To Do List
Art Trades: closed
Requests: closed
Commissions: closed
= Sketching
= Lining
= Coloring
= Details/Background done; ready to uploadHello again
Hey there y'all! I really don't know how I ended up here. I haven't been on dA in weeks (months?) and am still struggling to become active again. I just can't seem to figure out the new features and the layout and everything going on on this site :') BUT I still haven't lost all hope that one day I'll be back here and hopefully find new watchers and a new community I can be part of. For now you'll probably just find me creeping through dA every now and then, deleting my entire inbox, faving a picture or two and disappearing back into the hole I came from.
Anyhow, what's little Shehy been doing in the past few... months? Years? Got married to my absolute soulmate in August 2020, began my second apprenticeship to become a surgical nurse after a long back and forth in October 2021, and moved to my MIL's house (that she moved out of for the time being and kindly offered us to live in) a week ago so that we could be closer to the construction site that is gonna be our very own house in summer/fall 2023 ♥ Things have been going - not always uphill, but mostly. It's been a stressful time, a lot of changes, a lot of challenges, a lot of work, but it's all gonna be worth it. That job is my dream job that I really want do for the rest of my life. That house is gonna be our forever home and the home to our future kids. So what's a stressful year or two compared to that thought? Anyhow, it might explain why I haven't been drawing regularely which won't be the case until my apprenticeship is over either, but you know, that's probably just part of being an adult. Still can't believe what I/we have accomplished when I think about how I was basically a stupid little teenager when I joined dA 
Apart from all that I spend a lot more time writing than I used to, both my story Netherworld that I want to have a first finished draft of by December 2023, and a fanfic that I kinda use to practise my writing style on and gain some more confidence in it. Also, I spend nearly every evening behind my laptop designing. OC's, adoptables, canon foals, not so canon foals, just whatever I feel like. I'm just way too lazy to upload and sell them, so now I have a whole collection of adoptables just looking nice and collecting dust. At least I enjoyed drawing them 
There will be character changes going on now and then that no ones gonna notice probably, I'm still sorting characters in and out of my active herds and I haven't quite settled with the current versions, but I'm getting there. I'm still struggling with some of the characters, because I really love their designs, but can't quite click with them (yet), so I'm not sure if I should keep them on dA or retire them for now until I find the perfect opportunity to reuse them. I guess until my graduation in 2024 I will be done with that, finally reduce my working hours and draw more. And learn how to draw digitally. Yeah. So much for the plan.
That's it from me now. See you all back in the next journal that I'm probably gonna write next year x'D Have a nice sunday and bye bye xoxo
Looking back
Hey there,
it's been some time since I wrote my last journal, but with the year ending I felt like sharing some thoughts with you.
Needless to say, 2020 has been a crazy year in so many ways. Many people suffered under the global pandemic, health wise, job wise, financially and mentally. I'm one of the lucky ones affected only in ways I can handle. While working in such a huge hospital like I do I'm constantly confronted with covid patients I haven't been infected yet (or I simply didn't know) and despite my fear that I'd fall back into the hole, that I've fought my way back up from over the past years, it didn't happen - mostly thanks to my husband, my best friend, my family and also my therapist who's been by my side for seven years.
With everything that's going on in the world right now I surprisngly find myself looking back at the year with many positive feelings. 2020 has been nothing like I thought it would be. It started with a new job, much closer to my home than my previous, and it turned out even better than I thought it would be. Working in a surgical centre comes with a lot of responsibility, requires mental strengths and demands a lot of constant work and studying from my side, but I have the most amazing colleagues and boss that I could have asked for who help me to learn and improve day by day. My new job also comes with a higher income, more free time and many options for my future.
Then in spring with the first lockdown here in Germany something happened - I found my love for drawing, writing and dA back. With my best friend and me working on "Netherworld", our new story about Ouija, Reyna and Chantilly, I regained my inspiration and motivation that I'd lost a very long time ago, which led me to finally feel free as an artist again. I started to sort out my characters and my gallery, redesigned many OCs and got rid of all that chaos that's built up over the previous eleven years that I have been a member of dA. Eleven years - isn't that crazy? I basically grew up with this site and the community, but the launch of Eclipse baffled my euphoria quite a bit. So over the time I finally became active here again, I found that things had changed. Many things. The site. The community. The way that dA intends to lead us to. I haven't quite got used to Eclipse yet and I kind of feel like a stranger, but eventually, some weeks back, I decided to give it a chance. But while I might get into the flow with this new deviantART there are things that I cannot change. I found that most of the people that I grew up with here, who I liked, who I considered my friends, who I admired and looked up to have left a long time ago. Many profiles are deleted, some others look like they have been frozen years ago, and all those wonderful people are gone, which hurts. There's hardly anyone left of the people who cared about me or my art and I feel like a ghost here, most of my new uploads being mostly ignored - which hurts even more. At first this nearly made me give up my existence on dA and move back to instagram to share my art, but it's simply not the same, so all I can do is draw and hope that things will change, that I will find new awesome people and see what time will bring.
Eventually, summer came. The summer that I'd waited for for a year. I married the man of my dreams on our anniversay day, my boyfriend of four years, my soul mate. Tom, who supported and encouraged me throughout the past years in many decisions I made, in dreams I have, in situations I struggled to see the light at the end of the tunnel. A man I will hopefully share the rest of my life with. While the wedding was planned, obviously, something else happened in late summer that we didn't quite expect. His great aunt died and we (to make a very long story short) inherited her house. It's old and requires a lot of work and money, but that's not gonna stop us, which means we will get the work on our very own house started in spring which is so, so exciting! I really can't wait. We will live next-door to my mother-in-law who's so supportive and probably even more excited than we are Love her so much ♥
Right now I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to christmas songs from my childhood, drawing the third christmas gifty and drinking tea. And I feel blessed and lucky and strong enough for whatever strange, hurtful, exciting and happy moments the coming year has in petto.
I wish all of you a marry christmas, happy new year and hope that your dreams will come true, whatever these might be. Stay strong, stay healthy and take care! Love y'all ♥
~ Shehy
Inactive characters
None of these are up for adoption.
MARES
Name: Amril
Nickname: -
Age: 4 years
Breed: Azar x Papillon
Herd: Herd of Evergreen
Name: Évangeline
Nickname: -
Age: 17 years
Species: Black Magician
Herd: -
Name: Final Fantasy
Nickname: Fantasy
Age: > 1 year
Breed: Scenequine x Lacari x Pegasus (50% x 25% x 25%)
Herd: SceneSoul Herd
Name: Kalita
Nickname: /
Age: 23 years
Species: Black Magician
Herd: -
Name: Rainbow Haze
Nickname: Hazie
Age: > 1 month
Breed: Scenequine
Herd: SceneSoul Herd
Name: Riamara
Nickname: Ria
Age: > 1 month
Breed: Autiria x P.R.E. (Hanoverian influence)
Herd: DawnShadow Herd
Name: Skadi
Nickname: -
Age: 4 years
Breed: Scenequine
Herd: SceneSoul Herd
STALLIONS
Name: Hayabusa
Nickname: Haya
Age: 5 years
Species: Black Magician
Herd: -
Name: Keoma
Nickname: -
Age: > 1 month
Breed: Autiria x P.R.E. (Hanoverian influence)
Herd: DawnShadow Herd
Name: Overkill
Nickname: -
Age: about 8 years (he can't remember)
Breed: Scenequine
Herd: SceneSoul Herd
Name: Panic at the Disco
Nickname: Panic
Age: -
Breed: Scenequine
Herd: SceneSoul Herd
Name: System of a Down
Nickname: System
Age: -
Breed: Scenequine
Herd: SceneSoul Herd
Music theme art
- 1000 Words (Final Fantasy X2) - Firefly & Naledi
- About to get Crazy (Oh the Larceny) - Ouija, Reyna, Chantilly
- All the Things she said (TaTu) - Firefly & Naledi
- A Monster like me (Morland & Debrah Scarlett) - Overkill & Cascada
- Another Empty Bottle (Katy McAllister) - Liberty
- Become the Beast (Karliene) - Reyna & Ouija
- Boom (iBenji) - Donna [personal song]
- Chosen One (Valley of Wolves) - Ouija, Reyna, Chantilly
- Creep (Radiohead cover) - Overkill & Cascada
- Don't die before I do (Rammstein) - Ouija & Chantilly
- Easy on me (Adele) - Ouija & Chantilly
- Halt (Rammstein) - Ouija [personal song]
- Halt dich an mir fest (Revolverheld) - Aurumm & Gaedano
- Head above Water (Avril Lavigne) - Naila [personal song]
- Keep holding on (Avril Lavigne) - Ouija & Reyna DONE
- Kiss me (Jazzotron & Maat Bandy vs. Jamie Berry) - *** & ***
- Love in cold Room (Lina Arndt) - *** & ***
- Love the Way you lie (Rihanna - cover) - Isobella & Caruso
- Monster under my Bed (Call me Karizma) - Ouija & Reyna
- Ocean Eyes (Billie Eilish cover) - Ouija & Chantilly DONE
- Ohne dich (Rammstein) - Ouija & Chantilly
- Oh Child (MILCK version) - Ouija & Hayabusa
- Psycho (Muse) - Chantilly [personal song]
- Rammstein (Rammstein) - Ouija, Reyna, Chantilly Lace
- Remember (MCY feat. Sweetbox) - Chakko & Sera
- Rise like a Phoenix (Conchita Wurst) - Sergej
- Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy (Tata Young) - Fixerbraut [personal song]
- Someone like you (Adele) - Isobella & Caruso
- Standing in the Way of the Light (Birdy) - *** & ***
- Surrender (Natalie Taylor) - Gaedano & Aurumm
- Sweet but a Psycho (Ava Max) - Chantilly
- That's my Heart (Lindemann) - Ouija & Chantilly
- The Moment you believe (Melanie C) - *** & ***
- The Night we met (The Running Mates Cover) - Reyna & Ouija
- Unintended (Muse cover) - Ouija & Chantilly
- Warriors (Imagine Dragons) - Ouija, Chantilly, Reyna
- Welcome to my Life (Sunrise Avenue) - Alessio [personal song]
- You're not sorry (Taylor Swift) - Isobella & Caruso
- Zeit zu gehen (Unheilig) - Sergej
Missing the old times - things will change
Hey guys!
I guess all of you have noticed - I haven't actively drawn in more than two years. I'd left dA for a months in the past, even several times, and never really returned. Many things have happened; I was forced to go to psychatric hospital, found a new relationship, moved out and found an apartment with my boyfriend, I had a job and got a better one within a few months and so on.... But - I lost interested in all of my characters, mostly in my fantasy equines, and never found my inspiration again to sit down and just draw. dA has turned into such a serious place over the past years, at least the equine community. Everywhere you look, be it the fantasy equines or HARPG, it's all about points/money, imports, stats, levels, competitions, placements and and and. It's just about being good and better and the best. About what is right or wrong. The tack is wrong. This couldn't have happened like that in real life. That's not a typical horse's reaction. The anatomy is incorrect. The lightning makes no sense.
Genetics. Colors. Designs.
It's all wrong. It has to be perfect.
I see that genetics and colors are a rather important point in HARPG for natural horse breeders for the group shall give us the freedom to do what we might never reach in real life - having an own stable and breeding and competing our own horses. And even I myself love genetics and figuring out which horses can produce which foal. That's all nice and stuff, but people started taking the realism too far. I know that there is no such thing as Silver Dunskin Roan Tobiano Hanoverians, but who cares? You have a winged and horned horse in your stable that is claimed as "part Arabian" so apparently in your world Unicorns and Pegasi can breed your purebred Arabian, but Hanoverians cannot be a Dun and Pinto here. Who the heck cares about either of that? No one. Please, just let me play my game like I do. No, I will not change my horses' breeds because 'American Warmbloods could actually be pintos'. Why? Because I don't want to, that's why. People can't just let others enjoy what they do and let them "live" their dreams. It all has to be correct. If you want to see correctly purebred horses, go visit a breeder's show and don't look through dA users' profiles. (Sorry but yes, that actually bothers me.)
I first found the issue mainly in HARPG groups, where it was all about pedigrees and exobertantly expensive Imports or breedings, like, no I'm not gonna pay 1,500 Points (15€!!) for a breeding to your Olympic winner horse. I mean, I could. But maybe some 15-year-old player couldn't even if they wanted. It was all about being better than others and you could only be the best if you were willing to pay lots and lots of points/money in breedings and sales to get the right connections to win the most competitions. This is not what most of us are drawing for, but the constant pressure of feeling like no matter how hard you try no one even notices you and you totally drown in the mass is very frustrating and dishearting.
But this mindset soon caught the fantasy equine world as well. There suddenly grew a massive load of RPG-groups out of the ground, they soon competed among themselves, trying the be the most popular one. Drama over drama intra-group everywhere; 'you copied this', 'you scamed points there' and so on. Levelling systems where made up and got more and more complicated. More sub-groups and rules to keep the perfect order the admins wanted to have and where used to from the beginning where there were 1/20 of the users they had now. Even in these groups, in the fantasy world, where everything used to be possible, where we as artists used to be "wild and free", it suddenly started to be all about being the best. Characters have to possess a certain amount of drawings and stories and experiences to gain points in order to improve their magical skills and level up. And again - those who actually drew for fun and to roleplay and to meet new people started to be suppressed by the faction "My character is the very best!" and again it became daunting.
Watching all this, I couldn't sit down anymore and draw what I wanted. I sat there in front of my sketch. Sketching alone took me an hour or more. And I sat there and stared at my sheet and thought to myself, "The anatomy is incorrect, this has to be changed. And this. The neck is too short. The legs too thin. The tail is too high-set for a Hanoverian. He looks to muscular for a warmblood." and I couldn't stop. I did the lineart and thought, "This would look soooo much more realistic if I didn't do the lineart, or at least not in black ink." I felt like I had to make everything as perfect as possible like everybody else did. Cellshading? No shading at all? Forget it! It has to be perfect. Detailed shading. Shiny coat. Flying mane. Fluffy tail - but not too fluffy! Might look unrealistic. This is a drawing just for fun. But it MUST have a background. But not like, meadow and sky and some mountains. That's too boring and mainstream. I have to do something fancy, colorful sunset, waterfall, river, lake, sparkly stars, clouds, some fog. And a forest. Everything I started made me feel forced to make it the artwork. The best I've ever done, and every god damn time it turned out being worse and worse than the sh*t I'd done before. And realizing, or feeling like you get worse instead of improving is frustrating and sad. It makes you want to take your pencils and paper and throw it all across the room AND I can't tell you how many times I've done this ever since I left. My stomach started hurting once I thought about drawing. It was no fun anymore, not at all. I could say, without trying to make it sound worse than it was, I f*cking hated it. I hated what used to be my freedom, my little world, my shelter. And I thought more than one time about never drawing again for I was convinced I was just a bad artist and my time was simply over.
I know that long time users all have been to the point saying what I'm gonna say, or, promissing to themselves what I'm gonna promise myself:
I'm no longer gonna be a part of this kind of community.
No, I'm not gonna leave dA. I will not give up on RES and I will not re-do my whole account and start all over. I don't want to do this. I rather want to hold on to my memories from when I joined. Back then nobody cared about perfection and and realism. My dA friends from back then were as old as me (and I was pretty young) and all we wanted to do was draw some cute little fantasy ponies and make them happily jump through some nice sparkly fantasy world. Most of them have either left dA or are no longer equine artists, but it's nice to think back to this. I draw two or three pictures a day and yes, I dodn't put all my effort and time and tears and blood into these drawings, BUT I enjoyed it. And that's what actually matteres. It sure weren't masterpieces but each day when I returned from school I was looking forward to sitting at my desk and start to draw. I want this feeling back. I don't want to try and be popular or a good artist others are looking up to, I just want to be happy with what I used to have.
My future drawings will probably look like less quality and less effort. I might not add a background to everything I draw and I probably won't do a detailed shiny super shading either, but be sure - I will enjoy it. Of course I'm aware of how things will not be like they were in 2010 and they never will. I've grown up, living on my own, I have a job and friends and things to do apart from drawing. But maybe this will give me back the feeling I had while drawing that I'm missing so, so bad.
This all means, there will be less pictures that will actually make "sense". You know, it shows a part of some story or it has a purpose like a training image. I will just draw my horsies standing around looking nice. I'm planning to enter more competitions again, but RES will focuse on the personal story now instead of being popular and winning lots of competitions like I'd always wished for. I will also not take commishes, requests or art trades anymore. If I do commishes, then I will offer them on my facebook page and for real money only (because, you know... In your apprenticeship you are a poor little person and need to make more money somewhere else in order to get yourself something nice xP). I want to do more roleplays - roleplays where no one has a plan on where this shall be going to. I want to make more gifts and stuff for myself. Drawings of characters just looking nice. It doesn't always have to come for purpose and make sense and be a masterpiece. Sometimes all it should do is make you happy and look nice and make other people happy looking at it. This is what I want back. Sounds melodramatic, doesn't it?
Thanks for everyone who read this and please take a cookie
~ BLONDI
PS: Yesterday I finished a drawing for viviwonda, featuring her characters Destiny and Immortal. Just these two galloping and being happy, no background and fancy stuff. So nice to draw like that again
