The ebb and flow of creativity

It's been a bit since I've posted, hasn't it? I've had many things happening to me and not happening to me. For one, I certainly haven't been painting as much as I'd like to within the past month or so. I have ideas, but the push it takes to get me down to my studio area can be difficult. The past few paintings I've really focused on, I've been enjoying rendering fish. Their tails, scales, and eyes have such fun reflections, and there are so many different species, as well as themes you could place them in, that there are endless possibilities. If you are one of the gracious people receiving publication 2 of my newsletter, you will be seeing the glistening betta fish that I drew digitally, and had a ton of fun with. I've been doing quite a bit more digital art than physical lately, mostly because it's so easy to just pick up my tablet and start rather than getting all those supplies ready.

One thing that's led me to draw digitally more, you may not have expected. I've been drawing assets for video game design. Yes, It's always been a factor in the back of my mind, but this month the game design bug really latched onto me, and so I've been drawing little assets for possible games, as well as drafting out ideas for different types of games I could build. It's frustrating, without a doubt, but fun nonetheless. Actually, I started out with what I thought would be a relatively easy building engine for me, Godot. This turned south pretty quickly. I've taken short coding courses before, but no matter how hard I try, I'm just not very good at it. Even though Godot has been advertised as a 'no-code' or minimal-coding program, I have to disagree. Maybe there was some essential step I was just not understanding, but I couldn't seem to code even a single button. So I did a little research on other possibilities, and found GDevelop. It was an absolute game changer- literally. Even though I still hit snags here and there, the process of getting scenes and events set up is so much faster and so much more visually intuitive. So yes, I've been designing a game or two in my free time.

Another hobby that I'm trying to make a profitable reality is singing/songwriting. After so many years of scribbling down random lyrics until they sounded right, I've finally got a handful of songs that could make a decent album. And, with a little help from a friend or two in the music industry, I plan to copyright and record my songs. It's so fun to write and sing, and I would absolutely love if I could make at least a small following for it. But I guess we'll have to see.

The reality of my existence is that, I can never quite stick with one hobby for long. It's the blessing and curse of an ADHD brain. Some things hold my interest deeply, and within a few weeks, I'm on to the next thing, craving novelty. But a little reassurance that I have to give myself and others with this problem: Just because the interests dip for a while, doesn't mean they're gone forever. Think of them as a family of stray cats. You nurture them all equally, but they have minds of their own. Some come some days, some come others, but ultimately they know where the food comes from, and they always come back.

Hopefully someday I will have an actual product of all this work that I can present, but until then, I hope you'll enjoy my site and what it has to offer, and I encourage those of you who haven't had the chance to subscribe to my newsletter to do so!

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