🎃🍬Happy Halloween🍬🎃

Waniwin
Oct 28, 2024
7 min read

Happy Halloween from the atelier!

I hope you all had a fun and relaxing weekend. Now, we're preparing for a week of never-ending candy, diabetes, and the screams of younguns with vampires, ghosts, ghouls, and supermen walking on the sidewalks!

What will you be going as for Halloween?

Halloween theme'd (vampire, ghoul, scarecrow, clown, etc.)
Game theme'd (halo, doom, god of war, mario, zelda, etc.)
Movie theme'd (saw, scream, chucky, arcane, GoT, etc.)
Other. (comment!)

This will be the last week I send out weekly goals and reports to all of you for my email list. Instead, I will do the beginning of every month & perhaps the middle of every month. This is to prevent an incessant amount of emails from me with no huge value beyond small updates and minor plans. Rather; I will collect all of that at the beginning of every month sharing achievements and new goals.

~HAPPY HALLOWEEN~

Now, I am not a celebrator. For me, it's for the little ones and for those who are huge Halloween junkies who enjoy the atmosphere and enjoy dressing up. For some it's an excuse to party and make awful mistakes 👀 But for me, it is an excuse for the corporates to get more money off of you by selling a crap ton of candy. I am not huge on Halloween, I barely enjoy candy anymore as it genuinely makes me sick to eat too many sweet things nowadays. But I genuinely enjoy the autumn season, I love the feeling of it, the look of it, the smell, and the cool breeze. I greatly enjoy the decorations for the autumn season and to celebrate the Autumn Equinox more than anything. I've never been big on the Halloween aesthetic with the vampires, witches and skeletons in their more stereotypical depiction. But, most holidays are for the kiddos! It's always nice to break out of the routine though.

I've only tricked or treated 3 or 4 times in my life. We didn't really get to afford or genuinely look into costumes. Most of my costumes were improvised or borrowed, and I didn't eat the candy most of the time. My feet just really hurt by the end of it- Christmas has always been more my holiday in terms of the most exciting ones. Because everyone is involved! It is genuinely a time for people to come together and celebrate.

But for those who do enjoy it greatly for your reasons, I genuinely hope this Halloween is a great one. We only get it one day a year, make it count and make some genuine memories with your families and friends!

~ART~

I believe it was said last blog, but I have been super busy! I don't know how a lot of my peers make time for all kinds of art and practice when fitting in your time feels like I'm committing a crime!

My weekdays go as follows:

wake up at 6:00 am and go to school.
Get out by 9:45 or 10:45 am making it back by 10:40 or 11:40 am.
Begin stream (lest Wednesday)
The stream begins at 11:00 am or 12:30 am and goes for about 5 or 6 hours. Ending at 4 pm, 5 pm or 6 pm every day. I work on everything, commissions, side projects, and school projects.
I get to relax at 7 pm when my partner wakes up, we either play games for 2 or 3 hours or we chill in call together and I work on more projects whilst enjoying each other's companionship. (this is suggesting however if my hand isn't in throbbing pain)
There is some room for relaxation, but at this time I can't really use my hands. So I either read a book or watch some TV, I can't play a game or draw something I want to work on that's not a project on the side.

And not working on projects- or filling that time with more drawings I could make on the side feels like a sin! I feel like I need to be making way more art where I can... if my hand wasn't so flimsy! I do understand artists need their breaks.... but then I see my peers constantly drawing, coming back into class with 3 more sketches they've done within the 2 days we haven't been in-seat.. amazes me! I also work a little on the weekends, but some days I just feel the need to say "fuck it" and sleep in or play a game or read all day. Saturdays are the days I watch a TV show with my mom- that is my break day out of the whole week. But my main focuses have still mainly been:

Vtuber Commission
Crochet scarf & bag for my mom
Any art assignments.

Because of how large and how much time these take, I've been only fitting a few minutes a week on other side projects. But all of this is probably down to time management. However, I also don't want to force myself to work on too many projects all at once, as that may only result in burnout and "spreading myself too thin" so I am not pushing my current capabilities.

We do what we can, with what we have, where we are.

~ SHOP~

I have yet to still put up my Academia Overlay on my store. The whole week I was so distracted with helping several friends that I was too exhausted to do much else. But I will be sure to get around to it this week.

Soon I will be working on the Color Book project for the end of the year, and get started on another entirely handmade overlay in Illustrator if I can!

~Aesthetic Shift?~

I have thought about another aesthetic shift... not huge- Instead, it's a shift that will happen because I have been observing myself the past few years and the feedback I have gotten from others in the past to now. So rather than looking at aesthetics that I enjoy, I am thinking about my interests and personality, what works with how I look and what works with my personality too. I ended up MAKING my aesthetic, based on a few that already exist but work with me as a person, I want to work with who I am and own who I am. I am beautiful as I am.

So far I've landed on:

Dark Fantasy (themes, values, media)
Femme Fatale (fashion, look, feeling)
Dark Academia (activities, visuals, themes, ideas)
Light Academia (principal, feeling, lighting)

These are generally more negative feelings & visually- I'm generally the opposite... so what in the world?

Well, I call my Aesthetic Dawn & Dusk.. the transition from dark to light and light to dark. I can be a negative person because of my background.. but I'm so introspective and a deep thinker, a critical thinker, similar to Dark Aca and Dark Fan. But I'm more active, I have more energy, I dont turn down a good talk and I joke. I love sunshine and morning activities, I enjoy fantastical stories, comedy and general uplifting things... hopeful themes, small activities that bring peace and a soft silence, hope and light on the horizon, a transition, a renewal, and a rebirth.

I dont enjoy stories where there is no hope and no happiness.. no small rewards. If a story is very deep and rich, then I can let it slip. Berserk is a very very dark series, but there is still humanity, humility & hope. Dark Souls is just dark and dreary, but there is still some hope to be found in even the darkest places. I enjoy those stories- and in the end, if the dark is inevitable and all is against you, then I hope in between our hero gets a little bit of bliss before the end. It calls into question our existence and what it means to live, love & ultimately die.

Dawn & Dusk is represented by:

A gentle silence
quiet activities in solitude
whispered voices and soft laughter in meaningful companionship
Candles & lanterns
Magic, mystery & intrigue. Enticement & escapism. Creativity & courage.
The sun & moon meeting (eclipses)
Virgo & Leo meet, an elegant black lion with a flaming tail. I chimaera of sorts. ((a chimaera can mean the quality of the self, or simply being a mix of many things))
Red Spider Lilies, black roses & Red Lotuses
Cats (independence, intuition, curiosity & listening to your inner self)
Butterflies, Snakes, and owls to represent change.
The element of fire (or even ice)
Reds (all kinds), crimson or burgundy, blacks, earthy tones, dark blues like Sapphires, forest green, gold & shimmering silver as highlights. Whites as highlights too.
Books, libraries, journaling/diaries, yarn crafts, paintings & artworks of many kinds, all-time music (specifically orchestral and non-vocal works), spending time outdoors, games and TV shows on brand.
Stone works.
I prefer life over death, living animals rather than the undead.. but who is to say both are not hand in hand..? The messages the dead give us to learn to appreciate life.

I feel like this is all something I can go off of to draw one day and make an original character. I feel like I can attempt to use this as a basis... I hope this truly fits who I am now. It's what I have been getting from others, so I want to try and embrace it.

I know I don't have to mention this, but I feel like it is perfect for Halloween since we are not only talking about themes but specifically darker ones. I've been told again and again that I have darker features and the perfect "maleficient" look, as well as so many other things. Maybe one Halloween I'll try to cosplay her.

~LASTLY~

I thank you all for tuning into all of my weekly blogs, I know they can be a handful. But from now on you will all only be receiving 1 or 2 a month. Three if it is a super important update. Those will probably be much shorter. This will help save up some time for me to spend on some art as well.

The beginning of the month will address everything from the previous month and the goals for the upcoming month. The middle email will talk about any updates & progress, as well as any new exciting news and ideas. Such as; new website additions for members, a new discord server, new shop updates, art events, Q&A's and more.

I thank those who have participated and read everything thus far. I will see you all next month~!

Once again, Happy Halloween & indulge on all the candy you'd like!

~Wani~