This one happened to land in my lap after reading more of the book "The Creative Act" by Rick Rubin, and a concept mentioned in one of the chapters on self-doubt resonated perfectly with another that had crossed my mind when I saw these two, while browsing the tweegeemee bot's backlog.

In Buddhism, the concept of "Papancha," or "conceptual proliferation," can be summed up - rather inadequately, I should note - as a "preponderance of thoughts and feelings." I would urge you to read up about it if this art resonates at all; but considering how being full of such things almost at all times, to where regulating is so very hard for me, is pretty much my baseline, this felt worth expressing in this strange, collaborative medium I've found for myself.

The spark hit during one particularly, positively overwhelming moment while streaming, and I had to follow through on it.

This feels to me like a reprise from 07. Bathed in Shade, but I knew what it would look like the moment I saw the original generated image, and the vibe was different and striking enough to be worth its own spot.

The tab has been open ever since, and I had to follow up on it when the appropriate mood struck me; just today.

I've always felt like my art style is predominantly very flat, cartoonish, and not all that technically advanced at the face of it. I covet the work and skills of my peers that employ a more adept handling of textures, shading and forms than I feel I am capable of even if I tried to emulate them, but haven't had much success teaching myself over the years of passively developing my craft. It therefore feels somewhat ironically satisfying - and satisfyingly ironic - that the techniques I used to make this and 07. go so hard in the complete opposite direction in order to appropriately convey the intent behind them, and achieve it exactly as I'd intended.

A little while ago I made this based off of this tweegeemee as an analogy for how I've felt about my career path with my art for a while now.

Coincidentally, today I got to look at some old physical merch and patron rewards I made back in 2017 that my girlfriend Arwyn had kept all these years. The letters that I included in them sounded uncannily familiar to me, listing off many of the same persisting issues that I've struggled with to this day.

I feel like I understand what it takes now more than ever, but it feels somewhat insurmountable and still entirely uncertain, too. I just hope I can make a breakthrough soon.

This tweegeemee drawover kinda just happened to me since I've been having a rough time with some growing pains related to my art.

I was already in a very strange headspace when this generated image showed up on my feed, and instantly reminded me of the lichen encrusted stones I'd pore over fascinatedly when I was young, while out and about with my family. The way they looked like splatters of paint, made by something alive. How I might make my own.

When debating the specifics of the drawover, I considered making the splatters rainbow coloured, much like in Art is Poison and Smoke's visual language - but not this time. Part of what I realized about what it's gonna take for me to succeed in ways that matter to me, as an artist, was that I still didn't feel able to sacrifice in ways that actually matter to it, my art.

This was somewhat cathartic to make, and while there's a lot more for me to process on this front, I just needed to let out some things along the way.

I've been wanting to do more of these as some of the things that the tweegeemee account has been putting out have been really, really inspiring to me.

This one was certainly no exception, and considering my recent feelings and struggles with my identity and creativity, the idea it inspired felt both timely and cathartic to me.

More to come soon - been working very hard towards doing better, so thank you for your patience and continued support.

Further to the drawovers I did during Quicktober, I decided to experiment further by running a raffle on a stream and offer folks a chance to participate.

This generated image had a completely different vibe to 05. Dreamcase's one, which I picked on the basis of Trixter's displacer beast-adjacent cat monster critter and wanting to practice some more painterly techniques. I think it turned out alright.

Further to the drawovers I did during Quicktober, I decided to experiment further by running a raffle on a stream and offer folks a chance to participate.

This one was an especially trippy background that offered a spatial element to it that was different to some of those I'd done in the past. While working on it on stream I even accidentally forgot about how intense the colours that I was working with were, but folks in the audience seemed split on which version was best, so I included both.

Very, very pleased with this one.

Quicktober! Quick draws for instant whims.

I discovered this Bsky account, called tweegeemee, which posts two procedurally generated (not AI generated, an extremely important distinction to make) images every half hour.

This is the second batch from the ones I posted earlier this Quicktober; "03. Dark Gate," "04. Strange Plane." The hotlinks lead to the original tweegeemee posts on the site that the generator maintains.

03. got a genuine "holy shit" from me when I switched off from the working colours to see how the effects I was building up would end up looking in the finished product. I knew what I was aiming for when I first saw the generated image and I'm so proud of how well it translated into the finished piece.

Both of them have such an intense, ephemeral vibe, and it's exactly what I wanted when I initially came up with the concept for it ages ago, back on Twitter.

Quicktober! Quick draws for instant whims.

I discovered this Bsky account, called tweegeemee, which posts two procedurally generated (not AI generated, an extremely important distinction to make) images every half hour.

When I was still on Twitter, I followed several accounts similar to this and always thought I could make some abstract and liminal pieces by drawing over the designs that spoke to me. Spoiler alert; I never did, but when I found this and felt inspired on what I would actually do with them, I figured - fuck it, there's my Quicktober project.

I made four of them today, and these are the first two; "01. Three Black Twine," and "02. Deep Pup Print." The hotlinks lead to the original tweegeemee posts on the site that the generator maintains. You can even see the parameters used to generate the images, in the old-timey, non-planet-destroying procedural and genetic algorithm methodologies that I'm used to. Tickles the dusty old neurons in my former Computer Science student brain.

I hope you like them, cause I'm very pleased with how they came out.