longer.blue

Hey! Sorry for disappearing again, Mama Urbs needed her alone/quiet time for a while XD Some much needed digital unplugging helped! I figure now’s about time to share updates on how things are going (mainly w/ my grief journey) and what I've been up to later. Sit back, here's another long post lol It's near going on 9 months since Cres passed. I can say w/confidence, as of late, that….things are genuinely looking up again. Not excellent, but good. There are still waves of bad days ahead, many. But, it’s gotten to the point where I can look at his photos w/o tearing up and, instead, smile. A silver-lining (for such a tragic loss) was becoming closer to his family. Just plain wonderful and generous folks n they’ve always treated me as their own since we've met. They paid out of their own pocket TWICE to help see Chris during his final weeks. I seriously am forever in their debt! <3 His brother flown down to the Midwest from Oklahoma back in June to hang out with our close friend @strawberrytiki.bsky.social and I for a few days! He’s really taken an interest in the furry fandom, we’re both in the process of co-designing an owl fursona for him! It was a fun trip we all needed. Outside of that, I've been seeing a grief therapist bi-weekly since September. She's awesome and look forward to seeing her again for the next session! It has been nice being able to just simply SAY Chris’ name w/o it being some taboo thing that makes people *insert guy disappearing meme* lol Lastly, relating to Chris, is thanking our very longtime friends @tallowandsoot.bsky.social for doing so many awesome commissions for us over the years! We've both known these lovely people for 15+ years; their art was one of the many fun things we bonded over! A lot of stuff I've been commissioning lately are some of the silly ideas we've talked about while he was still around. And to keep a special tradition alive! Thank you to anyone who was willing to work with my ideas! Another thing I’ve been focusing a LOT on the past couple months is mostly just working on improving my art. I've been taking a more serious interest in re-learning the proper fundamentals and doing more life-drawing type stuff. And boy, does it make such a difference w/results! I really enjoy doing backgrounds and props a whole lot more and they really make pictures that much better! I’ve been doing a lot of boring life-drawing stuff haha, but I’ll def share some of the more toony and fun backgrounds I’ve been practicing on at some point! Animation is another thing I’ve been also trying to get back into learning! Currently working on 2 of them! One of them being an animated fanart of an obscure character I always adored that I look forward to sharing. I'd hope to feel confident to take some as commissions one day! As of right now I am working on the artwork/design for my holiday cards this year. I will make a separate post for that later this month, for anyone interested in doing a card exchange. I love receiving Christmas cards, as much as I enjoy sending them to others! Well I've already spent over 40 minutes writing all this, lol. But that's more or less what I've been up to lately! If you've made it this far, thanks for reading all that!