Blog: Life

This week I spent some time improving my marker rendering skill.

On Friday I created a fashion illustration for an outfit concept I’m working on for my course, and I spent hours on it, working to the best of my abilities to render it in colour. But after I was done, I just felt so disillusioned. It looked so rough and amateur, and it had taken me so long because I didn’t really know what I was doing.

To be clear: three years ago I would have been stunned if you’d told me I could draw something like what I drew last week. But we always strive for better. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at such beautiful illustrations, and my standards for myself have shifted.

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I usually make a few new year’s resolutions, and forget them by the end of January. This year, I’ve decided to go all in on one really difficult target: I’m going to try to read 52 books this year.

This is a crazy target for me. My highest ever book count was 37, and that was years ago, when I was hyperfixated on the very concept of reading. I’ve not been like that in recent years. Last year, I read 10 books, and two of them I had to finish in audiobook form because my concentration was so shot. (No slight on audiobooks as a form of reading - but personally it’s a last resort.)

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Alternatively titled: Stepping away from toxic content culture. Or: The dangers of consuming too much content aimed at Instagram marketers.

I’m not leaving Instagram, but I’ve re-evaluated my relationship with it. Over the last couple of years, I’ve felt shackled by content culture, and it became very toxic.

A lot of this is my fault because I watched a lot of Instagram marketing content that was aimed at small businesses and influencers who use Instagram as a marketing tool. Candidly, this is because I was thinking of starting a small business (but I’m not anymore). The trouble with watching all these Instagram marketing tutorials is that they blurred my understanding of what Instagram is for. They made me think that the goal of using the platform is to increase your following for its own sake.

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