wrimbles

[wrimbles]

4/17/25 - Ghosts

I had a big moment today. I've been trying to find the right way to write about this, or express it creatively… and I'm sure I will a thousand times in the years to come due to it's eerily poetic nature, but I felt compelled to share this.

I watched a video by a science educator I watch on YouTube which was dismantling and critiquing an author that I used to be a fan of. The year before the pandemic, I was introduced to Joe Rogan and his weed-smoking hang-out-with-your-buddies-and-talk-about-mindblowing-shit podcast. It reminded me of college, hanging out with my bandmate who was also a huge sci-fi and fantasy nerd, and coming up with what-if theories, so I got really into it. Through the podcast, I got into Terrence McKenna and… unfortunately… Graham Hancock. The critique I watched today was dismantling Flint Dibble's "debate" with Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan's "podcast".

I used to literally listen to Hancock's audiobooks in my sleep. Not even joking. Night after night, having fucked up dreams, while I was going through some pretty fucked up life shit as well. I don't know if I was 100% onboard with all of his theories as absolute truth, but I entertained the possibilities he floated as though they were any other form of evidence. As though they were more than just fantasies based-on-a-true-story. I took his word for it. I deconstructed from this after the final episode of his "Ancient Apocalypse" series on Netflix gave me a massive "the world could end right now" panic attack, I think that was in winter 2022. That's a story for another day.

I found a comment on the critique I watched that called out to me, because… and I hope I read this right… they seemed genuine and innocent.

"How are theories about Atlantis "dangerous" AT ALL. Unless it's a stepping stone into ideas that challenge the power structure. Like maybe lost technology Why else could it ever be considered dangerous? Are you just that scared of differing opinions??

Maybe I was being generous, I don't know. But I felt compelled to answer. I think my answer sums up some of my personal journey challenging these ideas with critical thinking, and the complexity of what I discovered given my familial history. Vague, I know… what can I say, I like to build suspense. Here's what I responded:

"It is unfortunately not very common knowledge, but Atlantis and the mythical continent of 'Hyperborea' are the core of the supremacist doctrine of the Nazi party. This doesn't mean all stories and explorations about Atlantis center around this, but… as Dibble said very clearly and directly… it is the responsible thing to do to disclose and critique this when discussing the topic, since it's shockingly unspoken about. The Thule Society, the Ahnenerbe, etc. To put it very short and simplified, they believed that the Aryan race was descended from Atlanteans. It is what made them the 'master race'. It was literally one of the primary justifications for the Holocaust. Again, it upsets me--someone whose grandfather was one of the first to discover and liberate the Birkenau concentration camp--that this isn't more common knowledge because once a light is shone on it, it seems pretty clear why glamourizing this is… not a good thing… since people still believe the same racial supremacist crap in the 2020's, not even a century later, for some fucking horrible reason. Like it or not, this fucked up ideology is still around, and we still need to keep it contained, all of us individually.

What helped me wake up a bit was looking at the history of 'Chariots of the Gods?' by Erich von Däniken. Since Hancock's first two books were… 'Fingerprints of the Gods' and 'Magicians of the Gods', and he has cited von Däniken's work in the past, the connection is hard to look past. Von Däniken served 9 months in prison for embezzlement and fraud. Von Däniken also handed his original manuscript for the book over to a professional author for a rewrite before it was published. It was rewritten by a man named Wilhelm 'Utz' Uttermann, who went by the pseudonym Wilhelm Roggersdorf. Uttermann was a former editor for the Nazi Party newspaper 'Völkischer Beobachter', and was a bestselling Nazi author. It's not just… 'association'… with some of these sources. I really hope that you would understand the importance of citing a bestselling Nazi author as one of the co-writers of a source--especially on a topic like Atlantis--even if it isn't directly relevant to what is being cited, at very least just for disclosure's sake.

It is not 'just differing opinions'. It is not 'just asking questions'. I wish it was that simple, but history never is. We are not the first people to ask these questions and have these ideas. When it turns into citing literal white supremacist sources, I'm sorry but like… something needs to be said out loud there. It's really hard to call someone out on that without them freaking out and losing their mind, even when you present evidence directly to their face. Watch the clip of Dibble calmly doing this again with this context to see what I mean, and why I have so much respect for that man's courage. This isn't using the term 'white supremacist' or 'Nazi' in the proverbial or hyperbolic sense, like someone is name-calling or trying to say a code-word for 'bad', it is the most literal usage of the term possible. No one wants to be directly associated with this, I get it, and I love the idea of going on an Indiana Jones-style archaeology quest even as a passionate amateur, but… whether it's said out loud or not… this one in particular is 100% directly associated with these horrible things from history, and Hancock knows it, and he continues on anyway, he just doesn't want anyone talking about it, which I find concerning and dishonest. I think a glaringly obvious tell that he knows about this association is how he conveniently seems to investigate everywhere else on the planet except for where 'Hyperborea' was alleged to be--though I will admit, that's my own speculation.

This is not just a stepping stone to white supremacy, it is one of the cornerstones of the ideology that justified one of the most horrific genocides in history. It's very dangerous, and people need to be educated about how beliefs like this can easily be used to twist people into committing atrocities. It needs to be part of the conversation when talking about Atlantis, and it's genuinely horrifying to me that people would fight so hard to not have this topic be part of the conversation. We can not and will not bury the Holocaust. We need to be educated about this, and we need to keep talking about it, even when it's uncomfortable or embarrassing.

Think of it this way. It's not that you 'can't draw swastikas'. You can. But if you're going to, please be responsible, please do your research on the history of the symbol, please give clear historical context and clearly critique the horrible history associated with the symbol, and understand that normalizing that symbol without context can lead to people feeling comfortable with it, and vicariously the horrible things that come along with it can sneak their way back in. Just because you yourself may be able to stop at just a symbol or just an Atlantis story and call it a day, does not mean that the next person after you will be able to, and we all share this earth, so we all need to look out for one another.

I'm sorry if that was a lot, and I hope it answers your questions."

For me, there was a lot of shame in discovering that I had been lured in by the same fantasy story that my grandfather risked his life to fight against, even if it was just a root or branch of that story. I felt… stupid. Short-sighted. Foolish. Embarrassed. I felt like I should've known better. It still makes me feel uncomfortable to even write or talk about it.

Luckily, I didn't stumble on the Nazi ties immediately. I think that was part of what helped me blunt the shock of it all. I first made the racism connection. I took a chance and watched a critique of a Hancock video, and saw him standing on-site at a Southeast Asian archaeological site, and saying directly into the camera something like (paraphrasing) 'these primitive local people could not have possibly built this, it must have been someone else'. A common argument in the pseudoarchaeology scene, either "aliens" or "ancient advanced blahblahblah" filling that invented "gap". I don't know why I bought it so unquestioningly. When it was shown that this specific site he was standing at was very clearly similar to other sites in the region, and the locals were very capable of building in that style, and excelled at it, and took pride in it… I saw it for what it was. Overt, unabashed racism. Negligent or not, that's what it is.

That one crack in the dam was enough. I started asking questions, and realized Hancock had no answers, and no evidence. I dug deeper, I kept searching, I found actual history, actual archaeology, rich and intriguing local culture and traditions. All of which was dismissed with a scoff and a skyward tilted nose by Hancock, as though they didn't interest him at all. I have never looked at him the same since. Especially after I started really digging deep into the history of the Atlantis myth, that really sealed the deal.

It made me feel like I had dodged a bullet. Like I could've been swayed towards darker beliefs. I was never intentionally racist or supremacist. I've always been a bit of a hippie, and try to be very open, loving, equitable and accepting. This fantasy made me act in ways that I am ashamed of, by hijacking my passion for mythology and ancient history. It made me discredit other cultures of their heritage, and diminish their cultural accomplishments. That realization scared me, because it was something I would have never knowingly and willingly done. It made me start reassessing my behaviors, and pressured me to be mindful.

The shame and embarrassment still lingers, along with a painful sense of betrayal. But I am deeply grateful for the experience, because it revived and jump-started my critical thinking. Ever since that pivotal moment, watching that one World of Antiquity video critiquing Graham Hancock, I have been tirelessly devoting myself to developing my critical thinking skills: fact-checking and challenging beliefs. I got "Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan not long after, which has been very helpful perspective as well.

I've found a lot of shared experience in religious deconstruction spaces that I've been spending time in recently. I am a lifelong atheist and kinda-half-assed secular Buddhist (on paper) who has gone through many passionate phases of researching various world religions and mythologies… but only dabbled in personal spiritual belief during the Graham Hancock phase, so I guess the two are kinda interlinked for me. I can only imagine how staggering and world-shattering it is to have your lifelong worldview melt away, and lose your entire community. I do have my own versions of that too, to be honest, but it's not the same as lifelong indoctrination in a church or cult. They say in group therapy to not compare yourself to others, and I get why. I do feel a lot of comradery though, I feel at least a similar shade of what they've felt, and connecting with them and having them accept me amongst them has been incredibly meaningful to me. As a historically reclusive atheist, I've never had a community like that before. It's alien but it's very heartwarming.

Interestingly enough, my personal deconstruction of this ideology has not "killed the adventure" that I felt with pseudoarchaeology - the thing I think a lot of people still in it kinda fear to lose. Quite the opposite, actually. It nurtured my passion for science, mythology, history, and fiction. I started to carve defined lines between fiction and evidence-supported ideas. I find adventure and wonder in both now. It's not a competition between them anymore. It's not "I think I saw a ghost and this buzzkill skeptic asshole is going to rain on my parade and judge me", it's "I am so impressed by how my brain is capable of convincing me so powerfully that a shadow and a sound is a strange spectral human invader in my home, and I want to learn more about how and why that happens" and "I could capture this experience and turn it into a painting, or a short sci-fi story, or a song."

I didn't lose those wonderous cinematic experiences. They evolved into something so much fucking cooler. Two new worlds. The "real world", which can be explored through repeatable experiments and verifiable data. And the "imagination world", which I can explore through a variety of different creative mediums and riff off of any time I want. And these two worlds get to interact all the time. It's so much more than just being stuck in this "I saw a ghost once and it was totally real, I can't prove it, but I know it was." To me, that's just… very one-dimensional and boring now. It's lost all of its appeal. To me, it feels like the difference between going to a tacky tourist trap versus exploring a new countryside and immersing yourself in the culture. I don't know, it's hard to describe.

So yeah, I just wanted to get that out. My webcomic series I was doing updates on here about was kinda about that, but just… wasn't really doing what I wanted it to do. That project has gone very far on the back burners and may not come off anytime soon without some reworks… it's a good idea, and I love it, but it doesn't feel right as it currently stands.

Since I last posted, I've been chipping away at my sci-fi horror novel, which I'm tentatively going to say is right on the cusp of done with the second draft. I still have to read through the entire book one more time, I'm giving it a little distance so I can do that fresh and try to do it in one go while taking notes.

In the meantime, I've been fucking around in Blender. I like drawing mandalas, and I've wanted to make animated 3D mandalas for a long time. I've done animated 2D before, but never 3D. I've got a good foundation done, but there's definitely a learning curve that slows shit down a lot, I'm very very new to even basic 3D modeling. It's really frustrating to put in like 6 hours of just making mistakes and fixing them, only to scrap the whole thing and start over because it would be easier to just start fresh and try something simpler than to salvage it. But, you know, all part of the journey.

The other thing that I just started yesterday is… in my novel, my main character has a wood cabin that he built himself. I designed it and drew up rough concept sketches for it when I was writing Act 1 Chapter 4, so I could really paint an image in my head of what the scenes looked and felt like.

I've been saving all the matches I use to light incense and candles for a good amount of time, I probably have about 1/2-2/3 a box of spent matchsticks at this point. I cut the carbonized parts off, I'll save those to make ink or something at some point… probably… I started to take measurements of the house and scale it down so that each "log" is the width of a match's width. I have a 14" ceramic dish that I designed a miniature sand and soil Zen garden in by my windowsill. I plan to make this scale model of the cabin and put it in the garden as part of that mini ecosystem, and maybe even get some miniature live plants (moss, probably) to bring it to life. It's fun, it's intimidating because I've never taken on a project like this before, but I think it's going to turn out really cool. 🙂

[wrimbles]

3/31/25 - Concept Sketching

It's been a bit but I'm back! I've been caught up working on the second draft of my sci-fi horror novel since the last post. Because of that, my webcomic series thing is kinda going on the back burners. I love it, I think it's really important and a big part of my creative journey to start sharing my personal stories, the moments that shaped me as a person... but it can get very personal and very emotionally intense to be working on that for long periods of time. Each drawing takes hours each, and when it's reliving difficult memories, it can be very draining to do that day-in and day-out. Not to mention the technical difficulties on top of that. So, I'm cool taking a break for a bit.

I started to rework Chapters 4 and 5 of the first Act of my book. It's Two acts, split about halfway through the book and separated into 5 chapters each. I worked out most of the kinks with Chapters 1-3 over the winter. Chapter 1 was mostly posted on a critique website, which I got a lot of really good feedback from. I spring boarded off of that to do Chapter 2 myself. Chapter 3 is a big one though. It's a really long, transformative stretch of narrative, and I wanted to make sure it builds the way I want it to.

Without giving too much away, it's an old man who now has to do desperate things to survive. He's been in survival situations before, but as a young man, and nothing even close to this. This involves having to do genuinely evil things just to stop the unbearable pain and to live another day. I have three different "tests" for him, scenes where he must do incrementally unethical things in order to survive, all in the claustrophobic setting of a ship in deep space.

First, it was theft, betrayal of his company/crew - in a manner that, if caught, could be lethally damning for him. I wanted to portray his nerves, his amateur clumsiness being in this new role as a malfeasant.

Second, it was violent betrayal of a friend/coworker. The stakes were raised massively on this one, and I wanted him to still be nervous, but slightly more experienced.

Third, it was violent betrayal of a stranger/crew... which goes wrong. I wanted to demonstrate him starting to grow confident after having success, and becoming more comfortable doing illicit things, since these events are all spaced out by at least a week apiece. But I still wanted to hold on to him being inexperienced, almost like a teenager - a little brave and cocky, but still nervous and clumsy.

This was a bit tough to balance and I want to go back and give it another read to make sure it progresses naturally, but it's in a pretty good place.

Chapter 4 is the main character, a father and adoptive father/grandfather (it's complicated), coming home. He left as their father, and comes back as... a monster in disguise, who is still the father, just... more. Scene 2 and 4 I focused on the most, where he is caught and confesses to his daughter (2), and when his daughter tries to help him and he is forced to reveal that they must all flee their home because of him (4).

I realized that on my first draft, I did a lot of what those who critiqued my first chapter called "head-hopping". I wasn't familiar with the concept before writing. It's where you jump between perspectives when telling a story with out any real transition, so you tell from first person from the main character, then hop over to the other character's head and show what they're feeling and thinking. It can get a bit confusing and detach the reader, and I'm starting to see that clearly now.

I struggled a bit in Scene 2 because... it's the first real introduction to Sam, the daughter. She's a much more emotional person who has PTSD, but is very emotionally strong and works through the emotions in healthy ways... for the most part... I originally wrote this scene as a first opportunity to show this off and really get to know her, since I was really excited to introduce her, she's my favorite character. But... I just jumped into her head exclusively for this one scene. And when I was revising it this past week for my second draft, it made way more sense to have that scene be in Maxwell's (the main character, her father's) head.

He just got home after like a month in deep space, he had a major life change, he just got caught exposing his big horrible secret... and I wanted to show Sam's reaction to this, rather than Maxwell's experience of being caught and having to break his daughter's heart in thousands of ways to her face. When I reconsidered it, it was totally obvious that hopping out of Maxwell's head (the whole story has been in his head so far) just for this one chapter, out of the entire Act... it just didn't make sense, and actually took away from this powerful moment for Maxwell.

So, I ended up changing it. But I went further. I asked myself... "why did I go into Sam's head, what am I trying to show specifically". And I figured it out. It was one specific moment, where Maxwell... half-confesses a horrible crime he committed, and he's bidding for sympathy, because he knows his daughter served in the local militia and had been through horrible things and had to make impossible decisions, too. It was a bid for sympathy, which triggered Sam's PTSD. The scene even starts with Sam coming downstairs because she can't sleep because of PTSD nightmares, like the whole scene is set up to display this moment. It's a very important moment, and what I specifically needed to capture was getting inside Sam's head to show her flashing back to traumatic experiences. I wanted to show, not tell, Sam's PTSD getting set off and how it affected her. I felt there was no way I could really do that justice from Maxwell's perspective, like she just goes quiet and rigid and stares off at the fire for a few minutes... it's not as powerful and immersive as showing the chaos of what she's experiencing.

So... I plopped in a tiny camera zoom-out shot observing both of them, to sorta serve as like a camera transition as though I was animating this or making it into a film or something... then transitioned the camera over to Sam, and since this happens around the end of the scene, it wraps up pretty neatly by bringing them both together in a powerful moment. I think it works way better than being in her head the entire scene, best of both worlds.

Chapter 4 Scene 3 sets up the subplot of hunting after an ancient ghost ship called the Rising Dawn. Maxwell works for a salvage company, and they're setting out to hunt it down. Chapter 5--the final chapter of Act 1--is the hunt itself, which serves as a cover for the family's escape. This is where I am currently, and... this is really hard to write about without giving too many spoilers! 🤣

Long story short, I need to write a detailed description of an unfathomably large colony ship. Like the size of a small city. And... I realized that... even I don't know what this ship looks like. It's in my head, but I can only really visualize the scale, the size. So... I tried to take on the task of drafting up concept sketches.

The first draft was taking a section of an actual small city for reference, then adding my own general ship components (thrusters, hull, etc.). I liked how it had an organic asymmetrical structure, it was definitely an interesting challenge. "How do I turn this city into a ship?"

It captured the scale the way I wanted it to, but... it was too much "city". To literally "city ship". This was supposed to be a sleeper ship, a ship that transported tens of thousands of people in cryogenic stasis, and enough supplies to start up a new human population. They didn't really need to live on the ship. In fact, it kinda messed with the plot if they did live on the ship.

Making it a sleeper ship is waaaaaay more space efficient... which actually doesn't help with design. I really wanted to preserve the size of the ship, this massive gargantuan ship that absolutely dwarfs the... I guess small-cruise-ship-sized scrapper ship.

So I started to design modular sleeper pods which can house 150 people each, arranged in clusters of 10 pods, attached at cardinal directions to a central transportation system that spans the length of the ship. In theory, this is zero G and automated by drones, which can select pods to transport through the ship to different areas - to wake them up, to load them into transport/escape/cargo ships, etc. This was all encased in a outer hull for environmental protection.

With this being the final assembly. The three in the middle are extending towards the viewer, with an identical stack on the far side. 4 wings, 8 columns per wing, 5 pods per column (doubled to 10 as each wing is mirrored, which you can see in the white pods) = 320 pods total. 150 people per pod = 48,000 people. Those are the numbers I'm going for.

Next I started to design power generation. I decided to go with 4 massive fusion generators, with arrays of giant batteries embedded within the nearby hull.

This is utterly massive. Each cryo pod is 103m x 16m x 16m. So each generator is like... 300m diameter? Huge.

It's been fun designing this, I've never done it before, and it makes me really have to think. It reminds me of Space Engineers, but way harder because there aren't premade pieces to play around with, you have to make everything from scratch.

But I'm still not happy with it. Honestly. I like the concept... but again, it's not the right style of ship. This ship feels more like a giant version of like a transport barge or something. Too linear, to stretched out. The general silhouette of the ship I pictured wasn't like that. It doesn't feel like the Rising Dawn I've had in my head.

This ship makes more practical sense: it's modular so it would be easier to manufacture, it's space and weight efficient so it's easier to transport long distances and uses less fuel. But... it doesn't have the personality of the ship I'm picturing.

I was picturing something more like the top half of the Mondoshawan ship from the beginning of The Fifth Element. Or kinda like the ship from Independence Day, but more dome-like and erratically shaped than a classic saucer. Kinda, I guess, like a more organic... kinda shell-like shape. That was my original vision and I guess I put it aside because I wanted to make it read more clearly what it is. And because I don't really know where to start with logically designing a ship like that. I wanted some visual reference clues to make it easier parse what you're actually looking at, rather than just a giant mass of metal, lights and glass. But I don't know, despite all the art I've done over the years... this kinda stuff really gets in my head, I guess.

I don't know how people can just sit down and make a random shape and turn it into a ship that looks like a practical functional ship, like it plausibly could be real. I guess I just need practice.

All this because... I don't know how to describe the ship. And I just really really feel like something like this needs to have a ton of detail. All this for a reference image for a written description of a colony ship. Which I haven't even started writing yet. And it's been like a week now, just brainstorming and doing math and prototyping different ship modules, hour after hour.

Maybe I'm... avoiding writing? Maybe I'm avoiding taking the "chance" of just forming this ship through words, through a mental image, and retreating back into my "comfy zone"? It's an interesting situation, I'm not sure if I've ever been in it before.

To be fair to myself, even if this is my way of sorta... retreating to a more comfortable art form rather than taking a leap and trying to fully craft the ship in writing... I have to remind myself--and I want to extend this to others, because learning to add this thought to my creative process has been huge for my self-care--the time I spent prototyping this ship was not a waste. It was part of my process. That's just how my brain works. It's the route I took, it's where I needed to go, and that's part of how I work. If I hadn't followed, I wouldn't be where I am now.

I often feel like... if I take a side route or get distracted, or do a draft that ends up getting scrapped... or even a whole project that ends up getting scrapped... it feels like a waste. Like I wasted that time working on something that just ended up in a trash can, or on a shelf half-finished and collecting dust for 2 decades. But it isn't a waste. Drafts are not a waste. Practice is not a waste. Experiments are not a waste. They are experience. Every single exercise is XP, it's practice using your hands, using your eyes, using your brain. It all adds up.

That's my positive self-talk and project update for the day!

I started streaming on Twitch again this week, too. I started a new Rimworld playthrough that's a bit more laid back and more of a challenge run, but... of course... it took on a life of its own and got RP and story heavy! I love it! It may not be a long-lived playthrough, the challenge I'm trying is very difficult, but I'm excited to be along for the ride and I'm having fun.

The storytelling and RP combined is inspiring me to see if I can throw together some sort of easy-to-learn TTRPG (like D&D) that centers around a futuristic castaway survival situation like Rimworld. I'd love to get a group together and have them roleplay as survivors and guide them through a story like Rimworld does, I think that would be a lot of fun!

Down the line, I'd like to do art streams again. I'd like to see if I can do those on YouTube since I've been meeting lots of new people through YouTube livestreams, but I'm still kinda getting my sea legs back... so I'm planning to do probably at least a good week of streaming on Twitch first before experimenting over there.

[wrimbles]

3/16/25 - Storyboarding

I've had a whole lot of life going on, but I've made decent progress on this comic/graphic novel (still don't know what term to use) series. It's not as much as I'd like, but I'm going at a steady pace and I'm good with that.

I'm in a bit of a rough draft phase, and I've storyboarded the first two pages, out of an estimated total of eight pages. I've been running into the same problem I was predicting in my last post, my reason for doing a practice character sheet--I'm struggling with drawing this character consistently from memory... more specifically drawing her from different angles and having it read as the same person. I think I'm getting closer, but yeah, I think it's just going to be a battle.

I came up with a new system for reference, though. Last post, I was really trying to push myself to draw entirely from imagination and memory. It's a skill I'd like to develop, and I can absolutely see the use for it. But.... 🤣 I mean... why wouldn't I use reference material if I have it available? I like a challenge, and I plan on working on the skill of drawing entirely from imagination, but I kinda reminded myself that this challenge and my current project are not one-and-the-same.

I knew the exact poses I wanted for page two, but I was struggling to capture them when drawing from imagination. I turned to AI, and tried to generate some images in the exact pose. It... was a mixed bag. Some were close to what I was looking for, some looked like a surreal horror movie. Then it struck me... I have a phone... and a tripod! So, I ended up posing for my own reference photos, which was probably the smartest thing I've ever come up with. I have no idea why I never did it sooner.

Here's what I've gotten so far, so you can kinda see how my brain and chaotic workflow work. Page one is still very rough, and I tunnel-visioned on one specific image that I wanted to capture: the main character kneeling in a reverent pose, lit only by a single candle.

It's still coming together, and it's likely subject to change, but it's a super rough start. I even prototyped the text a bit, to see how my... "unique" handwriting would work in this format. I'm on the fence, we'll see. I kinda like the rough pencil style, it's been one of my styles for a very long time and I think I might stick with it throughout. It's just messy because... I'm very used to doing that style in black and white. Adding color to it is a world I haven't really explored much.

This past week has been working on page two in chunks. I've made some pretty significant progress in it.

This is where I started to hit some blocks with legibility, because this was not a small task. This is the same character but from very different angles, different hair styles, different outfits, different ages and different moods. It's been really eye-opening to me how much even just a haircut can change someone's appearance, always learning new things every day! This is getting close to where I want it as a draft. When compared to page one I think it's pretty visible which got more attention.

I hope to continue storyboarding, likely starting with rough sketches for page 3 tomorrow. I am, however, getting the itch to go back and finish up my second draft of Act 1 of my sci-fi horror novel I wrote this winter. I may try to alternate between this and my novel, I just... don't want either to go neglected. I'm pretty sure I only have the last two chapters of Act 1 to reread and revise, and they're not very long ones.

I just took a peek at it. It's really cool. 😁 I... honestly really love this story. I want to make sure I do it justice. I've never written long-form fiction before, most of my writing has been... like... conversational journal form text like this, or metaphor/imagery-heavy poetry. I'm pretty nervous about it, but I actually submitted the first few scenes to an online group that exchanges writing critiques and I got really positive feedback!

Critique is probably the biggest barrier to creative expression for most people, in my opinion. In my younger days, I had a very "punk" "fuck your opinion, I'm doing my own thing" approach to it. (Refer to the smoking pose on page two for reference.) I tried to harden myself off from criticism, block it out, and just focus entirely on my message. This kept me true to my craft through times when many many many others would have gotten demoralized and quit, and I'm grateful for that, but it was... not the only way.

I ended up missing out on a ton of valuable insight. I had experienced teachers and peers with different perspectives that I could've drawn from to expand my skillset, to look at my work from outside the bubble of my own experience. But back then, I was just caught in a frenzy, a flurry of stories to be told, songs to be recorded, images to be captured, and I just wanted to capture the aesthetic or message that I was experiencing the best I could in that moment. It was like... I was playing solitaire, and I was using college as an excuse to just create things full time and figure out who the fuck I was as an artist. To find my style. And... I did! The style of my drawings above is really not toooooo far off from what I was making back then, over 15 years ago. It's just way more refined and sophisticated now.

I learned over the past 5+ years that... my habit of hardening myself off to criticism in college was a self-protective mechanism. A byproduct of my mental health stuff. It served me back then because my life was a living hell in college, full of betrayal and genuinely life-threatening scenarios, and abuse. I remember having an all-hours pass to the Fine Arts Center and trying to sleep on the linoleum floor of the painting studio at like 2AM because my junkie roommate had threatened me in the street outside our house, and I knew he had a gun, and I was horrified to go home even though it was a block away.

It may be odd to some that my self-protective mechanism took the form of protecting my self-esteem, when my physical safety and security was in potential danger. But the psyche works in unexpected ways sometimes, and often we try to keep safe the things that mean the absolute most to us. In that time, my ability to pursue art was... who I was as a person... I protected it as though that's exactly what it was. I needed to get through critiques to continue making art, so... I endured. I found a way.

Since I began intentionally working on my mental health, I started cracking the code on this one. I am very grateful for the part of my psyche that has kept me safe through dangerous times, both physically and emotionally, but I learned that this part can be refined. The whole... "brute-force, fuck it" approach... just sucking it up and sending it when getting on stage and playing a gig... it can be tremendously effective, but it can be sloppy.

The thing that solidified this for me was watching two professional skateboarders talk about throwing themselves onto a handrail going down a set of 20 stairs. Not just normal stairs, but like those really wide stairs they have in some outdoor plazas and shit that are like twice the width of normal stairs. The kid doing this was like... late teens? Couldn't have been older than 18. He was just standing there and staring at the rail for like 2.5 minutes, not moving at all, barely blinking.

The filmer, also a pro, talked to him and they discussed the two different methods of getting yourself to do something really fucking scary. The approach where you get yourself really hyped up, build up a ton of adrenaline and then just fucking send it... and the approach where you try to still yourself, and clear your mind, and just let it happen. The kid was trying the second method. I only knew the first one for most of my life. And the difference between the two is pretty staggering.

The "hype and send it" approach is way quicker and easier to pull off in a pinch. I mean, I have go-to songs that can get me to a mental place in less than a minute where I can throw myself off a 6-set. That's quick. The problem is... and the pros were saying this, too... the "hype" people are the only people they see getting hurt. The hype method is sloppy, it's unfocused, you're not really in control at all, you're just along for the ride and fingers crossed it works out. Adrenaline can make you tense and stiff which, in skateboarding, can make you much more prone to injury.

The meditative approach is way slower and takes a looooot of practice to do consistently. It's something I've been learning for years now to manage trauma activation and panic attacks, it's incredibly counter-intuitive. But once you start getting the hang of it, the difference is night and day. It involves being mindful of what you are experiencing emotionally, where that is in your body, and training the ability to feel that feeling... and then let it go, while remaining in the moment. It sounds incredibly simple, but... I mean, next time you're at a stair set of over 5 stairs, just imagine making yourself jump down to the bottom. Picture yourself doing it. Then jog up to it as though you're going to make yourself do it. There's a feeling you'll feel, something that wants to physically hold you back from doing it. Learning how to identify and release that feeling consistently... that takes a ridiculous amount of practice.

Since I've started taking that approach, and hybridizing it with my older "hype and fuck it" approach, it started opening the flood gates. When I was in "fuck it" mode, was basically blocking out all feedback. Now, I can go adaptively and filter as I go. The useless hurtful shit-talking? I can switch on fuck it mode and keep myself emotionally safe. The useful input that might otherwise be mistaken for shit-talking? (like, "your proportions are off here" or "the perspective is a bit off" or "I wouldn't phrase this paragraph like this, it's confusing", stuff like that) I can manage those embarrassed or insecure anxious emotions waaaaay better now, and actually absorb that feedback, engage with it and... grow from it.

Huge tangent, but to tie it back to writing... submitting your very first fiction novel... to experienced writers who commit their lives to it... that was really fucking hard. That was scary. So many other phases of my life, I would've just talked myself out of it, like "meh, I don't need to get a critique, what are they going to tell me that I don't already know. I can do this myself." I am so glad I actually submitted it, because boy was that wrong! They gave me perspective that... I never would've stumbled on, honestly. I know my characters inside and out, in way more depth than I even show in the novel. They saw my characters from fresh eyes, from the outside. They pointed out things that made sense to me, given my contextual knowledge, that made no sense to them. Little things that were complete blind spots to me. Once I started to see the blind spots, it allowed me to evolve my story into something much deeper and more rich and approachable than it was before.

I can't stress enough how valuable that was, and I think it applies not just to creative endeavors, but to life as a whole. Pride isn't always purely self-indulgent vanity, it's also often self-protective. But it's always blinding, by design. It's incredibly hard to be vulnerable and allow yourself to be humble, and open yourself to critique. But it's the only way to get outside input, which encourages new unexpected growth. It nurtures diversity of thought and perspective, which I think is incredibly important for expanding your worldview and growing as an individual.

Welp, there's the sun again. 😉 Time for me to pack it in.

[wrimbles]

3/6/25 - Growing pains

I've been waiting for the "right moment" to start this blog... well... re-start this blog, I guess. I realized there isn't a "right moment", so here I am.

I've been planning for many months to do an art blog. I love writing and I love art, they are both what I have committed my life to, so... an art blog just made perfect sense. But, right now... my art is feeling very... lacking.

Okay, honestly... I'll admit I'm embarrassed to share it, because I'm working outside of my comfort zone. I have spent the vast majority of my art career working directly from reference, and I have decided to challenge myself to try to design an original character completely out of thin air, for use in a cartoon/graphic novel kinda series. It has been... an ordeal, to say the least.

Over the last 15 years, I have done most of my art using references, a habit I adopted as I was training to be a tattoo artist. If you give me a photo, I can do a good job replicating it. Here's an example of a portrait I sketched from a photo a few years ago.

This one is rough, it's stylized, but it's very recognizable. It captures the model's personality.

Making a new character out of thin air... it's different. The biggest thing I struggled with at first was making the character actually look... like a real person. Well... I mean... making the character actually capture the vibe I'm looking for, as this character is meant to capture and represent an aspect of my personality. It's hard to describe but... there's a feeling, a vibe, to that...

I drew a few sketches in 3/4 perspective, starting fresh when it felt "off", and finally got one that felt right.

Her name is Eve. A little on the nose, since my current intellectual obsession has been studying Christianity and hanging out in Christian deconstruction spaces, but... I'm attached to the name at this point, so that's just who she is now.

It's actually weird going back to the original because she's changed quite a bit over the past few drawing sessions. I tried to not get too attached to the original, because the person I got the drawing exercise from warned that this character would 100% change over time. They were definitely right.

The exercise was to do a series of five different expressions in the same perspective, then to redraw the character in a neutral expression without looking at the original reference. The final product would be my new default.

I actually scrapped my first six. I didn't like them at all. I was going to say "fuck it" and share them anyway, to show how the character has evolved... but I actually deleted the layer. Oh well.

So, here's what I did. I grabbed the general shapes of my base expression and copied them six times.

Then I went to town doing different expressions, giving myself a little leeway to use references I took of my own face so I could see how the muscles move and shit. This is how it came out.

Still has sketch guidelines on it and everything!

She started to develop a lot more personality. The last one is my new base, which you can compare to the original and see... yep, she definitely changed quite a bit. Not a ton, but she's definitely different. And while the first image definitely had character and read as an actual human, she feels like a dynamic person now, like I could put her in situations and have an idea of what she would look like. I struggled to do that with the original.

The first hang-up I had on my first series of expressions was... the top right expression, which I still think is a bit off, honestly. The smile. It just felt wrong and I couldn't figure it out until about an hour after I stopped drawing. I was making a cup of hot chocolate, and I was just like... "she doesn't smile like that". Like the big full-teeth beaming smile. Nope. It threw everything off. I was forcing the expression on her, she just doesn't smile like that. So, I went with more of a reserved smirk in this one, which... I'm still on the fence about. I think her smile needs a bit more sass than that. But hey, it's always a work in progress.

The next session was something completely alien to me.

I have been making art for well over 15 years. I went to college for art, and stupidly went to a state college that didn't offer drawing as a focus, but did offer painting... so... I took Drawing 2-4 and Painting 1-4, learned how to paint from scratch just so I could get a degree, and got a BA with a focus in Painting. I still prefer pencil (mechanical, to be precise) but I'm learning to accept and love digital.

In all of my education, and all of my time drawing since, I had never been presented with the quandary the exercise I was about to do put me in. It nearly broke my brain. If I ever give art lessons... fuck it, if I ever give art advice in general... after getting the basics and shit down, I would 100% recommend trying to develop this muscle as soon as you can, because the potential value of this skill is so immense... god this is so hard to put into words, let me ADHD tangent over to what I'm talking about.

When I close my eyes, I can't see anything but black, afterimages and static. I can conceptualize what things are supposed to look like, but I can't hold on to a mental image. I can't close my eyes and actually see things. Like... I can't just go "I want to picture an apple" and visually see an apple on the back of my eyelids. I might get a flash for a split second, but I can't hold that for visual reference. I don't know if other people can, but I 100% can not.

So, if I need reference material, I need to visually look at it. When I draw from memory, I just kinda put lines on paper and try to mold them like clay until they feel right. I can't summon an imaginary image in my head, then just close my eyes and look at it as reference, the way I would with a reference image. I don't know if this is a skill that can be trained, but I just don't currently have that ability.

That ability would really come in handy, like a cheat code, for the skill I would teach. The skill I would teach... is practicing looking at an object, any object, and trying to draw it from a different angle than the angle you're viewing it from. I imagine if you can picture this in your head, and like... rotate it in 3D space in your imagination... this would be such a huge advantage. I cannot do that. So... when I tried to do this exercise, it felt like I was trying to exercise a muscle I've never used before. Like this empty feeling, where I know there should be something, but I just like... don't know what to do or something? Like an intellectual phantom limb syndrome or something? It's so damn hard to describe.

The exercise I did that elicited this response was called a "turnaround". It is... exactly what it sounds like. It's the same character drawn from all different perspectives. Portrait, 3/4, profile, 3/4 back, back. So, I took the new 3/4 expression, the last one in my series of 6, and... I tried my damnedest to draw her in all 5 positions. It came out... okay.

The orange lines are landmark guidelines, to help translate body part locations to other perspectives. I think the profile looks the best, though I can definitely find some things to nitpick about it. I didn't give enough attention to the hair (more about that in a few); in fact, in the 3/4 rear I didn't even try, I just put the 3/4 front hair on it as a placeholder. 🤣

I'm genuinely surprised this came out as well as it did. It was one of the hardest and most alien-feeling experiences I've had as an artist, even more so than picking up a paintbrush for the first time. The part I struggled with the most was trying to match volume. Starting with 3/4 gave me a huge edge, it was way easier to go from 3/4 to profile/portrait than from profile/portrait to 3/4. Matching cranial volume was just... a struggle, for some reason.

I've dipped my toes in basic 3D modeling in the past and this genuinely felt like doing that in a 2D form. Like I was building a 3D model in my head as I was drawing different angles, like I was "mapping" it. Through a lot of the process, I kinda wanted to just scrap it and start 3D modeling the character in Blender, then pose the model, then draw it using the 3D model as reference! I kept getting the urge to reach up and rotate the damn thing, or like swing my "camera" around to see what the face looked like from the other angle. Kinda like how you can sometimes kinda lean with a controller when you're playing a video game, as though it's going to make your plane bank harder.

Considering this is my first time doing this, I'm calling this a success!

The past few days have been... hair. 😑

I am... ugh. I can do hair and feathers and fur from reference. But I just... a whole lifetime of not giving half a shit about fashion or hairstyles has led me to being... I guess "poorly educated" when it comes to hairstyles. I just put the half-hawk on her because I used to have one at the stage of life she's representing. I tried to give her different kinds of hair and... I'm honestly struggling, because I've really only ever had a shaved head or a mohawk for most of my life. But I want her to have more... "feminine" hair styles for different stages of life, to contrast that look.

That's what I started playing around with today. Different stages of life. I'm trying to draw her at 4 different stages - somewhere around 8-10, late teens, mid-20's and mid-late 30's. This is definitely a bit weird because skull shape doesn't change that much between late teens and late 30's. And the sorta cartoony style I'm using is pretty sensitive to adding face creases, they tend to make you look way older because they're much more pronounced with such a high-contrast style.

I didn't make much progress with that today, so I'm gonna save that progress check-in for another time. I guess... I'm gonna keep playing around with hairstyles and practice drawing them on her, see what fits. Kinda feels like shooting in the dark, I know I want her hairstyles on the shorter side, but I just never really developed an eye for what would look good on her.

I'm doing this all in preparation for a series I want to do. It's an autobiographical comic/cartoon/graphic novel (I don't know the right term) thingy about... difficult shit I've been through. My struggle with mental health, my home life, fucked up situations I've been in. I have some pretty crazy stories that I feel like I should share, rather than cram them down in my mental vault.

I feel like I have two different kinds of art. Art that is making something aesthetically pleasing... and art that makes a fucking statement. When it comes to statements, I feel like... the more of me I put in it, the more soul it has. It can just be a bit scary to be that... intimate, publicly. This first one is going to be a short summation of my upbringing in an isolated conspiracy theorist household, and my personal experience deconstructing from my own conspiracy theory shit, and some of the incredibly important lessons I've learned along the way.

So, yeah, that's my plan. Might be a ways off, but I have this short series scripted and I'm ready to start storyboarding. Just trying to get comfortable with the character, and there's a lot of time-jumping in this story, so... trying to get comfy with portraying her consistently at different ages.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, feel free to follow if you want to follow my progress on this and other projects! I also love to write and ramble, in case that wasn't apparent, so I'll probably add some writing-only blog posts, too... I haven't figured out a format for here quite yet. Until next time!

[wrimbles]

Perception

I have something kinda stuck in my head from last night, I felt it worth taking some time to explore a bit. It had to do with a scene at the end of PENTA's Twitch stream last night. In this scene, Deputy Randy Wrangler has arrested another character (I didn't catch their name) for being an accomplice to some pretty sketchy criminal activity - what PENTA was calling a "car swap", which is a tedious criminal tactic which was overused as a meta for many years on NoPixel.

I don't really feel like it's my place to speculate on where the energy was coming from, and I prefer to assume that it's the character speaking, especially since PENTA specializes in playing antagonistic characters - but this specific part of the interaction was what stuck with me. I could only capture 60 seconds for a clip, so please feel free to watch the VoD for more context, this clip grabs as much relevant context as I could fit in the time restriction.

What I want to comment on specifically is how the suspect character was, from my perception as an artist and art enthusiast, genuinely sharing their interest and passion... and in a very approachable way. They seemed to choose a genre of art that was contemporary and popular - polka trash. Which, admittedly, has an unfortunately unapproachable name. Even with my art experience, I have to say the name was new to me... but the second I looked it up, I recognized it. The character was very right to have been using tattoos as a gateway into that conversation, to bridge the culture gap. Here's an example of polka trash art:

As you can see, a pretty clear meld of abstract and representational art, in a way that makes sense - it clearly has a distinctly different personality and feel than it would if it were just the portrait or the abstract elements alone.

Yet... this attempt to connect from the prisoner was met instantly with suspicion. First, the deputy tests him by challenging him to name several different types of art. Then, just moments later, uses the information provided (four referenced "types" of art - cubism, realism, "abstract" and polka trash) against the prisoner, accusing him of being "borderline insufferable", saying he looks down his nose at people because they don't know a few "key phrases".

I've encountered this interaction several times in real life. Where one party is genuinely trying to share a passion, something they have dedicated years of their life to, and the other party enters the interaction with suspicion, tests the initiator, and then uses the test afterward as some form of ad hoc "evidence" to prove their suspected malicious motive. Not unlike, say... accusing an eccentric woman of being a "witch", asking her a bunch of biased test questions to gather more "evidence" to confirm your preexisting suspicions, then condemning her exclusively on your fabricated evidence. No motive, no physical evidence - just suspicion and execution - which in the legal world might fall under... malicious prosecution? I'm not experienced in law, so that's sort of a shot in the dark.

The irony of that situation is... though you could definitely argue that the initiator's actions could be perceived as condescending or malicious through a certain lens, the response is certainly suspicious and hostile. There is zero question there. The only debate there is - is it "self-defense", or is it unwarranted aggression?

I've been mulling this over all morning, specifically the mechanics of how that could even be misperceived by the deputy. What is happening in his head? What is he seeing/thinking that is resulting in this interpretation? Is he hearing a tone that I don't hear? Is he referencing a negative memory from his own past?

It feels like... what the deputy is perceiving is an air of inauthenticity, akin to sarcasm, where the art enthusiast would be speaking about art in a similar way to how... well... how lawyers, judges and police officers use "legalese" to refer to common everyday situations in ways that are very specific... but can be confusing and feel demeaning to the layman, even to legal veterans in some cases. This is to the point where the difference between "reasonable suspicion (RS)" and "probable cause (PC)" is a constant dead-horse beaten in the PD, despite being taught in academy since day one. Is the suspicion in this case sourcing from... the police officer being so used to linguistic gymnastics being used to try to confused them and undermine them that when they hear new unfamiliar jargon... they just immediately assume that's what's happening?

Or maybe it's a matter of... cliché, of stereotypes and tropes. Maybe it's the trope of a snooty art critic who uses lots of big words to say "nothing" and aggressively, pompously dismisses the perspectives of laymen based on their lack of education. What does a veteran's personal opinion on an art piece - or art as a whole - have anything to do with the opinions of others? I don't believe an education in art terminology gives you any more weight in deciding whether an art piece is "good" or "bad" to you, because art is entirely subjective - art education simply gives you more context and more detailed language in order to make that personal "good" or "bad" judgement. All art critics can truly do is say, within the bounds of their experience and language, what they have observed and how they feel about an art piece.

The same goes for music. You don't need to know music theory or be an expert in banjo fabrication to make a judgement on whether you like a song, but that education may further enhance the complexity of your judgement, and assist you in communicating why and how the piece makes you feel the way that you do. For example, a song from a horror movie that is intentionally made dissonant and unsettling would be overwhelmingly successful if you were so uncomfortable that you had to stop listening to the song out of discomfort. Some would say they "hated" the music, because it made them have a reaction they didn't want, and they would attribute that "bad" feeling to the music itself being "bad", despite it expertly accomplishing everything it set out to do.

I firmly believe that there is an extremely common false equivalence between "I don't like how this makes me feel" or "I don't understand this and at this point I'm afraid to ask" and "this is bad", and that frequently is a result of not merely a lack of education, but a present refusal to try to learn more.

As a parallel here, let me share a personal story. The only time I've ever personally encountered a "snooty art critic". It was my senior art show, we had a guest artist come in for a critique which was going to be a big part of our final grade. We were directed to choose one piece to have judged by this guest judge, a local artist, and a panel of professors. I chose a piece that I made independently of my classes, it didn't fit in any of my prompted coursework and was immensely personal to me, indisputably the single piece I was most proud of. This piece was an acrylic painting of a woman wrapped in unravelling black ribbons, levitating in the middle of a landscape and being drawn by her heart up towards the full moon. It's a recurring image that appeared to me in dreams over and over. This was hand-painted on the first guitar I ever owned. That means, in order to execute this art piece, I had to risk permanently "ruining" my first guitar, which was a cherished possession of mine that I got when I was 12. What I got from this critique was worse than harsh criticism, worse than insults, worse than cryptic jargon that didn't actually say anything... I was told this "was not art" because it was painted on a practical object, and because of that, they refused to critique it as art.

In the story above, the guest artist was certainly using their identity as an "art expert" in a way that read very clearly as "I know art better than you, I am the expert here, and I am telling you that your art is not art." They didn't need to use jargon for that. To put it in food critic terms, they didn't grade or even taste my food because they deemed it "not fit to be food" at first glance. That's a step beyond a misunderstanding, that's blind judgement and ignorance. That, in my personal experience, set the bar for what a real art snob looks like. I almost didn't graduate college because of that shit.

I just went to my local paper and read 3 art reviews to try to find a single example of "pretentious art speak" that was "snooty", "condescending" or incomprehensible to someone with access to a thesaurus. Every single bit of every one of them was very approachable, surprisingly so, though some did include some flowery language like "mélange" and "cohesive". But some people like to spice up their writing with language like that, like throwing a dash of hot sauce on your eggs, I don't really think that alone is so far from approachable when used in a creative medium to be automatically presumed as malicious or anti-social.

So yes, an academic going around throwing out constant jargon like "stippling" and "batique" and "imposto" and "tromp l'oeil" can be just as upsetting as people who say "fruit of the poisonous tree" or "Terry frisk" or whatever. But what makes that... aggressive, offensive or condescending is not what language is being used, it's what message is being communicated and ultimately what the intention behind it is. If the language is being intentionally used to deceive the other person in the conversation, that's an issue. But how can you prove that intention if you literally don't understand what the other person is saying?! It seems as superficial, reflexive and ignorant as presuming everyone who speaks a foreign language is inherently hostile.

As far as I see, there's a chain-of-thought going on that is basically this - first, they hear a word they are unfamiliar with. They associate that term with elitism, with cartoonish prejudiced tropes, and automatically assume prejudice against themselves. Rather than clarifying what the word means and verifying intentions, they "mind-read" intentions, bypassing any form of investigation and immediately presuming guilt, and then preemptively counter those presumed intentions. Their response is a smug "gotcha, you can't fool me" type of response, which... in cases like this... turns out to be a completely unfounded outburst.

Moments like these upset me very deeply. I see them frequently. In fact, the more jargon I learn from different fields, the more knowledge I accrue from different disciplines, the more I see them. In a moment where we have an opportunity to both learn and teach, a moment to grow as a group, experience new things and connect... instead, there is ignorance, suspicion and hostility.

It makes me especially sad because I have been that person in the past in my younger years. I am grateful that I have learned how limiting that mindset was to my personal growth, and I try every day to see the learning opportunity in everything. However, moments like this often make me scared to teach, despite a strong desire to pass on what I have learned. I have no doubt this pattern of social behavior has existed as long as the human ego has been in existence, so I frankly don't expect it to change anytime soon... so, I guess the life lesson I am getting from this is...

If we put selflessness, generosity, kindness and teaching into the admittedly excessively broad category of "Good", and put selfishness, gatekeeping, prejudice and persecution into the admittedly excessively broad category of "Evil"... I would say the lesson I'm getting out of all of this is... Just because "Evil" exists in the world and is often staring us in the face... shouldn't discourage us from doing "Good", even though it's hard, deeply unfair and often feels dangerous. In fact, it's arguable that because "Evil" exists in the world, and "Evil" begets (sires, creates more through reproduction) more "Evil"... that makes acting from a place of "Good" in these moments especially important. And one thing I'm really trying to practice in my own experience of being human, is being "Good" in the face of "Evil", despite the presence of "Evil". Looking "Evil" in the eyes, and being "Good" regardless. And not allow the self-serving/self-preserving mindset of others to pressure me into acting in "Evil" ways myself, either through active forms such as retaliation and punishment... or through passive forms such as retreat and prejudice.

Yeah, this is all a bit deep to be extrapolating from a Twitch clip, right? Welcome to art - where exploring the experience of reality, existence and our own creativity is encouraged, not dismissed as frivolous useless nonsense. Because within every prompt lies how we feel about it, and our feelings are a reflection of our self, and our story. Ultimately, I've found that the more we explore in this manner, the more we learn about ourselves, which provides tremendous opportunity for personal growth.