Updates and Changes

Hi everybody!

I have some updates for you. As you've probably already noticed, sadly my Patreon picture this month is going to be late again. I still owe you guys last month's picture; the four princesses playing at the beach. (If you were in my stream yesterday, you've seen me work on it!) and this month's picture, the poll for it will go live in the next few hours! If you're one of the $5+ pledgers, you'll get a message regarding it soon.

The four princesses picture should be done by Monday!

I got sick with strep throat after attending a con earlier this month, which pretty much rendered me unable to work for over a week. By itself that wouldn't really have been a problem, but as you may know, earlier this year I hit a rough spot while working for Babscon, a lot of my commission and projects piled up during that time. And I'm still, now 2 months later, trying to clear this backlog. Losing a week of work just made things worse.

Since I'm still struggling with my workload and I really want to clear all the commissions and Patreon pictures I owe as fast as possible without sacrificing quality, I've decided to update my Patreon to reflect this. Up until now you guys provided the ideas and voted on two Patreon pictures per month. But until I'm able to clear my plate, I sadly have to reduce this to one picture per month. I changed the '2 Pictures Per Month' stretch goal to $1k for the time being. I'll lower it again once I'm up to date with all of my projects in a few months.

I'd also like to take this time to address another issue with my Patreon campaign in the past few months. One of the stretch goals promises that I'm streaming at least once per week on Picarto. That sadly hasn't happened regularly enough to be acceptable. You may have seen that I was streaming yesterday, I'm going to pick up a regular streaming schedule again, as promised. For now the regular slot will be every Friday afternoon (PST). I'll also try to throw in one or two additional streams per week on different days and times, so people living in different timezones get a chance to watch me work. This other streams will happen at an unscheduled pace, but the Friday afternoon streams are going to be a fixed thing. If you follow me on Picarto (RatofPoni), you'll get automated email updates whenever I go online! I would like to apologize that I didn't do the streams regularly as promised in the past.

This year is the first year where I've been doing art pretty much as a full time job. And I've hit some rough patches, unexpected things kept happening more frequently than anticipated and adjusting to them wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be. I overestimated how much work I could do, so I bit off more than I could chew with commissions and projects. I'm really sorry for the delay. I promise it's going to get better. I learned a lot in those past few months, and my backlog finally got to a manageable size and the end is in view!

For those of you interested, I'm having some really amazing and big projects in the works, I just wish it wouldn't take me that long to finish them, but I'm super excited for them and I'm sure you're gonna love them!

If you'd like to remove your pledge for the time being, I completely understand. If you do, maybe you'll consider pledging again once I'm doing 2 Patreon pictures per month again?

Again, I'm very sorry for the delay in pictures and for the disappointing news. I hope you'll understand. If you have any concerns, comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me under ratofdrawn@gmail.com.

Best regards,

Rat