I have so many things to do, and I’m ignoring them all by playing around with geo nodes and rendering animations in Blender…and while I’m waiting on that, I’m going to stop and reflect a bit here. I find that when overcome with deadlines, to-do’s and generally trying to do too much at a time, stopping, journaling, going for a walk, sketching, etc. are not only great choices, they might actaully be necessary.
A few random thoughts from this week.
There is fake ice. It’s called glice and they act like it’s normal but you’re trying to skate on cutting boards and it just doesn’t work. I hate it; I’d much rather risk smashing my face in.
I like wine more than other alcohols now, but I like all alcohol less than pretty much everything else.
Cool people are cool. You find them, but you gotta talk to a bunch of other kinds of people before you find them. Just keep trying.
I have a lot of expectations and goals for this year, but mainly they are all related to staying active and focused on the path i’ve laid ahead of myself, however that turns out. Overarching all of that, I think my biggest desire is to just be in the present for it all and try to enjoy the process. I’m seriously worried that I might forget how to relax and not think about work someday.
Just looked at the material I had set aside for my subscription launch in January andddd its gotta go. I don’t like it anymore. It was a good first attempt, but I need to rework it so it feels a little less…hm…cringy. The main goal is to streamline my process, get myself to focus on series/individual bodies of work, and to grow an audience/find people that want my stuff.
I’m sure I’m overthinking it, but I’m just going through the motions to figure it out and see where it takes me.
2024 is going to be a big year for me. A lot of newness, learning, and stepping out of my comfort zone. There will be pain, frustration, uncertainty and dissapointment. But enmeshed in that will be success, inspiration, connection, growth and new energy. I know I sound new-agey, but I’m just trying to temper my cynical pragmatism with the other side of the truth coin which is usually a little harder for me to see.
Almost 1/3 of the way done rendering…I don’t think I have enough to talk about to fill the entire render, so I guess that means I’ll have to do actual work now. What else is there to mention…
Speaking of Blender, I am genuinley excited to get my hands dirty and try something I’ve never done before. Modeling and sculpting reference for paintings is one thing, and in one sense, is just a more palatable way to deal with the things in a painting I don’t care for as much - the fundamentals checklist and compositional build-up and organization and all that. I say I don’t care, but without that work my paintings would be much worse and not as strong, so I dont actaully mind it in the grand scheme - they are just the pieces of the process that feel much more like work than play, compared to the fun stuff - texture, color, gesture. So I’m learning and trying things out but haven’t had the modeling spark click for me yet in a really fun way. Procedural VFX however, has been really fun. I’ve only just set up a few nodes on a sphere and twiddled knobs and sliders for hours, but I have been transfixed by some of the results I can get with 100% ignorance of what I am doing lol.
There is also something to be said of a creative trying a new medium or process and finding fun in that - I am too close to painting and drawing to really let go in a way and let it be fun just going through the process. I know it so well and I know how I feel about so much of what it is I do, it feels difficult to be surprised sometimes. I think it’s healthy to have a space where it’s not only ok to feel lost but kind of a requirement. I don’t have any expectations about things needing to be good or recognizable or relating to my other work in any way - although soon enough I know it will - right now making weird blobs and doodads jump around in 3D feels so much lighter and easier than thinking about paintings the way I usually do.
All that being said, the other reason it feels fun is because it will be used in collaboration with Jenna Desmond to make cool music videos - something that I would never endeavor to create on my own, but something I can contribute to in a way that no one else working on it would be able to. It’s easy to get ahead of myself with this kind of stuff, and I still barely know how to much of anything, but I’m excited to see where I’ll end up with it in a year or two and how my art will continue to change with the tools I learn.
Anyway, I hope your 2024 is a fruitful year as well. Plan on doing something challenging.
Z