It feels eerie to have my first blog post during this apocalyptic-like setting, but also oddly appropriate. The truth is, I had a lot of plans for this upcoming year. I was hoping to motivate myself to get into more conventions and art shows as well as use my studio as an active space for the art community. Though I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to attend events and connect with others in person, I am encouraged that we all may come out of this as better humans with an abundance of gratitude that we somehow lost touch with.
On a positive note, I was really happy to incorporate a whole new medium to work with at the end of last year. Since then, using an iPad Pro with Procreate has been my new obsession. At first when I started to see so many digital artists emerging, I was torn. I wondered if it should even be considered as a medium or if it was technically “cheating”. After seeing how quickly one could produce with it and how genuinely enjoyable it seemed, I caved and let myself indulge in this new technology... and I absolutely loved it.
It has allowed me to let go of a great deal of perfectionism that I hold onto in my art, by not having to worry how many times I want to re-do a sketch or draft. Also there are virtually no such thing as “mistakes” as anything can be rectified with the click or drag of my digital pen. It definitely feels like the polar opposite of Scratchboard Art, my other favorite medium. As unforgiving as scratch art can be, I still have not lost my love for it. In fact, I do believe that a lot of my digital work has acted as a practice ground for creating physical art. Much like how using lucid dreaming or even playing certain video games can act as a practice ground for the physical world. (This is really where I had a fun time, pondering whether that makes digital art higher dimensional as it only exists as light, and holds no “weight” in our physical world unless it is actually printed out, a process that is essentially just transferring light to pigment.)
But whether it be painting, pen & ink or etching, digital art has allowed me to let loose and increase my skill in the process. I also hope to use this new tool to create comic pages with much greater ease and speed. Though I will need a bit of funding in order to dedicate a certain amount of time with this, so I’ll also be launching a Patreon account very soon, in hopes to aid in being able to dedicate more time to creating the stories I want to share with you all. On Patreon, a funding platform with tiered monthly subscriptions, I also plan to post exclusive art, behind-the-scenes, and videos ( recorded, live and timelapse) in order to provide more engaging material.
I do hope that everyone is doing well and trying to stay sane during all this insanity, though it’s definitely been hard for me. Even so, I am extremely grateful for all the love and support I have received from friends and family over the past three weeks. It is always scary to make a living in the creative field as the amount of work can fluctuate every month. But now more than ever I can use the support of those that are able. So thank you again from the bottom of my heart and I hope to be more in touch, as that is more vital now than ever.
With love and gratitude,
Natalie
PS: Please see my absolute first digital art piece below ❤ I had so much fun and I plan to share the time-lapse video on my Patreon.
