We don’t get into our UK home port until tomorrow which is a few days earlier than expected. Work do occasionally fly you home after the first day of the next cruise so I didn’t question it initially but this time it turns out there was a slight error with the contracts. I’m still getting paid until the 5th because that’s what the contract says, it just means I’m disembarking a few days earlier than planned. It was an interesting one in the sense I was the only lifeguard on the ship, the good thing is I’ve done the job for long enough that didn’t phase me and I found it to be pretty chill. I did miss not having other people in my own department to interact with so I didn’t get a chance to socialise as much as I usually would. I still made friends easy enough, just their hours often clashed with mine so I didn’t see a whole lot of them. Christmas is def more enjoyable on ship, it’s more about having a good time and isn’t commercialised. New Year was wild, I was in Amsterdam overnight which was awesome and not quiet what I was expecting. If I don’t get a Christmas/New Year contract this year I might look into visiting Amsterdam over New Year. 

It’ll still take me a few days to get back into the swing of things though, always does.

OC vote

I totally copied someone I watch with because I’m curious. Most voted for OC will get a new drawing and a new short  drabble.

If you want to know more about my OC‘s or have a prompt request I am totally open to that too, I am always happy to answer questions and talk about my OC’s, which sometimes is easier to do in fic form.

Currently only have OC’s with finished profiles in the poll but feel free to ask for anyone not yet submitted.

New Year goals

Studies

• Get a high enough math grade to get a cadetship for navigation officer with the company I currently work for. With my current adult ed tutor who is great at teaching people who are dyslexic and really considerate of that, this might just be doable this year. It could still end up being something I end up continuing to work towards but I’m feeling pretty good about smashing this goal this year.
• Continue learning German (and practice more because I def got lazy between my Summer and Christmas contracts). I’m planning to take actual classes to help figure out the grammar (which I’m finding hard to self-teach) this year! I’ve got about 500 words down now but because I’m not even close to being conversational due to not understanding the grammar I can’t use what I know to interact with people. I have improved though, I understood the majority of a few Rammstein and OOMPH! Songs and when watching German drama I understand every 3rd and 5th word and sometimes it’s enough to get the gist of a sentence.

•  Finish profiling all my OC’s and get them all posted here to TH. I only have 4 of my 13 OC’s left to do so that won’t take long.
• Draw my OC’s more before calling their designs finished. I know I got lazy with this last year, I’d make an icon of the character call the design done and never settle on a design because I only made that one little headshot, this happened with my main kiddo and icon OC Hendrix.
• Make everyone ref sheets. I know I’ve been saying this for literal years but I’m determined I’m going to sit down and start doing it this year. Y’all might not see them individually posted since I’m planning to recycle the same pose for speed I’ll be submitting the sheets to a private tab then making it public.

• Continue working on anatomy, volume and other technical aspects of art. I have this problem where I learn anatomy for something say the forearms and forget anatomy of the neck so I really want that to stop being an issue. Neck anatomy is something in particular I need to work on because I keep forgetting it no matter how many times I go over it. I think half of it comes down to me not knowing how to practice effectively, I’ll learn say forearm anatomy, apply it to a drawing requiring an OC’s forearms to be visible and that’ll be that.
• Work on expressions, I did fall into same face syndrome of expressions last year.
• Tidy up and start posting those 30-something WIP fics I have been sitting on.
• I wanna draw my OC’s interacting and doing things more. Done a lot of simple and reference-y white void pictures for getting designs down especially whilst figuring out how to shade so I want to start drawing my OC’s doing stuff and interacting with things/each other this year.