Good morning lovely people!
I have some major updates; Some good but unfortunately some that aren’t so good.

THE FIRST BIG CHANGE:

Let’s start with the not so good, to rip the bandage off;
For the last few months (since November) I’ve been trying so hard to get my Patreon Subscribers some consistent monthly merch. This was made possible because my baseline income on Patreon ended up going up to $400 before fees.
As long as I kept growing and stayed over that number, the intent was to keep it running and give my Patreons an awesome new merch design every month.

Unfortunately, despite my attempts to market and grow the Patreon page, people started to leave one by one, and a few of them taking some pretty big pledges with them. I don’t begrudge them and I’m not upset or anything! I understand that pledging to something like Patreon is a commitment we can’t always stay consistent with, and sometimes life has to take precidence.

Sadly, the sudden loss of more than half of my Patreon income means that I have to backtrack the monthly merch club until I get back to my minimum monthly income goals there.

What does this mean for you?
It means that starting in a couple months, merch will no longer be automated monthly through Patreon and you will have to get any prints, posters, stickers or shirts off of my Redbubble page.

Why a couple months and not immediately?
I have decided that even though I have to pause monthly merch, I’m not going to remove the merch that I already have scheduled; As long as you remain pledged on a merch tier for the next couple months you will still get merch for those months.

What does this mean for Ash Something?
It really just means that I’m going to have a couple months in which I can compile more artwork and hopefully rebuild my patreon following so that I can afford monthly merch for you all again, and not have to worry as much about setting aside 1-3 days to work specifically on updating a merch design for Patreon.

I’m looking at this more like a break from monthly merch and not an end to it, as I really do want to keep giving my followers here access to hard copies of my work!

THE SECOND BIG CHANGE
This one is potentially a good/happy change!

Around this time last year, I set up a discord community, and attempted to integrate it with Patreon, but I didn’t really have the time or energy to think about how best to do that to make it feel like a reward for my patrons, instead of just another social media for people to jump into, and so it laid by the wayside, inactive for an incredibly long time.

Around a year prior to that, I set up a facebook page called Ash Something’s Art Lovers as a kind of community for anyone who was a fan of my art and art in general to hang out, chat, share art, and interact directly with me. Unfortunately, I was unable to keep people interacting, because I honestly don’t have any experience building and growing pages and communities.
Social media is something I’m on, but I’m not any kind of professional when it comes running and operating one, and I’m not what anyone would consider a “social media influencer.”

I’m just here to draw, you know?

Now, here’s the thing.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been attempting to get both of these pages refocused and build them both up as communities for not just MY art and such, but for artists, SWs, clowns, etc to gather and help build each other up.

And with that, I’ve now created a second facebook group, with the specific intent to connect artists and SWs who sell customs to connect with each other and help each other grow.

On top of that, I updated my original Ash Something’s Art Lovers group to be a little more open, and I revamped the discord to be a home base for both groups AND my Patreon!

What does this mean?
For starters, it means that you now have a new community to be a part of that is specifically for Ash Something Art news and discussions, on Facebook, where you’re also allowed to just post about whatever art you want, as well as another new community that is specifically aimed at helping you all connect to OTHER artists (or potential clients if you have your own artistic endeavors to sell and market).
On top of that, if you’re present on Discord, it means that you have access to a one-stop community that is the combination of both of those groups, which already has a special section for all of my @Backstage Passholders, that will be a home base for me to run livestreams, Q&As, and other events specifically for Patrons and regular commission clients of min!

Here are the links to these pages and the Discord!
Ash Something’s Art Lovers – Facebook Group
Art Network by Ash Something – Facebook Group
Ash Something’s Art Lovers – Discord Home Base

Join at your discretion, and have fun! I’m always happy to have you all in my community! As with many of my endeavors, I have made my discord an 18+ community, and it includes 18+ channels which will require age verification directly through me for you to be a part of!

THE THIRD BIG CHANGE
This one ties into the prior one.

Starting sometime this week, I will be adding a new reward to the $5 or $10/month tiers on Patreon;
That is, all subscribers on the tier that I choose (and higher) will have immediate access to my discord’s Backstage-Passholders channels and be able to participate in subscriber-only events and have access to subscriber-only content (such as the livestream events I mentioned above.)

Everyone is free to join my Discord, as it is a public community, however the backstage pass will be hidden from anyone who is not either a Patreon subscriber or a client who has consistently commissioned me for various work, which means you will be among a select group of special individuals who will have much more direct access to me.

Events in the Backstage Passholder channels will include direct Q&A sessions, livestreams in which I take and complete sketch requests from you all in real time, do portfolio reviews, or do realtime-critiques of your own artwork, as well as allowing you to have input on certain decisions like what new tier rewards I may offer on Patreon, and such!

It may also include the option to have 1-on-1 art lessons from me, in the future, however I have not decided yet if that is something I wish to implement.

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW!
This is a lot for one update, so sorry for the long post, but thank you all so much for your continued support, and I hope you look forward to the continued growth of Ash Something Art, not just as an artist but as a community! Have a good one, and I hope to see you all around the new groups and servers!