Cool stuff, art stuff and breakup stuff

I have been reading a few cool books on anxiety, am trying out some anti-ai stuff and breaking up with Instagram was hard but needed to be done. Also pardon all my grammer errers.

Coolio Cool stuff!

---

I have not linked any of these cool things I’ve found below. There’s this thing called “search engine” and you can find it yourself :)

I have been listening to an audio book called “The Courage to be disliked” and I have found it absolutely fascinating. The Audible version has three narrators, two are just fine but the younger person they have narrating is irritating. Still, even with the terrible voice of the youth, the book is rock solid and great advice.

I struggle with inferiority complex, imposter syndrome and anxiety just like the rest of us and this book has really given me a different perspective to ponder

I also read another book on Kindle called “Give me space but don’t go far” by Haley Weaver. It’s a mix of her life with anxiety both in written word and comic format. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it helped me realize more to have a relationship with anxiety rather than try to squash it down. It’s an easy read and I found it very wonderful

I’m also trying out a program called “Glaze” which supposedly makes it harder for Ai to snag your images. It’s 4+ gigs large and slow, time will tell if it’ll really make nice or not but so far it’s a breeze to use for me.

I have cut my doomscrolling down by a landslide by using this app called One Sec. It’s fantastic and I have it on my iPhone and PC. You set it up to let it be your “nanny” with social media. So if I want to go see what Uncle Raiferd’s new conspiracy theory post is on Facebook? Well now I have to take a French language quiz, or sit and breathe for one minute, or write in a journal BEFORE I can even go see Uncle R’s stupid post…and honestly by the time I’m done with the intervention, I generally don’t care to go to social media (this also involves Reddit which I do like but can’t seem to tear myself away from).

Art stuff

---

I’m working on my character design portfolio (CD folio) and when I’m at a place I can give a detailed post about what I’ve been up to, I will. At the moment, it’s still a hot mess.

To not burn out on my CD folio I swap between my swoopy sexy style where I’ll either go on Croquis Cafe (worth every dollar spent there) or Earths World (they should really charge, too) and draw without thinking much and just enjoying the process. The enjoyment of that generally turns itself into a piece. This particular piece didn’t start out as Cleopatra, it just ended up that way. We can title this “The Key of Life” (which has no hidden meaning in the picture, she’s just holding the ancient Egyptian symbol “The Ankh” which is defined as the key of life.

I have 7 followers and I know almost all of you on some personal level, so this (part of the post) is for y’all.

If you’re like me, you see someone’s artwork and just marvel at it. For me, I sometimes get wound up with “well they are just perfect, talented and can draw like that with their eyes closed.” However working with a number of mentors in the industry, I realize many artists (and non-artists) have a process that’s usually a hot mess rather than something that just magically comes out of their hand, effortlessly.

So here’s my process of this particular image.

I started with this sketch, just a loose mannequin to get the flow of the pose correctly. I’m looking at a model who is making this pose and often studying it over and over and over (again I use Croquis Cafe for most of my model inspiration, which is behind a paywall, but Earthsworld is free and if you’re a photographer or artist, this site is my all-time fav for face studies of some of the quirkiest people on earth).

When I’m done with an initial sketch I start to flesh it out a bit by adding volume onto my mannequin. While I do aim for some accuracy, I’m looking for harmonies throughout the image on how things flow around, how does the negative space look in it, is the personality and story there?

Once I have this down, I start my first real rough draft to see how things work. I have a NASTY habit of altering my pose and a few of my friends have pointed out “I liked your first version than your clean up.” So I’ve been trying to stick to the original energy of the sketch. Trying to do this and NOT lose that energy is, I found, a very delicate balance.

After I’m done with this sketch, I move to catching any proportion errors and adding in a bit of story. As I said, this didn’t start out as a Cleopatra like character, the story came to me as I was drawing. I usually listen to a lot of music and that influences me as well.

From here it’s my own process of adding in patterns, shapes and trying to keep the harmonies together (and as you can see, I lost a little of the energy here which will be an ongoing process for, probably forever :D ).

After that is a bunch of cleanup and choosing to see what lines style in and what needs to be taken out.

Breakup Stuff

---

Ever been in a toxic relationship? I know some of you who follow me have like I have. It’s like the two of you sit and take turns sipping a toxic potion that just makes things worse and worse. Sometimes it’s the other person who is the toxicity and sometimes it’s you (I’ve been on both sides). When you finally break free of those toxic relationships, hindsight becomes 20/20 and you say to yourself “how could I have missed all the warning signs.” That was me and Instagram.

I want to preface; I actually love Instagram. The friends, the adoration and constant dopamine praise you get is just wonderful. But as all of you have probably experienced, it’s very temporary and you’re left with a lot of… well, bleh.

However, I noticed that each time Instagram reiterated itself, I was giving in and compromising my worth and value. First it was small things like shifting the like button, or the easy-to-use post button. Then that gave way to “Stories” then to “Reels” and now to “Threads.” Then there was the algorithm that punished you more than rewarding you. And it always seemed a handful of artists knew “the secrets of how to get more engagement, likes and followers. And likes are better than followers no wait, it’s more comments are better than…no that’s not right, it’s how many stories you share… I meant posts, or something.” JFC!

And I don’t have to bring up that ANY artist that posts a picture, you have some dude with a weird mustache messaging you to share your work with him for an NFT and you’ll get tons of followers from a country you’ve never heard of where they farm those followers. Oh, and don’t get political because then you’ll have a shit storm on your post…unless you WANT that…for engagement.

I have tried this stuff, I’m not a marketer, I’m an artist. I don’t want to do the “5 secret steps to get 10k new followers.” I hate this game; I want to spend my days having a good time and not dealing with all this crazy ass bullshit of trying to market my work rather than focusing on my work. (Yes I know that’s important but there are other solutions for that).

But then the final blow was sometime late last week where artists in Europe were showing how you could opt out with all future posts that would not scrape your images for their Ai Image Generator, but in the states you are unable to do so. All my work has now been fed into a database without at least giving me a choice if I wanted that to happen or not. Ok, no worries, I’ll just click that off BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE IT’S NOT A FEATURE FOR US IN THE STATES AND WE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT MATTER IN THIS WORLD! #FREEDOM #USA ::eagle emoji::

I felt I’d endured enough and decided it was time to leave the platform. Now, of course, that cuts me off with a TON of social stuff and at first it did leave me a little rattled but now I’ve found myself much more at peace with that decision. And hey, Substack is kinda rocking.

But what about finding work?

So yes, IG and X is where recruiters look the most, as well as producers and art directors. But there’s also LinkedIn, word of mouth (all of you who currently follow me already know many contacts and if you don’t, DM me) and I’m going to try to set up a brainstorming session with some art buddies of mine to see if we can come up with more solutions. Meta may have the monopoly but so did Sears and Roebuck once upon a time…and now they are nothing, but a tiny store annexed to an abandoned mall.

---

So who knows, maybe next you’ll see a post that says “just kidding, I’m back on IG, please like and follow and share and comment on my latest post so I can get that sweet dopamine rush” however I do think I’m done with it.