MaelynnHann

I've been working a ton. Like, a TON. I'm doing my best to start something here with my love for comics. It took years to discover that cartoons are it for me. 

I have been playing around a lot with Tumblr today and yesterday. My art has become more crisp and clean since I began this path of webcomic-ing. I'm proud of my progression even though there's much to learn. As I become more proud of my artwork I want to share it more. But the way I was going about it was very limited to Google+ and Facebook. My art wasn't getting the exposure it deserves, especially when I am really putting more of myself in them. I have more comics coming up and really want to share it in a way more people can see them. 

In my recent twenties I wasted a lot of time on the internet, posting selfies and status updates that were very attention seeking. Now in my thirties and I am more confident and at ease with myself than ever. I feel less of a need to express unnecessary status updates. But, there is still a desire to share something special with others. To express myself creatively the way I was born to. So I am beginning again with Deviant Art and Online Social Networking in general. 

I started this journey a year ago and only now does it feel like I am really beginning to set a foundation for myself as a webcomic. All in all, I'm still an egg, in the world of webcomics.

I have been setting up my still life for 3 days now. I listed 10 themes and narrowed it down until I decided on using myself as the theme: My name means flowers in water. My element is water. My card is the queen of clubs. So I listed objects to setup in my still life: flowers, water, playing cards, leaves, candles etc. I went in the backyard, emptied out and wiped down one of our magnificent clay pots, clogged the hole on the bottom with a kneaded eraser and filled it to the brim with water. I dug around in the garage and discovered our lantern designed for holding candles. I found a round candle, I cut up the roses from the garden, I dug through some clothing bags and found my silk Japanese robe as backdrop for the still life. I went to my parents house to borrow some masking tape and called my best friend to borrow his plastic playing cards (perfect for staying flat in water). Also a lighter for the candle.

After setup I spent sometime taking pictures during the day, but the lighting was too consistent and unimpressive. I waited until evening. I dug around the backroom and then the garage in search of extension cords and lamps. My roommate coincidentally joined me outside to practice his fencing exercises and was able to assist me in holding the light several ways while I took a million photographs. After an hour I went inside and transferred the images onto my laptop and narrowed it down to 15 photos, then to 8, then to 5, and now to 2, and now 1. I emailed and text some friends, artists and non artists, for feedback and am still awaiting replies from a few. But for the most part my roommates and myself have all liked this particular photo.

Fanime was an amazing experience in Artist Alley. I was inspired to no end and I made some amazing connections with some extraordinary artists and just friggin awesome personalities. Monday after Fanime ended, my wonderful friends and I toasted to some refreshing peach soju in celebration. After a little too much soju and napping I had some get togethers to attend to which proceeded in more drinking 'till about 4 in the morning. The week was crazy and it took me a couple weeks to fully recover.

Now I am working on my second portfolio. It appears that I will have some months to complete this. In the meantime,  I have art exercises on the daily for one hour and will be attending figure drawing evenings with my talented and hardworking colleagues. I have decided to make this into a project i truly love whereas the very first portfolio was more of "I have to get this done on time" mentality. This time I want to create something I am proud of and put myself into it as much as possible.

Fanime convention is in less than 48 hours and I am excited beyond belief. I just submitted most of the art I will be selling. I am feeling exhilarated and thrilled. Just a week ago I was discouraged because time was running out. But after 20 minutes of wallowing in a pit of endless doom and despair, it hit me:

I just couldn't give up.

I downed a Vietnamese iced coffee, a cold red bull and got to work. I stayed up for 16 hours straight and completed my prints. In a disoriented haze, I managed to somehow make my way to the printing shop. Afterwards I crashed in bed, and somewhere along the lines had to wake up and eat food. We ended up eating the best fried chicken of all time (bonchonbayarea.com), drank an entire pitcher of peach soju and proceeded to sleep for a glorious 14 hours.

I learned to always always follow my gut despite logic (which was never my fortei to begin with) and never ever give up. Also, to draw every single day starting now until about say.. forever. Then I would find it less necessary to do extreme art, high on caffeine, adrenaline, and manic determination.

I used to draw a lot of comics about myself and my quirky daily adventures. The comics were fun to create, however, I never found my chibi self to be very appealing. Me and those closest to me have joked that if I had a signature animal most like me it would be a puppy: Playful and loving and always hungry. I love huskies so today I decided to draw myself in husky form. :3