This website has been down a while. I mean, a while-while. Probably 2 years, if I’m being really honest. There’s no real reason, but I had a decent excuse I’m not too shy to share: basically the portfolio theme I bought expired, and the author of said theme vanished, so I couldn’t renew or even edit the damned thing. Figured I’d just put it to bed as I settled into my new life. More on that later!
So, with dust on the ground and in light of all the little Adobe/Instagram AI scandal a few months back, I decided to pull focus back to something I’m already paying for: webhosting for gorotoro.com! I feel a lot more comfortable sharing my content on my platform rather than any of Meta’s, but I’ll still use IG from time to time to reach people. And honestly, I figure the entire interwebs has been or is in the process of being scraped for anything of value, including this site (hah!), but what are you gonna do? I can rant on about generative AI in another post, but to give a little tease: “AI” is nothing without human input. No matter how many impressive (and often times, creepy) images and video it can spit out, it’s always looking into the past, at what we are doing, or have done, for that matter.
ANYWAY, back on topic: sharing content. I really abhor that word, “content,” (hate that word) a good friend asked me, many years ago, why I don’t share more of my art? I never had a clear answer for him. Before I could offer a real response, I seriously had to explore the motivation I had behind drawing in the first place. The answers I received were really complex! Often times it’s a bit of a masturbatory thing, to put it bluntly–something I do to amuse me and only me, nothing to be shared. One of those things where, if I got “caught” doing it, maybe you can “get off” on it, too, if you’re into that type of thing. Sure, I’d put a few images out here and there, but I’ve always struggled with consistency. It’s not that I’m afraid of the work or anything like that, it’s just…keeping the signal clear and strong, from heart & soul, through the brain (without staying there too long), down my arm and out the other side of my pencil/pen/stylus…that’s always been a bit tough. Things pop up, I can get distracted, my mind moves faster than my hands, I fall out of practice, doubt can creep up, the list goes on and on.
Sometimes I’d get a trigger that would make me want to create. Usually it would be the need to prove myself, after a rejection of some sort, or if I were applying for a job, or needed to crank something out for work. When something outside of myself required it, I’d always put myself out there to meet the demand. Other times I’d want to draw as a way to soothe myself after a traumatic or shocking event. There’s been plenty of those in the past few years!
At any rate, whenever I create something for myself, I almost never share it. Especially sketches and WIP stuff. My sketches are rough, and often too scratchy to discern. It’s not for work, it’s for me! And I don’t like the idea of tailoring my W.I.P. stuff, just to be shared online, it just feels a little dishonest. Doesn’t it irk you when someone shares some brilliant piece of detailed art and they caption “Quick sketch to start the day,” or something along those lines? Come on. But the issue is, if you’re an artist and aren’t in a constant state of sharing what you’re up to at all times, people probably figure you’re not up to much.
It’s really quite the opposite, on my end. As I was gathering materials together to get this website back up and running, I noticed the sheer amount of stuff I’d been working on, behind closed doors, for years. Especially after I bought an iPad Pro back in early 2019 (shout-out to that educational discount I got, thanks to working at AAU!) The friend I mentioned above, he got me into the habit of doing “automatic drawings”–where you basically just start doodling with no intent, letting the pencil take you wherever you subconscious tells it too. Of course there are moments where you just can’t help but add a little extra to something, but the practice itself is super helpful to relax the mind and get yourself warmed up before you work on something “real.”
I’ve done something like 70 of these things on my iPad. And not a single person other than myself has ever seen them. Until now! I’ll be updating my blog, with the most discernable automatic drawings I can extract (unless you really want to see every single one of these) and offer my thoughts on them. I ain’t gonna live forever, and I may as well get all this out in the open while I’m still able to.
Yeah, I really had to write all that out just to get to this simple share.
One thing I can see right off? This isn’t much of an “automatic drawing.” More just me noodling around in spots, and getting fixated in others. Oh, and there’s an Opa-Opa at the top right. I’d been planning on doing some more fan art based on video games I’d played back in the day. Maybe I still should, because…that’s a space ship, with sneakers.
So, yeah. There’s more coming, and boy do these things change. I’ll post the best of the old ones before I share the most recent. Bye!
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