Google Reader

Yesterday morning I had never heard of google reader, today I am subscribed to approx 263 art blogs with 369 new pieces I have not yet checked out. I was put onto it by Skottie Young, artist extraodinaire in the comic world.

Who had this to say:

It's very easy to get lost in all the negative blah blah that goes on around the net and in the world of comics and entertainment. You know, "This books sucks" "This book is GOING to suck" "Company A are just a bunch of Greedy F's and Company B is ruining my childhood" "This press release is so dumb" "Artist X is no good" blah blah blah. You've seen it, I've seen it. If you're not careful, it's easy to get sucked in and fight the battles that will never find a winner.

One of the things that keep me on a constant positive high is the daily art rush I get from checking my Google Reader Blog Subscriptions. Every time I find a new artists blog, I copy the address and drop it into my subscription list. Over the last few years, I've compiled a list of 350+ blogs and it's growing every day. When I get into the office each morning, the first stop I make is Google Reader and I usually have bout 50 updates. That's at LEAST 50 pieces of art that kick starts my day and keeps me in a great mood. It inspires me to no end.

He then lists all the artblogs he has painstakingly collected over who knows how long.

This is a wonderful thing he has done. It is possibly the nicest thing anyone has done for me this year. (last year was all the charity donations, which will be hard to beat ever). The first paragraph I quoted above, I could relate to coincidently from something I saw just the other day.

I like Skottie because he's in the cartoony school of artists working in comics right now. Humberto Ramos though is my hero. I was looking at a forum discussion of his run on Spider Man 'Big Time' story arc and couldn't believe these Joe-nobodies paying him out.

Sure I think Ramos' artwork is gorgeous and others prefer Jim Lee or something, they are entitled to their opinion. But it's amazing how things change for the pro's.
Currently (well as of yesterday's post no longer currently) I tend to pay out my artwork and the friends/fans build me up. It seems that reverses at some point, perplexingly when you become really good, suddenly you need to believe in your own abilities to survive because the vast array of 'fans' out there are overwhelmingly negative.

I'm definitely guilty myself, I'd readily criticise Tool's '10,000 days' album myself even though in reality it is better than any music I will ever produce in my lifetime ever. (It to me was just not different enough to Lateralus). And I always assumed that Tool would never care about the opinions of Joe-Nobody like me.

But the internet is a funny thing, it makes the army of nobodies that populate fandom out there into a huge visable mass. A visable mass of haters. I'm going to endeavor to no longer participate in this mass, because as I figure most peeps who create stuff are probably their own harshest critics anyway and they just don't need to be told what is wrong.

The second paragraph was a paradime shift for me. One would think that getting daily reminders that there are thousands of great artists out there is a depressing reality of how hard it will be for any newbie artist to stand up and be counted. But on the contrary, drawing is so lonely, so terribly lonely that waking up and being able to tap into and see so many people creating such beautiful/perverse/wonderful imagary every day has the exact same effect that Skottie described - It puts me in a great mood and motivates me to work harder.

Thus I salute you Skottie Young, and thank you. This is a great idea, a great, free idea.