Hello, folks! This may shape up to be a moderately-sized proper update, instead of a quick rant as seems to be usual fare for my dA journals. Such rarity!

First up: if you weren't aware, I do have a tumblr these days where I post mostly WIPs and the occasional doodle! You can find that here: [link]

A handful of you might have noticed that I haven't been livestreaming lately after an intense period of it some time back - this may persist for the time being. Don't get me wrong, I love streaming art, and will definitely get back to that when I return home to my beloved cintiq and actually have enough screen space to work with. It's also the best way I've found so far to keep me focused (people are waaaatchiiiing) plus I might get to meet you, otherwise faceless watcher! That's been missing for me here for the past few years; lost contact with the friends I'd made on dA during several long hiatuses and never really built that up as much again. Though of course there are the bunch of you that comment regularly these days, some of whom I've got to know a little through commentconversations and more - you know who you are! I love and appreciate you guys to bits, I really do.

That... derailed slightly. New paragraph. About the livestreaming. Yes. So instead of that, for the past few paintings I've been watching shows and also listening to podcasts by ~ChrisOatley who does a neat show that's down-to-earth and indeed inspirational, and gives some interesting insights into the film and animation industry. He's not to active on dA, but his site's here: [link] It's particularly fascinating when I'm on the cusp of deciding whether or not to take the challenging path towards an art-related career or not - quite honestly an idea I thought I'd abandoned ages ago and only started reconsidering in the past year or so. Would have to do a more portfolio-oriented overhaul of ye olde net presence if I do, though. Stay tuned, kids, the next few years could be pretty interesting!

Speaking of which - man, these name changes are gonna give me a headache when I finally start clearing through the message center backlog again. Though of course my own is a bit of a headache in itself when trying to give folks a link to my gallery. It is a bit of a strange name, belonging to a character that still has yet to have a finished picture done! Fun fact: "blayrd", or "blayrdxx" in full, is actually my name in code. I've presented this challenged to a few people but nobody's managed to solve it yet, heh. 'twas made in an era when I was young and my mom wasn't comfortable with real names online (hi mom!) - buut I guess it can stick around for a while. Would be neat if Deviantart enabled a single account-redirect as well, though, for those people that've reserved their desired names in another account so that wouldn't entirely go to waste.

Now that I mentioned it above I do miss my cintiq, even with its dead pixels and occasional palm-searing hotness. We shall be reunited soon!! (Flight home in less than a month. Egads!)