Discovering, losing, and finding my love for art again

As a kid, I was always interested in drawing and doodling, whether that be on paper or MS Paint. I never put too much effort into those drawings because I didn’t see any reason to do so. Then and even now, I often play random browser games and quickly jump from one to another because there weren’t any that really interested me. One day in my search for a game to pass the time, I stumbled upon one game that was a visual novel. From the title I could tell that it was an episode from a series and I enjoyed the episode so much that I started searching for the creator and the rest of the series. Thats how I found Pacthesis! (Pacthesis's website (takes a bit to load) and Pacthesis's Deviant Art) The game in question was Xolga and Mr. Toko! It's a visual novel that tells the story of a detective Xolga and his assistant Mr. Toko who are on a case to find out more about a cursed locket. It doesn’t go as planned and Xolga is turned into a teddy bear while Mr. Toko becomes a flying egg! In an attempt to return to their old lives they go through all kinds of adventures together. I remember the game being mostly silly but there were some parts that made me emotional to the point of sobbing back then. Since the game can’t be played on a browser anymore, I highly recommend downloading the game to those for whom a silly emotional visual novel from 2012 sounds fun (It can be downloaded through Pacthesis's website). To fill up the emptiness I felt after finishing the game, I went through Pacthesis's Deviant Art and found a bunch of dating sim games that I loved. Some of my favorites were Chrono Days Sim Date, Lunar Days Sim Date and Memory Days Sim Date (all found on her website). Her art, characters and stories made me so happy and inspired me to get better at drawing and I finally found a reason to draw - to inspire others the same way!

I started my journey on Deviant Art where I mostly posted bad anime fanart. Even with Deviant Art’s reputation and limits it still stands as one of the best social media for artists in my opinion, at least the old version of the website. Oh how I mourn what the old Deviant Art was. It gave all kinds of artists, from digital and traditional to crafts and photography a place to show off their work and interact with other artists. I remember learning how to add little pixel icons made by others on my website with css and redecorating it with a different theme every time I got bored of the old one. The website was so good that you could even ignore all the fetish art that it would be flooded with. It didn’t last for long because the awful Eclipse update came and a lot of artists had to migrate from there, including me.

I figured that Instagram works well enough for artists so I continued posting my art there. It did motivate me to keep drawing a bit, I did make some friends and found inspiration in other’s work but it just wasn’t the same as the old Deviant Art. Slowly it started to feel like a chore to post art and keep my account active. I used to like and comment on other’s art in hopes that they would like my stuff back or maybe even follow me, rather than doing it because I actually liked what they created. That method of course didn’t work well. People that would follow me would quickly unfollow me as well, and I was just losing the little following that I had. That was also when AI generated “art” became better and more popular online. Artists tried to cope by saying that it’s not as good as real art, or that it lacks a soul that real art has. I knew that it would quickly become better, to the point where it looks the same as real art. While you can’t say that AI “art” has a soul, it's not something that really matters today. Most companies and people just want a quick and cheap way to turn their idea into a picture and while it's not perfect, AI does exactly that. I didn’t see the point in continuing to make art when my followers didn’t care about it and artists were being replaced by AI in all fields. A lot of other things changed in my life as well and my mental health got worse, which resulted in a several year old art block.

While I didn’t really post anywhere during the art block, I did some occasional doodles and still enjoyed the art created by others. After a while, I started to miss the feeling of completing an artwork and showing it to others, and sharing the art with a few close friends wasn’t enough to give me that feeling back. I was lonely and during that time I joined random Discord servers in hopes of finding other artists to share my art with. I would try to make friends there, do art collabs and trades, but all interactions with people would quickly end which kept making my mental health worse as I tried to figure out what I did wrong to cause them to leave. I stopped being social on those servers and instead just lurked in different channels.

After all those failed attempts at creating my own place for what I create, I realized that I can’t count on other people to care about my interests, art, or rambling, and that I need to create that space for myself alone. Social media doesn’t have that freedom in terms of customisation and the whole focus with it is to get other people to interact with your posts. I decided that the best thing for me would be to make my own little website that lets me do whatever I want, without thinking about who and how many people will see and like it. I found Neocities as a free host with a nice community and got to work! The first few days of learning to make a website were hell but I quickly got the hang of it. As I worked on the homepage so many new ideas and designs came to me and I finally got that motivation back, again. I can finally create anything I want and know that probably no one will see it, and that's fine! I will create for the sake of creating and looking back at my own work.

For me, this website is something dear that serves as an archive for what I create. While I don’t stress over engagement and having a community anymore, it wouldn't be too bad if I do achieve my original dream and inspire someone else that stumbles upon my website. :)