‘Winter Arc’
Memey title and social media approved subheading to go here ...
This time of year I always think it would be fun to be an illustrator. Maybe its just the dread of going back to work. Like illustration isn’t work. Clearly. And hard. Not to even start on the hustle, the devalued skills, the craft.
I was never a great hustler, and I’ve never been great at working to a brief. Which is 101 for illustrators: art as response, drawing on cue. I wonder if it’s that I envy a little bit: that agile, illusory freedom of seeming to be able to draw anything, to pivot on a sixpence with your aesthetic personality intact.
Visually it can seem a fine line between art and illustration, but this is the key or only difference as I understand it - art is mined from within, illustration a response to external cues.
Maybe it’s the end of year best ofs that pop up on social media, the notion of untrammelled creativity as a desirable not quite attainable lifestyle, or maybe its just my wintery habit, ancient stirrings now honed by capitalism into the idea of reinventing oneself in sweet time for Jan 4th.
The siren song of being able to draw whatever someone needs from us, without recourse to grinding through our own inner turmoil, is quite appealing. I can be a terrible collaborator. I don’t take notes super well, and I can basically only draw this archipelago over and over, and then only about 50% of the time. Hello the New York Times!
For the past few years I’ve got a bit sidetracked, and I found a beautiful community of outsiders, but its easy to take your eye off of whatever it is you were doing, when you’re neck deep in twitter everyday.
The vibe I am getting from reading substack a little more over the winter break is everyone is feeling like this, a sort of post social media, capitalist end game dopamine burnout. I finally managed to kick twitter, way past its use by date; Elon seems a monstrous narcissist, the fragile kind, possessed of unfathomable clout built on emerald wealth. Whilst instagram is making us all into our own vulnerable narcissists, comparing our situations to everyone elses as we get peppered with lifestyle ads.
Since leaving twitter I have missed the art community it’s true, and I’ve sent a few gifts and freebies. Sometimes I’ve secretly logged in through alt accounts, as I miss everyone so much and feel so out of things, only to feel ennui, shame, all that same old stuff. I’ve been getting high via one means or another since I was a teenager, so I don’t beat myself up for it, but I am absolutely at that anhedonic phase of the cycle, where all we feel is remorse.
This isn’t a list of resolutions or what not for 2025, more of a checkin I am airing out loud. I need to try and get myself healthier this year, in heart and soul and in my wheezing, overweight body, and I need to extricate myself from the always online, rat in a wheel pavlovian nightmare that is all but consuming me.
Maybe I will update my website again, maybe Cargo instead, who knows, maybe I’ll write some more stuff here like process about animation and stuff. I just need to focus.
Good luck to everyone, feels like we’re all on similar if not quite adjacent pages, and given the motherfuckers now running this show, we’re probably all gonna need it.