Hhhhmmm.... So I suppose this is where I explain what this is. I guess this is my spot for my ramblings, what's happening, etc. Let's start with Hi! I'm Calicoe or Urtica. Those are my main two online alias that I tend to go by. I'm an avid anime/manga fan and I try to do art in my free time. I'm married and have a one year old son and two cats. I'm here to make friends and hopefully improve my art. On that note I am willing to accept safe for work art requests, but depending on demand and my available free time it might take me a little while to fulfill. I am a stay at home mom so my free time is in short supply. Also I mentioned it once on one of my pieces, but I tend to keep clean line art of most of my drawings so if you are interested in doing a recolor of one just let me know all I ask is for credit for the line art.

The War on OC-tober

Well as many of you already know I've been trying to do the OC-tober challenge this year and life is truly making it a challenge. I'm officially ten days behind! We have a friend moving in with us along with her kiddo and so we've been adjusting and trying to figure out the new groove of things. We also had an impromptu vacation into the mountains. Chasing after two kiddos and trying to enjoy the scenery left little time for much else. Got to go to the zoo which was actually completely open this time, but it was a bit too crowded for comfort. So with all these excuses I'm finally getting back into the swing of producing my OC's for the month. I did have one idea for day 10, but scrapped it for the current one as I decided I liked it more. My mind has been trying to focus on multiple things like coming up with ideas for characters and where we can move stuff to create more room for everyone. Having a household go from three to five definitely makes things more crowded and it's amazing how much more mess there is from two toddler tornadoes instead of one. I'm not giving up though! Hopefully I'll be churning out more quality OC's it just might take me longer than I'd like. I've firmly given up on finishing them all by the end of the month. To those of you still doing the challenges on time I'm mad impressed and keep up the fantastic work!
Anime updates....man what have I been watching.... Tsukimichi a moonlit fantasy which wow it's so much fun and surprisingly serious at the same time! I've been watching Horimiya and it's fun to revisit. (I haven't seen the anime before, but I read the manga). I'm a sucker for a warm fuzzy anime although I'll take a tear jerker too...Your Lie in April comes to mind.... so good! so sad!! Uuumm... oh rewatching Rise of the Shield Hero as season 2 should soon be on it's way. Manga wise I have some catching up to do. I bought the entire box set for Tokyo Ghoul:Re (already had the first part), still working through Fushigi Yugi, and reading Toilet Bound Hanako Kun. Finding time for everything I'd like to do is getting difficult. Between hobbies, kiddos, friends, and house work life is pretty hectic! I must admit that I miss watching scary movies and horror stuff at this time of year. I've settled for horror podcasts that I can listen to through earbuds away from tiny ears. Kiddo already believes in monsters so don't want to give those monsters any new faces by watching something that might horrify him. I feel like eventually though you have a snapping point and start thinking....my parents showed me that and I'm a somewhat well adjusted adult....Anyway hope you're all doing well, staying healthy, and letting those creative minds spill out onto paper, ink, digital outlet, or whichever way you choose to express yourselves! Thanks for reading!

Fall Update!

Hhhhhhmmmm...where to start. Welcome to fall! I think I mentioned that I picked up the manga Toilet-Bound Hanako kun. Which I really really like, but it appears there is no way to get a hold of volume 4! First world problems I know. I did find it online just so I could continue on with the story as it's really quite a good read, but I'm sad I have so far been unable to obtain a physical copy I have 1-3 and 5-9. Fall colors have been invading my color palette as the new season sets in and my thoughts turn to warmer clothes and sitting cozily under the kotatsu with the fire going (still a bit too warm for this.). I also discoverd teeturtle.com where you can get amazing nerdy shirts or just anti social shirts or whatever your current mood shirts. I saw a few I felt I needed...One of which has a red panda on it that says "I'm listening to my murder stories" (I'm a bit obsessed with true crime podcasts). Art wise I'm trying to stretch my comfort zone again in trying poses and angles that I'm not very used to. I'm also trying to draw more male characters. I feel like if I ever truly want to draw a comic I really do need to know how to properly draw them. A friend of mine asked for me to do a more realistic portrait of his mother and her fiance....I must admit with shame I've been procrastinating on working on this. He originally told me about the idea back in July, but didn't get me pictures for reference until the beginning of this month. The large gap in the reference material caused a lack of interest for me in trying it. I feel bad and really need to get motivated to make an attempt at this.
In other news I discovered recently that funimation changed their access in that now you don't have to have a paid sub to watch their content. You'll have ads, but you can watch what they have. I will admit that I've binged a few different shows now that I have them available. I still need to watch the Demon Slayer movie Mugen Train which I was extremely excited to see on there! My anime otaku side has been giddy with all the new and old stuff on there.
In video games I've been playing a lot of Terraria! I've always been a fan of the game, but they've added a bunch of new content since the last time I played and it's just so easy to turn it on and get lost in it for hours! I love that the game has so many options for things to do. You can waste your time building and gathering materials for your buildings or you can progress the game along fighting bosses and increasing the difficulty. For those of you who have played it you know what I'm talking about.
Well once again I feel like I managed to jump topics at random and for those of you still here thanks for reading the rant of jumbled thoughts! I'll continue trying to make fun pieces of art to share and my randomness here! Cheers!

Weddings, Toddlers, and Covid

So the title of this post really sounds more like a tag than a title, but it's really fitting. Alright let's get down to it! The last two days have been amazingly busy for my little family. My mother-in-law just got remarried yesterday. She has actually already changed the date a few times due to covid restrictions and thought with the lull we had that she could plan without fear. Well as you know covid has spiked again meaning last Friday the mask mandate was reinstated here. Not something that really thrilled her. We had a rehearsal dinner on Friday and because I'm such a great planner (super procrastinator!) I also had to go shopping for something to wear!(Yay!) Thanks to covid I really don't leave my house more than I have to (I didn't really leave it before, but now I have an excuse). Got done with the clothes shopping and immediately it was time to go to my husband's grandparents' house for the rehearsal. Now his grandmother is old fashioned southern hospitality kind of gal. This means that she was trying to prep enough food to feed an army on her own plus clean and decorate. She's in her mid 70's with so me heart issues so of course I jumped in and spent about four hours prepping food with her and one of her friends. Luckily my husband was there to watch our hyper active two year old! After this exhaustive night we had the wedding the following day. If you have kids you will definitely understand how I felt going into this. The wedding was set for 3pm and nap time is normally 2pm. We needed to arrive early so nap was out of the question (he also decided to wake up early). Cranky two year old in formal wear at a wedding! He and my husband hung out with grandma (the bride) while I helped everyone in the main venue. It was a lot of organizing and letting people know where we're at. Wedding party arrives and I go out to the hall to snag kiddo from my husband who needs to walk his mother down the aisle. As soon as we get in my son starts yelling go for walk! Long story short I missed the whole ceremony while walking my kiddo up and down the hall outside of the room! I don't think it helped everyone was wearing masks and he isn't a crowd kind of kid. Finally exhausted we got to sneak out a bit early! Kiddo had finally passed out for a bit at the wedding, but this meant he hadn't ate anything there. I wanted to be a proper responsible mom of course so I decided to heat up some fish sticks and tater tots in the toaster oven. Let me tell you....using VERY hot appliances when tired is NOT a good time. I warmed the fish sticks first since they cooked at a higher degree than the tots (450). Took them out with the oven mitt and set them on a plate. Grabbed tater tots and went to put them on the same metal tray and thought I should move that tray first.... grabbed it with my bare right hand... and yes hurray burns! All five fingers! I don't have great temperature feeling in my hands when it comes to heat so it took me a moment to really feel it. My thumb is screwed! Thank goodness we had a bottle of aloe in the house. Hand feels much better today, but this is definitely a weekend that I need a weekend to recover from!

I died for a bit....

Just kidding I did not die, but did feel like I feel off the face of the internet/drawing world for a bit. Summer life has just had me busy and had to fight off what I hope was just a summer cold. Covid has really not had an enormous effect on me besides not wanting to be around people even more than before. My birthday happened though and as such I opted for getting a bunch of manga that I've been wanting and so besides keeping up with my crazy two year old I've been reading manga. I finally manage to get a hold of the entire Fushigi Yugi manga (it only took me YEARS). Got the last volume of Demon Slayer (this hurt my heart a bit I love this series). Picked up the first few books of Toilet Bound Hanako-Kun. I'm only part way through the first book of this, but I'm really enjoying it so far! I enjoyed The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent so much as an anime I started picking up the manga for that as well. I also started The Apothecary Diaries and I have to say I really, really, really like this series soooo much. Highly recommend for people who like a bit of mystery with some dark humor/slightly morbid characters. Obviously I have started drawing again with some inspiration from Moonfini and some other friends. Wasabi, Vesperia, and Velvet were all very fun to draw. I'll probably do a few more of Wasabi as my friend is welcoming all art of her and super happy to get stuff.
Other then that I've just been playing FFXIV again. Recently did my contribution to the free company I run by revamping some subs and airships to make them more efficient in gathering items. Leveled up in Bozjan and been working finally on my blue mage. Been doing mostly in door stuff as it is forest fire season and our air quality is questionable. Oh, and the free downloadable content for Pokemon Snap happened so I will admit that I have once again been feverishly trying to capture pokemon in cute poses in order rack up those points! I hope that all of you have been having a good summer and that you're staying cool out there!

Yeah It's a Hot One

Well summer is definitely on it's way here. It's been nothing, but thunder storms followed by hot days! Got the little guy a fancy new pool that I have to basically crowbar him out of. I've become that parent that buys my kid things because I would have killed to have them myself as a kid. Finally got around to finishing my summer secret santa piece for deviantart. Due to a lot of hassle originally getting signed up I ended up procrastinating for ages. The experience kind of left a bad taste in my mouth making me not want to do anything associated with it, but it was no way the fault of the person I was assigned so I buckled down and got it done. I'll be posting that in a few days or so after the event posting starts. Did another piece for a friends birthday and that was much easier and faster to create. Drew her final fantasy XIV character. I really love drawing other people's characters. I like creating my own as well, but idk for some reason it's just really fun to use (with permission) the characters others create and put my own spin on them. I like to think I'm just a fan of other artists and therefore creating fan art?
Got my first real boy mom scare last night! After telling my precocious two year for the 500th time not to jump on the couch he learned why. He was happily jumping away when he came down for a landing smacking his chin on the back of the couch. For those of you with kids you know when they do the "I'm actually hurt" cry. Saw him crumple and do the actually hurt cry so rushed over to check on him and all I see is blood coming from his mouth and his little fist covered in it. We get him scooped up and start staunching the blood flow while trying to figure out where the blood is coming from. I was originally concerned that he might have knocked his teeth loose. Luckily it was not nearly as bad as it looked. From what we can put together his front teeth much of skinned the back of his upper lip when he impacted causing a big flap of skin to peel back and of course all the bleeding. It was a pretty big piece, but the bleeding got stopped pretty quickly and he seems perfectly fine this morning. I expected his upper lip to be pretty swollen, but he looks like nothing happened. He did tell me about how he was hurt really bad last night when we woke up this morning.
Let's see what else have I been up to....oh I don't know if I mentioned it last time, but I got a tamagotchi on. I haven't had a tamagotchi since....8th grade maybe? The new ones are so fancy! My kiddo absolutely loves them and when my friend moonfini came over with hers and he started obsessing I thought I'd get one. You can of course raise them, but now you can find them a tamagotchi to marry! Then you get to raise the child that the two produce and continue the lineage. I think I'm on my 8th or 9th generation already! There's also an app now that you can "send" it to and play games, speed date, or propose to random people's tamagotchis in the hopes of creating a cooler tamagotchi. It's pretty involved! On the brightside once you have raised one you can send the child to the parents house during the day until 5pm as free tamagotchi care.
This was a very long rant about mostly nothing I'm realizing now at the end... but hope you're all staying cool and healthy! Until next time!