Has this year been going by fast for you? To me it feels like someone dropped a brick on the accelerator and I'm left wondering where it is we're headed. Maybe this is the rubber band snap from time feeling frozen in the years after the pandemic? Or maybe I'm just losing my mind.

Anyhoo, I've been watching anime lately! That's fun, isn't it? So far the best show I've watched is Witch Hat Atelier, and if you look closely (read: at all) you might notice young Coco, witch in training, is here among us now. Less surprising is the addition of a Merry, because of course July is the home of Draw Merry Day, everyone's favorite day to draw everyone's favorite Stuart Gipp Original. Least surprising of all, a collection of Natashas and Bries for your viewing pleasure. I hope they grant you as much pleasure in the viewing as they granted me in the drawing.

June did not see me making much pen on paper art, but I was inspired by a vintage map of the world to work on a similarly baroque map of Natasha's world. It is still far from finished, but I have included a recent WIP version of it here for your enjoyment. I also drew Natasha in a frilly two piece beachy outfit twice in a row so I guess that makes it canonical.

I've also watched more anime recently than I have in years, such things as Zenshu (good), Secrets of the Silent Witch (fine) and Witch Hat Atelier (fantastic). Who can say why a story about a passionate but naive young girl taken in by a man harboring suspicious motives might appeal to me? Sure would be weird if she gets caught up in a battle between larger forces for the future of the world. Anyway don't be surprised if I draw her in the near future.

You may also notice a mysterious Gwynne among the art this month, she's from Jean Caden's lovely comic "What we gained in the fire." I haven't been following Ms. Caden for very long but she seems like someone capable of making a whole ass comic and posting it online, which is cool. I really like her art, and I hope I get to see more of Gwynne in the future.

May was a slightly less productive month, with a bit more stress and a week long vacation that limited my available drawing time. I've also been working at a different station on my job that further limits how many times I can provide Natashas for the teeming masses.

I do have one additional technology available to me to address that, I recently got my hands on a copy of the new Tomodachi Life and wouldn't you know it, now Estavelle Island is full of residents that you might find familiar and I definitely find familiar. I've been trying to take screenshots of their travails and I intend on sharing them with you all here in a separate post in the near future. I should also note that this art update includes Kat, the mega lady protagonist from Glitch's newest cartoon pilot Gameovers. I just think she's neat!

The month of April marks the arrival of new Dimestore Novel character, Brie Zahn. You see, what had happened was, I was spending a lot of time drawing Hitomi Kanzaki from classic anime The Vision of Escaflowne. Now, I have never been much for fanart and fanworks, and the Hitomi I was drawing bore decreasing resemblance to the Hitomi in the show. Imagine the artistic equivalent of a dog chewing a chew toy. It dawned on me to take this feeling and release it from the burden of being attached to an existing character. With surprising speed it sprang into a new configuration. Like Hitomi, Brie is launched into another world against her will. Unlike Hitomi, Brie is kind of a bad person. Entitled, immature, unwilling and unable to deal with the demands of the real world. So lucky for her the world she finds herself in is not real.

Look forward to seeing how her story intersects with the rest of Dimestore Novel (spoilers, it's laid out on her EoP page).

Additionally, among the love heaped on Natasha and Brie this month you will also find Evangeline, Virginia, and Ashley. Remember them? I wonder if we will ever see and/or meet them in the near future. You never know!! Dig Ashley's cool arm though. Pretty neat, eh? I think you will see her robotic limb in increasingly modular forms going forward.

They say time marches on. So too, does March, so it seems. As a result, I have produced for you a small selection of March Arch. I mean art. Mart Art.

Whatever. You get the idea. At this month's art feast I have provided a dozen or so normal crumbs, as well as a few salacious crumbs. The latter are not cataloged here because I am a coward. If you wish to see them you need but ask and I shall share with you my horde of lewd. When I wrote that I wrote "horse" at first and that is an entirely different category of lewd which, while popular, is not one I partake of in any capacity.

Recently a good friend of mine approached me and asked, "When am I going to stop exploding?" It's a good question. He was supposed to stop exploding quite a while ago, and yet despite my least efforts he remains caught in the moment of destruction. A skilled cartoonist can elide a lot of events in the white space between two comic panels. Even a skilled cartoonist, which I do not consider myself to be, cannot depict events between a comic panel and nothing. Another panel needs to be drawn. Until such time, my good friend will continue to explode. Doesn't seem fair to him, but on the other hand he did know what he was getting into.

As expected, February was a better month from an art production perspective if not any other conceivable metric. I don't actually know if that was expected, or why it would be expected. Despite this being a substantial bounty of drawings this is not even all of them, there's a handful that are a bit too lewd to share on this public venue, even though my definition of lewdness is not even enough to upset an online payment processor. Maybe if enough people clamor for them in the comments below I will share them...somehow.