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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
I don't think I've talked about it here yet, but I've started doing linocut printmaking. I joined a weekly studio night hosted by a friends art collective back in November and it's been freaking awesome. I learned with pottery that I enjoy 3D mediums more than 2D, and for some reason this falls into that camp. It's fun to figure out how to cut things away to make things look correct and the process of carving is just plain meditative.
I've made a little selection of them here! The top two were carved, printed, and then scanned so I could start trying out Riso printing! It's like linocut in that it creates layers, but it uses a machine to print the layers and semi-transparent ink to get more colors. I did a 4 color set for the one with the buildings and a very basic 2 color set with the luau one. I got really inspired from this piece, and want to try to print the 2 fishmen and the wetsuit guy onto a big sheet and then color in the jungle around them with watercolor and color pencils. I'll follow up with an edit when it's complete!
I bought a linocut block and chisel? knife? carver? the other week but haven't pulled it out of the box yet. I remember liking it way back in high school art class a couple decades ago, and I saw it at the art store and thought I'd try it again. But I'm kind of stuck on the art part-- I mostly just want to carve as i remember that being very satisfying. So I'm thinking I might just find designs online and somehow transfer them to the block and then start.
Do you have much prior experience with 2d art? You've got good designs.
Another problem is that I keep thinking "sure, i like the idea of this design, but do i need it as a linocut? Am i going to reproduce it more than once?"
Yeah, it's easy to let things sit. I bought a big lino sheet - like 12x24 - and it's been too daunting to start on so I keep doing little "experiments" to decide what to do on it. It's been like 3 months now. I'd just say take my friends advice and just decide your early ones are for learning the medium and it doesn't matter what they are or how they turn out! You could even just pick textures!
And thanks! I liked to draw as a kid and took some art classes in highschool but it's been an almost 20 year gap since then. I've really enjoyed getting back at it!
I thought that might be a thing for me too, but it's turned out to be the opposite. I kind of feel like my drawings are lifeless and boring, but when I carve them out they get all this style and life. I'm much prouder of the prints than my sketches. They get a cool texture, the errors turn into fun little "design choices". And honestly I've made like 10 blocks that I only ever printed once. There have only been 3 I've made so far that I actually made a run of 10 prints and that's because people in the art class were kind and said they wanted some.
If you're up for sharing, I'd love to see what you end up creating!
yo, that's cool! virtual high five 🫸💥🫷
I really, really like your work! Beautiful.
Aside from 3D printing / CAD learning which I talk about in the "technical" project topic... so I don't want to repeat myself...
Music! I am forcing myself to try, though am struggling a bit lately with hating my voice (which comes in waves, and sometimes I get over it and then have the problem again later), but also with songwriting. Feel a bit stuck from time to time, even when writing/creating on the fly, and even when doing less accessible or less structured things (ambient / harsh/industrial black/death noise / etc) which are part of what I'm working on right now. As a break from that and to get used to my singing voice I've been working on covers of softer songs too. Sometimes the struggle is it just feels like everything I create is "too much like everything it's inspired by" or I convince myself it's something no one would want to hear, or whatever. I think I'm in my head WAY too much. I'm very aware of it at least. ----- But also, in the process I've been learning and getting better at piano, learning chords, and learning how to use both hands at once. It's been decades since I really focused on this (when I was a kid I did keyboarding) and it's been a joy to work on again as part of the overall picture of my music-making, and I think it'll become an integral part of my ambient work
Yardwork / fixing stuff around the house! The creative portion is me doing some small aesthetic things. Being outside in general is not my thing, and certainly landscaping and such isn't either. But I just made a few easy inexpensive choices and spruced things up a bit and just that little bit made things look so much better that it eased my mind. So now I'll be focusing on some next steps in a similar vein.
EDIT: Gonna update this and say, actually, I kinda broke through my writers block on music (at least of the harsh noise / death industrial / etc variety), and not long after I posted this I've been able to focus and write more of it than I have in a long time. Have a full track, more ideas than ever before, and a second track on its way. None of this publicly available yet, but yeah.
The anxiety if influence runs deep. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so go for it, I'd say. Plus, you'll add things to your artistic repertoire that'll enrich your output. As far as worrying if anyone would want to hear that output, well... as long as you'd want to hear the output, I'd say "mission accomplished." Other's enjoying said output is just icing on a cake.
Music mostly. I’m trying to strip away all the extra flair I used before and I’m making a simple home setup. Just guitar and maybe some extra add ons if they’re needed. Kinda bedroom singer songwriter stuff. But other than that I’m desperately trying to break this rut I’ve been in for art. I’m getting into more illustrative stuff but I’m struggling with character design. I really like cartoony stuff like City the Animation.