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.

It's been a while...

It has definitely been a while since I updated here! We just had so much going on...holidays followed by my son's 4th birthday followed by hospital trips. Life has seriously been a bit exhausting lately. Back in March my kiddo turned four and we had a great birthday party for him with balloons, pinata, and even a cake decorated to look like Pororo his favorite cartoon character. We had a bunch of family and friends over to help celebrate and wouldn't you know it...someone was sick. Who? No idea...well a few ideas, but long story short we all got sick. Now recently I had taken my son to his yearly check up and told the doctor I was suspicious that perhaps he has asthma just because I noticed after running around a lot he usually starts coughing. He prescribe albuterol to see if it helped. Well before I could fill the prescription we all got sick from his birthday. By that weekend it was obvious Sammy was super sick. We were miserable, but he was really not good. He had the runny nose and horrible cough, but it was so much worse. He was super lethargic and trying to take naps on his own. He seemed wobbly and when it was bed time I noticed he was breathing like he was running a marathon just trying to sleep. At midnight I called it and said we're going to the ER. After getting him checked in we get called over by the nurse who put the finger monitor on him to check blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen levels. Immediately he tells us to take Sammy to a room. Turns out he was definitely in respiratory distress. They put him on a nebulizer and initiated breathing treatments. We ended up spending two nights in the hospital in the pediatrics wing. Seeing a toddler have to get an IV put in and with breathing mask on is probably one of the most heart breaking things ever. I have to say it was some of the worst mommy moments of my life. Luckily I felt the need to bring him in or things could have been so much worse. Since then we've been doing daily breathing treatments and likely he does indeed have asthma which is why this virus caused such an issue. He's recovered well and life has gone on with a new routine that will hopefully keep us from a return visit to the hospital. Right after we recovered from this was Easter. Then it just seems like various other things kept happening for a bit, but finally stuff is calming down.
On to the lighter stuff! Anime I've been watching lately is Shadows House, My Love Story with Yamada, The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague, and Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion. Shadows House started a little slow, but the story has developed so much since the start and I'm really enjoying it now! I just finished season one of it and I'm getting started on season 2. The whole concept is interesting and it kind of has almost a fairy tale kind of feeling to it. My Love Story with Yamada is just a fun Rom-com and as an online gamer I couldn't help, but feel some connection with the main characters. It makes me laugh and I love the parts where they interact online! The Ice Guy one I just finished and I'm kind of bummed I reached the end. It was just one of those super sweet anime that almost makes your teeth hurt it's so sweet. It was really just a ridiculous feel good anime. I liked the mix of yokai and people that they blended in it! Fun if you're looking for something light hearted and very much none serious. Finally Raeliana is still coming out and it's another Isekai (anime is super saturated with these right now) Honestly it's not a super original plot, but I'm enjoying seeing the characters develop and the relationship build between the main character and the Duke.
Drawing wise I have been drawing, but it's been kind of spread out. I've also been realizing that I've been forgetting to post them here and then when I do notice I have quite a few to post and I hate to flood the gallery with my stuff. I have to admit that I've also been feeling some art block and that unless I feel inspired I'm having a hard time creating good pieces. I've been thinking about finally starting commissions as well, but I'm seriously at a loss as to how to set the pricing. I suppose I'll figure it out eventually.
Other than all of that I've been squeezing in some video games. Grow: Song of the Evertree has kept me pretty pre-occupied. It's really cute and has some really creative ideas twisted in with the farming sim feel and town management. It's different in a good way and I really enjoy that.
Whelp if you've stuck with me and my rambling until here I thank you for reading my randomness! I hope to be putting up some cool pieces soon. Got two to post right now. Hope you're all staying healthy and have good things happening!

Art Fight and Current Life

It has been a while! Lately we've been busy with odd weather followed by being sick and finally now summer. We had a really unseasonably wet and cold spring and summer weather didn't really hit us until the last week of June. We all caught some sort of nasty cold and were out for nearly two and a half weeks. If you have kids you know how much it sucks to have a three year old whose nose just doesn't stop running. I also ended up in urgent care due to a very bizarre headache. It was located only in one spot, not light sensitive, sudden stabbing pain and then disappeared, and then it would strike again. It was honestly so painful it woke me up the entire night and continued into the next day so I figured I should have it looked at. Luckily it was nothing too serious as far as we can tell and I was told to try and take it easy.
Okay! Now onto the fun things! As of July 1st art fight has started. Moonfini actually got me into it as she had heard about it before. Basically you register and get placed on one of two teams either Wither or Bloom. You then submit some of your own OC's for the other team to draw/attack you with. You then are able to search through their characters and chooses someone to "attack". Once you attack they're able to revenge if they want and of course vice versa. So far I've done 8 attacks and I thought I would post the comparison pictures here for people to see if they wanted! Art fight is still going for another couple weeks so if you want to get in on it you should go to their website of artfight.net

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!

Art Process 2

First off a Merry late Christmas to you all! I hope that you had a great one! This is kind of a continuation of my last post in a continuation of my art process. This is of course my most recent drawing. I did use a picture of a contortionist for reference because it's hard to just imagine that position in my mind! Later on afterwards too I had to do an adjustment to the left arm as you'll notice in the finished picture it's in a different position. As lots of us do I asked what people thought and it confirmed what I was suspecting that it just didn't look right in perspective to the rest of the pose. (Never be too proud to ask other people's opinions).

As you can see I started with my rough basic sketch, followed by the line work, then you have the base colors, followed up by the end product which has the shading. All my digital work is done on a surface pro in Clip Studio. Hope you guys are enjoying these little inside looks into my process!