If you follow Birch + Bat on social media, you’ve likely seen my posts all this past month about Rebecca’s Sunday Stream. It’s something new I’m working on in order to get back into art and back into putting myself out there on the internet.
More than a year ago I shut down all my public social media accounts under my old name. I did this because I was having a hard time balancing it and managing it along with my mental health and home life. In the year or so since, it’s been a really positive change for me. Not constantly putting myself out there for other people’s validation also gave me more time and energy for introspection and self-care.
In that time I’ve come out to close friends and family about something I’ve always known about myself but felt I couldn’t share publicly. I am a trans woman, and am slowly starting to live my best life as my authentic self. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be loved and accepted by those closest to me.
As I’ve started to come into my own again, I noticed that one thing that used to bring me joy daily was making and sharing art and sketches of my tabletop game characters and ideas. It’s primarily why I started blogging to begin with; to have a place to share all of my art and doodles. It made for great daily practice, and I improved a lot over the years.
However I live a much busier life now, and finding the time for a few hours a day to relax and sketch has been almost impossible. I have a responsibility to myself and my family to spend my free time working on things for our business. So I’ve decided to use our Twitch account to do both: get in weekly drawing and interacting with the small community of people who love our stuff and my work.
So Rebecca’s Sunday Stream was created! A chill 3-4 hour hangout every Sunday afternoon to chat about tabletop game stuff, dungeons and dragons, art, and life in general. The art shown here are some of the character sketches and things I’ve made with the help and input of our lovely chat members.
Much of the art has been Ravenloft character fashions for an upcoming campaign idea I had, but during my birthday week I’ve also branched out into making ALIEN rpg character sketches, as well as some goblin PC sketches too.
It’s been a lot of fun and it’s gotten me back into doing art. In the years since I left Tumblr I’ve been struggling to keep up with art and mapmaking practice. My skills have definitely slipped and my line work is much less confident than it used to be. But, slowly but surely it’s improving again. The more I keep at it, the better I’ll get over time.
If you’re interested in this, I implore you to join us on Sundays to hang out and make some art. Streaming on Twitch has been an absolute joy and I look forward to it all week. I’m also going to try to do more impromptu streams for videogames and ttrpg design work that might look good on stream.
Be sure to follow us on https://www.twitch.tv/birchandbatstudios. I’ve almost reached affiliate status after only a week, and I’d love to grow the channel.
To everyone following GameJoy, Birch + Bat, and myself, thank you so much! I really appreciate it.
