Well, my posts are like London buses nothing for ages then three come along all at once. It’s been a very busy time as probably all of us are having. But I wanted to get back to the blog. As there are a whole lot of things coming up and also some things have changed. The most important piece of news, well to me it is, is that I will be doing my Linocut course in a couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to it. It’s going to be a bit of a dream come true to finally get to make something that is a physical thing and not purely digital. Apart from the doodles I have done over my lifetime, and I think you could count those on one hand. It is really the first serious thing I have done since school. But I am sure that the first efforts will be not partly good. But then doesn’t everything start like that? I am going to see if I can take a few pics and maybe a little footage. But that will probably not happen as I fully understand privacy concerns. But if I can I want to mark the occasion. But I will definitely report back as to how it went and you will start to see the fruits of it within a short space of time.
Next up, I have been thinking about all the places I am currently putting out my doodles. The scattergun approach may not be the best. And so I have reduced a few places that I feel do really have any interest. I know my drawings are very simplistic and not to everyone’s taste, and really don’t fit in with the current fashion for manga. But consistently putting one out a day for the last 194 days should hopefully appeal to some. I find it hard to judge what is seen as I don’t have much analytics. But then I am not really that bothered. I just listened to the “Making It” podcast where they talked about creating videos on youtube, but also the fact that sometimes, one doesn’t want to keep up with the trends and that just having a devoted audience is enough. I am a follower of that attitude as I think when one starts chasing the numbers it changes the dynamic. But I am getting way off into the weeds with this. I think that having a few places where one can be part of a community rather than a platform. The received wisdom is that you have to be in all the places all the time. But that is tiring and also people get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. I know I do. So I am happy to stick to a couple of places and build my tribe from there. All the buzzwords make it harder to not get sucked in but then if your not bothered by these things, then it can just wash over me. For the moment I am on Twitter and Pinterest. However, I am not sure Pinterest is really for me and my efforts. It’s really hard deciding where to be. But ultimately the best place is ones home, i.e owns blog.
So leads me to my final thoughts about where I should put my pictures. I know I don’t want to clutter my feed up and have a post a day that may notify followers. I didn’t realise that this was happening on my Kofi and Patreon accounts. Thankfully I have no one to hack off at the moment. But I am going to package the drawing into once-a-week uploads, in a semi-webcomic-like fashion. The benefit of doing this is that I can then post it to all the places that don’t suit daily upload. I am then going to put it into my feed on the blog here as it is then a lot less intrusive to the reader and subscriber. I can imagine the constant ping of the notification being enough to drive one to not wanting to see or keep up with the blog.
Like many things in life, one works out through experience what works and what doesn’t. I knew that if I waited long enough that the answer would appear to me. And that it has done. So going forward there will be a weekly visual diary update and also other thoughts will appear here on a sporadic basis,
Until next time…