Artist's Way events I like to do and take up my time part 1

I'm supposed to make a list of events that take up my time to figure out where it goes. I'm not interested in doing that but I'll give it a try. It's hard to stop and thing about what I like to do because there are specific things that give me a smile and in the attempt to fill the page I want to think of things I would probably like or things a "normal" person would like. So I'll try my best to be true to my own interest. I think I may add on to this once I figure out more things I like to do.

1. Pinterest. I love going onto art sites and finding pictures I can add to my collections. I was introduced to Pinterest when I was studying game design and the instructor suggested that we make our own collections to inspire us. And it worked. Sites like Pinterest are filled with other people's art work and other postings that inspire. When I first started, I took an interst in bottles. It sounds weird but glass and procelin fixtures seem to comfort me somehow. It's soothing to look at spherical objects made of glass. I think the same applies to my love of stained glass windows. But I went beyond the bottles and found fantasy art that fed my brain. I can almost feel part of my head relax when I find images that I can use for my stories. It's similar to how I built stuff out of junk I found on the ground. I would pick up stuff and ask myself how do these things fit together. I get a little bit of a high when I add to my collection. It makes me feel as if I'm improving myself or adding to my own world. It's hard for me to access parts of my imagination. Pictures make it easier to build ideas. The same happened to me when I discovered Tumblr. The site is filled with other people's art, so much so that I had to make several categories called "art inspiration" so that they wouldn't over flow. One of the problems with Tumblr is that it focuses on the "new." Older posts are buried deep into the site and it doesn't keep your place. It also affects the speed of your device as you scroll down further it eats up the RAM making it hard to keep track of your posts. To add to the confusion, if you try to stay in a blog, the blog resets when a new post is added which loses your place. It's very frustrating and makes me think the site is more focused on new posts rather than preserving them. But Pinterest feels different. You find yourself stopping the scrolling when something catches your eye. When it speaks to you, you want to save it. Right now I'm working on my KIY collection which is getting a little bare as I think I've picked the Cthulhu gallery clean. But I still find pics to add from time to time which inspire me. There are three areas of KIY that I love that have become my favorite sub categories to post. "Something Happened," "Robes," and "Those with Powers." The first category, "Something Happened," is inspiration for short stories. It's pics that wouldn't fit with my other characters but could provide the idea for a short story. The collection is often filled with pictures of people who seem distressed by a monsterous change or a creature hovering near them. This adds to the idea that something terrible happened and it needs my main characters to come in and fix it. "Robes" is a collection of people in said title. The original idea was that each cult would have their own type of robe you could recognize. Like a school uniform mixed with the color scheme of A Song of Ice and Fire. It was to categorize each cult in a way the reader could imagine because Lovecraft seems to be scant on those details. Finally we have "Those with Powers," which is where I put my ideas for the main cast. A simple image of a pose or power can inspire a lot and I want to find the right words to clearly tell what that picture is about. I think Hideo Kojima works in a similar way. He tries to make the game or the scene that fits with the music he's listening to. My issue with Pinterest is how it can go askew. The algorithm is designed to find similar things, not similar but new ideas. For example, when I was researching the ghouls I got caught up in Tokyo Ghoul and found a lot of fan artwork. This was fine until the algorithm only gave me Tokyo Ghoul art when there are other pieces about ghouls out there. This means I have to correct the site by finding other pics on my own rather than relying on whatever they suggest. There's a few other collections like "Hunters" which is about the humans who hunt down the Eldritch monsters. A lot of that is based off of Bloodborne art. What's promising is that the sub categories has let me break down ideas and other authors like Arthur Machen's works. There isn't a lot of artwork about Machen's stories but the few that I find help me understand what other's think about his ideas. "Junjit Ito" is another category. His stuff is heavily influenced by Lovecraft. I've also made categories for the different gods that Lovecraft and other writers created. And then there are the strange tangents that Pinterest sent me on like the "Bug People" or the "Goth Girls" and the "Aquatic People" categories I made which I'll probably never use. The inspiration that Pinterest has provided me has expanded my story farther than I ever thought. My favorite example is this category I call "Blessed of the King" which involves a story about people touched by the King in Yellow. It is fun to go down on bunny trails and see where it takes you. You almost have to follow that idea that you say to yourself "I don't know why but I like it."

2. Photographing Splatters.

When I was in my last year of college, I came across an issue in my art class. I had to fill up my sketch book. The problem was that I wasn't into drawing boring things like chairs and people. I wanted to go with my imagination. I noticed the floors had a lot of stains on them from the tape the other students had used that was mixed with the charcoal and dirt. The contrast made an interesting picture that I had to capture on my phone. It was interesting enough that I decided to draw it. And that became the start of a long interest in the stains on the ground. It can't just be any stain, gum stains or certain streaks don't do it for me. It has to be something that makes me wonder "how does that work?" I see people, weapons, all sorts of strange art that encourages me to draw them. It's strange add on for my RTF stories where my protagonist makes weapons and tools out of things he finds. It makes sense if I don't add too much logic to it. The pics are a remenant of the past when I was in middle and high school where I would draw patterns that I saw on the floor. Strange shapes appeared before my eyes when I looked at the floor tiles so I drew them to the best of my ability. It didn't matter if they made sense or not, what mattered is that they were a welcome distraction from school. These pics formed my protagonist in RTF and made him what he is today. I don't know when I'll get around to writing him because I'm focused on my short stories right now. 

Wow, this took a lot more out of me than I thought. I guess I won't have time to work on Cain today. Let's take a break.