fish feed

4/15/26 - hands are a little sore

Making so much stuff that my hands are starting to not feel the best, but I am obsessive. I have been struggling to sleep because all I want to do is draw. I've been losing sleep over it. It's wild. I have to be mindful of my hands. I need to stretch them because now they're so tight that my drawings are feeling stiff and tight.

Here's some of the things I've made. Christina Koch, da world, nasturtium, maybe a shirt for a future shop update(?), + some fish from on of the zines I've made.

There's like 9 more fish too.

I updated my sketchbooks a few days ago too. I picked up a sketchbook I had neglected like five years ago. I got a little frustrated that it was kinda big. I dug a little more in my shelf of old sketchbooks, and I found this tiny Art Talons sketchbook from four years ago. I only drew on about 10 pages. Yoink. Drawing in that now.

4/5/26 - moving around

Here's a page from a zine I am making. It's a collection of tiny rare fish species in MN because everyone loves the game fish, but the little guys need love too. They're also affected by a number of things, and we're losing darters and others all around the country. Invasive plants and fishes are affecting their populations. They're some of the most beautiful fish out there too. I suggest looking up darter species. They're gorgeous and so cute.

I was going to handletter the body text, but it was hurting my hand, so I just made a font. I gotta do some adjustments to the spacing though. Descenders really mess up the line height which gets on my NERVES when a font does that.

I am making a travel gouache palette for funsies. Don't judge my color choices because I am OVER the boring ass palettes. I don't care if things get muddy. I like tastefully muddy colors.

I'm making the palette because I want to incorporate more gouache in my skeches especially when I am out and about. Sometimes, I crave more than just pens and pencils.

I have been working in my living room for the past couple of months just because it was so cold in the office, and I didn't want to use power to turn on the heat. I had basically moved all of my art and hobbies downstairs. It was just being cozied up on the couch in my big blanket, but I missed my desk.

Have I shown you my desk? It's a bit dusty don't mind that. It's a little nest that I've built for myself. It's got a lot of fish, art from my college friends, smiskis, cute lights, and trinkets. Not pictured is my fire escape shelf that has more trinkets like LPS and hexbugs.

I wish my lava lamp worked!! I burnt the bulb... Just gotta buy a new one.

I also made this little gar guy as like a logo. I love illustrated logos. I know they're not the best for like actual companies, but for an illustrator, they work just fine.

3/31/26 - stickers + more!!!

Printing lots. The zines are a lot to print because my printer doesn't print double sided, so I have to plan around that. It's working out pretty well though. I just can't be too emptyheaded when I do it.

3/22/26 - stickers + more!!!

⚘ Saab 9000

⚘ Squiggle art for funsies

Here's some of the stuff I have been working on :] Of course, almost all related lmao. I have yet to make the zines and to actually print things, but I am making progress! It's just hard to keep my focus.

3/14/26

I have been drawing horses and dinosaurs lately. I used to draw dragons when I was first learning to draw. Euro-centric dragon designs have horse bodies, so I find horses kind of easy to draw. It's the face that's hard.

I didn't go in with much of a plan for this horse illo. I just winged it. Not a good idea. I had an issue with figuring out colors because I didn't do a color study. I also didn't do real thumbanils, so I didn't know what I actually wanted to do beyond the horse and text. Just overall poor planning iwth the illo. I still like it tho. It's differen't from my other stuff. At least to me!

3/10/26

Art flashbang.

Goodbye.

3/3/26

I saw an image I liked of a gleeby deeby cat in space, but the background was AI so I made this in frustration. It didn't take that long, and I set it as my desktop image.

Sticker ideas coming along nicely (mostly secret until I decide to reveal them)... I am arting again.. I won't let the depression win...

2/27/26

Gar-oboros? Ouro-gar-os?

Not sure what to call him! I think I'll stick with "precious."

2/25/26

Honda fih.

2/20/26 - HI HELLO HII

I am having chicken burger tonight. I have talked about my chicken burger vs chicken sandwich thing. Sandwich is where it's like a chunk of chicken breaded and fried. Chicken burger is the ground chicken that is breaded. I love both a lot... so much I had to draw something about it. Put this on a cave wall.

I drank a "potion" (instant coffee like the sugary kind), so I feel like I am losing my mind rn. I cannot keep my thoughts together.

Before I put far too much caffeine into my system, I cut my hair. I made it more mullet-y. It's not quite where I want it to be, but I'm gonna test out ways to style it first before I try to cut it more.

I have ideas for the stickers I want to make. They're super fun. I am excited. I'll also be making some zines. There may be scrolls in the future too. IYKYK

Anyways, I am going to try to not fly out of my seat. Wish me luck!

2/9/26 - cars cars cars

I've been drawing the rally cars I've seen both at LSPR and now Sno*Drift. I like to give them a line boil and overlay it on videos of the cars themselves. So far, I've only done two. 4DCAPRI from LSPR and the Subaru limited car that Travis Pastrana drives and Rhianon Gelsomino co-drives.

Pushing a car's proportions is hard as hell. Edges and panels have to line up right without looking wonky and such. I'm doing it though!

Here's the GIFs on their own.

Back to drawing :)

2/3/26 - drawing like a mad man

Idk what it is, but I'm drawin like crazy rn. Of course, the only thing I can think to draw is cars. I did one last nice spread in my sketchbook before I moved onto another.

Still learning like the structure of cars and how things tend to line up, but I think I am getting there. Because I can only draw cars right now, I want to make an illustrated map of the Nürburgring. If you don't know what the Nürburgring is, it's a really famous track in Germany. They have track days every single day that there isn't a race on it, so there's tons of videos of random things on the Nürburgring.

Only at the Nürburgring can you see a shitty little hatchback racing a Lambo. A lot of folks will bring their work vehicles too because they're in the area, so might as well.

The Nürburgring isn't like free reign let these people loose tho. They are required to take some sort of safety course. It is also an intense, long track, and there's clips of people puking. It costs a lot to get towed out too. Sometimes planes and helicopters show up? It's like a cartoon town.

On the topic of cars still, my partner and I discussed our dreams for the Kia Tasman which is a Kia truck sold on Australia. I think it has an ugly face, so I "fixed" it.

I'm mostly packed for Sno*Drift this weekend. After going to marches in the cold, I think I am prepared for the cold at Sno*Drift. Mini themselves will be there with John Cooper Works Minis. I really cannot wait to see a Countryman and Mini thrash in muddy snow. Also, a 1983 Toyota Celica, 1990 Volkswagen Jetta, 1981 Porsche 911, and a bunch of more modern rally cars. My favorites are always the old ones. LSPR had a Ford Capri with the original V8, and it was the coolest thing ever.

Here's some extra other stuff I made. Defo gonna go back to that bumper sticker. My fellow toaster drivers deserve better.

1/28/26 - yay race car

Amped for rally race soon. Connor Martell, Alex Gelsomino, and the Skoda won't be there tho :( BUT it's because they're in WRC. When we saw the Skoda at LSPR, it was really funny because everyone's midwestern accents enlongated the O. (Mostly me and the gang.)

Skooooda!

Drawing cars is really hard, but I don't hate it? In art school, a lot of my classmates avoided drawing vehicles at all. I really like it? Even though it's hard asf? It's really fun. Who knew that learning to draw something you like is actually kind of fun???

It's really difficult to turn a rigid object like a car into a cute, bouncy little thing. You kind of gotta push and pull like you do in animation. It's also really hard to stylize them because you can't stray too far away from how they actually look. I'm really into how @madeby_tommy stylizes vehicles.

I think the lancia is just so cutie. I love the weight of the lines and the forced perspective. It's just all so cute and loving AND he has good taste in cars. The 80s Nissan 720? Oh my gooood chef's kiss.

Anyways, back to drawing!

1/26/26 - making despite everything

I am having issues with making final-ish illos. It's just not feeling quite right. I have this issue of what I make not "professional" looking enough. Like I said in my last post, I have a lot of ideas about what's "correct" in illustration because of art school. I am not necessarily against art school. I'm against it costing so much, but it can be beneficial in many ways. An art degree isn't needed to have a creative career either. However, the feedback, networking, and resources I still have years later are great. The feedback from my working professional teachers did infect my ideas of how I want to present my work. Not that it was ever on purpose. They give their critique because it's what you do in art school to improve, but they also know what they are talking about. I just get too hung up on every single point ever said to me in my four years in school. Nothing negative. I'm not sad about any of it. I mean, I am pretty professional about receiving art critique. I'm excited to get it because it does help me improve. I just wonder if anything I make is like... good enough? I can't find a less sad way to describe it.

One thing that really messes with me is that I have somehow got the idea that having linework at all is "unprofessional." I really don't know where this idea comes from. I don't think that when I look at other people's work. It only applies to my own. I spent years training myself out of using linework in any of my illustrations. Shapes only, but now I want to explore lines again. It gives me some weird pit in my stomach though.

So I guess that's something I should work on.

Anyways, I just want to remind people to keep creating despite of everything that is going on. It's important to step back and just make.

Make and don't stop.

1/25/26 - miscellaneous things

I am debuting my new idea to quell my strange desire to post on instagram AND yap about it. However, we all know that instagram sucks. I just want to yap and have a chronological feed. So I made it for myself, and I have called it Fish Feed.

Official Fish Feed logo.

When I first learned CSS, I had been wanting to make a windows-esc theme on a page. It is over done, but I don't care. It makes me happy. I think it's fitting for this page. I'll be posting more casual things here because I am creating more these days. For now, I have a backlog of art and abandoned projects.

Here's an abandoned illo (illo = illustration) with freshwater fish in tamagotchis. Specifically, the tamagotchi connection V2 because those are the ones I grew up having. I have about three imported from Japan. They were for parts, and I was only able to restore one. Tamagotchis are actually pretty easy to fix. It's just replacing batteries and cleaning the connections.

Another abandoned piece of me (with a bob at the time) in my dream baja. The love for the subie baja goes really deep.

I'm really not sure what I was trying to do with this piece. I do have it stuck in my head that my portfolio needs to appeal to just children's book publishers, so I think I was trying to make an illo of a room to show that I can do interior spaces.

I do pressure myself a lot to make my portfolio exactly how all of my art teachers told me I needed to have it. While I think there was truth in what they said, I don't think it's applicable in the current illo industry. They are experienced in it, but the industry changes so much especially in economic turmoil.

Anyways, I got really bored of this illo, and I stopped.

Here's some sketchbook pages that I put on photos I took. The actual scans of the sketchbooks are defo somewhere in my sketchbook page.

Here's a few iterations of my instagram profile pics. I'm not sure if I wanna link my instagram quite yet on this site. I keep it somewhat professional with my business name attached to it.

Anyways, I think this format is fun to talk about just my art. I get a little lost in my website goofs and forget to make or show my art. I hope people find it fun also :]