18+ | Adult | [ It | We ] | nameless
Edit: Goal met: 1.3k/1.3k Thank you to everyone who helped.
Personal top art programs of 2024:
- Rebelle 7
- HeavyPaint
- Gesture VR
- Nomad Sculpt
- Focal Paint
Honorable mention: Pixaki
Prior years Csp was our main and only go to drawing program: our perpetual Clip Studio license was considered void after we accidentally upgraded and they considered the third party website we bought it from made them not liable to replace it when we downgraded again.
All that to say; we were so annoyed by the situation it really helped expand the flexibility we approached art with just to avoid supporting csp for a year.
Most of the programs listed work specifically to replicate traditional art - our experience with traditional is primarily done through woodworking and a sketchbook so we truly couldn’t give a verdict on that particular accuracy. Program feel is what we look for, does it feel good to draw in? Does it support ultra-light pen pressure?
One feature we greatly miss from CSP, and which no program has yet replicated to our satisfaction, is the lasso fill tool: our entire style was built on it. Of course it was only masking foundational weaknesses we had on solid drawing (you know the actual act of drawing itself) Being forced to reevaluate our fundamentals and basically boot camp ourself for this year and change lead to discovering an enjoyment of the drawing process itself- something we had not anticipated or experienced beforehand
To tie this all up: we’ve built a relationship to art unrelated to social media - which maybe paradoxically in turn has made us more willing to engage with it? Losing what we thought was essential in several areas forced us to figure out what we actually wanted from art as a practice and as a part of our life. In short: a sense of grounding | of play | development of a neat technical skill with a ceiling only as high as you can push it | challenge: as our gestalt pushes against each other, urging growth in unexpected ways.
May next year we get to intentionally make art that’s fun and kinky amen.
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The below we wrote before the above, a 2024 reflection:
Ah 2024 what can we say about thee’
Firstmost the committee asks: what the fuck was that - did every month have to be a knockdown drag out knuckle busting fight against the world? Yes? For our collective growth you say? Sure sure but about that, ah even that?
Our nesting partner asked: would you change it? And well the complicated answer is, no? This year has pushed and pushed and pushed; we weren’t ready for just how much. To speak frankly Rabbit was already exhausted at the start of 2024; carrying this feeling of being pushed into a corner and no matter which way it turned being the wrong move; something lost each time for our hubris of existence. In a cultivated world in which cruelty is very much the point Rabbit is in a near perpetual haze; Canidae surfaces to time lost and our state deteriorated and wonders was it not doing enough; why does it seem like our back is always against the wall?
With our exhaustion, the world doesn’t relent. It asks for more: more achievement, more clarity: some evidence that we are pulling ourselves forward rather than treading water or slipping away from ourself.
The things told to us don’t align with our lived reality: “You’re so smart” on the breath of “But you don’t live up to your potential” as if potential were a debt we owed to everyone but ourselves. We’ve pushed and reached interesting heights in our “Career” as winding as its path has been but depression and such is deficit that can be pointed to - a worn dance that of which we know the steps to bring us back. But if its just /Us/ us that is the deficit; whose clock is out of sync to the rest of the worlds then what do we call the rhythm we keep—our specific own? A life spanning misstep? A failure to adapt?
Maybe it’s survival, plain and unspectacular.
Humming that stirs beneath the noise of what should be. If the world demands syncopation and we answer with teeth & a love towards our lived experience is that not its own kind of potential? The kind they don’t tell you about?
If the clock won’t match us, the answer isn’t to force alignment but to dismantle the thing altogether.
Don’t get it twisted and think we live in this state defined by agonies • the gentle comes as surely as the other states of being; we keep the minutiae of it, the inbetween daily happenings mostly for ourself as a personal ethos.
Did you know this one started writing this journal at the request of Canidae, with the intent only to share our top five art programs? The absurdity of it, really—how a list turns into an unraveling. That’s the nature of things when you give them room to breathe: the expanding | shifting | taking on lives of their own.
This journal | our art isn’t about what we like or dislike, not exactly. It’s about charting: the rhythms we follow | the ones we reject - imposed narratives and the homogeny of an unchallenged self. Hobby | learning | fun | sharing breath in unequal amounts with someones voice saying “this is what I’ve carried, here’s how I’ve made sense of it” and a choice to share it with you the observer; these quiet moments we claim as our own.
Art is only ever the starting point
[ 🔌🎼 ]
Spoiler
Firstmost the committee asks: what the fuck was that - did every month have to be a knockdown drag out knuckle busting fight against the world? Yes? For our collective growth you say? Sure sure but about that, ah even that?