Blog

A quick announcement about my newsletter

Before the pandemic hit, or maybe around that time, I made a huge deal about starting a new email list, "Dreaming out loud". And then things went... well, I know how things went. So many things have happened and somehow it's now four years later. During this time I have restarted my YouTube channel and changed things a lot at Patreon. And now Patreon has given the opportunity to share posts restricted to free members only or to all members, including free ones. Which has moved me to make a decision: For now I will only share newsletters with my Patreon members, or Patrons. This inclu...

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Art as resistance

As I wrote on Instagram, I have been thinking about how to make my art more impactful and more meaningful. In this world full of power hungry people who don't care who they hurt as long as they will end up on the top, art seems to be a way forward. There has been lots of attempts to make people be more productive. More productive in ways which build capital for the few. For a while there were lots of articles and blog posts about the hazards of procrastination and how you can be more productive. Then everyone started to burn out. Now people are beginning to understand the hazards on produ...

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How to quit chasing algorithms

For those of us who try to get work or run their businesses through the Internet, the word algorithm sounds almost like a curse. The constantly changing algorithms on different social media sites and search engines are sending people trying to get their message heard and content seen running in circles. You must post more. You must have a clear niche. You must have lots of followers, though if you don't have lots of followers you won't probably get lots of followers. You must get more people to see your content so that those cursed algorithms will show your content to more people. It...

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New art workshop and more on Patreon

Do you want to do art? Do you want to do more art? If you answered yes (or even maybe) to just one of these questions, then you are in the right place. It's been several years since I first tried Patreon. There's been a lot going during this time and I got a less than enthusiastic about it for a while. But I'm certainly persistent, stubborn really. And finally I have realised what to do with Patreon! Since I've become more prolific as an artist and even started posting art videos on YouTube pretty consistently, making my Patreon all about art makes sense. And I really want ev...

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Hot Chocolate Season desktop, laptop, tablet and phone wallpaper

It's the hot drink season in Northern Hemisphere! The weather is getting colder, as it should and there's even been snow in many places. Not so much snow here in Helsinki, but other parts of Finland have seen pretty severe snowing already. The world is very hostile at the moment. People are being taken advantage of and violated by corporations and governments alike. Depressing and mortifying things are happening and it can feel like you cannot do a thing. But as Fishtopher the cat (or rather his human) wrote: "i know kindness exists because i am kind. i know hope exists because i h...

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Yet another brand and website redesign

It's that time of the year. Or something. Yes, I redesigned my site... again. If you have been hanging around for a while, you already know I cannot quit tweaking and refining and messing around my site. It's something I've been doing since late '90s and I cannot stop. Actually I redesigned my site last time just about six months ago, but I didn't quite like the design. I didn't hate it. I just didn't like it that much either. It wasn't that much different from the previous design, mainly just working on the colours and adding some solid colour blocks here and there. But it felt a bit stif...

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A few thoughts on YouTube

For the past couple of months I have been reigniting my YouTube channel. Before that I had only posted one video of drawing a cat and that was it. But recently I have been adding Procreate drawing time lapses almost weekly, and have even posted a few little animations. Procreate is a popular drawing app for iPad and iPhone. It has an inbuilt feature which creates a time lapse video of your drawing process, which I have been sharing either as is or with little edits. Adding some music from YouTube to the videos. It has been also an interesting little exercise, which has prompted...

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