I made a keychain

Health update first, as has become my habit: IT BAD.

I am still baffled over how many times I *almost* got over the hump, only for some RIDICULOUS bad luck event to destroy me.

We know the crash began when I was mostly better, when a pharmacy nightmare destroyed me. Then… no idea. Something I did mid-December put me far away from even seeing that hump, and I’m not sure what. (I know doing the big art piece after was… ungood on me.) So I’m getting worse and terrified I was screwed over enough that I can never get over the line again. Which is double scary cuz I have dental work coming up, and each prior dental stuff put me in major crisis for MONTHS. (I got a cleaning, cuz I kinda had to. where they had to numb my whole mouth, and I barely survived the pain! Crap!)

So I guess the only thing that motivates me is making the kids happy. I did the Official Ghostbuster badge for my friend’s son, and this keychain is for my Umbreon-loving niece.

She is young enough that she doesn’t know much about Pokemon, but I still got her some cards to play with. I bought cheap keychain making stuff for her, with the plan of cutting up some common Pokémon cards. I knew she liked dark and dragon, and I grabbed some packs to see what I’d get.

The only cool dark and dragons I got were among the dozen Pokémon cards that are actually worth more than $5, so I HAD TO DRAW A KEYCHAIN INSTEAD! And I had to do it over the course of my one “be social” day a month, as it was the day before Easter and I found out she’d be visiting the next day. Her birthday isn’t until May, but it was my shot.

So she got a shiny Umbreon keychain, drawn with zero planning.

I didn’t like the standard poses I found on image search, and didn’t wanna copy fan art. I pulled out the plush I got for MY birthday (thank you ALL for blowing my mind!!!) and then promptly tried to improvise.

Look, kids at her school can’t bring in toys. Only loopholes are cards in wallets (hence card collecting without her caring about the game) and keychains. A hand-drawn, two-sided keychain gives her cred, even if it’s a simple 1” drawing. Crush those other kids, sweetie!

Oh, and I also did some prep work for my friend, who is counting on me to find enough health to illustrate the cover of his book. Featuring a dragon and a human. Every aspect of this is not in my skill set, but I’ll do the prep work when I can.

This is a joke sketch. I made the dragon five a thumbs up, for freak’s sake! I was trying to narrow down features he wanted, before I put in effort on physiology and pose. I just kept improvising until I filled the page. The only “correct” element is the dragon has frills instead of horns, and is meant to be on a domed church. Everything else is me screwing around, because I started to realize I had to intentionally do it wrong and be told “not like that” rather than expect a dysgraphic person to vocalize an idea correctly. I gave the original to him to take home, cuz I couldn’t look at it anymore. And maybe he’ll look deeper and come up with some useful thoughts for improvement.

Hope to eventually have more on our dragon friend soon.

Man, I am not proofing this. It was all blurted out on autopilot. And my autopilot is drunk, even if actual Chrispy is stone sober forever!