(please click for larger!)

Wait… I painted something??????? For the first time since… (checks posts) April 2017. But it’s Christmas, and I usually paint my own Christmas cards, and last year I don’t think I did anything? Probably because I was busy adjusting to moving across the country. This year I’m only adjusting to moving across town so much less emotional backlash.

Of course anyone who even glances at this blog will notice I haven’t been idle creatively. How many stories have I written on in the last two years? A lot…? It just seems to me that writing is more rewarding (also easier >.>) (even if it’s fanfic trash it’s good fanfic trash okay). Given the lack of practice, I’m really surprised and pleased by how well this painting turned out! It actually looks like Achiyo!! I made two designs, as you can see: Season’s Greetings for normal people, and Starlight Celebrations for the people who know what that means! ;D

But I want to talk about some of the problems I had in creating this… mostly because I want to vent all in one place and it’s hilarious just how little I know about printers apparently. First off, my physical harddrive failed about 3 weeks ago (and it’s only due to arrive at the company for a warranty replacement tomorrow, and then three days processing time, and then goodness knows how long to get the replacement with Canada Post swamped with Christmas mail) so I didn’t have access to Corel Painter which is my current preferred program, which was on that drive (I recovered my data but not my programs). Okay, so I used Krita instead, which has some weird controls but is perfectly functional, and it worked out (bonus: those mountains and the scales on her arms are both special brushes in Krita, which is pretty cool).

Then the actual problems started. My printer is CMYK, and I paint in RGB, so immediately after I printed it I realized the colours were different – her hair was washed out, and the reds were orangey. So I converted the image to CMYK in Krita, and tried adjusting it from there, hoping it would then print the way I wanted it to. All I learned was that working in CMYK is hottttttt garbage for me and I hate it. Whoof! And then to try and adjust the hair I put a layer over it rather than adjust it using the sliders, but the above images are the original RGB paintings I did (with all the best, most vibrant reds yessssss) – but now I had to figure out how to get the hair layer from CMYK to RGB and haha it looks terrible in RGB. So! I give up! Printing things is the worst! (Also my printer is apparently blurry as hekkkkk) So next year I’m doing my Christmas cards at the same time as my Sinterklaas prep (November, right after Halloween’s done) and getting them printed at Staples.

If you received one of these in the mail, I’m glad you came to check out the originals. Doesn’t she look nice? Thanks for visiting!