I’m free now, I have to get this stuff done I have a real honest to god deadline and I’m very excited to write about the Absolute Bullshit I hope to get up to. Art Diaries will more than likely remain a Tuesday afternoon publication, at least up until September, and I’m always willing to write more in depth articles about stuff I do in these newsletters (and for what its worth, AD will be free forever, and any extra articles that relate specifically to my portfolio will also absolutely follow that rule, so hopefully if it’s a really good portfolio, this will be a resource accessible well into the future).

Since you guys are awesome, you can have a bit of a Sneak Peak into what’s hopefully coming in the future, provided you can read my handwriting.

ANYWAY! I have stuff to yell about now! Woo!

I Thought I Signed Up For Art

You did! I’ve just been busy, but I have some drawings to share!

It was fun to do some inking with a fountain pen, but as you can see from the note saying I need more ink, I don’t have any backup ink. I will get a convertor at some point but the Voices are saying buy a second fountain pen and have one for coloured ink and another for black. If anyone has any recommendations for fountain pens that are good for art but also not that expensive I’d appreciate it. Then again, I’d totally take another Kakuno.

These are some small gouache paintings I did recently, based on a technique I saw erinkatearcher do. Looking through her page now for finding the link, I’m actually in awe of her style, woah. The technique in question is using a gold paint as your background wash, and then painting on top of that. I used acrylic for the gold and gouache for the actual painting, the gold background is actually different in each of the paintings, it’s not a lighting thing. I found a tube of gold acrylic but an inconveniently placed sticker (and my own forgetfulness) covered the part of the tube that states its transparent, so the moonlight drawing was on top of a transparent layer. The grassy field one had yellow ochre beneath the gold, which created a more coppery look in real life, and the lake had cadmium yellow hue, which created a gold that reminded me of how gold looks in Gustav Klimt’s works, such as in The Kiss (LOOK!!! I TOOK THAT PHOTO MYSELF I SAW IT ITS SO COOL!!!!!!!!!! OK ANYWAY)

I found that the technique was very slippery to paint on, you can very much see in the clouds of the field painting that I just couldn’t get it to play ball, the acrylic acted as a slippy film that watery paints weren’t working with, and I’m not sure what would prevent that, but it looked better when I peeled the tape (since the orange tape definitely made it more pronounced when I was painting, I think). Since the taping made me overestimate the size of the paintings, I added some grass at the bottom and framing with gold ink at the sides except it looked super dull. I still have a lot to learn about gouache, but oh man I love it. Anyway, onto the boring parts of this newsletter.

Whats In Store For Future Publications?

GOOD THINGS I HOPE!!! So, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I have a portfolio due next March. Make no mistake, the drought of content within these newsletters is very much temporary, as I have a lot of work to get done. It’ll be mainly sketchbook stuff and concept work pertaining to my story “Gabhar”, which you will be hearing a LOT more about. Most of the stuff will likely be digital from here on out, but that’s a good thing actually, as it means I can deliver a lot more in terms of project breakdowns! While Art Diaries is the main shtick, I’d love to write individual articles about all sorts of things, and don’t worry, it's all about art. At the core of this newsletter, I want to encourage you to make things, and while I don’t think I’ll be publishing tutorial content, I will be publishing guides about how I did something in the hopes that you try too. I’ve got an idea for an article about screen alternatives that includes some creative endeavours, as well as some about nostalgia. And I’d love to write loads about Gabhar, which will encompass storytelling, worldbuilding and plenty of mythology and Irish influence. As a treat, since this is a visual newsletter, I bless you with some Gabhar art from last year that I haven’t really shared! It likely won’t all make the cut for my portfolio since theres 3 other characters who need the space, but I really love Fionn he’s my guy.

Media Corner

girl what do you think its moomins and rdr2 its always moomins and rdr2. I’ll pick up a book or something eventually but for now have a boatload of screenshots that I took, I think this’ll be a nice closing to this weeks entry.

Conclusion

I’m very excited and also really should get better at calming myself down in the evenings so the excitement doesn’t impair my sleep. Hope you enjoyed, have a great morning/afternoon/evening/whatever and make loads and loads of art!!!

Arts and Crafts are Very Fun

This week I did a bit of sketching and a bit of crafting. Unsurprisingly, I finally drew some Red Dead Redemption 2 characters. I struggled a bit with Arthur, I guess theres a bit more pressure to make him look “right” since he’s the guy you play as, and also because he has to have a very distinct look since in game you can play dress up and give him different beard styles and stuff but he still looks like himself. Shading made all the difference, and I think it shows that I learn anatomy by sculpting.

As mentioned, I also did some crafting. As we well know, I like to birdwatch, and when I don’t have binoculars, I use a camera to be able to zoom in on birds. While I always keep it safe and sound in it’s own spot in a bag, I noticed some scratches on the screen and wanted to prevent any more from happening. By some miracle, I had some scrap fabric from a pair of pants, (I had to hem about 5 inches off a pair of small pants!!! Why does this always happen with fast fashion pants!!!) it was a fleece like material on the inside, and was just wide and long enough as to where if I folded it in half, I could tack down the sides and have a pouch. How perfect! I used a blanket stitch to give it a cutesy handmade feel and added a flap closure. I wanted it to have a button but I don’t actually. Own buttons. I considered velcro but it was loud and finicky. Like any good crafter, though, I hoard any and all usable scraps so I had some extra dense EVA foam offcuts that I made into a button. There’s also a hole for the camera strap to go through. It’s not meant to protect the camera from being whalloped around, but it should keep the screen free from scratches.

“Journaling” Is Just A Thin Excuse To Buy Pens

So my stationery order arrived on Friday! Yay! I did have to pay a customs charge because of how much I ordered (boo) but it still works out more affordable to buy most stationery direct from Japan (I paid less for express shipping than I have for standard shipping on items coming from Europe, and credit where credit is due, DHL estimated Friday and they delivered Friday). My Leuchtturm1917 came on Thursday, and now that I added two new notebooks to my collection, I have established a bit of an “ecosystem” and I gotta say I am having so much fun.

Alright, so here’s what I’ve got in the ecosystem. The small black book with stickers is my ‘everything’ journal, it’s the first one I got, it’s a Hahnemuhle DiaryFlex. I used it for everything, and I still do to a degree. It gets dragged around with me. The big black one is my sketchbook, I included it in the photo to make me feel cool. It’s a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook, it’s my 20th sketchbook, go start one now. The white one is a Midori MD notebook, dot grid. My first time using a dot grid notebook! I mentioned this in #4, but I’m dyspraxic, I have gods worst handwriting, I need lines. I’m using it as a commonplace book, and commonplacing is a bit of an obsession. The final pictured notebook is my Leuchtturm. You will very quickly learn what my favourite colour is. This is what I use for ‘typical’ journalling, I write about my feelings or whatever and sometimes follow a prompt and you will never ever in the history of ever see the stuff I write in here, even if most of it is just describing my dinner. I have this rule where I have to expand on things, it helps the writing flow, so theres no “had dinner”, I am stating what I had because I know that if I say I had pasta I’ll go on a little tangent about why this specific dish is so special to me and blah blah blah.

Stationery Haul Slash Review

Look at that photo. Doesn’t that just spark so much joy? I got this from Bungu, and I really like how they package things in a furoshiki. We’ll start small and work big. I haven’t actually gotten to try the pencil lead, since the Kuru Toga comes preloaded with some and I haven’t used it all yet, and I haven’t used the Mono eraser because to be honest it’s almost entirely decorative. The ruler is a self explanatory purchase to help me format things and it has gotten a deceptive amount of use. I like the purple, and it has a cool feature where you can still see the black numbers on black backgrounds, and nobody else appreciates how awesome this is to me, so please tell me that its very cool.

Leave a comment

I got two highlighers, because I do not actually own any good normal highlighters. I think I have one of those star shaped ones but it’s bulky and sucks to use. I do have glittery ones that I use copiously to decorate but they bleed a lot. I had been using my yellow PITT pen which ironically solves most highlighter issues (doesn’t bleed through paper, you can get a stable line ect ect), but I got the Kire-Na in yellow and a Campus dual-tone highlighter with lavender and pink to decorate things. The prongs on the Kire-Na are awesome and make my life significantly easier. And it’s actually a highlighter, so it pops more than the PITT pen ink ever did.

Next is the Jetstream Touch Lite, I got it as a 0.5 because I liked the yellow colour, I’m not a huge fan of the smaller tip size, but it does allow me to fit more things on a page. I do like how little pressure you need to write with, and the yellow colour makes me happy. I got a Kuru Toga, I didn’t technically need a third mechanical pencil body but it came in purple. I have a 0.7 and a 0.5 Faber Castell one, and I use the 0.5 exclusively for 2H lead, and I’ll probably put 2B in the 0.7 next. The mechanism isn’t really applicable for the work I use my other 0.5 mechanical pencil for, since the mechanism works based on pressure, so if you’re drawing one continuous line it isn’t going to turn much, but it doesn’t impede user experience, it’s comfortable to hold and apparently the eraser is replaceable, which is a nice touch.

The last pen I got was the Pilot Kakuno fountain pen. It’s my first fountain pen, I still need to get a convertor and inks (why is the CON-70 so expensive!!!) but I like it. I’m not used to writing with a fountain pen so it’s a bit of a strange adjustment for my wrist, especially since I learned the hard way where to put my fingers (the ink it comes with is hard to get off of skin!) and I have a terrible habit of smudging the ink, but I like it. And drawing with it is pretty nifty.

Also the nib has a smiley face on it like what more could you even want.

I already mentioned the MD notebook, I’m still learning how to write on a dot grid but my god they weren’t kidding when they said it lies flat. It’s FLAT. It’s nice to write on, there’s a bit of ghosting I believe it’s called, but not a dealbreaker. It is very much ‘minimal’, for example when compared to a Leuchtturm, but I paid €14 for the MD compared to the nearly €30 a Leuchtturm is. I find it very enjoyable to write in and it brings out the best in a lot of my pens. If you have any particularly inky pens like those glitter highlighters I have, they mightn’t play very nice with the MD, but it’s just a good experience overall and I really enjoy commonplacing in this. I think what I’m doing is commonplacing. I have a new fixation, it’s paraphrasing Wikipedia articles of stuff I think is interesting into it.

The last thing I got was the Campus looseleaf paper, I got it because I wanted to try the dot ruling for graphs and it’s exactly what it says on the tin, but the paper feels much nicer than a typical refill pad. I also mentioned I got a Leuchtturm, I love the Moleskine-esque features (ribbons, back pocket, style), the colours, the fact it has the stickers, but I wish the paper was just a little less see through. It’s almost perfect, but for the price point I wish it was a smidgen better. I know I said I would never ever show the insides, and thats going to stay pretty true, but here’s the opening page.

Media Corner

Normally I use this section to talk about shows or movies or whatever but I haven’t been watching much. I want to get back into reading. You can leave recommendations but I am banned from buying new reading books because I have so many unread, please keep in mind with any recommendations that I’m rebuilding my reading habit and I often feel like that one tumblr meme where its an ogre upset that he read Ulysses but only understood surface level themes.

Ok tangent over. I’ve been listening to so much ABBA. Don’t get me wrong I love Dancing Queen as much as the next guy but you guys have got to get on basically all the tracks on The Visitors. The title track is incredibly catchy, it’s a protest song about persecution in the USSR, and while on my first listen I was like “yeah this reminds me of how my nerves make me feel”, subsequently I started to really recognise what the lyrics were referring to. I also really love Eagle, it’s such a good song and I’m really glad it’s their longest. It wasn’t a major hit but one place it charted in was West Germany! Reading that was a bit of a mindfuck for me since, if it isn’t already obvious, the Berlin wall fell before my time. Reading that really contextualised things in that way that history does sometimes. Another really good track that I cannot recommend enough is “I Let The Music Speak”, it’s such an experience of a song and you can see how it was an exploration into more musical-styled writings that were then realised in “Chess”. I’m not the best at deciphering song meanings on my own, but when someone is able to tell me, I find myself able to then appreciate it, “Swan Upon Leda” by Hozier is an example of this, I wouldn’t have figured that out on my own.

Conclusion

MAN I LOVE STATIONERY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m already making a list of what I want next, and it’s all bullshit! Do I need another pen? No! So I’ll get a clip instead to hold down my books! Why the hell not! I’m really enthusiastic about this, so I’m sorry that it’s a total change from the regular degular Art Diaries stuff, but I hope you guys understand my joy. Also, I added alt text to all the images, so if anything is broken or could do with improvement, I’d love to know. And finally, next week might be delayed and the week afterward I might take a break. I’m busy next week which impacts ability to write the newsletter and make art, but afterwards I’m really knuckling down soooo please accept the drought. I hope you have a wonderful day/night/whenever and that you make loads and loads of art!!!

Yellow and purple is a favourite combo of mine, but I think I have to get rid of that damned mint. I might make some extracts? Definitely some tzatziki. Anyway, with that being said, into the art we go!

Just some Doodling

I finally picked up my sketchbook again! I went through the last one in about 4 months (compared to the one before that taking a year) so I can forgive myself for not blazing through this one. A New Years Bingo goal of mine was to finish a sketchbook, and I met that, that’s enough for me. On that topic, I really recommend the New Years Bingo idea proposed by Magnify instead of resolutions, and if you think the idea is neat, start one now! I’ll say it everytime I can, don’t wait for the perfect time just to start things. Anyway, I drew our dog, the plants, and a “whats in my bag” page.

The bag in question was just the crap I brought outside. The camera for birds is mostly just for zooming in on them. Pocket binoculars! Trying to zoom in on birds on a garden fence with a phone is a nightmare, it’s harder to ID from that than it is from the naked eye, I think. Also, see how the pencil case is labelled as ‘for art’? I have a separate journalling one, but I’m wondering if I should get a new one to have for days where I’m on an art outing? The thin one I usually use is great, and it’s the one I bring and would continue to bring abroad and stuff, but I dunno, I’d like to have a combined pencil case, there are supplies in my bag you don’t see because I swear by them but can’t fit em in my usual case. I’m thinking the Lihit Labs Large, I hate my pens rolling around (hence why I just keep them in original packages, like anything I get from Sakura), so it looks perfect. I dunno, I’ll wait till my stationery comes I think. At least it dispatched! Crazy how express shipping from Japan is cheaper than standard shipping from the UK… Maybe I can get the pencil case as a treat when I get journal refills.

As another aside, I really love Tony’s Chocolonely, as featured in the spread. I rarely eat chocolate, but I could down a pack of these in one sitting. If you are also sick of terrible quality chocolate, I implore you to try these guys, and I know its a little costlier, but the quality, and more importantly, the brand mission, make up for that tenfold.

I also ‘doodled’ this piece digitally of Fionn. You might remember him, but now that I’m writing this, I think I should make a dedicated post about Gabhar. You’ll be seeing a lot more of the trio in future Art Diaries, I can guarantee that, since I’ll be working on my portfolio. Thats actually why I’m not in any major rush to get back to drawing yet, even if it makes these newsletters dry sometimes. I guess I’m conserving my energy and taking time to relax so I can find my footing more organically. I don’t know if calling it a doodle is the right term. It *was* a doodle, then I inked it since it had been a while since I’d drawn, then it grew legs. I guess calling it a doodle is a comfort, I didn’t treat it super seriously so I don’t feel like I’m allowed to consider it a “real” drawing.

I think it’s important to examine the language we use to talk about our own art and how it can influence the artists around us. Thinking on it now, doodle is absolutely the wrong word for a rendered piece, even if it feels unimportant to me. I also did some actual doodles of Eagle Flies but I didn’t have proper reference so he looks a bit wonk </3 genuinely I picked back up RDR2 cause of this guy but I’m still in chapter 2. I don’t know much about him but as established, that doesn’t matter to me. I WILL draw whoever I want. I love drawing game fanart as a way to practice portraits. Side profiles are becoming a favourite thing to draw aha.

A Newfound Love For Journals

Alright, let’s talk journaling. I never really thought I was the journaling sort, mainly because I’m dyspraxic and can’t really handwrite. Typed note taking is the only sustainable option for me, and to be fully transparent, I have to take breaks from writing because of the pain, and I feel ashamed of my handwriting because I struggle to actually form the letters. If I struggle so much with handwriting though, why do I even bother handwrite my journals? For the love of the game.

I think that if I started this journal with the intent of it magically changing and organising my life, or with the intent of writing detailed accounts of my every day, I wouldn’t still be doing it. I started it to write idle thoughts, but I kind of found myself wanting to write in it more and more. Idle thoughts started becoming a sort of ‘flow state’ when writing where it just kept going, often in a different direction than I initially planned. It has, in fact, been really helpful to write about my feelings, and writing with total honesty has helped make me feel better. My only rule with it is to expand on things that are mentioned in passing, write what exactly I had for lunch, explain an inside joke, stuff like that. It helps me to keep the writing flow going.

The only thing is, I’m blazing through pages of my current journal. It’s a Hahnemühle DiaryFlex, a refillable notebook concept, and I’ll definitely keep using the system, but I think in the future I want it to just be an ‘everything journal’. I’m tempted to try a Leuchtturm1917, but they’re expensive. I do have a bulleted MD notebook coming that I’ll use for commonplacing, and if I like it then hopefully I’ll stick to MD’s for personal journaling as well, since they’re just that bit cheaper. I just don’t really want to be lugging around super personal entries in my bag. I’m also considering a Paperblank, but I’m kind of tempted to just hold off till I’m in a store and then I can properly pick my journal. If you’re reading this whole ramble as a prospective journaler though, ignore most of this. Get whatever feels nice so you’ll feel excited to use it. Anyway, heres the customised DiaryFlex cover! I painted the inside to look like Mollymauk Tealeaf’s jacket since he’s my favourite character of all time ever in the history of characters.

Media Corner

its just rdr2. its all just rdr2

Listen, the game has a story and stuff, but I’ve been treating it like a glorified walking simulator. My new thing is just wandering around in first person mode and sightseeing. I love birdwatching in it. No new screenshots because I haven’t taken the time to transfer them over or whatever but you can just. Imagine. I found the white Arabian and she goes fast!

Speaking of, in the real world, I got to add two birds to my life list, collared doves and robins! I’ve seen robins before, but you know. I love birds :]

Conclusion

Alright, that’s all for today. Somehow, I always manage to find more to say than I thought. See what I mean? The writers flow. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, have a fabulous day/night/morning/whenever, and make lots and lots of art!

First of all, this newsletter is brought to you buy the copious amounts of tea I’ve drank from my Moomins Arabia mug! You might remember last week I told you to maybe put a pin in the fact I hate paying shipping, and I told you that because my sister was recently in Kraków, where it turns out there’s a Moomins store. Obviously, I had to ask her to bring me back a mug, and she did! She brought me back the Moomintroll one (because she got herself Snufkin lmao) but between you and me, I think I actually prefer this design. It’s smaller than my usual ones, but it’s a really nice quality, and it brings me so much joy just looking at him. I got the mug Saturday night (like, midnight), and as of Tuesday morning I have drank six cups of tea out of it. I smile every damn time, too.

Alright, with inevitable further ado later down the line, heres what I’ve been up to!

Blender Stuff (Again)

Yeah so I haven’t really touched my sketchbook, like at all, or done much drawing. I dunno, sometimes that happens. I still try to flex the ol creative muscle though, and I think I’m really cracking the code for translating my own painting style into Blender. The key to all this is colour. I pick all my colours to an obsessive degree. I stay away from blending modes in digital art (as a manner of preference), and I usually work in mixed media just to get the right level of layering. I like putting colours in weird places, and that extreme level of control to push things into unrealistic territories is what I think gives my art a certain something. You might recall the very yellow tinted doughnut? Rejoyce, for the egg is not as yellow!

The tricks at play here are normal map painting, some minor texture painting and my Super Secret Shader Setup, which I will show you. For those unaware, Normal Maps are basically guides that tell the program what direction something is facing, and that helps calculate light fall. If you imagine a cube, each face is going a different direction, so they’re all coloured something differently. Of course, most objects are round, so as a result, Object Normal Maps tend to be gradients. If we break up the smoothness of that gradient, we break up the smoothness of how shadows fall. We can use brushstrokes to do this, and by painting them in manually from the point of view of the camera, it gives a 3D scene a look of being a hand painted 2D illustration, but with lighting flexibility. Of course, this didn’t come out of my own noggin, I learned from Cody Gindy, so please watch his video since it makes infinitely more sense than anything I’m saying here.

The method is not 100% flexible in the sense that, by painting from the camera view, a whole chunk of the model is unpainted, but thats easily fixable by… you know, painting it. Here’s a progression of the egg, you can see just how important this step actually is.

There isn’t a strict step by step formula to follow in order to achieve this effect, its just trial and error and editing all sorts of things till you’re happy, but that’s the advantage of relying on normal painting to give a painted effect. Texture painting small bits and pieces can help add further colour variation, as well as actual stylised “highlights” in fun shapes. Pick areas that you know will stay in shade for scenes like this.

Another thing that helps is the shader setup. You can see that I use the Paint System plugin for normal maps, UCUPaint for texture painting, and the bulk of the shader setup comes from TheSicklyWizard. It was initially for a cartoon stylised shader, it replaces a colour ramp with RGB curves, then separates and combines the HSV channels to give back light colour compatibility (another important ingredient in adding unique colour variations), since you can add cool blue bouncelights. I mix this with a Principled BSDF (with various settings adjusted on a case by case basis, such as subsurface scattering being bumped up to “whatever looks cool). The reason I do this is because without that shader, raytracing wont work, and since you HAVE to use EEVEE with this shader, you kinda want the raytracing. This may or may not be an inefficient method, I neither know nor care.

Anyway, the RGB curve method was probably meant to be used in steps, but it allows you to adjust the amount of RGB values in different parts of the image, meaning I get much tighter shadow control, and since its tied to the material, I get it per object. Woohoo!!! In retrospect, I’m not 100% sure how I did what I did, but I think it was just a lot of stubbornness and adjustment. My final important wisdom for this method is to set up your big things quick, like camera angle and main light source/shadow because you’ll be working in relation to them for the majority of the process. Pick your angle, make a window, and no matter where the sun is in the sky, it’ll still shine through that spot. Anyway, I’m glad I got so many words out about this one piece, because thats all I’ve done art wise!

I’ve Tried Something Adjacent to Journaling

I don’t know what counts as journaling. I don’t know what doesn’t count as journaling. I seem to have ended up with the evil cousin of a commonplace book. It was a bit impulsive, but I’ve always sort of wanted to try journaling. Anyway, I’m being vague. What I’ve gone and done is bought a notebook, and in that notebook I write thoughts of mine as I have them. I date the pages, try to timestamp the thoughts, and do my best to add context. I have a list of times I’ve used the Moomin mug, I have a list of my favourite Irish phrases, I might add some sudoku layouts in there for funsies. And while I don’t know what to call this, I am having a lot of fun, and I think you should consider it too! A bullshit book, if you will!

This book is a continuation of my “do the thing” attitude. I believe that when you want to start a new hobby or whatever, within reason, just start. If you want to learn to crochet, go to the store and get a hook and yarn, and go from there. That’s what I did, it’s been years since. I didn’t do excessive research into journaling or buy a super fancy one, I just got a book and put stuff in there that I liked. Whether or not it counts for a journal I don’t know, but I am now actually going back and learning about this cool hobby. Also I bought stationery. I’ve wanted to get Japanese stationery for a WHILE so this was inevitable, I will very much write about it here when it arrives. :]

Media Corner

I watched The Shawshank Redemption! Finally! I’m one of those people who has a letterboxd account, a long watchlist, but rarely watches movie except for rewatching nostalgia stuff. And also I rate movies highly because my analytical abilities are a work in progress and I truly believe “fun” is an important factor in a movies quality. I went into Shawshank really, really unaware (the ideal way to consume media, in my opinion) so that means I sort of thought “Ok, prison movie about a guy in prison. This is going to be really depressing, I think.” Instead it isn’t, rather it fits into category of movie where its a bunch of Things happening over the course of many years, think Bicentennial Man. It probably shows that I don’t watch any movies. Anyway, I’m not sure if there’s a method to ‘spoiler’ things in Substack but without letting on too much, it was a very fabulous watch, especially if you’re reading a newsletter about art in an age where ‘hope’ is hard to find.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Severance lately, and really need to rewatch it. I actually have the S2 vinyl, and it’s my favourite vinyl in my collection. Awesome soundtrack, obviously (shame you cant get S1 anymore, The Four Tempers is a REALLY good track), but the bulk of it is paper goodies. I cannot explain why they are so clever because it would both count as massive spoilers and also make absolutely no sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn’t seen the show. Even the vinyl itself has etchings from the show on it, tiny little ones that you have to look for. I mean come on. Whoever designed it needs a raise. Go watch the show. Do not look ANYTHING up, the less you know the more immersive it is. Not to pull the “if you like x you’ll love y” comparison, but this series is especially worth watching if you’re a fan of The Stanley Parable, though they’re distinctly different. Plus, you can follow up your Severance watch with some Ted Lasso.

Finally for the media corner, I’ve been really into Red Dead Redemption 2 lately. Shoutout to Natalie who got it for me for my birthday, picking this game up again around now, after having not played an Assassin’s Creed game in a hot minute, has meant I’ve enjoyed it. Its so thorough I can’t get over it. Theres an in depth hair growth and cutting mechanic. You can play dress-up with your cowboy. You can ride around a beautiful landscape on horseback. You can go hunting if you want. I’m not that much of an open-world kind of guy, but comparing it to the only other one I’m really familiar with, AC Odyssey, while I was enjoying Odyssey, theres something less overwhelming and more fulfilling about RDR2.

Conclusion

Moomin mug is great and Arthur Morgan is awesome. I hope you enjoyed and that you have a great day/night/whenever and make loads and loads of art!

So, anyway, sorry this isn’t coming out on Sunday, I’d rather if it did but better late than never. I actually really love a good weekly newsletter, it’s something to look forward to. For this entry, I’m gonna try a different take, more formatted this time, but also less, because I never actually wrote my day to day accounts of week 3. For the week I did log, I’ll do a breakdown of each day before closing the whole thing with what I’m calling the Media Corner segment for any shows or games I’ve been enjoying. Theres a decent bit to talk about, spanning a lot, so you’re interested in anything specific (since I’m glossing over certain bits here), I’d be happy to write a full article!

Weekly Overview - Week 1

Monday - 13/4

haha 4/13.

This week was the home stretch for finishing my current sketchbook. Thing is, I HATE paying more than I need to for shipping (you might want to remember this fact, it might show up again, I’m not sure), so I had no idea when its replacement would arrive. But the idea of both not using and not having a sketchbook? Terrifying! So I made one, and I highly recommend! I followed this tutorial by JelArts, which links to other ones, but honestly I found that I didn’t need them.

It sounds scarier than it actually is and it doesn’t require any special bookbinding equipment, and making it yourself gives you a huge level of customisation. Anyway, I also did some doodles in my regular sketchbook.

Tuesday - 14/4

My notes for this Tuesday were that I did a painting to commemorate the new mini sketchbook. Obviously, it was Connor Kenway, because even if I haven’t played Assassin’s Creed 3, I still think he’s neat. Its uh… a little wonky. A lot wonky, actually. I mean, if you only look at certain parts… no its definitely wonky. Listen I try not to get bogged down by flaws in my art, but by the gods I’m really questioning myself here. But thats fine.

I really love AC, it’s a somewhat recent interest (if last September is recent) and I’ve completed AC2 and Brotherhood. For context, I viciously fixated on Baldur’s Gate 3, clocked about 120~ hours and still haven’t finished the game. I don’t finish things. The AC obsession is serious.

Wednesday - 15/4

More doodles! Whenever I don’t know what to draw, I like to draw my hand. The likelihood is that you have two hands also, so I recommend this. It’s a great way to practice something notoriously difficult.

I also doodled some assassin Moomins. I didn’t think I’d talk about Assassin’s Creed and Moomin’s this much in a newsletter. Oh god.

Thursday - 16/4

The sketchbook came, wahoo! I never open them till I’m finished the last one, but now I had the security of a sketchbook. And also some new paints, hey, they reduced the shipping rate because of the value of the order, what choice did I have? I got some Holbein gouache, since I fell in love with the Himi gouache I got but wanted to try a more premium brand. Specifically, I got the CMYK mixing set, also to practice colour mixing. So far, it has the Aengus stamp of approval, but I haven’t used it much. I just doodled stuff today, lamented a bit.

Friday - 17/4

All I have in my notes here is that I properly swatched my paints. But I actually drew some locations, since it occurred to me that actually the setting is really important for Gabhar.

Weekend - 18-19/4

“bleh” is all that seems to be in my notes for Saturday, which considering I must have been in some sort of state on Sunday to be too exhausted for this, sounds about right. Actually, wait, Sunday night I finished my old sketchbook, and was fighting against my presumed cold to paint a bell pepper.

Weekly Overview expect not really because I didn’t write my day-to-day - Week 2

I started my new sketchbook properly-ish with some Fionn doodles. Fionn is a character of mine from a story called Gabhar. I’m reworking bits of it, so my usual “pitch” is out of date, but Fionn is the protagonist of the story, apprenticed to an old bog witch. It’s just a portfolio project, but I love it a lot. Anyway, I knew that if it was real, it’d be an animated TV show, and I had been conceptualising it as a 2D one. That impacted the designs a lot in terms of detail, but things like turnarounds had given me some trouble earlier (in terms of stylisation and translating my own work, which is often painted), and visually speaking it didn’t feel very interesting. It occurred to me that, actually, does it need to be 2D? I mean, stylised 3D like Arcane is awesome! And so it began… I haven’t touched my new sketchbook in a hot minute.

The itch. The terrible, terrible itch to mess around in Blender. Oh, I love Blender. Let me provide some brief Blender related wisdom while you’re here. Some people talk about ‘learning’ it like its one massive Thing to be tackled, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. “I wish I could learn Blender…” SHUSH! Pick the thing you want to learn, and learn as you go. You can just figure stuff out on a need to know basis. That is how you “learn” Blender.

It started with texture painting, I edited the default head that comes with Nomad Sculpt, I painted it in Blender (Paint System addon is a blessing, btw).

Then it became just Blender, an attempt to see just how much I could do by hand whilst retaining things like light compatibility.

See, the easiest way to make something look painted is to paint it. Fortiche knows this, Arcane is a result of compositing and camera trickery as opposed to 3D lighting and shaders. But you can paint all sorts of things, like normal maps. This video by Cody Gindy explains it better than I ever could, and the affore mentioned Paint System addon makes this really easy.

Other people have more competent explanations for this sort of stuff, but if you’re interested in a breakdown of my experiments from the week I can do that too!

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Media Corner

I haven’t really engaged with much media recently, but I noticed I talked a lot about it in #1, so I’m including a media corner. The past two weeks have been a bit of Moomins (1990), but I did watch season 3 of The Capture with my parents. I haven’t watched the first two seasons, and didn’t realise there were two others. This particular season was about the practice of ‘corrections’ and deep faking, AI, and other topical stuff like that. I don’t really know how to explain things without spoilers, but I think it was interesting.

I also picked back up Red Dead Redemption 2 this week (so I guess it doesn’t count for this newsletter but who cares) and I’ve been enjoying how damn thorough the game is. The Assassin’s Creed Black Flag remake trailer was released, and I did watch that and the associated overview video thingy, it looks so good and I am (warily) excited. If they don’t screw it up, I’d love them to VERY FAITHFULLY remake the first game. I guess what I want is a remaster, but I feel like it’d be easier to go from the ground up. And I’ve been more into birdwatching than usual lately, if that counts as media. My attempts to reduce screen time on YouTube shorts may or may not have lead to 20 minutes spent in that Merlin bird app listening to bird noises.

Conclusion

I feel compelled to conclude everything I do properly. I don’t even know if conclusion is the right word. This isn’t an essay. Is it as long as an essay? Eh. Anyway, moral of the story is making things with your hands is good and birds are super awesome. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a good day/night/evening full of lots and lots of art!

I’m writing this on a whim, because I’ve always been a believer of doing the damn thing, it’s why I don’t write any New Years resolutions, if you aren’t willing to start now, then you certainly wont start just because the calendar says ‘January’. All this to say, because I’m writing this on a whim it’ll be a very spotty account of my week. Not that it matters anyway, because this week I have been tired.

I guess thats the theme for this weeks entry, in lieu of a day to day breakdown or any update on a project. Believe you me, I had plans. I intended to work on a figure, warp a new project on the loom, churn out a couple more sketchbook pages, make multiple videos, try a longform video, watch one of the DVDs I bought and… that is a lot. And it was a bit delusional to think I could get all that done, but I didn’t actually get any of it done.

I’m not trying to mope or lament (that much), but its really frustrating to have plans that never come to fruition because of your own exhaustion. Art fulfils me and sometimes it feels impossible to strike the balance of rest, meaningful rest! and making something fulfilling. That being said, I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad. I painted an orange, and I think it was quite spiffing. And a portrait, too. And I filmed both of those and posted a video, oh, and I did an awesome bird themed spread! I really love birds! I reckon that I’m doing better than I thought! Still, if you’re an artist, I’m curious, can you relate to these woes? How do you tackle them?

While this week wasn’t as full as creating as I hoped, I have also been trying to relax in a more, shall we say mindful manner? Which for me means setting a timelimit on youtube and Instagram to curb my Short habits and prevent a Reels habit from ever developing. And damnit, it’s working. Anyway, I rewatched Spirted Away for the bajillionth time, after having rewatched Howls Moving Castle and Kikis Delivery Service the week before. The former is definitely my favourite Ghibli movie, but if an alien came to Earth and asked for what we consider entertainment I would make them sit down and watch Spirited Away.

I love the scene where Chirio is eating the bun Lin swiped, looking out over the ocean the rain created. Something about the whole movie just hit me again at the right time, it’s a beautiful movie and I really recommend it if you haven’t seen it. It’s very much fed my recent escapism.

Aside from rewatches, I did spend yesterday living what is probably some Pinterest users aesthetic fantasy. The weather was beautifully terrible, I drank about four or five cups of tea (I cannot for the life of me remember) and watched The Moomins (1990) for the first time. Anyway, turns out drinking about four mugs of tea was causing a shortage of mugs, so in light of these events I will now be acquiring a Snufkin mug. I’m quite fond of Snorkmaiden also. I feel relatively compelled to draw the Moomins… you’ll probably be hearing about them again next week, provided this isn’t just a passing fancy.

On an art related note, I did order my new sketchbook, and also some gouache. I want to try Holbein gouache, and they had a really cute CMYK (and white) set that I thought would be great to practice colour mixing! Plus, I got the watercolour Moleskine, 200gsm pages! I’m not sure how I’ll feel about the hot press but I’ve been really into gouache lately and I want something that wont have a conniption fit if I so much as dangle water near it. Hopefully I’ll be back with a review… soon.

I’m trying to blaze through my current sketchbook since I love it a lot but I kind of wanted it done last month. I spent a year on my previous one and I don’t think thats a good habit for me, so I’d like to curb it. Sketchbooks are like diaries. You know, I actually am shit at keeping diaries, so I don’t know why I feel like I’ll be able to keep up with some sort of newsletter/diary/blog combination but whatever, we’ll see.

Anyway, I think I’ll conclude this weeks entry. The first one! Next week could look totally different, but again, you just gotta start damnit! I wish everyone luck in their own creative endeavours, and I hope that you’ll stick around for whatever this is? I enjoyed writing it! And hey, hopefully I’ll get around to the stuff I mentioned above, and then I can talk about it! I can’t wait to get weaving again, I’d love to talk about textiles (I love textiles). Anyway, yeah, have a good day!