Back in full color

Weekly letter #30, on AI, watercolor palettes, and turning 39.

Well hello! And welcome to the first, real weekly letter of the year. I'm excited to be back. My energy has returned, along with my desire to write and paint. I feel like myself again.

I celebrated my 39th birthday this week, on Wednesday. My gift to myself was to spend the day exactly as I wanted, no "shoulds" or "musts". I ended up mostly practicing watercolor portraits all day.

I've fallen back in love with watercolor lately. Not that I ever fell out of love with it, but as you might know, I had health problems during the fall of last year, and the few times I was able to make art, I preferred to work with charcoal and Pan Pastel. Apart from a bird painting here and there, I haven't reached for my watercolors very often this past year. Now, it's all I want to do.

I've picked up a small watercolor sketchbook I started over a year ago, with the intent of practicing portraits in. I had managed just two sketches in there before giving up. Something about watercolor portraits is so hard to crack for me. I'm really struggling. But it's that familiar, exciting struggle that I've grown to love. Each new page is another shot at getting it right. I put the dates at the bottom of each page, because I know how fun it will be to flip through this later and see my progress.

To be fair, this one is in gouache…

I'm also planning a new watercolor palette, since I'm starting to run low on a lot of my favorite colors. And I'm actually thinking of switching brands! Been curious about Daniel Smith watercolors for a while, but went with Winsor & Newton at first, simply because I found a convenient 12-color half-pan set that I could afford. Since then, I've been transitioning more over to tube paints (still W&N Professional).

I recently got this bigger palette, with larger wells for tube paints, and a larger mixing area.

My new Paul Rubens watercolor palette

It's so much more comfortable to work with. I have room for larger brushes in the wells, and have space to mix colors on the fly. I even have room for my little cut-out piece of dishtowel that I use to dab off excess water and paint.

Now, I'm going to figure out exactly what new tube paints to buy. This is a lot easier when you have some experience painting and know what subjects you prefer and which colors you tend to reach for. But still... there are sooo many shades of yellow. And I haven't tried most of them. 🤭

The solution: Daniel Smith dot charts.

What a genius idea this is. Try all 238 Daniel Smith tube paints, for the price of like $25. These dots are even big enough to paint a few paintings with. So that's what I'm doing this weekend. Swatching my way through all of these. I feel like a kid in a candy store! (And really, you kind of want to eat these…)

As for the business side of things, I've just launched the paid version of this Substack, as you might have noticed. 🥳 Thank you so much to all of you who have upgraded your subscriptions. And to those of you who have said you hope to be able to in the future. And to all of you who are simply staying subscribed for free. You all mean so much to me.

I will keep you updated on how this is going, because I know a lot of you have started Substacks of your own and are curious about how to grow and earn income from it. My ultimate plan this year is to create a course on how to build an email list from scratch with Substack.

But before that, I'm finally creating that watercolor course I've been planning since forever - a complete beginner's guide to watercolors. I'm in the middle of scripting it, and am about to start production next week. Hopefully I can have it done and out before the end of February. I'm actually excited to make a course again. (Might be because I'm not already filming my ass off for YouTube each week. 🤔)

And yeah, that's what's going on over here. I'm off to bake some bread and clean the house, because we're having family over tomorrow to celebrate both of our birthdays. Apart from that, this will be a weekend of watercolor practice and lazy reading on the couch...

I hope your January is going well. I'll see you again next week. 🖤

With love,

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New post: The best books I read in 2022

The Best Books I Read In 2022

Introducing: The chatroom

I've just launched the chatroom for my Substack! The Substack chat is a group chat similar to WhatsApp or Discord. I'm thinking we might use it as our own little private corner to discuss various topics, share our work, or simply make friends. I will start conversations and share links there, and you can reply to those threads. (Some chat threads might be for paying subscribers only.)

The chat can be found in the Substack mobile app. Just download it for free in your app store of choice. Look for the chat icon in the meny bar at the bottom, and there you'll find the chat for my publication (Confessions of a Terrified Creative.)

I have an introductions thread there now if you want to go say hi. 👋🏻

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The AI "art" hysteria continues... Since I last wrote about it back in December, I've watched videos, listened to podcast interviews, and read countless articles and essays.

Like this one, by author Chuck Wendig.

“Feeding the beast means feeding an engine that feeds techbros and not artists. That’s the heart of the problem, really. Artists are like dinosaurs getting mulched into oil to fuel this thing.”

And this one, by Erik Hoel:

AI-art isn't art

“The worst-case scenario, wherein AI-art replaces a significant portion of human-art, will herald the arrival of a world in which much of the “art” that you see, especially online (where most eyeballs are) is generated by non-conscious machines with minimal human input. Behind the entire aesthetic of our civilization there will be a vast emptiness, a void communicating nothing. In such a world the art isn’t art, in the same way that a photograph of a hurricane doesn’t get anything wet.”

I'm trying to keep calm and not get too worked up over this. I'm not so much affected by the fearmongering around AI. Frankly, I'm dumbfounded that so many people seriously seem to think that these AIs are a real threat to human culture. Sure, some will try to replace human writers and illustrators with AI. (Many already are.) And some will get away with it. But all this will do in the end is make all of us annoyed and bored sick with cheap, AI-generated crap all over the internet. As with advertising, we will learn to recognize it immediately and filter it out, or boycott it. And that in turn will increase the demands for real, human, creative output. And maybe then, we can have a discussion about the value of that creative output. It’s a discussion we badly need to have.

So I'm not "afraid" of AI. I'm angry at the corporations and people who are so blatantly exploiting creatives and their work. Who are flippantly putting these tools out into the world without thinking about the repercussions. Who are greedily making millions off of the people who are already barely making ends meet.

But mostly, I feel an urge to retire from the modern world to go live in the woods. I just can't be bothered with all this nonsense. (Can you tell I'm turning 40 in a year? 😂)

I try to focus on the work that's being done about this, by creatives, organizations, and legal experts.

There's a crowdfunding campaign by The Concept Art Association to cover the costs of lobbying and raising awareness around this issue. I donated what little I could. Consider doing the same if you're able to. I'm not a concept artist, but they are fighting this fight for all of us, and I'm so grateful for that.

There's even a class action lawsuit now as well.

I don't want to get my hopes up, but I'm excited to see how this will pan out. Regardless of what happens, I'm proud of the art community for speaking up and fighting against this blatant injustice.

I've read quite a few books this month too. Most recently, Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back, by Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin. Reading The Death of The Artist,(mentioned in my post about the best best books I read in 2022), sparked a need to educate myself more on these issues, and this book definitely did. Full of tales of unimaginable corporate greed, but also of inspiring uprisings and examples of justice. And of concrete ways we all can help contribute to change. A must-read if you work in the creative economy.

Currently, I'm reading Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, by Jason Hickel.

I'm also reading The Thing, by Alan Dean Foster - The novelized version of one of my absolute favorite horror movies.

And I'm re-reading The Clan of the Cave Bear - a book I haven't read since highschool, so it's very nostalgic.

You gotta have some fun too among all the dystopian, apocalyptic stuff. 😅

Matthew White is one of my favorite art YouTubers, and a recent videos of his is a short crash course in painting watercolor landscapes. Very helpful and concise.

Oh, and we just saw the first episode of The Last of Us yesterday. The new series based on the video game. I gotta say, it's looking very promising…

A long and very insightful discussion about AI art with Steven Zapata on the Art Café podcast: