curious if this is a perk or nah

thinking of things to do with the patreon. never ever in a million years wanted to post stuff from the sketchbooks, but might have to start doing it. (cw: none of this has anything to do with furry porn or cum or cummies or penises or balls)

there's basically 2 things you need to do keep developing at a skill like this. practice and personal projects. i don't do either, because neither make any money. not that i've cared much about money of course, but my landlord does.. so i'm only ever doing client work. this is a great way to develop a completely inbred artstyle that gradually deteriorates with time until everyone is sick of it and you fall off. i've seen it happen to artists i've followed once they made it... keeps me up at night...

i've alluded to this before, don't want to dwell too much on it, last year was something of a year from hell for me (as was 2023). it was a year of constant, daily struggle, and if you were paying attention you noticed the drop in output. yet in spite of the complete and total uphill struggle, i kept developing and improving. and at the risk of tooting my own trumpet here, actually at a rate beyond what i've seen in over a decade. not since beginner days have i made such strides.

this is because i kept making time for practice, even when there wasn't any. some people consider me a 'good' artist, i won't argue, but i have a few problem areas that never get addressed because of the lack of serious practice time. these continue to plague me in my work since they're problems i don't have adequate solutions for. the logic of this will all make sense when you think about how a football team spends most of its time practicing, not playing stadium football games for 10 hours straight, 7 days a week.

I've made time to practice, in the way that i am now making time to work on personal art. I can't hit all 3 areas of commissions, personal art and practice, without the others bringing in at least some form of income. so much as i hate to do it, the sketchbook is part of the monetization program now. i hate, hate, hate turning it into another avenue of 'work', and in all honesty i don't even like posting it in public. in fact i think hardly anyone who follows me will be remotely interested in the stuff i draw on my spare time because it's pretty different (no furry penis buttsex balls cum cummies sexo), which is why i never talk about it or show it to anyone. i think most people will just be kind of bewildered how little it has to do with the art i post online in terms of style and approach. but this is the stuff i draw when there is no financial pressure to draw anything else for anyone else, so in its truest form, this is my art.

I think if you're real enough to toss me $3+ to draw what i want, you're real enough to get to peak in my sketchbook from time to time, so this will actually be a paywalled tier. it's not something i'm actively promoting or i expect anyone to care about on even the remotest level, but it's there for the people who do fw my art on like an artistic/stylistic level.