golfcart to paradice

I have mixed feelings about Krita bc it's so so close to outstripping CSP but it's learning curve is just higher for me. It's come so far though, and the 5.3 update has this:

Which is something I've desperately desperately wanted!!! Krita is inching closer and closer to having a "reactive" canvas. My goal of figuring out a system to emulate paper crinkles divots and texture is still a ways off, but this makes the worst offender, a non-reactive brush, so so so much better. I can't think of like. Any??? Physical medium? That does not reduce white spot break through if you press it harder into the canvas, so this feels huge. I'll be testing it out today to see if it fucks as hard as I think it will.

At this point I think.....I wanna test a stupid bullshit work around for how to make a more reactive canvas possible. I'm not really sure it will work but....it will be fun to test.

Other exciting improvements to Krita:

This marker mode is going to be such a huge win for anyone who wants to make a watercolor brush that's more accurate to a nice wet brush.

note shown: the INCREDIBLE looking comic making tool I'm curious about.

My goal is, if I do work with a manufacturer, to list their company (goal, specific name) as a collaborator. Branding wise, this looks like [fellty x SocksCo] or [fellty x Jane Doe]. I am not overly fond of seeing labor being credited to only the artist under the guise that design is the only thing worth crediting for and I want to investigate labor practices to ensure I am in compliance with both my morals but what is ethical. Right now though, the easiest way to approach this is making things myself which is vastly what I prefer.

In 2020 I face-planted hard and badly, but its given me experience for this, landing painfully on my elbows and pushing myself up as quickly as possible. My friends are my biggest supporters through this and it would be impossible without their care. My health is still pretty bad, and I have spent a lot of time sleeping to try and stay ahead of whatever my body is struggling with. I'm at a point where I'm accepting that to manage flares I can't work a traditional 9-5. My flares don't schedule themselves, they happen whether my boss likes it or not.

I think it's the forgetting, the sensation I have the practice but also the emptiness of knowing its just harder that day. What is retained is how the process is supposed to go, but it's the memory of the exact way it's supposed to be that becomes vague. When I use a reference there's the same resistant anger, I wanted to draw it my way? The way I can't remember how.

The way it's supposed to go is the logic of the drawing, first the arm, then the wrist, then the hand. It's the sort of routine. But when I go to follow the routine it's like I can't recall the exact details of how it actually exists in space. The recall feels like a strain, a wall shaped like a headache.

I guess it's learning to draw with less fidelity, but I like the high fidelity. If I were to follow the "logic" of the drawing I think my style would become very graphical. Lots of beautiful graphical styles but I attach a lot of emotions around the fidelity of detail so it feels like it kills a lot of the joy of drawing for me.

What to do when you can't remember a thing but feel dead set on remembering. I'm not always resistant to a reference but there's points where suddenly it's not about the reference it's about knowing what you feel you should know. It's about the loss of when you don't.

This familiar pattern plays out though, and has thousands of times. I repeat it my grief or avoid drawing to avoid my grief. Stress shapped into a wall that I'm still navigating.

Marketing advice I've seen trotted out freaks me the fuck out esp since it seems like an inauthenticity pipeline, so seeing someone approach from this angle is actually such a relief to me. Never seen marketing advice that actually felt grounding.

So far it seems to be:

Art that encourages, stylistic prowess, works that make me feel a bit like how I think people chained to their cubicles look at beach palm trees (wow, what a beautiful place to go), work that feels grounding, some silliness, novelty, and motion.

Being able to improvise is crucially important in all steps of making things for me, and make sure it yields to digesting or processesing otherwise I get really bored. I can't making something too ridgedly planned so I need to create with guide rails that allow for responsiveness at every step.

When I look inward though, I realize that's a pretty big important blind spot for me- I actually don't quite know what responsiveness looks like, rather what I found limits my responsiveness and engaging with daydreaming and curiosity on the page. Usually if I pre-emptively Know what to do them I already know it so I don't feel any need to draw it out. It's more fun to see what happens if I have to do it on the spot! It also frankly limits the amount I can hem and haw about theoretical execution and limits me from feeling chained to making something rather than, again, being responsive at every stroke to what I'm engaging with.

Tall order. But kids draw like this all the time. Once upon a time there was a tree. With big gnarly roots and a large gash down the side. And what's related to this tree? Where are we going? Maybe a bird? See this is already much more fun for me.

This means though that if responsiveness via creative day dream improve and constant experimentation is the goal then all my guideliness need to focus around that. I may actually be able to be "more ridgedly" plotted out if I can figure out how to make a thumbnail that doesn't feel like suddenly my piece is too nailed down to have fun.

Maybe it would look like, I wonder what all these shapes are doing? That could actually be pretty fun, making some blobs and then figuring out how they relate to eachother once I find a right gob of blob.

My coloring has been pretty weak lately because I find that I'm not really engaging with it like I did when I was forced to use one layer of mspaint and Choose Inmediately. But that's also so extremely much to think about all at once. So I'm going to need to refine responsiveness there. I tend to approach coloring more mathematically lately which might be part of the problem. Going to have to think on this one more.

Anyways I haven't drawn much due to health shit I'm trying to figure out. I got one of them figured out after going to the ER and maybe on Friday after another doctors appointment I'll have another clue. I am eager to not return to my former job though, and I have about ten days before my LOA runs out so I want to figure things out and have them digested enough to expidite me shifting careers.

The goal is to move from avoidance, to fretting, to plotting, to action. Gap between plotting and action has been rough due to low but developing skillset around the planning-action bridge/execution cycle. Usually plans function too ridgedly to actually be actionable and divorce from in the moment responsiveness creating a crash. So. Better to approach with experiments and curiosity rather than This Is My New Life Now. Important to sit with fretting to drill down exactly what those needs entail so that goals align with needs.

Learning to prioritize means learning to be cued into your needs pretty consistently or the priorities will feel meaningless and burnout inducing.

Effectively I am a door to door salesmen so making that not feel genuinely ass for everyone involved means the mental caloric content of the ad needs to be excusable and inoffensive to be effective.

Basically if I'm going to make an ad it should be fun to witness so my time and their time isn't wasted. For me, I'm not sure an introduction is really that helpful though it can help facilitate a sense of a relationship for better or worse. "Ive seen that guy around" is more effective than "who is this" but for most people "who is this" is going to be their first impression of me. So "what is this being sold" is more effective to highlight right now. Art is endless cold sales at first unless you're very lucky or very established which I hardly am.

So. We sit with what I am selling, and what my needs are for the sale. Up and down health issues with no clear days or distinctions for when my brain is functioning mean I will need to survive on selling items that can be made when health issues let up. I can reasonably get out of the house once a week or every two weeks. Items ship "x" day of the week and dedicating myself to that day feels reasonable. Realistically I think these would be POD prints and as I raise funds, getting my own printer to ensure better quality and consistency, and frankly more peace of mind with how POD labor functions.

Grandpa Meat currently has a crush on Uncle Wrincle.