I, Cartographer?

Writing I feel comfortable with.  I can take an idea and find a way to express it, even if that expression is more poetic or cryptic or layered with allusion and metaphor than perhaps the reader wanted.  Some things are worth pondering, so feel encouraged to open your mind and ponder away.  Taking a paintbrush in hand, I even feel empowered enough to create art that I will occasionally sell or more often hang on my wall.  But this digital world… that’s new and scary.  Thinking in layers is much harder than painting, not really because of the layers themselves — painting from background to foreground is basically the same thing — but because I gotta remember to make all the digital layers!  That one’s harder, because I’m used to getting in the zone and just pushing paint around until I like the result.  I’m also used to painting over mistakes, not digging through layers to delete them.  So trying my hand at digital art is taking a minute to master.  Master?  Who am I kidding?  It’s taking a minute to create something a middle schooler could draw.  And not one of these super awesomely talented digital arts prodigy middle schoolers, either.  The kind of middle schooler that brings home something that at least resembles what it was meant to be, and Mom puts it on the fridge for a couple of weeks before either throwing it away or stashing in a box somewhere for said middle schooler to go through as an adult and can decide for themselves if it should be thrown away. 

I’m also trying my hand at mapmaking.  Oh, I have a natural mapmaker available to me, but due to scheduling conflicts, I need maps faster than I can get them.  So now I’m trying those too.  I can read an atlas like a pro.  Making one?  That takes some skills I don’t yet have.  Hopefully for all our sakes I’ll get them!  I promise you all this, however.  I will not be making any DIY videos on how to successfully create quality maps or digital art anytime soon.  Maybe I’ll make a “how to draw a digital stick figure” video at some point.  Probably not, but who knows?  Gotta face those challenges and turn them into opportunities every chance you get!

Keep growing