Hello again my kiddos!

Argh, it's kinda weird to see them green banners again, ngl xD But ye.... GUESS WHAT I FINALLY FINISHED!!!!

Last year around, I introduced my artbook "Leaves" with a small "meet the artist" thingy, that you can see right here:

And.... OH BOY. A SHITLOAD HAS CHANGED SINCE JANUARY 2020. Either way, I promised yall in the outro of said artbook, that i'd try to do one of these every year, to see how my art and self-perception have changed over time >w<
Also it's just nice, to have one of these in every artbook, so newbies get to know you a bit better haha

I initially started with something a lot more wild. I was in the middle of the flat-process, when I sorta gave up on the first attempt, and let the project sit in my WIP folder for another month, before wanting to revisit the idea and finding it best to scrap what I already had, and start completely new again ^-^

Starting off my second attempt, I had to look up how other artists did their version of this again, to figure out layout and have an idea what poses I could use.
I settled on something, that I thought would represent me best! Right hand up to show them devils horns, and my left hand leaning on my pockets.... since that's where they usually are chilling, if I'm not chewing on my nails or making awkward gestures towards people I know.

Then I moves on to the linework.... and oh boy was this tricky. On the one hand, I wanted to draw myself and how i looked, on the other hand, I wanted to represent how I actually saw myself.
This was especially interesting, since I drew myself how I'd usually draw my male-bodied characters, also trying to make my still very female features shine through in areas. It's kinda especially visible in the neck and face later on, since they contrast my arms here a lot.... yeah.....

either way, I think I found a nice middleground, that makes me feel like this image is me, whilst also making it recognizeable for other people around me >w<

um... not rlly all that much to say about the lineart, except that I hate drawing glasses with a passion, and that I figured out something new concerning hands, and had a blast drawing those :D
Clothing-wise I literally just chose one of my standard outfits, trying to accurately represent my wardrobe >w<

Oh! And the hair was a lot of fun.... that stuff was always just pure chaos, but ever since I cut it short, it seems to just have gained it's own freedom and refuses to do whatever I want. I swear, I tried wax, gel, spray, just water and airdrying, etc. but i can just get a rough shape of what I want, whilst the other half of this wavy mess just... yeah.... does whatever the fuck it wants.
But I like it! Makes my head look more floofy >w<

Next up it came to the colours. Those were fairly easy to choose from, since most of the tones were already in a self-portrait I made last october, and only had to tweak some stuff, to fit my present colouring style a bit more!

When it came to the print on my lotr-shirt, I..... well, I literally just googled it, pasted the image from the elbenwald-online shop into my drawing programm, and magic wanded the actual print..... may be lazy, but it's better than eyeballing every member of the fellowship and at least everything's 100% accurate now!

Oh, I also was an idiot and switched left and right around..... so.... yeah........ just imagine all them moles and scars mirrored >w<"
(And yes... a lot of moles.... it was really fun trying to figure out what was where, and I do think i forgot quite some in the end xD)

Then it came to shading..... and shading has just become really fun, ever since I switched over to cell-shading. I don't know what it is, but I am enjoying it a lot lately >w<
So.... ye.... not all too much to say here..... same procedure as every time

And then... well yeah... then I slapped that exported png on another canvas, adding some details (like my wonderful spots for texture QwQ) and some final overlays. Then I slammed some personal information about me in there as well and here we go!!

A lot of things I like, not so many things i really dislike, apart from some obvious stuff... like disrespect towards other people bc of whatever, arrogance, bullying, etc.
I decided to leave those away, to keep the thing a bit more positive, without dragint more serious and partially political issues in there haha

So yeah!

Other than that, I think that's all I have to say this time around!
Hope ya like to have some sort of face behind all the works now, even though it's only my artistic, masculinzed rendition of myself!

>> cuddles you, wraps you in a blanket burrito and gives you some ice cream <<

See ya along the way then! Hope you're doing well, drink enough in this weather and remember to take things easy.

Farewell my kiddos!