MY WRITINGS
My thoughts put on screen.
AS AN ARTIST
I am a digital artist. I literally create art using a laptop and a drawing tablet. That being said, drawing on a tablet isn’t my only strength. I can draw using the traditional pen, pencil, charcoal, etc. If there was something I wanted to improve on, it would probably be painting, and just understanding color in general. What do I draw? Everything. I draw inspiration from anything and everything. My backyard, the streets, and the places I’ve visited. It isn’t only limited to real life, either. I take from video games, anime, and other things on the internet. I prefer fiction, so most of the time I’ll draw from fiction. My goal is to hopefully create a career out of my abilities, whether it’s through creating art for myself or creating art for another.
WHAT IS ART?
Art is the result of work. It is the end result after a three hour drawing session, after all the linework, coloring, and shading is done. Or it could be the end result of a one minute drawing session, without any coloring and shading, and just lines. It is a cultivation of skill and also defines it. Art has no definitive property; no boundaries or limits. It isn’t limited to a piece of paper, or a canvas. It isn’t the container water takes shape in, it is the water itself. Art can be full of meaning or have no meaning at all. It doesn’t matter how the art was created. The process of creating a piece of art can be related to the art itself, or not at all. For example, if you hang a bucket of paint over a blank canvas, poke a hole through the bottom, and let physics create the art piece, then both the process of creating the art and the newly painted canvas itself tie together into one art piece. Of course, the different ways different people see art also influences the art piece itself, but regardless of how other people see art, that piece will always be art. Generally, the steps taken to create a piece of art is the art style of that piece. The brushes used, the color palette, and even the lighting, can all be different factors of an art style. Art style is the grouping of similar works of art and identifying the common point that those artworks all share. Art does not require skill, but is complemented by it. A toddler with a paintbrush could create art, no matter how random it is. Even an art piece that takes on the appearance of a singular white line could make it to an art museum. Simply creating art is not a skill, but you can make it a skill by constantly doing it. Art can literally and figuratively be anything, and it is.
WHAT IS DESIGN?
Design comes from the idea that art requires preparation before completion. Design is an idea. It is the plan that makes the operation look good before it even starts. The design of a modern building comes from the blueprint of said building, which was originally created through creativity and practicality. The design of a website is heavily influenced by the need for user clarity, in order to get the client where they need to be. Design is intentional, whether it is supposed to confuse or whether it is supposed to be clear. Optical illusions are designed as optical illusions for the sole purpose of tricking a human’s eyes. The very obvious light colored cliff edges in video games that scream ‘you can climb me’ are intentional so the player doesn’t get lost in that deep jungle section of the game. Design directs art, and pretty much everything in the modern age. The way color is used on curbs to determine where a person can or can’t park, or the way numbers on a page are used to guide the reader to other pages of a book, is all intentionally directed by design. Without design, there is chaos. Design is the foundation of a lot of things, no matter how broad they can be. Design is the person wearing a high visibility vest and holding a stop sign, simultaneously controlling traffic and getting the school children across the street safely. In other words, we desperately need design, because we would be lost without it. That being said, lack of design also exists, but you could even say that the lack of design is intentional design itself.
WHAT IS CRAFT?
It is generally known that a craft is like a profession, a skill that someone has, a hobby that someone is good at, no matter how unique it could be. Craft is one’s willingness to become skilled at something. If someone dedicates their life to something, that is their craft. It could be anything too, from water skiing to painting to professional gaming. Craft is something anyone can obtain, but not something everyone has. Just about anyone could become a professional chef if they tried hard enough, but nobody is born a professional chef. You cannot have a craft without skill, because then it is not a craft. That being said, if you dedicate your life to something, it would end up becoming your craft, assuming skill is slowly accumulating through experience and learning from mistakes. People will often make their craft their profession, and make a living off of it. Craft is proof of a person’s hard work to accomplish a task. A person with a craft takes pride in that craft. They’re the most skilled, knowledgeable, and passionate about that craft, and anyone would be able to tell just by watching them. People compete over their craft, holding competitions to see who is faster or better at what they do. This could range from sports to cooking shows to game shows. Having a craft will help the individual in life, because it gives them bread, something to talk about, and friends that are interested in the same thing. That is the idea of craft.
CREATIVITY VS. KNOWLEDGE
What is creativity? What is knowledge? Creativity cannot exist without knowledge, and is born from it. The relationship they have is similar to an idol and their fans, or a god and their followers. That being said, creativity is just as important if not more important than knowledge, and both rely and take from each other.
Creativity is the ability to think abstractly and imaginary, although it doesn’t necessarily have to be fictitious. Without creativity the world is dull, bland, lifeless. Humans could not have gotten far without creativity, because without it, there wouldn’t have been inventions, the very thing the human race needed to advance into a more advanced civilization. Creativity gave a path to art, design, and craft. All of the distinct paintings, sketches, and digital art on the internet were born from one’s creativity.
Knowledge, on the other hand, is something that humans gain from experience. Mistakes, accomplishments, socializing with other people, etc... they all give us knowledge. Without knowledge, we would not be able to survive as a species. Existing knowledge saves us from eating the wrong thing, dying of easily preventable diseases, and doing questionable things. However, having knowledge alone is useless if one cannot act on it.
Both creativity and knowledge tie in with each other although they could be described as completely different from each other. A human being cannot progress and gain more knowledge without their creativity, but they cannot be creative without using their prior knowledge. Which is why creativity or knowledge are things that no human is born with, and it is ignorant to think that humans are born with a set ‘amount’ of creativity, or to think that someone can simply be ‘born smart.’ Both creativity and knowledge are things that can be accumulated as one grows.
In conclusion, there are levels to creativity and knowledge, starting with knowledge. As a baby is born and grows, the more they experience comes to them as knowledge, but their use of this knowledge comes as creativity, and with creativity comes more knowledge, and the more knowledge gained amounts to the more abstract their creativity can get. It is a cycle that is constantly in motion as long as one has the willingness to grow and take from their existing knowledge.