Artist of Nothing 002
August Newsletter, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Hate Social Media
Brushes
I’m still in the process of finalizing the design of the image, but I want to share Ibis Paint custom brushes. A lot art tutorials and resources lean heavily into Procreate and Clip Studio Paint; not too many focus on Ibis Paint X, which is the drawing app I use. So, in addition to brushes, I hope I can also share tutorials as well.
Worked on Website
I worked a bit on my website, which has been up and running for awhile now. I am one of those people who can never stick with a single design. I think my old Synaptic Misfiring website went through 5 redesigns, and I barely drew that webcomic for 5 years.
Art I’ve done
July Recap
Took a social media break
About mid-July I was realizing that I wasn’t really spending work on a lot of the stuff I had wanted to. And in fact, most of 2024 I hadn’t spent working on things. I thought it was The Funk (which it was) but I was also spending a lot of time on social media. And with social media being as broken as it is nowadays, I was putting more hours in to get the same sort of enjoyment that I was getting back in 2019.
So I deleted apps off my phone and just…existed. I didn’t try to force myself draw or work on art, or get into a productivity fugue state. I really put a lot of thought into how I was using social media, both in my personal life and with my semi-pro art life.
A lot of my social media use was due to habit; I would go to Tumblr, then Instagram, and then back to Tumblr, etc. None of it was fulfilling. None of it gave me anything of substance. I can’t tell you any of the posts I’ve actually liked. Or why I follow an artist. I just did things.
And this lead me to look how I was using social media for my art. I wasn’t getting engagement, whether it was comments, shares or likes. So why was I making art FOR social media. Why was I making a piece of art specifically for Instagram if it wasn’t going to perform well? Why appease an algorithm that doesn’t care about me.
So I ended up changing my whole approach not to just social media, but also my art life. It’s about making art first, and then making content from that art, rather than making art as content. It’s the difference between recording myself drawing and making a short form video instead of recording myself making art specifically from a short video.
It also means I don’t need to worry about posting 5 days a week in order to get engagement. Social media is broken, so why try and use it as a central part of my workflow?
I’m hoping that this will help me feel better not just about making art, but also sharing it through social media.
Rest of August
Exploring other platforms
I’m looking at Cara, Telegram, Snapchat and other non-algorithmic platforms, while at the same time not being platform-dependent. Platforms aren’t safe anymore; look what happened to Patreon in the last few days.
Store
I’m in the process of finalizing my products. All print-on-demand for now, and starting small. I definitely will be trying some digital downloads.
Find me elsewhere on the web, including Substack! See you next month.
