Burnout and plans for summer

Hey everyone - I want to make a quick update blog because I think i'm in a bad place energy-wise but I don't want to let people down. It's a bit wordy but there is a cute doodle at the end!

TL;DR: This summer

• I want to rein patreon piece size down from multiple panels -> pinups, with four or five alts

• Aiming to have the main art this month done for Deer Friends soon (end of this week)

• Next month's poll is gonna go up early, so I can get it done before my BF arrives

My Problem

I think i've been burnt out this month. I'm finding work on the monthly art to be a bit of a struggle (i am still about 75% done tho - just the deathclaw to go) I'm not eager to draw like I usually am, i'm distracted and headachey. Didn't help that I slept awfully last night 🙃

Last month's art took me up until the penultimate day of the month too, I crunched real bad on that to meet that monthly deadline. In March I finished the monthly art the day before my flight to America. February came in two days before the end of the month. I feel like i've been crunching for three months now and have had fewer pieces to show for it than normal (my FA gallery had two posts in April, compared to six the month before)

I've slowly built up the expectations for my patreon output into comic pages with loads of alts and it's not sustainable. I acknowledge that this is basically self-imposed, none of you are ordering me to do this but I am very externally validated and I don't want to let anyone down.

The Solution

I need to scale back my patreon work a tiny bit. I'm not changing any of the offerings, but I do want to limit the size of the pieces i'm making. No more comic pages - I want to stick to pinups with maybe a cutaway, or with two characters. And in terms of alts, I want to keep it closer to four or five good ones, rather than the six or seven i've gotten used to.

My hope is that if patreon takes up a little less of my time i'll be able to open commissions or do personal projects that will still be enjoyable for you all (Deer Friends will get more rough sketches and fun updates in the fortnightly blogs again)

My BF is arriving from America in the middle of June, so i'm going to put up June's poll early, probably the 26th-27th of May. July's poll should still happen as normal, and i'll hopefully open commissions at the end of that month too.

Thanks very much for reading, and for your understanding. If you're thinking that this is much ado about nothing that's fair, but I needed to vent and to set myself this limit publicly.

Here's a little sleepy Milton doodle as promised.