Beautiful melancholy

Thoughts on YouTube growth, pain, death, and crows.

Hi friend, how is your October? 😊🍂

I'm ashamed to say I've barely been outside lately. I should be getting fresh air and enjoying my favorite season. But apparently, one of our neighbors had a bear in their horse pen a few weeks ago. And that's kind of a deal breaker for me. I can handle moose and badgers, but bears are a hard no. I'm terrified of them. Going down to the basement to walk on the treadmill, however boring, will at least eliminate the possibility of bears. *sigh* Life on the country side... I love it, but it has its downsides.

YouTube is a lot of fun right now. Easing the expectations on myself has made me more productive and creative. I'm working on several videos simultaneously, finishing them at a comfortable pace. Enjoying the craft of making videos again.

And my channel is growing like crazy right now. I recently hit 5000 subscribers, and just a few days later I'm approaching 6000. That's insane. It really is true what they say about the exponential growth and occasional leaps that happen as you're building a channel. Last week's video about starting a creative practice later in life (or whenever, really) seems to have resonated deeply with people, which makes me so grateful.

This week's video is more practical. A full tour of everything I use in my charcoal practice + how I set up my workstations and tips for beginners who want to get started working with charcoal. Had a lot of fun with this one, which probably shows. 🥳

My villain portraits are progressing, but slower. I try to draw as much as I can, but my back hasn't healed yet and is acting up now and then. Sitting for too long hurts, standing or walking around makes my legs go numb, I don't sleep well, and can't train the way I want to. My body feels broken. I know it needs to rest and heal, but I'm not very good at that stuff. And so I'm kind of melancholic and restless. The only thing that seems to help are video games.

I started playing a game last weekend called Death's Door. An action RPG where you play as a little reaper crow who's slaying monsters and freeing lost souls. I'm deeply affected by it. Watch this trailer and you'll understand why.

This game challenges me to my very limit, gameplay wise. It makes me laugh. It's beautiful and brutal, pure poetry, and I can barely talk about it without tearing up. Might have something to do with all the crows. And the fact that the game is centered around death. (When it's my time to go, I wish for a crow to come get me. 🖤)

I also just started playing Psychonauts 2, a game I've been longing to play for a long while.

So yeah, I'll probably mostly be gaming this weekend. 🙄 (Maybe I should add a gaming category below?) Hopefully I'll get some drawing snuck in as well. And on Sunday, we're visiting my family for a birthday celebration. 😌

Talk more next week. Until then,

Lots of love

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New video: Everything I use for charcoal drawing (+ tips for beginners)

Course: Pencil Sketching for Beginner Artists

My course Pencil Sketching For Beginner Artists is now available as a standalone purchase, outside of Skillshare. This is the last day it will be available for $20, so now's the time if you want to sign up. 😊

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Reading:

Reading is going slow, but I'm 25% into The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. Really enjoying it so far.

Watching:

I LOVED these two videos by Marco Bucci:

Not only is it inspiring to see his journey, but he does such a good job of breaking down the fundamental skills of art, and the different stages our art tends to go through while we practice and find our style. Getting "good at art" is so abstract and hard to grasp. What is "good art"? How does a professional artist think? How do they go about creating those jaw-dropping pieces of art that make us jealous and dumbfounded? Even though I have a much better understanding of this now, a couple of years into my own journey with art, these videos really clarified it for me. They're exactly the stuff I would have wanted to watch in the beginning, when art felt confusing and overwhelming.

Listening:

The soundtrack for Death's Door. Easily one of the best game soundtracks since Breath of the Wild. This music soothes my soul and softens my heart. Sometimes I have to pause it though, because I get too emotional. 🥲

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