Things on my mind #1 — Blog

Trying out a new column idea. Might do it regularly. Things on my mind, in no particular order:

Death. My aunt passed away tragically last week on a flight to London (which also resurfaced some of the feelings about my dad’s death). And one of our neighbors in our ward passed away a couple days ago.
On this blog, I want to post more than just an endless stream of art releases. Especially more short essays and other posts that involve writing, since that’s the fun part for me. I think I’ve just been lazy.
I’ve been sitting on an ever-growing links post for (checks notes) over a month.
With the religious art, I wonder if I’ve been doing too many sequels and not enough new ideas.
Also thinking about spending more time gathering religious art ideas from parts of scripture I yet haven’t used much (or at all). And gathering new texture photos.
How I make my art. Part of me wants to paint every piece in Procreate (it’s the most satisfying way to do these pieces), but painting is (much) harder on my back and often leaves it flared up, and some of these types of pieces seem to work better with a crisp graphic design feel.
Working on this type of symbolic/geometric art for so long feels like it has dug deep furrows into my brain and I’ve forgotten how to draw anything else (like the art I used to make).
I need to figure out ways of working on other types of projects that don’t exacerbate my back pain. I feel like it’s become 100% art all the time and while it’s nice to make progress there, I miss having a wider variety of projects on the table.
AI. I have pretty much no interest in using it myself, at least for now, but it’s anthropologically and culturally interesting and we’ll see what kinds of effects it has on everything.
I’ve been at my new job for a month now. Slowly starting to come out of the usual initial onboarding whirlwind.
Using a heating pad during the day at work has helped reduce my back pain a little, but with the warmer weather it also makes my back ridiculously sweaty each day. I do not like this and need to find a more sustainable solution.
A fly is buzzing around the room now, first one in the house this year. Mmm, a snack. (Just kidding.)