Daily Dex - Meltan, Axew, Trapinch, Frillish and Seismitoad
In which I challenge myself to draw a pokemon every day until I stop
OK so I know this feels moot at this point but like. Covid? Covid's got hands??
Before the first lockdown happened in March of 2020 my partner and I started taking it very seriously because of health stuff in our immediate household. I don't wanna get too far into it (I've even talked about it on the blog before) but like suffice to say - lots of immunucompromisation going on here, not even sure that's a word but we're going with it.
I've had Covid twice now; once in October of 2020 (which fucked me up beyond belief), and now again in 2026 which directly followed a bout of laryngitis and holy shit this this newer one is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. The primary downtime was like bad-bad but I'm definitely now in the throes of "long covid", a thing I did not experience at all with my 2020 run.
Every day I get up, do not physically exert myself at all out of caution, work from home at a desk, and by about 3-4pm my body just collapses. Going up my stairs exhausts me in a way that is inconceivable 2 months ago. Brain fog kicking my ass, sitting up in bed to eat after 5pm almost impossible. And like, I have a bunch of work shit I HAVE to get done (I missed almost 2 and a half weeks already) so getting up and doing some work isn't negotiable.
I'm definitely better today than I was even within the last week but not by much!! It's fucking madness, and I don't really have an end in sight which is like really, REALLY frustrating.
So at the very least, I'm drawing pokemon in bed between naps and hydrating. Please enjoy the last 5 day's worth.
Fri 04/10/2026 - Meltan
I like this little guy. Living metal with a bolt/knut eye thing? Hell yea. Mixing metals is weird though, the gold on silver ain't my thing but it is what it is.
Sat 04/11/2026 - Axew
This one feels like the same school of design as Garchomp; a small dinosaur that evolves into something Ultraman would fight, complete with the design itself looking more like a person in a therapod costume than an actual therapod.
Sun 04/12/2026 - Trapinch
If I didn't know this was supposed to be an ant I would have sworn it was a robot turtle. You can see it, right??
Mon 04/13/2026 - Frillish
Alright so usually I only do one variant of a pokemon if there are multiple; genders, divergent evolutions, regional variants etc etc but when I got 592 on the random number generator and saw this thing with both gender side by side my IMMEDIATE gut response was "woah, transition timeline"
The blue male (of course blue is male) looks sad and depressed and as soon as they transition they're happy and full of life.
I know nothing about this pokemon but I can't unsee it now. The official art has the blue one sad and the pink-ish one happy. I don't think I'm wrong to read into it. Trans rights forever.
Tues 04/14/2026 - Seismitoad
Ugh. No thanks lol. I already didn't like the design of this thing but also the darker blue color pencil I've got just sucks and it didn't make it work the way I wanted, so not only do I think Seismitoad's design is bad to begin with, I made it look worse.