Finals Week = Unlikely Updating

Little swamped right now, sorry.  My finals week starts Monday, and I’m starting to study now because I have some serious exams coming up (not to mention a couple of major papers to write). So I probably won’t be writing new blog posts for a bit. :(

Why a Blog?

Well, I am now ten posts into this nifty experiment called a blog, and so far I’m liking it.  So maybe it’s time to talk a little more about why I decided to try it in the first place.

The biggest reason, I suppose, is my community-specific drawing style.  Currently I upload exclusively at The Lion King Fan Art Archive.  For a while I used a FurAffinity gallery just so I could link to bigger .png files of my work.  At one time I did a couple of pieces of artwork forWajas as well.  But both of those quickly died out, while my presence at TLKFAA has remained strong ever since 2006.

I’ve talked about in my uploads why I stick with TLKFAA instead of, say, deviantART,or while I only upload at TLKFAA and not other LK sites like MLKFAA.  It has to do with restraining myself so that digital art doesn’t overwhelm my life, among other things.  However, the result of this means that on TLKFAA, the only way I can express myself is in 750 characters per upload, which is incredibly frustrating for someone as verbose as myself – see my AotM speech for how annoyingly wordy I can be.  (Needless to say, I loathe sites like Twitter…and don’t get me started on YouTube comments.  Reducing intelligent conversation to txtspeak–my little Creative Writing brain would be screaming hysterically all the way to the looney bin.  Ah, I’m getting a great idea for a short story…but I digress.)

If I had a “journal” on DeviantArt I would be able to write all I wanted, but with the 750-char limit on TLKFAA that just isn’t possible.  Hence, blog.  Now I can happily blather here on Coalf for as long as I want, not worried about tichy details such as being careful not to double-space after sentences since that eats up my precious characters-remaining.  Hopefully in the future I can direct traffic from my TLKFAA uploads if I find myself with something more to say about a particular picture, and in the meantime I can chatter to myself about myself, setting my thoughts about my art down on paper, as it were.

And so that is a very basic backstory for the reason I began to blog.  And for those interested, this post is precisely 2160 characters. ;)

I Can Has Presence?

Happy Birthday to my new blog, “Confessions of a Lion King Fanartist,” from this day forward affectionately known as “Coalf” (which sounds like some adorable combination of a calf and a foal…might have to draw that sometime.  In fact, I think I will have to personify Coalf as some African calf/foal so I can upload it to TLKFAA…now on my to-do list).

“Coalf” is pronounced like “Coal” with an F sound at the end, similar to “golf”, I guess.  But with a C.  And an A.  Who teamed up and cornered the G in some dark alley and “persuaded” it that its position in the word was misguided and letting the C and A take over that duty would certainly be in its best interest.  Coalf is therefore golf+mobsters, which sounds like a bizarre yet oddly appealing mixture, just like calf+foal.

So anyway, Coalf is here because I am a person who draws Lion King fanart (as is obvious), and because I am a person who writes (I’m a Creative Writing major).  And I wanted to have a cyber-presence in the blogosphere…we’ll see how long this project lasts, and if Coalf will ever make it out of infancy.  Right now I’m very happy with my new pet, and am looking forward to blogging merrily away in the future. =)