pointillizm

It's ironic that doing creative stuff is not really about creating something new, at least in my experience and from what I've heard people say. It's about doing the same things over and over again and just giving it a different twist each time. 

An art style or a writing style evolves incrementally and it's built on a foundation of repetition. Just like the best thesis can be distilled to a very tiny point of thought that becomes tens or hundreds of thousands of words, so a spectacular explosion of fantastic art grows out of the mundane, pedestrian act of (literally or virtually) mark making. 

In clip studio paint, I have hundreds of brushes to choose from - I even bought a brush pack so I have even more - but for months now I have only used 3 - one pen, one pencil and a watercolor brush. I like those. I like what they do. I don't want to tinker with this system. I'm still learning what I can do with these. If I started randomly choosing different brushes, I wouldn't know what I was doing. 

To me, art is always a struggle in real time where you're battling for control, and the beauty of the art is a reflection of that struggle. A good example is watercolor painting. The paint is moving and you never really know where it's going to go and what it's going to look like, and that's the joy of it. 

So, with writing or with art, I just begin with doing things I know. Then, as it takes shape, I have an idea about how I can combine things in ways I never have before. I'm doing the same things but combining them in different ways. 

That repetition is very satisfying. Sitting there with a blank slate, an empty page, an empty canvas, and knowing what to do, because it's easy and familiar, but then your work becomes something beautiful or meaningful by some kind of magic.