Been doing a few works of art lately.

It's all too often that I try and switch up my drawing styles; I like variety. 

Below is a more recent doodle I did on my google tablet. I find drawing on a tablet to be easier than drawing on paper. There are never any eraser marks, I can layer it, I can select specific parts and delete them, I can paint without the mess, and so on. 

However, it's for the same reason I find that real skill comes from pen and ink on paper. It's more a challenge to create on paper. Also, there is a tactile sensation that can not be replicated by any kind of device. Especially the feel of good paper as the pen glides across it. 

It's been hard recently, as a musician, writer, or artist. We are all being replaced by A.I. generated slop and soon we will have to rely on our small communities who still appreciate "man-made". And those communities are growing fewer and further between. I am generally very careful with my art, in fact I make sure that most of mine are water marked.

Another thing thing I have been doing is separating my truly original art from my more main stream works. I don't post my art in my original style anymore. I am protecting my my style from the LLMs that steal things to train their art-bots. I learned that lesson years ago when I used to design and make leather bags, which I did for a couple years. They were all my own original designs and I sold a lot of them.

Things went well for a while, then one day I got on Etsy to see my listings and check to see if anything had change. At that point I hadn't sold a bag in couple of weeks and was curious as to why. There it was, a posting from someone else selling custom leather bags. 

The design was not just strikingly similar to mine, it was mine. And the write up was also mine, only a couple of small changes to the language. The pictures were even from the same angles. The worst part is that they were undercutting my price by $100.00. It only got worse from there. Listings started popping up every time I would log on that either were straight up rip-offs or damn close. The only difference was the quality. They were all lower quality. Lower quality leather, no waxed thread, no steal shanks, just crap. This effectively ended my business. How does one protect their work without copious amounts of money and an army of lawyers?

But, enough of that drivel, here's a peace of art I did that I don't have too make attachments to. 

(Umbria: The Tower of Ire J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025)

Cheers!