What’s New for 2023!

art letters

Happy New Year! I hope the time goblins brought you AWESOME presents! 

It does kind of feel like there’s a little (or a lot of) uncertainty with this new year coming in, so my control freak brain made me sit down to figure out what the heck we’re gonna do with this website, content, streaming, art – all the things old and new for 2023!

Where Have I Been?

I’ve barely streamed in the past two to three months. Not a whole lot of new art has been happening. It’s because of so many raisins! The year as a whole has been a big pile of changes. It’s been good, bad, and everything in between. Every time I thought I had things figured out so I could keep creating consistently, a new something happened. 

The past couple months in particular were super rough and I needed some time to get through it. Now that the dust is settling, having a new routine and a space where I can create seems possible. There has been *some* stuff going on in the background, but not nearly enough to keep the hamsters in my head happy. So without further ado, here’s the plan!

art letters
We’re making ART!

Artist of the Month

I missed December and I’m still kicking myself for it. Like, really? The last month?? With everything going on I couldn’t even decide on an artist, let alone plan a project. It did give me some time to think about how I could make it better. You’d think one artist per month wouldn’t be too bad, but my original plan of being a month ahead for each post failed. By the second month. Oops. 

It ended up being too much with all the other things I wanted to do, but Artist of the Month isn’t going anywhere. I’m just going to change the format a little. Rather than biographies on artists that were born that month, I’ll write more of a “fast facts” type of format. There will be a quick section on when they were born, what movement they were a part of, and maybe important contributions. Then we’ll get into the fun part! 

Every artist in known for something other than their art. Dali was weird. Picasso was a womanizer. Van Gogh battled mental illness. In there are some things you may or may not know that contributed to their art. 

Will there still be projects? Not planned ones, no. Making art in the style of another artist or movement is a great exercise and if lightning strikes, I’ll do one. But this year I want to focus on my personal work and put myself out there more. 

The Website

I’m adding a couple of sections to the site! Back in the early days of createm0de.com I had a sketchbook section for all of my fails. That sort of went away at some point, but it’s coming back. Sketchbook fails, digital fails, cursed art – it’s all going in there. I’m also going to add a fail section on my discord. I think it’s important, especially for beginning artists, to see that everyone else isn’t whipping out masterpieces for their social media every day. We’re all going through the same ups and downs as artists and we should share it!

sketchbook fails
New for 2023! More sketchbook fails!

There’s also going to be a downloads page where you can get my free Twitch badges and emotes. Right now they’re all posted on Ko-fi, where you can also get the paid ones, but I hardly check in there. I may post the paid ones on Etsy, but I haven’t decided yet because it’s Etsy. Anyway, to start the free ones will have their own home here. 

New Content for 2023

I need to get back to making YouTube videos! I’ve been saying it all year! That’s part of the reason I stream there now, but I really need to start planning content and posting videos. The most logical thing to do would be Clip Studio Paint tutorials since I’ve been using it for a few years now. We’ll start with simple things like workspace setup and tips, workflow, layers, making brushes. If you have an idea for something you’d like to see, holler at me!

There’s another digital art suite that was super on sale a few months ago. It’s called Rebelle and that’s all I know about it. I bought all the things because they were super cheap and still haven’t used any of it. That’s a whole pile of content right there! I’m going to learn it and share it all. Let’s see how it stacks up against CSP!

Also in the mix are the Body-Kun and Body-Chan figures. I wrote posts and made videos about them years ago and they still drive the most traffic to my pages! Obviously I need to use them more, so I’ll be busting those out with the Figma Archetypes, the blank Nendoroid, and the brand new knock-off figures I just ordered. Let’s see if the fakes have gotten any better! 

body-kun body-chan fakes new for 2023 fakes
Aaaah! They were (horrible) fakes!

Social Media

Where’s the best place to post? I don’t even know anymore. I sort of use Instagram sometimes. Facebook is all cross-posted stuff. Timelapses always go on TikTok. Then there’s the Twitter shitshow. I want to keep using it because it’s easy, but I don’t want to use it because of the aforementioned shitshow. I made a Mastodon account and haven’t used it yet. What do??

Is That It?

There are more plans for new 2023 things, but we’ve hit the major points of interest. Give me January to get caught up on things and get the routine going. This year is going to be amazing!