Illustration of a shouting young man.
This house will become a shrine, and punks and skins and rastas will all gather round and hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader. And all the grown-ups will say, "But why are the kids crying?" And the kids will say, "Haven't you heard? Rick is dead! The People's Poet is dead!"
Artists- life is so much calmer if you stop comparing your work to others. Same goes with careers and wee internet art groups, the whole thing. Fuckit. Do stuff for you. Never show anyone most of it. You’ll improve your mental art health a lot. Even just for a bit.
I think the biggest damage to the art community was the obsolescence of gallery sites (y!, deviantart, etc) and the rise of scroll-by social media, like twitter and even tumblr. Art is not ''content'', you shouldnt need to post art every day (or every month!) to be relevant. This mindset sucks.
A black and white drawing of Casper, a lurcher, in the sunshine.
Casper in the sunshine from 6 years ago today.
imagine even thinking about using ai when a living breathing master of the craft is putting his knowledge on youtube for free
Who can reply: anyone, nobody, people who can be normal about it.
trying out a new feature, lmk if it works
"If I was to use ChatGPT for my designs rather than our designer Sean, that's taking money out of the local area into the hands of a multibillionaire ... removing value from the local community and local artists [and] into the hands of some of the richest people in the world."
#AIslop #refuseresist
Writers: “How can I be promoting my books while The Horrors escalate daily?”
Everyone one Bluesky: “These are
my emotional support books. They are the only thing that makes life in this hell forsaken timeline bearable.”
Long live 2D animation (& practical effects).
For @hal-monitor.bsky.social's recent Draw This in Your Style:
A sketch of Terran Omega, a character created by PJ Holden.
A friend and I catch up to draw and chat, and last night I had a go at drawing @pauljholden.com's Terran Omega. Despite studying a ref. pose, I still couldn't get the foreshortening right - but still had fun working out the sketch.
A single panel cartoon. Moominpapa leans over a newspaper on a table, holding an empty glass. Snufkin is seated on the opposite side of the table, head in hands, puffing on his pipe disconsolately. Moomonpapa says to Snufkin: 'Tell us all that'a happening out in the world!' Snufkin replies: 'Fuss and misery..'
Mood
Very good advice for when you really wanna do a thing, but are afraid. <3
Consider the third mode:
We don’t need AI training sponsored by the tech firms selling it. We need AI education to help people understand what it can’t do, and what dangers lie ahead if you entrust your life to it
If you're a writer, wondering why you should bother writing with the world on fire. It feels like it's not important, I need you to understand that it is.
Even if it is just because it keeps you moving forward? Even if it only brings YOU joy, that gives you energy to fight & survive.
Drawing in ink of a rat wearing a sweater by Victoria Maderna
Mood.
warm again
All righty -- this year's writerly resolution is live, should you care to read it. The tl;dr is it's actually quite an optimistic read, so hopefully it'll give you some juice to kick open the new year and put words to stories that need to be told.
Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.
Unsolicited writing advice, no. 71616:
If you're struggling to stay creative during the dark part of the year, go back to what you love. Re-read, re-watch, rediscover old favourites. Remind yourself why you're doing this. Find your joy.
Hey. Make that story weirder.
Using genAI for concept art is so fucking stupid because like... that's where you get the cool shit. Thats the blue sky phase where artists make pieces of art that will be seen by a teenager later and change their life forever. Why would you want to start from mediocre. Why would you do that.
Just really sucks that so many of us are barely getting by (if that), and the people who stole from us are rewarded with billions. It's hard to put into words how demoralising that is.
I keep thinking about all of the people who were NOT hired as part of this exercise. All the real world production crew. The actors. The caterers supporting real world shoots. So many people with real skills not being paid. So. Many. Creative. People. Not. Being. Paid.
I said it before, will say it again -- generative AI fetishizes "ideas" while sneering at effort, execution, and education. That, despite Gen-AI being built on and out of other people's effort, execution and education.
Today, I went full Captain Kirk, mentally slapping myself silly for “not doing enough”… after managing 1,700 words in a chaotic week.
So I wrote a newsletter about it – and about why we need to stop self-destructing & start taking the win.
Have a read: www.cavletter.com/stop-beating... #writing
'you can cradle to grave away
every warm human word
you could ever have said'
💔
