A box!?

I'd gotten increasingly anxious about art, and making and sharing it, this year, and had stopped at some point because of this. Writing this now, it feels silly, because who's going to see this? Why does it matter? I don't know. The world is exploding on all levels except literal (for now), and I'm just some late 20s, almost-30-year-old gay trans non-binary schmuck occasionally making art and writing stories, so be gay, do crime, I guess. Or, y'know. Be gay/trans and make art.

Coming back to both digital and traditional painting after a long time, though, and after a year of intensively working on my health, painting this kind of felt like waking up to a number of realisations:

My technical understanding of things (light, colour, form, etc) is limited, I'm impatient and lazy, and my ADHD will have me bouncing off the walls mentally refusing to stick to any sort of slow, repetitive task (like doing clean, detailed lineart... god forbid).

It feels relieving to sit with these realisations without using them as tools of self-hatred - it's ok that I struggle with understanding colours and colour theory/relativity, or light, or form! That's stuff that artists have dedicated to mastering their entire lives/careers. But I had a fun time trying something different here, and playing with light and colours in a way that's really challenging for me, even if it's something I'm nervous about. I learnt a lot! And I think that's pretty neat - I feel good about that.

It's ok to be impatient and lazy, and not want to compile references or take the time to learn how to properly do something, because that's boring and hard, and I'm sure I can work this out on the fly, and then regret it terribly hours into it when I realise that I've drawn/written myself into a hole. This, and ultimately making my process so much longer than it needs to be every time, is something I want to hold myself to... Learning can be fun. Reference studies can be fun. I just need to make it more accessible for myself. Maybe I'll set a time each week to go down to Officeworks and print out some references to do art studies on the way to work, so it's like a fun little side quest. Maybe I'll write a short descriptive environmental study after studying history, so I can incorporate both the factual history and immerse myself in the personal experience of what that time would have been like. I guess I'll hold myself to it, now - they're small, achievable things.

And it's ok to struggle with slow, repetitive tasks - most people do, and with ADHD, it's so much harder. Also, it's art - I don't NEED to do anything if I don't want to, or can't. While I think a part of my kid-self is a little disappointed I can't do immaculate, crispy, thin, detailed manga-esque lineart, nor that I occupy a very clear art niche (like... manga, or comics, or fine arts) I think the weird blurred lines are a fun space to explore. The messy, fluid way I approach traditional art? I can do the same with digital - paint on one layer, let stuff overlap and be unintelligible, slap some grit and heavy noise on top in the place of physical texture. The expansive toolset of colour and level sliders in digital art? Take that experimental play, and all the lessons I can learn from it, and test it out in traditional. Make more experimental comics!!! I have nothing to lose by doing that, and just - not taking everything I do with the heaviness of a life-or-death gravitas. Who cares.

Anyway. It's really nice to just have fun making stuff again. I want to make more (gay) (trans) art. Despite it all, I kinda feel like living again. And just that feeling means more than anything else.