MysticSparkleWings

Happy late Wednesday evening, Sparklers.

I really do want to get back to doing these Museletters (and Round-Ups; the Museletters, for those who don't know, are a free addition to the monthly blog posts I do for my Ko-fi Members and can also be read on my Ko-fi Page) right at the end of the current month, but I've had a lot of issues with that timing just not working out. It's very disheartening and frustrating for me, and I imagine it ain't too fun for you Sparklers, either.

In that vein, this time we've got a 2-in-1 combining both May and June, and hopefully I'll be back on track when it's time to do July's. Only one way to find out!

I suppose though it does kind of make sense to combine May and June's Museletters...because I unfortunately only got around to posting one piece of art publicly for each. But! That's not all I did for two months, and I will be including a couple of other things after we re-cap the finished art, both to help make up for the otherwise sparseness and also just for fun.

But first, of course...

For the past few MerMays, while I super-duper have not had the time [not to mention the motivation/energy], I also haven't been able to fully resist the temptation of getting in on the underwater fun, either.

Clearly, this year was no exception!

I had the idea to give my second-oldest Winx OC, Trinity, a turn in the spotlight. Pretty much since I dreamed her up, she was meant to have a mermaid form, but somehow in the 11 years between then and now I had never attempted to draw said mermaid form. About time, right?

I did start on this "Undersea Beauty" with an entire 2 Days to spare before May ended, hoping I'd have just enough time to get it fully rendered up to my usual Winx standards, but alas, that didn't happen. And once I realized that was going to be impossible, I switched gears and opted to color the sketch in a semi-watercolor-inspired style that I've sorta used before.

As I stated when I posted it though, I do intend to come back to the sketch and do it up right later. There may be a few small changes made when that happens, but overall I was really happy with how the sketch was turning out and I'm mostly happy with the color palette here. [Very happy with Trinity's genetic colors, it's the outfit colors that have a couple of things here and there I might want to tweak.]

For the record, I did have a different MerMay idea I had wanted to try squeezing into the last week of the month, but I couldn't pull together everything I needed to in time...However, I do plan on keeping what little I was able to prepare for that one and hopefully carry it over to MerMay next year.

And just to clarify, May in particular ended up as sparse as it did in large part to me still dealing with the emotional fallout from April. June, fortunately, was more about poor time management and just trying to be gentle with myself while finding my mental footing again.

In the same vein, June was more productive both behind the scenes and as a technicality. I may have only posted one art piece, but that art piece also came with the ever-rare Time Lapse video. AND I got really "wild" and made a little promo video to post a few days before the art itself went public to hopefully drum up a little more intrigue.

Originally, [as I said in the description] I wanted to have Three Cheers for Harmonic Revenge finished by June 8th, the release date of My Chemical Romance's album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (back in 2004). Because the entire premise was that I was drawing Helena—a character from a song of the same name on the album—as a Harmonix Fairy from Winx Club to celebrate the anniversary. (Check the description if you want me to expand more on how I came up with such a strange idea!)

I ended up missing that date because the art itself wasn't quite finished—It probably could have gone up but still needed some final tweaks and touches—and I hadn't even started on the written description or video.

The art was ready to go by the 12th, and the video was mostly done...except for the audio.

In my infinite wisdom [sarcasm], I really had my heart set on trying to make a mash-up of Helena and the Harmonix song for the backing music [instead of my usual royalty-free instrumental picks], despite having basically no experience with audio editing—especially not to the level of skill required to make something like that work really well.

So trying to do that naturally took way, way, way longer than expected. And it didn't help that I went out of my way to get feedback from two friends of mine that know more about audio than I do. Possibly more than I could ever hope to.

I'll let you Sparklers be the judge of whether the extra effort was really worth it or not:

However, if you're not brave enough or if you watch that version and decide it's simply not for your ears, I did go ahead and make an Unlisted version with a more "normal" royalty-free music choice:

And while I'm grabbing video links, here's that little promo video I mentioned went up a few days before the art went public [warning that it may be on the loud side]:

I would like to build up more of a habit of making videos like this, but I usually either forget or am too lazy to be bothered. This time I made an exception because it had already taken me so long, if there was any chance a promo video would put more eyes on the final art, it was worth it to me.

The promo video was whipped up in Canva instead of iMovie though, so that's why I wanted to give a warning about the volume. Canva gives me a volume slider but it doesn't seem to actually have an effect on the final export. But to get the visual effects I wanted without having to completely reinvent the wheel, it was Canva or bust.

I don't hate how it turned out. I quite like it, actually, and I've considered making a follow-up "in case you missed it" promo in the same style, but clearly I haven't gotten around to that yet.

I also really like how the thumbnail for the Time Lapse came out—Which is unusual for me in general, and extra odd considering I [as I typically do] forgot that I needed to make a thumbnail for the video, and had to figure something out in like a 20-minute rush while the video itself was still uploading.

There are still things about it that could be tweaked, but all things considered, this may actually be my favorite YouTube thumbnail I've made so far. It's a weird feeling, but a welcome one!

And y'know, if I was really meant to only post one thing in June, I am kinda glad it was a passion project like this. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it ending up meaning a lot more to me than I expected. That makes the struggles I had in pulling everything together worth it.

Now, while that is it for my public postings in May and June, I believe earlier I promised I had a few more sparklies up my sleeves before I go...

We'll start with something that may end up getting its own dedicated journal/status update to make sure those who are interested have the best chance possible of seeing it, but I'm undecided at the moment.

Some of you Sparklers should be very familiar with my Ohuhu Swatch Chart, which was featured pretty heavily in February's Museletter.

After the "Large Print Edition" was added at that time, two things have happened:

1. On June 17th, Ohuhu launched Refill Inks for 51 marker colors

2. On June 10th, I found out there is an 80 Set of Honolulu markers that Ohuhu only sells on their Japanese website and Amazon Japan, which features 19 additional unique colors not found in any other Honolulu set.

Ohuhu has made statements for months that refills were coming, so Point 1 wasn't a surprise and I was somewhat prepared to update the Chart again to reflect that some colors have refills available and some don't. (And this is actually a very good thing for the markers' longevity!)

Point 2, on the other hand...I was baffled when I first heard it, and I'm still baffled now. Why Ohuhu continues to let the Honolulu range be so divided among so many sets, now with regional restrictions, is absolutely beyond me.

Regardless. If I want the chart to remain true to its purpose, these 19 colors must be added.

The 80 set in question can be found on eBay for a premium price, so it's not completely unattainable for non-Japanese customers, but I do understand it's still going to be trickier to get ahold of than all the other Ohuhu sets, so the chart update will respect and reflect that.

I haven't updated the downloadable files in the Shop yet, but that should be happening very soon, as the files themselves are finished.

Once they are updated, the original 242 Version of the chart will officially be retired and no longer included, just to keep the number of charts I have to manage when an update is necessary more manageable [and I figure by now most people have moved on from that version anyway]. But more or less in its place will be the current 344 version + Its Large Print counterpart. Both 344 versions will be updated to reflect the refills and will state the true total marker number of 363, but will not have boxes for the additional 19 colors. This version is for those that know that 80 set is out of their reach and don't want 19 perpetually empty boxes staring at them.

And, of course, there will be the new proper 363 version with those 19 boxes, plus a Large Print version of it as well. It was a tight squeeze to make the single-page 363 work [the page basically has no margins anymore ], but I did just barely manage it!

Lord help me though if and when Ohuhu adds any more colors to the Honolulu range. I will most likely have to completely overhaul how the chart is designed to make everything fit...If it can still fit...

But I thought I'd let you Sparklers know since the Ohuhu Chart is my most popular chart at the moment, and the update was the primary project I worked on for June when I needed a break from Three Cheers for Harmonic Revenge.

In semi-related swatch chart news, I will also give you Sparklers a little teaser that I originally featured in the Monthly Round-Ups for April:

A few weeks ago, in a few places I posted a photo of two pencils I'd been waiting on to finish the job, but this is your first public look at the Prismacolor Swatch Chart I've been working on, in the same "Color Family" style as the Ohuhu one!

I'll spare you the further details of what went into making it until the chart is in the Shop, but I really wanted to go ahead and share since I'm not sure when exactly it'll go up. Like the Ohuhu update, it should be pretty soon, though!

And we're still not quite done—I've got a couple of smaller announcements to share, too.

Firstly, I'm sure by now at least some of you have heard of the Threads app, Instagram's answer to Twitter's recent decline. You can find me there now, and I've been more active over there than is typical since in these early days, there is a kind of appealing energy to the app's environment.

I can't make any promises that will last, and it'll be interesting to see if the app itself lasts longer than a couple of weeks, but if it does, I figure it's worth letting you Sparklers know.

And lastly, it's been a while since I've mentioned anything about my book, Drawn like a Magnet. Honestly, that's mostly been lazy- and forgetfulness on my part. But, my distributor Blurb sent me an email earlier this week to let me know they'll be running a 20% off sale from July 12th-14th. So, if you Sparklers are interested you can use code "BSF20 " on physical copies of DlaM over there!

And since between them and a few other storefronts this seems to be a week to do sales and July is DlaM's Birth Month anyway, I'm going to match Blurb's 20% on the DlaM eBook over on my Ko-fi! Just use the code "TERRIBLE2S" [because DlaM is two years old, get it? ], same dates—Today through the 14th!

If I hear about any other sales that apply to DlaM this week, I'll do my best to let you Sparklers know. At the moment, Blurb is the only one I can find. Depending on how it all shakes out...There may be one other Drawn like a Magnet-related announcement a little later this month, but that's not set in stone.

For now though, I hope with everything I have been able to share that you Sparklers saw something you enjoyed, or something to look forward to. Even if it wasn't as much as I'd hoped I'd be able to share with you by now.

Before I go, I will include a very gentle reminder about the New Website Goal that we're still working towards on Ko-fi: the $250 goal is officially 50% funded, which is amazing! And the sooner the additional $125 can be raised, the sooner I can actually start building the new website, and the sooner you Sparklers will get to see and use it!

If you're interested in contributing, you have your choice between One-off Donations, Monthly Support/Membership with special perks (namely the Monthly Round-Up posts like this that show exclusive content and behind-the-scenes stuff!), or Shop purchases (almost everything is Pay What You Want!). Or, if you can't contribute directly (which I understand completely), just spreading the word helps too!

Either way, Thank You SO MUCH for your time, attention, and support, no matter what form it comes in; Sparkle On and I'll see you all again soon!

Mystic

Hey there Sparklers; It's been a while, hasn't it?

So I suppose I should start with an apology, because I am sincerely sorry that it's been almost a year now since I was doing my regular "Monthly Museletter/Round-Up" Posts, and it's also been a few months now since I was posting art...really at all, let alone regularly.

And because of that, if it wasn't already obvious, this isn't going to be quite like our former "regular" journals. It's going to be long, which itself isn't unusual, but because of how much there is to cover, I'm going to try and divide this all up into mostly self-contained sections, and have a list of those sections (marked by headers of the same title) beneath this paragraph so you can jump around and read "the interesting bits" at your leisure:

• Overview of Where I've Been

• DeviantArt's Changes

• Other Things I've Been Doing

• Part 1: Ohuhu Again!

• Part 2: Social Sites & Dolls

• Part 3: Everything Else

• Peeks At Actual Art Things I've Done

• Wrap Up

Overview of Where I've Been

So what happened? Well, the Monthly blog posts were just a victim of my executive dysfunction—I got in my head about how long they usually take to put together and when I'd miss one or put it off too long, naturally that would mean the next one would take even longer to catch up and it just spiraled downward from there.

Clearly, if I want to continue with those going forward, I need to make some changes to how they work so I can actually do them. At the moment though I don't have any concrete plans, but I have some general ideas that relate more to the next section.

Okay, but what about Artwork? I was on a pretty good roll there, especially with Winx Art, and then...Crickets.

This one I can't even fully explain myself. At first, I know I was largely bogged down by the fact that I just kept missing self-imposed deadlines to have certain pieces finished by, and my motivation to post art was majorly crippled by some Changes DeviantArt Made, but I feel like those two reasons alone don't cover everything.

My personal life has also been a bit of a roller coaster these past few months, but that is somewhat "normal" for me, so I don't feel right blaming it on that, either.

My best guess is those things combined with my usual Post-Inktober Funk™ and made a kind of "Seasonal Burnout," sort of like Seasonal Depression (as is fairly common for a lot of people to experience around the holidays and winter months). I've had plenty of creative ideas and was even able to do some other creative things I'll touch on more in a bit, but the motivation to actually draw was just...not there.

The other reason I chalk this up as "Seasonal" is because as the weather has finally, slowly started to warm up, I have noticed some internal changes with myself...Nothing major has happened yet, but I feel more squarely pointed back in a "Drawing Direction," if that makes any sense.

I think the last piece of the puzzle to get me at least sort of back on track is related to those Changes I mentioned DeviantArt made. So let's talk a bit about that...

DeviantArt's Changes

Towards the end of October—Naturally, my busiest month!—All of a sudden, I could no longer edit Deviation descriptions directly in Sta.sh, which I'm sure some of you Sparklers are familiar with.

This matters because I found writing & editing descriptions in Sta.sh much more convenient than typing them directly on the Submission Page. Mostly for formatting reasons, but also as a hangover from many years ago when I lost a a few descriptions that were written only on the Submission Page, which didn't (doesn't?) auto-save consistently like Sta.sh did.

So. That wasn't good, but I figured out that I could still edit existing Text documents that I had in Sta.sh, so I took to writing the descriptions in an old one of those and would copy & paste it into the final Art description later. But eventually, that method stopped working too. (I think around mid-November, but I'm not 100% sure.)

As of right now, you cannot edit any text of any kind in Sta.sh anymore. You either handle it directly (on the Submission Page for Artwork, or using dA's on-site text editor for written work), or you don't bother.

Now, I'll wholeheartedly agree that on paper this doesn't sound like a big deal. And it really probably shouldn't be. But nevertheless, to cut an overly long explanation short: It is/was for me. It felt like one of the last few threads tying me here, to DeviantArt, snapped.

Again, to cut an overly long explanation short, emotionally, that really hurt. I have more or less been mourning the loss of the DeviantArt I first joined back in 2011 as a result.

And to cut one more explanation short: I've been thinking for a while now that it might be in my best interest to start up a more proper dedicated blog for my long art descriptions, and this blow to the way I write said descriptions on dA really solidifies that. I still have to figure out exactly where said blog will be—most likely Tumblr or Blogger*—but I have pretty much made up my mind that it does need to exist, one way or another.

(*I'd stick it over on Ko-fi, but as it currently stands Ko-fi doesn't have great organization or archive functions for older blog posts; If it's not recent it's difficult to find, and that just won't work with the blog-flow I know I'd need, among other small issues with Ko-fi's formatting.)

With all that said...I don't really want to say there's still a bit of light at the end of the tunnel for dA because that doesn't really feel accurate, but that's the closest expression I have.

Very recently, DeviantArt announced a new overhaul coming to the Submission Page, and while I have extremely mixed feelings about it (because I strongly suspect this is exactly why Sta.sh has been crippled)...I don't hate it. There are things I like about it, I'm mainly just bitter and fearful about Sta.sh's future.

But I also haven't fully put this "Studio" thing to the test yet—That requires actually submitting art. So, perhaps there is yet more hope than I think...

Other Things I've Been Doing

To that end, you're probably wondering about those "other creative things" I've been able to do I mentioned earlier, and also if there is any "proper" artwork to show for these past couple of months.

I'll go ahead and spoil that yes, even though there isn't much of it, I do have some "proper" artwork things I can show you, but I think (as this section title implies) it'll be better to address those other creative things I've been doing first.

Part 1: Ohuhu Again!

Probably the most interesting to you Sparklers will be the revelation that I'm in very early stages of working on a kind of "Buying Guide" for the Ohuhu Honolulu Markers.

I'm sure some of you Sparklers are familiar with my Ohuhu Chart and the unofficial "ongoing saga" of keeping that thing up-to-date. Some newer Sparkles may also have originally heard of the chart and/or me from the Ohuhu SubReddit, because I've spent quite a bit of time over there helping people figure out the best way to get all 363 of the Honolulu colors...since unfortunately, Ohuhu has made that process kind of confusing.

Very similar to my chart sorting out confusion over how many colors there are in the first place, I want to make some kind of fixed resource I can point people to that would hopefully help clear up a lot of that said confusion.

I don't want to get to specific on the details of the "final" guide at this point since it is so early; Rather I want to just tell you Sparklers the actual work I've been doing to make it happen, and that all boils down primarily to three things:

1. Collecting and Organizing some text-based information (mostly in the form of Spreadsheets), and I was already doing a fair bit of this before I decided to even attempt making a Buying Guide

2. Fixing up my marker storage. I keep my Honolulus in their original bags for space-related reasons, but I've been meaning to make dividers for the bags to make everything more stable, and Spare-Cartoonist6276's Honeycomb method was the final push to do that I needed to actually do it. The only real downside has been that it just takes a while to construct each honeycomb section (and I'm not even bothering with the pretty color-matching cardstock). Fortunately, at time of writing I only have 2 sections left to go out of the original 11!

3. Swatching & Attempting to sort every color in a "Proper" Color Order. This is also something I've been meaning to try anyway and how useful it would be became pretty undeniable as I started thinking about how this Buying Guide is going to work. I'm in Stage 1 for this process—As I finish a honeycomb section, I swatch the markers in that section, so when the honeycombs are done, the swatches for colors I actually own will also be done. This is also different from my usual swatching because I made very basic little cards with holes punched in them so hopefully comparing colors and physically arranging them is as easy as possible. This swatching has been a long time coming though and is also taking a little bit longer because...I don't actually own every Honolulu color! I'm missing about 35, all of which belong to the "Pesky 43" that only come in certain sets. And with other expenses and trying to save up for a new website (yep, that Ko‑fi Goal is still active, folks!), I just haven't been able to justify dropping $130+ on yet more markers to fix that problem.

However, after some poking around and discussion in the wider Ohuhu Community, a Reddit User by the name of JayZedHorse very kindly reached out and offered to send me physical swatches of the missing colors! They are en route to me as I type!

There are still many small ways in which this isn't a completely perfect solution, but it is still a very solid step in the right direction and I am eagerly counting down the days until I have those swatches in hand!

So at the moment I have the small goal of being finished with the Honeycombs and my own swatches before the swatches JayZed sent me arrive; That way I should be able to jump pretty straight into the comparisons and start on color arrangement. But, fortunately, even if I can't be finished with the honeycombs by then, it won't be the end of the world. Both things will get done either way, it'll just take a little longer.

But that is about all I have to say about this Buying Guide that I think you Sparklers would be interested in, for now, so on to the next subject...

Part 2: Social Sites & Dolls

I'll start by saying there are two Social Media sites I've been semi-active on and so people that either follow me in those places or frequent the same communities I do will probably already have a few ideas of the other ways I've been flexing my creative muscles lately. [...And Members of the Sparklers' Club Discord Server will also have seen a fair bit of the same posted directly in there!]

As I sort of mentioned with the Ohuhu section above, I've been spending quite a bit of time on Reddit. It's not my favorite place on the internet, but I do like that I've been able to have long-ish form discussions about things over there that I would be pretty hard pressed to cleanly fit inside of art posts. That's where most of my writing muscles have been getting their exercise.

The other one, and probably a little more interesting to you Sparklers, is BlueSky, one of the half a dozen "Twitter Replacements" that's been floating around.

To be fair, there were points where I though either Mastodon or Threads were going to be my "Twitter Replacement" of choice, but ultimately neither ended up sticking with me and I'm not really sure why. It's possible the same will eventually be true for BlueSky as well, but so far even without fresh art to post it's been jiving decently enough with me.

I've mostly been posting Doll Photos over there; Literally the month after I lost the will to keep up with the monthly blog posts entirely, my interest in Fashion Dolls was finally renewed after a probably 5-6 year hiatus with one Karla Choupette.

I'll spare you Sparklers the nitty-gritty details (especially since I think I may be able to delve into them more appropriately in the future ), but suffice to say after falling in love with Karla and Monster High finally producing dolls I actually like again that I've been having a bit of a "Doll Love Renaissance" and I have taken probably a gross and shocking amount of photos of small plastic ladies over the course of the last year.

I don't know what it is about BlueSky that's made me genuinely want to share over there—It certainly isn't a massive following or massive amounts of engagement—but there is something, and it's pretty nice when previously I had to really talk myself into sharing anything that wasn't directly art-related over on Twitter.

Aside from just letting you Sparklers know I'm active on BlueSky at all, this is also relevant because I've taken to fairly regularly making things for the dolls—Mostly tiny crochet clothes, but a few other accessories too, like a belt I recently made to cover up uneven stitching on one doll's dress. And sometimes I re-paint details on certain dolls as well, but nothing super dramatic like some Doll Customizers do!

I would eventually like to compile photos of all (or at least most) of the things I've made for the dolls and maybe actually post them at least over on Ko-fi, and maybe here on DeviantArt too, since I am pretty proud of a lot of them and I think they'd be mildly interesting to my audience. But there are no concrete plans for that at the moment, just wishful thinking.

One related thing I do have slightly more concrete plans for though is the release of a Crochet Pattern—I got a little tired of the lack of pants options for the Rainbow High dolls, especially non-skinny ones, so I did some research and muddled together a pattern for some fitted bell-bottoms. I think the pattern itself is pretty much ready-to-go for sharing, but I did want to make one last test pair of the pants first (this will be the third pair in total) just to make sure one of my yarn recommendations works as well as I think it will.

The pattern will 100% be posted in the Ko‑fi Shop when the time comes, I'm just not completely sure if I'll be attempting to post it (or example photos at least) to DeviantArt as well, but...probably. We'll see!

Part 3: Everything Else

There is one more "not proper art" thing I've been slowly chipping away at that I think you Sparklers will find interesting.

...To be fair, there are some other much smaller things that I've shared with the Sparklers' Club on Discord that would also fit in this category, but they're not as interesting and would normally be saved for the "From the Archives" section in a Monthly Round-Up, so I'd feel out of place discussing them here.

Anyway. I've started the maybe-minorly-insane project of maintaining a Wiki for my Winx Club OCs: "The Mystix Dimension."

I've been keeping a running Google Doc with information about said OCs over the past couple of years as I've been doing major redevelopment on them, but I was getting tired of the limited ways to organize everything in that format.

After a lot of research that ultimately ended up going nowhere, I opted for the format I know best. I spent quite a bit of time making pages for my most-used Winx OCs on the Winx Fanon Wiki back in the day, but in the present I wanted the freedom to mess with the Wiki's code to both make it look more like the "official" Winx Club Wiki and also tailor it more to my own specific needs.

The "Mystix Wiki" is still very Under Construction with a lot of stuff missing, but it is slowly but surely getting there and most of the "bones" are in place.

So if you Sparklers are curious about my Winx OCs specifically, you can pop over there and have a look around—Of the information there, there's already a nice sampling that's pretty different from what long-time Sparklers may remember of my OCs from the earlier DeviantArt days when I was posting about them super regularly.

A side effect of the Wiki that I semi-expected though is that it has made me realize how little I've actually drawn of my OCs even though they've been pretty consistently on the back of my mind for months. So I think pretty soon there are going to be more new Winx drawings in the works as I continue to fill out the Wiki.

And speaking of drawings in the works...

Peeks At Actual Art Things I've Done

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I definitely don't have a lot in the way of Work-In-Progress (WIP) Drawings, but I do have some that I started on before this unintentional hiatus. While I'd normally save some or even most of the WIPs for a Monthly Round-Up instead, given the circumstances I think it only makes sense to go ahead and share them with you Sparklers here and now.

We'll start with a few that should be recognizable as "updates" from the WIP Palooza that I posted back in August:

Firstly, and this will most likely be the next finished piece I actually post, I did finally polish off that sketch of Karla Choupette in the Winx Club art style. (And this is what I meant earlier when I mentioned I might be able to elaborate on my Doll Renaissance feelings later—The description for this piece would be a good place to do that!)

...I'm not showing the completely finished version here because I would like there to be some surprise when it goes public, and also even after all this time I'm still not 100% on the background I chose. So it could still change before the final post.

But Karla herself I'm happy with. I have no idea if I'll ever draw any more Rainbow/Shadow High characters in the Winx Style, but the door is open if I decide I want to.

Next we have...heh, My Winxsona in the Fan Transformation Formalix, better known as "Winxsona Winter Week 7". Incredibly, unbelievably late for "Winxsona Winter" at this point. But nevertheless, I started on the final two pieces for the series and I do want to finish them!

This one isn't fully finished like Karla, but it isn't too far off. It mainly needs shading and a background...And if I had no clue what to do for a background for Karla, then I have like -5 clues what to do for this one. I'll figure something out, though!

Likewise, I also have the "finished" sketch for "Winxsona WInter Week 8," or: My Winxsona in the Fan Transformation Dimentix.

Mystic Stars and Above on my Ko-fi already saw this WIP back in July, but this is much further along than you Sparklers saw in the WIP Palooza; At that time I had the concept sketch for the outfit and the wings done, and the pose, but I hadn't drawn the outfit on the pose yet.

The Dimentix wings are also ready for coloring (and the Mystic Stars & Above saw this one already too), but they won't be colored until after I get the flat colors down for the outfit/main image so I have a better idea of what colors should go where:

Again, no clue for the background on the finished Dimentix piece, but push-come-to-shove, I can skip a proper background and just recreate the..."wallpaper" effects that were used for the original Dimentix images made by FlorainBloom back in the day.

That leaves us with the two final WIPs I have to share, but for my Winx-loving Sparklers, I think they'll be the most exciting...

Yes, over a year later, I'm picking up the "series" that technically began with Light that Burns the Sky!

Originally, I wasn't sure "Dark Enchantix" (or, my preferred name that I way overthought: "Incantix") would even be a series, but the response to Bloom and Stella was so positive [the Time Lapse has over 20,000 views on YouTube!!] and I did enjoy the concept so much...Yeah, it only feels right to give the rest of the Winx the same treatment.

​As you can see, I've managed to come pretty far. Tecna and Flora have most of their shading done, so next for them is getting their wings in order, then the background (and I plan to use basically the same background that Bloom and Stella got for everyone, so that shouldn't take too much work). And Layla and Musa are pretty far along too...However, I have gone back and forth a bit on Layla's blues and Musa's golds/yellows.

Once again, I'll spare you the nitty-gritty for now, but was one of the challenges for my "Incantix Vision" from the beginning and is the smaller part of why these two drawings have been delayed so much. [...Y'know aside from the other things we talked about at the beginning of this journal.]

The other thing is that I lost my mojo for these two pieces specifically because I had hoped I'd get them finished by the end of the year to submit to a Winx Club fan project, and clearly that didn't happen. (I did go ahead and submit Bloom & Stella since they were finished, though!)

However, that fan project recently re-opened submissions through the end of May this year, so naturally I'm feeling a bit of an itch to see if I get can them both finished by then, even if it's just the still images and the Time Lapses (which only make sense to make since the first one did so well) have to wait a bit longer.

...Considering it's nearly the end of April now and I'd like to get at least 1-2 other things posted before I jump back into Incantix, and all the other circumstances, I obviously have my doubts about whether or not that will happen. But, who knows, maybe telling you Sparklers about it at this stage will be the extra encouragement I need.

At the very least, you Sparklers now know those finished pieces are coming eventually even if it isn't in May, and that was the main point in sharing the WIPs anyhow.

Wrap Up

​So. Now you Sparklers know where the heck I've been and some of what I've been up to in my time away.

I really didn't mean to more or less up and disappear and I am not happy that I have so little to show for my absence...But there's no time machine to go back and un-do it all, so for better or worse it is what it is.

I am, however, writing this blog post in the hopes that it'll be the "permission" I need to give myself to at least attempt to get back into an art posting rhythm.

As I touched on in the previous section, I do have a vague plan for my next finished piece to post, but it felt kind of wrong to just randomly go back to posting art like the past 4-5 months didn't happen with no explanation, especially here on Ko-fi. So here we are.

And...Beyond that, I really don't know how to end this. It feels a bit cheap to leave on my previous usual blog post send-off when this one is so different in nature...But I also don't consider myself as very good at ending these things in the first place.

I should say though before I go—I really, sincerely do appreciate you Sparklers that have stuck by me in one way or another while I went radio silent. Every favorite, comment, whatever—I've still seen them all while I was away, and those are the little things that keep bringing me back when I do hit rough patches like this. Knowing that at the end of the day the art things I do matter to someone out there. It means more than I can put into words. So thank you, Sparklers, for just being there.

​Hopefully, it won't be too much longer before I can share some new things with you Sparklers to make it really worth your while. But, until then, as always...

Take Care and Sparkle On

~Mystic~

I am a little later than I'd like with the Museletter (and Round-Ups; the Museletters, for those who don't know, are a free addition to the monthly blog posts I do for my Ko-fi Members and can also be read on my Ko-fi Page)) for April, but this will still be technically better than March's, and as I'll explain in a second, I have more of a reason than ever to give myself a pass this time around.

Some of you Sparklers may remember that last month I cited April had been far busier than I anticipated up until that point.

Sparklers, I cannot emphasize this enough that boy did I have no clue what was just around the corner.

There is no gentle way to word this: My dad suffered a stroke on April 24th. I'm sure I don't have to tell most of you Sparklers that it was very scary and caught the entire family off guard. And there has been a lot of aftermath to deal with, and there's still more to come. (He is, however, thankfully alive and in recovery.)

That's about as far into the details as I'm comfortable going, but suffice to say this was easily the most chaotic April of my life so far and I am so hoping May will be a much more pleasant and calm month, but given the circumstances, I'm certainly not going to count on that.

In any case, I thought you Sparklers should know. I'm usually not the most vocal person on the internet anyway, but I figure someone is bound to notice if I seem even quieter than usual, and as you can imagine any plans I had for the last week or so of April went completely out the window while I prioritized being there for my family.

That said, while things have stabilized for the moment...I have genuinely missed letting myself disappear into art-related content, and genuinely feel an update is a little overdue.

So then, on with the Museletter show, yeah?

...Unfortunately, for the reasons I just went over, I only ended up posting a single drawing publicly in April...

I assume most of you Sparklers remember Winxsona Winter Week 6 from last month, in which I chose the divisive Sirenix for my "any Canon Transformation" and ended up really enjoying the results.

Ironically, that and this additional Sirenix piece are now some of the best "performing" of the Winxsona series, only being cleanly outdone by Week 2/Enchantix [which I expected to outpace them all by a country mile anyway].

Regardless, as I hinted at last month when I finished Week 6, I was pretty set in the budding idea that I could quickly put together this Bonus piece to hopefully make the gap between Week 6 and Week 7 [as I'd only barely started planning for 7 and 8 at that time] go by a little faster. [A decision now also thoroughly coated in irony, naturally.]

I go over this in It's a Rush of Wonder's description, but since recapping is what we do in these Museletters: In Season 5, when the Winx use Sirenix underwater, their hair color changes. And this is part of why I was initially a little torn on whether I wanted to do a faux-screenshot like this for Week 6, or an "End of Transformation" image like I ended up doing.

I liked the idea of a different hair color adding a little variety and excitement to the Winxsona series, but there was something incredibly appealing to me about trying a EoT Sirenix image, as I'd never done that before.

After considering I probably could use the same base image for both and just change a few details, the background, and how it was cropped, "doing both" actually seemed reasonable and pretty fun in this case, so I took the opportunity to try.

And now I'm honestly not sure which Sirenix drawing I like more—this one, or the original Week 6. There's a lot I love about them both!

I hope I have equally as positive feelings when I do finally get around to Weeks 7 and 8. And since it has been so long and April was otherwise barren, to try and help tied you Sparklers over until then, I'll go ahead and reveal the Fan Transformations I have picked out for those two, as well as what I think is my "final" sketch nailing down the outfit design for Week 7, which I did just finish up at the end of April.

For Week 7, I decided to try my hand at Silencelabyrinth's Formalix. The Winx in Formalix, and a write-up from her that explains the form in more detail.

At a few different points I've had an inkling to draw my Winxsona in a formal gown like the Winx wear often in Season 3; This isn't the exact same thing, but I think it will suit the desire to draw a shiny fancy dress just fine, and it had the added benefit of being based on a fairy's Magic Winx, which was the first task of the Winxsona series.

Although I did accidentally create a bit of a challenge for myself, since my Magic Winx already uses a few ballgown elements in the base design and I don't want it to look like all I did was make the skirt longer/fuller.

Because I'm a strange cat, I also wanted to sneak in just a little Ancient Egyptian flair...though you can't really tell that at all from this uncolored sketch. And it'll still probably be really subtle in the final art since silver jewelry will fit the rest of the color palette much better than gold, but you don't really see silver in Ancient Egyptian artifacts.

Still, at the moment the only thing I'm not super sold on from this sketch is the hairstyle, but if I can't think of something else I like better I'll most likely stick with it for simplicity's sake.

I've also got a pose for Week 7 sketched out, but it's not quite to a point I feel like sharing, so I'm going to hold on to that for now.

I do not have any sketches for Week 8, but I have pretty solidly decided it's going to be Florainbloom's Dimentix. Examples from her Gallery, and Dimentix's write-up. [Though this write-up focuses mostly on the way the transformation looks; if you want more about how it functions, I'd take a look at the Dimentix pieces she did of the Winx and run the Russian text in the description through Google Translate.]

Both of these weren't easy choices, though. There are a lot of beautiful and creative fan transformations the fandom has created over the years. But in the end, I had to hit just the right combination of feeling like I would enjoy drawing the transformation, something that had lots of examples I could reference, and how memorable the transformation was to me.

And I also considered a few options that aren't really fan transformations because they have canon roots [like "Gothic Sirenix" for example], but ultimately those didn't feel like they were in the spirit of the Winxsona challenge.

A serious contender though was Flyrix, a very old fan transformation by a (seemingly now lost) creator called Tata, that to me (and I'm sure at least a few other Veteran Winx Fans) is sort of the "OG" Fan Transformation. Way, way, way back in the day when Season 5 was still yet to come, it was briefly possible to believe Flyrix (or, as I'm learning today, it was originally called "Gemix"?) was going to be the new transformation. Wild stuff!

But since completing Winxsona Winter has already taken me ages upon ages longer than it really should have, and Flyrix has those grand detailed wings and a fairly detailed outfit design (as lovely as the whole package is!)...For now, I'm going to file away attempting to draw it in the "Maybe Someday" box, lest I risk Winxsona Winter being extended into 2024.

Dimentix was the next runner-up; It's also a pretty old fan transformation and another one that I stumbled upon and adored dearly when I was first finding my footing in the fandom over a decade ago. I still have my concerns about some of the details, but I'm willing to give it a good honest try anyway!

Speaking of Good Honest Tries, I will share one last thing with you Sparklers as a bit of treat/early preview.

While this is definitely not the best picture of it [I need to find the time to take some nicer ones], this my Sparklers is a little shrug/bolero ["mini cardigan"] that finished about halfway through April.

I used to have a store-bought white bolero years ago, but at some point it disappeared, and they seem a little trickier to find these days. I still have a couple of black ones, but the tank tops and dresses I like to wear them with don't always suit black. So it only just recently occurred to me I might be able to make myself a new one.

I don't really share my crochet work very often both because I just don't usually make "shareable" things very often and also even at my best [which this isn't] I don't think I'm very good at photographing it. However, this time I do want to eventually share nice pictures of this one because while I originally tried to find an existing bolero pattern and just make small tweaks to it, this one really has turned out to be more of my own free-handed pattern in the end.

I mean that literally, too. I did my best to write down most of what I did just in case I want to make another in the future [potentially in more colors], and since I did have such a time finding an existing pattern I was happy with, I do want to try and clean the pattern up enough to share it.

The final pattern still probably won't be very fancy, but hopefully, it'll at least be something people can understand and adjust for themselves as they need to.

Regardless, I also wanted to show you Sparklers this to sort of demonstrate I already had yarn on the brain before disaster struck, because you should be seeing a bit more of it in May's Museletter & Round-Ups. Apparently, in the throes of emotional turmoil, my brain decided constantly fiddling with something soft with my hands was the best way to stay grounded.

For now though, that's really all I've got for you, Sparklers. I'm a little sad myself that this is it, but hopefully I'll be able to make what's left of May a little more productive and have more to share with you next time.

Before I go, I will include a very gentle reminder about the New Website Goal that I told you about last month: We're $140 away from the $250 goal, and the sooner the additional $140 can be raised, the sooner I can actually start building the new website, and the sooner you Sparklers will get to see and use it!

If you're interested in contributing, you have your choice between One-off Donations, Monthly Support/Membership with special perks (namely the Monthly Round-Up posts like this that show exclusive content and behind-the-scenes stuff!), or Shop purchases (almost everything is Pay What You Want!). Or, if you can't contribute directly (which I understand completely), just spreading the word helps too!

Either way, Thank You SO MUCH for your time, attention, and support, no matter what form it comes in; Sparkle On and I'll see you all again soon!

Mystic

Well Sparklers, I think this new free addition to the monthly blog posts I do for my Ko-fi Members (which you can also read on my Ko-fi Page) went over well enough last month—I enjoyed it, at least!—so we're going to stick with it for the foreseeable future and see how it goes.

I do however have to start this one off with an apology: The last week of March and the first half of April proved to be far busier in non-art-related responsibilities than I anticipated, so all of March's monthly blogs are going up way later than intended.

If this had happened some other time, it's likely I would've sent out a smaller update for transparency and held off to do March and April at the same time, but there's a reason I wanted to go ahead and get March's out as soon as I was able.

Some of you may remember from last month's Museletter that I got a nasty surprise that the "move and start over" I knew was eventually coming for my website had suddenly moved much higher up on my to-do list thanks to storage issues with my current website builder-host, Wix.

Since then, I've done some research and as much as I don't like it, the best option from here is to finally switch to a custom domain and start paying a subscription to a different website builder/host. This is incredibly frustrating since my website was operating completely for free before.

As I've said in the past, I knew at some point I'd have to pay if I wanted to use a custom domain, but I've run the numbers and even with the most economical new host option that provides roughly the same functionality the website had before, the cost is over double of what I expected.

Likewise, I regret to inform you Sparklers that I have updated my Ko‑fi Goal to help offset these costs.

The goal to cover all the initial setup costs for the new website plus the first 2 years of operation is set at $250, but thanks to my lovely Ko-fi Members & Supporters and Sparklers that have made purchases in my Ko‑fi Shop, that goal is not starting at $0.00. We're starting at $100, nearly halfway there!

So a quick but incredibly heartfelt THANK YOU to all of you Sparklers that have helped get me this far already; It helps ease some of that frustration I mentioned before that I have to even ask/make these goal changes.

And I don't really like doing this either, but good business sense says now is the time that I ask: If you're feeling particularly generous and you'd like to push that goal even closer to being reached, you have your choice between One-off Donations, Monthly Support/Membership with special perks, or Shop purchases on my Ko-fi. Or, if you can't contribute directly (which I understand completely), just spreading the word helps too!

I'm not going to sit on my hands until the goal is reached, either—That's part of why I wanted to go ahead and get the blogs out, to show that while it may be late I haven't forgotten about my obligations.

For now, with the big housekeeping announcement out of the way, let's move on to the more interesting intention of the Museletter—Recapping what I did in March! [And just to be clear, if I say "this month" in the next few paragraphs, March will be the month I'm referring to, not April—That's what I get for not being able to get these posts together sooner. ]

Much to my own pleasant surprise, March ended up being fairly productive; I got five pieces of art posted—three new, one backlog, one February Straggler—added both a fresh coloring page and a .PDF to my Shop, and managed to make some good starts on things that you'll be seeing for April's Museletter when the time comes.

We started off with that February Straggler, which I mentioned but didn't show in last month's Museletter; "Glimmers in the Rough," which was supposed to be for Pokémon Day on February 27th, but I didn't finish it until just before the clock struck midnight into the 28th, and didn't have it ready to post until March 2nd.

I wanted to make something for Pokémon Day this year since I've been really enjoying Pokémon Violet over the past couple of months—It may actually be my new favorite in the series, bugginess aside—I just didn't manage the timing very well.

I didn't officially decide I was going to make something until a week before, and then I got it in my head that I really wanted whatever it was to be a traditional piece, which did slow me down a little since a lot of the techniques I wanted to use, yes, probably would've been way faster to do digitally. And then as I mentioned last month, the latter half of February was generally pretty busy, which really didn't help.

That said, I'm still happy with how this piece turned out; I got to celebrate this weird little new Pokémon I like a lot, Glimmet, and I was able to do a little playing with a couple of new-to-me supplies I've had sitting around waiting for their turn.

So at the end of the day, "Glimmers in the Rough" was a pretty good time and I'm not mad at it, even if it was posted later than I wanted.

Fortunately after that, I was able to upload the rest of March's art without really any other timing-related hiccups.

The next of which was "Winxsona Winter '22 Week 4: Lovix," one of three pieces featured in a WIP Wednesday last month [another being "Light that Burns the Sky," and the final one we'll be getting to shortly].

Also fortunately, I didn't have any major hiccups while drawing this piece, which was a little surprising to me since I've never really properly designed a Lovix before—I've drawn one precisely once, but that was a decade ago and I really didn't understand what I was doing at the time.

That said, it also isn't really a "stand out" among the Winxsona pieces for me. It's nice and I am happy with it, Lovix is just a little unexpectedly plain compared to most other Winx transformations, and this piece probably leans the most into looking like a random screenshot than most of the others so far, so it kind of naturally doesn't have as strong of a "wow" factor.

Now though, we change gears a little and go back to something non-Winx and traditional, that had been sitting in my backlog for a year: "Luckitty."

As I alluded to last month and said outright when this piece finally was posted, I originally drew this cutie for Saint Patrick's Day last year...but I was only half-finished as March 17th came and went.

So, with no better ideas when to post it, I held onto it for a year, and it's now finally gotten its time to shine.

Likewise, I originally made the lines digitally and printed them out for myself to trace [then handled everything else traditionally], so from the beginning I was already set up to make a Coloring Page, and that's exactly what I did. Though I did go back a few days before March 17th this year and make some slight tweaks/improvements [mostly to the paws and tail], so the Coloring page lines are actually now a little bit better than my final drawing.

That step in particular seems to have been well worth it, as this is now one of my most downloaded Coloring Pages, and my Coloring Pages tend to move pretty slowly as-is.

Really, getting these ready to post made me want to get back into the swing making Holiday Kitty + Coloring Page art more often, but my to-do list is long enough as it is, so I definitely can't make any kind of commitment on that. But! Maybe eventually!

Speaking of eventuallys, though...

"Winxsona Winter '22 Week 5: Sophix" was actually able to miraculously top Week 2, Enchantix, from the Winxsona series as my personal favorite. I would not have guessed any of the others in the series would manage such a thing!

Especially not considering how green Sophix generally is. Green isn't my least favorite color, but it's not usually one I gravitate toward either.

This was also my first time designing a Sophix in a decade, much like Lovix, so I definitely didn't have the advantage of experience helping it out either.

The same cannot be said for the final art piece I posted in March, "Winxsona Winter '22 Week 6: Sirenix."

Despite Sirenix's reputation in the greater Winx Club fandom, I actually like it pretty well and it's one of the post-Enchantix transformations I have the most experience designing for. (...Not that that's saying much because beyond Magic Winx and Enchantix, I really haven't designed that many of any of the others...)

Still, I think my appreciation for it really came through, because this piece is now in a three-way tie for my favorite Winxsona piece with Week 5/Sophix and the Bonus piece that went up the first week of April. Something else I also definitely didn't see coming!

This is also where I originally thought Winxsona Winter would end for me, because I was unsure about being to do two Fan Transformations justice for Weeks 7 and 8, but as I said when I posted the Sophix piece, I have finally made up my mind I'm going to give Weeks 7 and 8 a good honest try!

And for what it's worth, I don't have solid WIPs to show for either yet, but I have decided on what they'll be, and I'm in very early design stages for Week 7.

Shifting gears to something completely different; The one other thing I posted publicly in March is something I've been meaning to do for a while now.

I added an "Alcohol Marker Crash Course" .PDF to my Ko‑fi Shop (for free/pay what you want).

Said .PDF has been sitting around on my website for a couple of years, I think even before I was using Ko-fi. So naturally, the recent issues with my site combined with Ko-fi's creator challenge for March [to upload a free item to your shop] finally nudged me into bringing it over.

Granted, the preview image with the Mini-Me holding an alcohol marker? That's totally new, made just for the Ko‑fi listing. Before, I didn't really need a preview image; I was able to add a feature to my website that would let people view the live Google Doc right there, with an optional .PDF download button underneath in case that widget didn't load properly.

Plus this preview image kinda gives me a format to work with for any future .PDFs of a similar nature that I might make in the future.

Now that we've reached the end, I hope you can see what I meant about March turning out more productive than I expected—This is more the kind of month I thought would benefit the most from a wrap-up post like this in the first place.

If you have any questions or comments about anything I've talked about today just let me know—Particularly how you're liking the Museletter idea and/or anything about the format and content of them.

Before I go, I will include one more reminder about the New Website Goal on my Ko-fi:

The goal is $250 total, and right now we're $150 away. The sooner the additional $150 can be raised, the sooner I can actually start building the new website, and the sooner you Sparklers will get to see and use it!

Like I said before, if you're interested in contributing, you have your choice between One-off Donations, Monthly Support/Membership with special perks (namely special monthly blog posts like this that show exclusive content and behind-the-scenes stuff!), or Shop purchases on my Ko‑fi (almost everything is Pay What You Want!). Or, if you can't contribute directly (which I understand completely), just spreading the word helps too!

Either way, Thank You SO MUCH for your time, attention, and support, no matter what form it comes in; Sparkle On and I'll see you all again soon!

Mystic

Heya Sparklers! This is a tentative new addition to the Monthly Round-Ups I normally do for my Ko-fi Members, and can also be viewed not just here on dA, but also [for free] on my Ko-fi Page.

I've been thinking for a while it might be nice to have a place to re-cap what art I managed to post publicly during a given month [particularly for busy months where there's a lot to cover] as well as things that get brought up in the Monthly Round-Ups but definitely don't need to be exclusive, like any personal art-related plans/news or pictures of new art supplies.

Since February was a pretty light content month, I figure now is as good of a time as any to test this new addition out and see how both I and you Sparklers alike...er, like it.

That said, while I didn't post a ton in February [but what I did post we'll get to in a bit!], it turned out to be kind of a big month for me for two reasons:

1. My Ohuhu Swatch Chart was featured on a live stream by ColorfullyOptimistic on YouTube, which quite literally doubled the number of downloads the Chart was getting overnight!

2. The Time Lapse Video for my two-days-late-Valentine's-piece, "Light that Burns the Sky," [both of which we'll talk more about in a bit] apparently struck a cord in the YouTube algorithm, as it hit 3,000 views within a week of being posted and nearly doubled my Subscriber count over there, from right at 50 to an email this week congratulating me on over 100!

I bring both of these things up because while I'm very aware all the numbers are still quite small potatoes compared to "big online influencers," they're still milestones that mean a lot to me personally, and I'm still a little in shock at how quickly it all seemed to happen.

The numbers themselves don't matter that much; It's the people behind those numbers—you Sparklers that think enough of what I do to support it in some way, whether that means just clicking on a video, a little heart button, or even an actual donation.

So I wanted to take this moment to once again say THANK YOU, because I will never be able to say it enough.

And it's also worth bringing up because Point 1—the Ohuhu Chart doing so well—means I ended up dedicating some time I hadn't planned on this month to adding a Large Print version of the chart to the download.

I want to be clear: That's not a bad thing! I mentioned it in a quick update post on Ko-fi and I'll say it again here: I'd been a little worried about how tiny everything on the Chart was for a while, so figuring out some sort of additional option for accessibility was pretty inevitable. And even if that wasn't true, the accessibility is still important and I know will be beneficial to more people in the long term. So it's still a net positive in the end.

Likewise, the time-lapse for "Light that Burns the Sky" doing so well just confirms the pattern I'd already noticed with my videos: Winx Club Content is a big "YES PLEASE."

That's great news since Winx Club art [as some of you may know] is how I really got my start posting art online a decade ago, so it feels a bit like I'm coming full circle with it now.

And speaking of full circles, why not instead of listening to me wax poetic about that for several more ages, let's circle back around to that recap of actual art posts from February, which coincidentally were pretty much all Winx-related.

To begin, we have my first WIP Wednesday of 2023:

As I mentioned when I posted it, I had originally hoped to have at least one if not both of the Winxsona Winter pieces teased at the bottom posted during February, if not have the magical [pun intended] experience of finishing Winxsona Winter entirely...especially since it should have ended in February if I'd stuck to the original schedule.

But the WIP on top needed my attention more immediately if I wanted to have it finished on time, and then the latter half of February ended up being all-around much busier than I thought.

The irony is of course that even putting both Winxsona pieces to the side, as some of you probably already know/remember, I still ended up posting Light that Burns the Sky two days after Valentine's Day.

For as bitter about the timing as I was though, the art itself turned out undeniably nice; And as we discussed earlier, YouTube didn't seem to care that I posted the Time Lapse two days "late," that's for sure.

YouTube also seems pretty fond of the Short/Instagram Reel that I made as a little promo of the art and Time Lapse:

While I'm at it and it sorta counts as public art stuff from me, here's a closer look at the first version of the thumbnail I used for the Time Lapse video:

It's okay, but it started to bug me a few hours after the video went live, so I went back in and made the current version:

I liked the idea of having something closer to the normal Enchantix colors in the thumbnail as an eye-catcher, though you'll notice things are a bit off if you look closely. I didn't have time to do a full color swap of the girls just for the video thumbnail, so I had to improvise with flat blue and orange and layer modes.

In the end though, it just wasn't what the thumbnail needed, which is why I made the change.

...And that's pretty much it for February. There was supposed to be one more, "Glimmers in the Rough" for Pokémon Day, but yet again I ended up behind schedule, so we'll be revisiting it in March's Museletter. [Provided you Sparklers like the Museletters, that is.]

Now, I'm sure some of you noticed that despite my hopes, Winxsona Winter didn't make any more appearances beyond that WIP.

I bring that up to make the point that other than getting a piece that's been in my Early Access Backlog for a while ready for Saint Patrick's Day, Winxsona Winter is what I plan to focus on for March. I'm not going to speculate on if I'll actually be able to finish it or not, but it sure would be nice if I could before the 20th, since that's the first day of Spring and calling it "Winxsona Winter" will feel awfully silly after that.

The good news is though whenever I do finally finish it, I am still set on doing the "one big Time Lapse" video for all the art in the series that I've been planning pretty much the whole time, and most likely I'll frame it as a "100-subscriber special" on YouTube, since I do want to acknowledge that milestone and currently both don't have any better ideas for a special and also even if I did, I probably wouldn't have time to do both.

With that said, I think I've about caught you Sparklers up on everything worth noting from February, so I think I'll wrap this up here so I can get back to work on those upcoming projects we talked about.

...Except now it appears I will also be adding "figure out what to do about my website" to my to-do list, because just as I finished writing this and the Round-Ups, my website host Wix has decided I am somehow using 2.2 GB of Storage when the limit is allegedly 500 MB, and yet everything was completely fine when I updated it last month. Not so much as a warning that I was approaching the storage limit or anything...

I've known for a while that eventually I'd probably need to move to a different host and rebuild my website from scratch, but I was hoping I'd eventually get around to it on my own terms, not have Wix force my hand...

Oh well. I'd really rather not dwell on that today, so back to my send-off as originally intended...

I do hope though that I've given you Sparklers something to look forward to in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or comments just let me know—Particularly if you like this Museletter idea and/or anything about the format and content of them.

Or, if this Museletter has piqued your curiosity and you want to see more of what I've been working on, please consider becoming a Ko-fi Member for Monthly Round-Ups featuring things like New Artwork Early, Exclusive WIPs, Archived Art, and more!

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and support; Sparkle On and I'll see you all soon!

Mystic