A high effort way to appreciate art
Welcome to my newsletter!
I have stopped using most social media platforms a few years ago, because I accidentally lost access to my Facebook account and, contrary to what I believed, I didn’t miss it at all. So I decided to do the same with Twitter, and now I’m only on Instagram, although I barely use it. I became the half hermit friend who only gets contacted via text messages! I then started a deep reflection on what this meant to me as an artist, because my main use of those platforms was to share my art instead of my personal life, and here is where my reflections took me.
Seeing amazing art, illustrations, paintings, sketches, photography from people I know and people I admire is an overwhelmingly positive thing, I can’t think of a single negative about it really. That’s why Instagram was the last social network I felt like keeping. I mean Facebook and Twitter are, at this level, pretty self explanatory, most people are aware of the issues these platforms have. But the thing I started noticing about Instagram, that kind of ruined it for me, is that the logic behind it is the very sentence I said in the beginning of this paragraph. Everyone likes seeing cool stuff. Artists enjoy seeing art, obviously. So they just maximized it for us, and now you get to see 48975 pieces of art a day!
It doesn’t sound bad when you say it, but unfortunately my monkey brain was not made to handle this humongous amount of visual stimulation and instead of making me joyful and interested, it just made me tired and apathic. I started realizing that I saw art that I genuinely liked, but I didn’t even bother pressing the like button, or commenting on it, or even following the person, I was just scrolling in the most apathic way possible enjoying 2 seconds of looking at something beautiful and then onto the next thing. This specific realization made me think about how this is probably how people interact with the art that I post, and this makes me sad.
So I decided to maybe try and do something different, for people who are perhaps a little bit like me and are feeling the same way, I offer you an alternative. I promise I will try my best to do something that is just sprinting on the opposite direction of everything I mentioned before. This is a high effort way to contemplate art and engage with an artist.
That said, I want to be very clear and say that this is not about reducing things to ‘social media bad’ and being judgmental towards folks who use it or enjoy it! It’s more about creating alternatives to people like me who want to live a different lifestyle but would still like to engage with art and artists in some other way.
My intention is to share bite sized pieces of my artwork, and maybe a few words on themes that are on my mind about art, creation, creativity and inspiration, a little bit about process and different traditional/digital media I use. I have a side project that I’ve been working on for a full year (!) without sharing a single thing because I just couldn’t trivialize it by turning it into an Instagram post to vanish forever into the oblivion of people’s timelines. I also plan on sharing it here, so we can look at it together. And of course, plenty of art in portions that normal people can experience it! You will have a whole month with just a single piece of art. And I am always, always open to conversation if anyone wants to talk or ask something, my inbox is open.
What you will see here: illustration, painting, sketches and sometimes even concept art (concept art is my day job!). What’s inside my sketchbook - where most of my ideas come to life. Loose conversation about different art media and techniques, both traditional and digital. Reflections about creativity and inspiration, what it means to be an artist and make art in this day and age. A different proposal when it comes to sharing and contemplating art. Guest artists.
What you won’t see here: tutorials, heavily technical stuff, reviews about products, advertising or sponsored posts, trendy art.
If you read this far, I want to deeply thank you! It means a lot to me to know that others believe in me and my art, or are a little bit curious about it.
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Next newsletter: I’ve been working on a series of food journal illustrations that I would love to share with you! This has been a meaningful project to me for many reasons. I used to work as an Illustrator a few years ago and I abandoned my job to work on games as a Concept Artist, but I started missing Illustration a lot and this was the first time in 6 years that I sat to draw something on my ‘own style’. It was an intense discovery process because I had no idea what my drawing looked like anymore after all those years adapting to different art styles and art directions. I’ll share everything about this process and my discoveries along the way. Lots more about my side project is also coming! Stay tuned if you want to get some updates.