to do more of this quest too!!

Studying other artists and applying it to things forces you to observe what other artists do, how they make marks and whatnot. There wasn’t much time to do it slowly with intention because I had to do it within a night…

MarchHotel26 day 24 internal shape design

March Hotel Shape Design shenanigans

I was really stumped with this one and then I went going with my gut and stopped myself from overthinking.

Because the more I delay and overthink, the less time I have to sleep :’)

And they turned out pretty nice! At the cost of my sleep…

#MarchHotel26 day 25 grounded figure & plant gestures

Went for pen sketches during work breaks because I didn’t have the time otherwise to do these quests

#MarchHotel26 day 26 eye blinding Junco birds

They gave eye piercing palettes to use on purpose and then I saw a junco bird photo being shared so here we are ;P

#MarchHotel26 Day 27 Raven head figure drawing quest?

I saw a crow being shared so this is my poor attempt at mixing raven/crow with figure drawing

#MarchHotel26 Day 28 Phil on a date & exaggerating facial expression

What do people do on dates??? I went with the photobooth cute couple photo :’)

Will never experience that ;P

Also did my best with doing her hair because I don’t want to spend too much time with details

#MarchHotel26 Day 29 Figure Drawing lighting

I didn’t do the fancy animated lighting that changes because I was really pushing it.

I didn’t have much sleep that night :’D But people doing this quest went ham!!

I also did one more piece for another quest after this but I’m not happy with it so maybe I’ll get back to it 🙁

Leonie rambles about…

• Crossy Road has the upside down / Down Under mode for April fools for a week
• Nie Xiaoqian | Chinese Folktales Adaptations
  • I vaguely watched the first movie that lacked substance when I was a kid :0
• Did Disney Really Steal Aladdin? / Lindsay Ellis
  • Howard Ashman, rest in peace :'(
  • great video with tangents
  • I fear I would have to tackle my own perfectionism and stress management too if I took charge of a project
• Why is everyone chinese?? / Mina Le
  • well…I learned what Chinamaxxing is oof
  • how trends and repackaged Chinese fashion/food/activities/rituals/etc are very superficial
    • and removing the context, history and culture things came from :/
  • and how food is a way to do cultural exchanges
  • I do relate how I don’t belong in either Western culture or the cultures my parents and their parents had
    • just have to walk your own path and connect with similar people :’)
    • feels lonely though when you’re not western/chinese/vietnamese enough
  • gosh I witnessed gua sha before
    • and it looked painful with a coin and then cupping happened too…
  • I feel sad about the qipao
    • and it’s not something I feel comfortable wearing because of the oversexualisation and stigma
• Watched Resident Evil: Requiem / RE9 and finished it (spoiler talk)
  • looked at Grace’s report and concept art too
  • pretty great game! Leaves some things open for future lore development too
  • I do wonder where Claire Redfield and Chris and Ada are…
  • the motorbike sequence is so silly/dumb and a homage to those silly action parts of some of the previous RE games
  • Also Zeno is incredibly underused as a character and is a meh “clone of Wesker”
• Watched the super light story of Pokopia
  • I am glad I am not playing it because it is a HUGEEEE timesink and it keeps going as you take care of your Pokemon neighbours
  • super cute, the Pokemon have much more personality and interest compared to Animal Crossing New Horizons villagers
  • this game is more like Dragon Builders 2 as a game and not Animal Crossing though
    • because it has more structure to it
    • if you want a stronger story than Pokopia, play Dragon Builders 2 instead
      • (the streamer I watch says this)
  • I am not keen on constantly decorating/collecting in a game when I need a break from creative/art stuff
    • plus I am burnt out from Animal Crossing ;P
• Watching a super long but classic, incredible and heart breaking JRPG – Lost Odyssey
  • the dreams / short stories of the immortal protagonist Kaim’s memories are so depressing, sad, well written, meaningful stories
    • I had to go back a bunch of times because I wanted to focus on the story when it comes up
  • I’m at Disc 2 out of Disc 5 so I’m far from done haha
  • it’s very weird so far
  • Jansen is so rambly
  • Wonderful, perfect song Lost Odyssey OST – Disc1 – Track10 – Neverending Journey
  • Battle theme also in my head sometimes
• I still want to play the demo for Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream
  • seeing how artists are SO creative with the Mii creator is super inspiring
  • I shared some stuff I saw at my discord server
• work has been super intense (how do people context switch??)
  • and there’s always more to do
  • and there’s things to fix, juggle and/or things I didn’t know
  • and figuring out priorities ahhh
  • very important to communicate and even then mistakes do happen
    • all you can do is do your best
• it’s less stressful now with home but yeah I’m just taking things by day :<
• bluesky doing ai feed things that people didn’t want :/
  • I’m not surprised but I’m just tired of all this
  • ultimately all I have left is this blog here
• my webhost thankfully is not raising prices but they need support to keep going?
  • I use knownhost! Are other webhosts raising prices due to the genAi bubble not bursting??

Reflecting and burnt out on March Hotel

• there’s more but I’m not finished with them
• there was also a Daylight Savings sun I did that I forgot to add here
• you can tell when I had more time and when I just needed to get something done :’)
• I agree that you can’t really do much personal art here when you’re also interested in the quests
  • (to learn and get out of your comfort zone)
• observing how there’s artists who are drawers firstmost and artists who are painters firstmost
  • I’m clearly more of the drawer with line haha

It was the final week and it was intense that I slowed down because I was burnt out. I had enough fake coins to survive the rest of the month thanks to doing quests when I felt able to and when the quests seem fun/interesting for me (you get varying amounts of coin for them).

They kept raising the daily rent to keep you on your toes because the whole point is to keep up with drawing. There was a LOT of leeway as long as you have enough for rent to get by, compared to how harsh kimo was with dailies last year (you get kicked out with no second chances if you don’t post art). So there were random days where I didn’t do anything but ultimately I posted a daily almost every day in March. Just missed one day and then felt bad that I missed out on coin haha.

I was overwhelmed by 7k people and the chat and just avoided them most of the time. I am afraid and anxious of voice chats with people I don’t know. There were times where chatter was more slow and manageable but not for long. Spamming happened a bunch too. Hopefully next time we can all be split into floors with our own designated chat spaces to make it less chaotic (probably too much work). I saw a lot of the quieter lurkers (like me) regret not being able to make friends when MH was ending. Just so much going on I had to block out a lot of things!! And the events are not for my Aussie timezone anyway ;P

I did enjoy spamming the fishing command at the “lake” when the cooldown finally runs out to see what fake “fish” I get and if I get any coins from it.

Another downside is that the quests kept me busy and I didn’t get to do much personal work haha

And quests didn’t really reflect how difficult it is to do them sometimes based on how much they pay. Difficult quests should have more days dedicated to them.

I tried looking at other lifeboat servers (since MH server is now dormant) and I was already lurking and juggling servers already so I only joined one new server in the end (and even then I’m not sure if I’ll stay – it depends on how they’ll run things).

I got spooked by the “mic voice chat only” server and the “tell us your age and post your work and we’ll judge you if you could stay” server and other overwhelming ones that was more intense with activity, OC fights, had a weird application question and/or are huge in number. I also avoided servers focused on following up market commissions – I don’t think that’s why people join servers – they should do DMs instead :’) And then there’s people plugging their socials and not a server even though that’s against the rules in the last few hours when I check back haha

Oof I got overwhelmed by the server activity since MH ended today and I’ve also been updating, thanking and welcoming people at my own little server! It’ll calm down though – I hope! I don’t want my server to be too time consuming!!

Ultimately, I am glad I did March Hotel but it was definitely a struggle. It was definitely a lesson in letting go and getting something done versus making sure you’re learning from it versus making something pretty and cool. I feel like most quests didn’t need to be just a day and on some days they gave 5 quests at once?? Hope they allow more days for people do it and juggle things better. And not rush things and do minimum effort entries. I know they do allow for WIP progress to be posted as a daily but I wasn’t in the mindset to do something big like that…

I’m sure they’re getting lots of feedback anyway!

If I do it next year, I need to be more picky with what quests I want to do properly and what quests I just leave to do for another time (yet my greed for more coins drives me!!) At the same time, the coins didn’t really mean anything and I should stick to doing 1 quest or so a day and ignore everything else and get more sleep (if I can ignore the interesting quests!!) Focus on not rushing things too much within reason. I find that a lot of entries are rushed, simple and/or not iterated upon because the timeframe given was just a day. Or maybe my standards are too high :’)

Did I manage to make art/study more of a habit? It’s not daily but it really did push me to just do stuff and not overthink. I think the trouble I have is doing self directed stuff and that involves overthinking, planning, concepting, struggling, not liking anything I come up with and getting frustrated – ah the creative process.

There’s times where you’re just taking in what people create and you don’t create anything haha

It does burn you out when you have to pump out art/study when you’re starting to feel lost and directionless. One thing you can do is switch gears to do something else and have the bigger picture in mind. And take breaks away…which is easier said than done.

And then there’s times when there’s too much you want to do and not much time!! And you have to sacrifice sleep to juggle it all 🙁

What is my bigger picture in all this?? I just want to keep learning and expressing myself along the way. There’s so much more to practice and learn and it’s a life long journey…

Maybe I’ll stumble upon a project I feel compelled to do that won’t burn me out one day…

And will I manage to actually do plein air???

I don’t know!! I’ll try but I wished for a break between MH and Plein air but it doesn’t work that way noooo!!

What do I want to get out of it? I just want to keep it to 5 minutes at least each day with shapes, colours and environments – even though I enjoy doing characters over environments.

My first ones will be terrible due to lack of time…but I’ll have to make and post something anyway oof

Okay I will take a break from blogging next week…!!

Doing weekly posts for all of March was also intense and exhausting!! I need breaks in between next time!! It’s not helping that it takes hours writing these because I get carried away…

Thank you and catch you around!!

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