Happy Tuesday yet again! I’ve been reflective as of late, arriving up to thirty minutes early to classes just so I can sit in the empty halls and stare at the wall. It’s become sacred to me; my music becomes the forefront of my focus rather than a backdrop, and I picture animated sequences moving with the song’s notes. I used to use Flipnote Hatena every day growing up as a kid, an animation program that came free with the Nintendo DSi. It was my primary motivation as an artist; there were thousands of young animators that would post their work there, animation trends, short stories, and more. Because of Hatena, I discovered all sorts of music and animation styles. It was really popular to animate original characters to songs in pseudo-music videos, and I would often make my own. I’d sit in silence at sleepovers, drawing frames over and over again, listening to the same 3 second loop of Carly Rae Jepsen trying to animate my warrior cat persona. It’s something I have, in a way, carried with me into adulthood; I listen to music with the intent of seeing an animated, silly music video in my head. So, with these minutes before class, it’s been really helpful for me to allow myself to go back to that childlike mind and simply sit with the music.
Have a great week, everyone! Thank you for reading.
First, I drew in the letters with pencil. Because this is just for fun and all freehand, it took me a few tries to get the spacing right. After that, I drew in outlines of a bunch of different types of leaves. Using references was really helpful here! As you can see, adding in the leaves kind of created a jumbled mess, but I was able to fix that a little bit through erasing. 
This way, you can lighten the graphite without getting those streaks or worrying about erasing too much.
