"Dear readers,
Drawing is fun. People who hope to become professional illustrators study special techniques and in due course get better at drawing. However, often as they make progress with their technique they lose their spirits which is the most important thing in illustrating. This is no good. Drawing technically well alone means nothing. Unfortunately, spirits cannot be taught. That is the problem. Obviously, professionals need to draw well or they'll be laughingstocks. In that respect, amateurs can be more easygoing because they don't need to concern themselves with technique. They can simply enjoy drawing for themselves what they see and feel without worrying about the opinion of others. For professionals this is not the case. They have to show off their skill to the world, which keeps them from seeming relaxed. In point of fact, an old man who hasn't drawn since childhood may draw primitive illustrations which moves the viewer deeply. Heta-uma (Bad-nice) illustrations fascinate me because of this kind of inversion of value.
You should believe your talent as an unskillful illustrator is equal to another's skillful talent. I hope this book will be a bible for such readers.
Please enjoy this book as you draw with your family and friends.
Love, peace, happiness,
King Terry"
The Secret of Heta-Uma Drawing
Drawing is fun. People who hope to become professional illustrators study special techniques and in due course get better at drawing. However, often as they make progress with their technique they lose their spirits which is the most important thing in illustrating. This is no good. Drawing technically well alone means nothing. Unfortunately, spirits cannot be taught. That is the problem. Obviously, professionals need to draw well or they'll be laughingstocks. In that respect, amateurs can be more easygoing because they don't need to concern themselves with technique. They can simply enjoy drawing for themselves what they see and feel without worrying about the opinion of others. For professionals this is not the case. They have to show off their skill to the world, which keeps them from seeming relaxed. In point of fact, an old man who hasn't drawn since childhood may draw primitive illustrations which moves the viewer deeply. Heta-uma (Bad-nice) illustrations fascinate me because of this kind of inversion of value.
You should believe your talent as an unskillful illustrator is equal to another's skillful talent. I hope this book will be a bible for such readers.
Please enjoy this book as you draw with your family and friends.
Love, peace, happiness,
King Terry"
The Secret of Heta-Uma Drawing
"Because it matters to YOU. Because it makes you happy."
2026 - Being an artist online, creative self-expression, and words from a guy who cares a bit too much about this topic.
It's safe to say that all of us are creatives on here, one way or another, and I know a lot of us are looking for places to sincerely express ourselves and showcase what we can do outside of the tight fist of algorithms. I'm pretty passionate about what it means to be a creative, and although I specialize in drawing, so obviously my views and experiences are influenced by that, I still hope that what I have to say here can reach any creative person who also feels or thinks this way, or needs to hear it.
Perfectionism has been in an all-time high in recent years, with the obsession with labelling our artstyles and categorizing them and aestheticizing them for the sake of wanting to be something specific, something appealing and worthy of praise. Too many of us have been shrinking ourselves for the sake of being accepted and liked, either following trends or limiting ourselves just enough so our work won't be labelled as weird, ugly, or unrelatable. Saying that we're not drawing for social media but still falling into the trap of changing things because they feel a little too sincere or unpolished; that could possibly make others want to make fun of us for it. Whichever form of creative self-doubt rooted from this constant online nurturing of irony poisoning and insults towards the self you may be feeling right now.
Being creative has been tainted by this constant need to be perfect immediately, and nothing else, nothing less. Only the best of the best to be pumped out monthly, weekly, daily, with not a single sketchy line out of place; works in progress being posted when they're so suspiciously pretty and clean and polished, framed in a pretty little screenshot.
People hating themselves because their sketchbooks do not look like 2017 watercolor blotched Calarts accepted portfolios, thinking that’s what natural on-the-spot drawing should look like. That may be how some artists operate, and that’s fine, but the vast majority will have their sketchbooks look like total bullshit of great variety. Because it’s not meant to be an exhibition.
All this, inevitably, feeds this back and forth sentiment of 'how is this person so effortlessly flawless? Is there something wrong with me?' I see a lot in the art community. This constant need to be perfect immediately and nothing else, and if not, you should berate yourself over it (or others, if you’re especially miserable). It’s a shame, and it helps no one.
You'd be surprised to see how many pieces that are clumsy and uncharacteristic (so to speak) even the artists you look up to make LOL and that's just fine, because THAT'S what being creative entails.
Enough circling around it, what I'm trying to say here is that more than ever now you need to let yourself, as a creative, be sincere and give yourself grace over technical mistakes (just never lose your critical and introspective eye, please I beg you), and make the art you personally would want to see. If you’re clumsy, you’ll learn, because you will naturally hop towards it – because it’s things you care about! Do what feels like 'doing you' and not what appears the most polished or aesthethically pleasing and so on. Avoid blindly following the words you heard on some art critique rando's Youtube video telling people some regurgitated bullshit about not ever using black lineart or how you MUST be using THIS brush and how to draw BEAUTIFUL (silicon-like white small-nosed spotless and supermodel looking) PEOPLE. Do take people's advice and practice as needed, but learn the difference between what's someone telling you how to commercialize and smoothen your artstyle or how to make it look like TikTok’s favorite soup of the day, versus actual guides that can help you improve and find ways to aid YOUR way of working and how to adapt new knowledge to your process.
Creativity is a constant discussion with yourself, understanding fundamentals so you may explore yourself through them. What someone learns for themselves may not work for you and vice versa, and that's okay. It's gonna be frustrating, you will doubt yourself through it, but it will be miles better than locking yourself into a forever performance. Same with WHAT you make: all your art needs is to be important to you, for it to come from a personal desire to translate the world as you experience it, to take what you love, etc. and control your thoughts for just a little while and have it immortalized. Keep it introspective, keep it critical.
As long as it matters to you, as long as it makes you happy, I implore you to make and create as you know best and to enjoy it without letting an invisible audience ruin it for you (or a perpetually unsatisfied inner critic, a stage that's a little harder to overcome, but you can learn to control it rather than it controlling you).
It's not sincere to expect everything you make to be perfect, or to like it all the time. I don't like some of the things I make at first, truth be told, but I let them grow on me because I know how much I cared for what I was making at the time. Just for the love of God, at least let things exist and breathe. Let yourself make clumsy things and just let the embarrassment breathe and let sincerity actually make you enjoy creating something for once, rather than it having to be a performance all the time.
And tell you what, if you do enjoy attention and want your work to be noticed, being yourself is what earns you exactly the type of audience you deserve, because you'll attract people just like you.
With all that being said, and stepping outside the art discussion for a second, this is a sentiment that really drives this website altogether: I'm not the first person to say how much they wish to escape social media or has already done so thanks to Neocities. I have not left entirely, I probably never will, but I understand the reasoning. There is a sincerity here that I like and hope will not be lost.
My website is... messy. It's weirdly coded. It's not structured clearly at all. That's okay. It's a very selfish project where I'm just putting things I like and make with little filter and bearing my heart out for strangers to see, and it's liberating that way. I'm talking in circles with myself about things I like and people are free to sit down next to me and listen along, and I just love when personal websites feel like that. Ironic to say this after this whole essay, but I tend to second-guess myself to an obsessive, sometimes destructive degree (OCD moment). I like to be chatty and honest, yet at the same time I don't deal the best with vulnerability or being under the spotlight. I put so much of myself out in the open with this site and at times I stop to ask myself… wtf am I doing, will anyone care? Am I making a fool out of myself? And if you experience these thoughts as well, the one thing I'm going to tell you is to knock them away as far as possible. You have no idea how fun it is to get these glimpses into people's lives and minds through their sites. I may not know what you're talking about but that shrine about your interest is a delight to read because I can see the enthusiasm in it. I've never heard of this music album but the way you express how the lyrics make you feel will stick with me whenever I'll come across the artist's name again, and so on.
What I'm trying to say is that we're not always gonna be proud of everything we make, but the joy that comes with sharing parts of ourselves like this and how it can connect with others completely overweights anything else. Your art and site, or whatever else that applies, doesn't need to prove anything else but that it can make you (and by result someone else like you) happy.
Keep creating, I beg you. Understand yourself through it, talk to yourself through it, hold yourself accountable through it, and give yourself peace through it.
Thank you for reading if you did. You're free to disagree with all of this and that too is the beauty in sharing. Again, I suggest you go rest your eyes a bit. Bye bye.
It's safe to say that all of us are creatives on here, one way or another, and I know a lot of us are looking for places to sincerely express ourselves and showcase what we can do outside of the tight fist of algorithms. I'm pretty passionate about what it means to be a creative, and although I specialize in drawing, so obviously my views and experiences are influenced by that, I still hope that what I have to say here can reach any creative person who also feels or thinks this way, or needs to hear it.
Perfectionism has been in an all-time high in recent years, with the obsession with labelling our artstyles and categorizing them and aestheticizing them for the sake of wanting to be something specific, something appealing and worthy of praise. Too many of us have been shrinking ourselves for the sake of being accepted and liked, either following trends or limiting ourselves just enough so our work won't be labelled as weird, ugly, or unrelatable. Saying that we're not drawing for social media but still falling into the trap of changing things because they feel a little too sincere or unpolished; that could possibly make others want to make fun of us for it. Whichever form of creative self-doubt rooted from this constant online nurturing of irony poisoning and insults towards the self you may be feeling right now.
Being creative has been tainted by this constant need to be perfect immediately, and nothing else, nothing less. Only the best of the best to be pumped out monthly, weekly, daily, with not a single sketchy line out of place; works in progress being posted when they're so suspiciously pretty and clean and polished, framed in a pretty little screenshot.
People hating themselves because their sketchbooks do not look like 2017 watercolor blotched Calarts accepted portfolios, thinking that’s what natural on-the-spot drawing should look like. That may be how some artists operate, and that’s fine, but the vast majority will have their sketchbooks look like total bullshit of great variety. Because it’s not meant to be an exhibition.
All this, inevitably, feeds this back and forth sentiment of 'how is this person so effortlessly flawless? Is there something wrong with me?' I see a lot in the art community. This constant need to be perfect immediately and nothing else, and if not, you should berate yourself over it (or others, if you’re especially miserable). It’s a shame, and it helps no one.
You'd be surprised to see how many pieces that are clumsy and uncharacteristic (so to speak) even the artists you look up to make LOL and that's just fine, because THAT'S what being creative entails.
Enough circling around it, what I'm trying to say here is that more than ever now you need to let yourself, as a creative, be sincere and give yourself grace over technical mistakes (just never lose your critical and introspective eye, please I beg you), and make the art you personally would want to see. If you’re clumsy, you’ll learn, because you will naturally hop towards it – because it’s things you care about! Do what feels like 'doing you' and not what appears the most polished or aesthethically pleasing and so on. Avoid blindly following the words you heard on some art critique rando's Youtube video telling people some regurgitated bullshit about not ever using black lineart or how you MUST be using THIS brush and how to draw BEAUTIFUL (silicon-like white small-nosed spotless and supermodel looking) PEOPLE. Do take people's advice and practice as needed, but learn the difference between what's someone telling you how to commercialize and smoothen your artstyle or how to make it look like TikTok’s favorite soup of the day, versus actual guides that can help you improve and find ways to aid YOUR way of working and how to adapt new knowledge to your process.
Creativity is a constant discussion with yourself, understanding fundamentals so you may explore yourself through them. What someone learns for themselves may not work for you and vice versa, and that's okay. It's gonna be frustrating, you will doubt yourself through it, but it will be miles better than locking yourself into a forever performance. Same with WHAT you make: all your art needs is to be important to you, for it to come from a personal desire to translate the world as you experience it, to take what you love, etc. and control your thoughts for just a little while and have it immortalized. Keep it introspective, keep it critical.
As long as it matters to you, as long as it makes you happy, I implore you to make and create as you know best and to enjoy it without letting an invisible audience ruin it for you (or a perpetually unsatisfied inner critic, a stage that's a little harder to overcome, but you can learn to control it rather than it controlling you).
It's not sincere to expect everything you make to be perfect, or to like it all the time. I don't like some of the things I make at first, truth be told, but I let them grow on me because I know how much I cared for what I was making at the time. Just for the love of God, at least let things exist and breathe. Let yourself make clumsy things and just let the embarrassment breathe and let sincerity actually make you enjoy creating something for once, rather than it having to be a performance all the time.
And tell you what, if you do enjoy attention and want your work to be noticed, being yourself is what earns you exactly the type of audience you deserve, because you'll attract people just like you.
With all that being said, and stepping outside the art discussion for a second, this is a sentiment that really drives this website altogether: I'm not the first person to say how much they wish to escape social media or has already done so thanks to Neocities. I have not left entirely, I probably never will, but I understand the reasoning. There is a sincerity here that I like and hope will not be lost.
My website is... messy. It's weirdly coded. It's not structured clearly at all. That's okay. It's a very selfish project where I'm just putting things I like and make with little filter and bearing my heart out for strangers to see, and it's liberating that way. I'm talking in circles with myself about things I like and people are free to sit down next to me and listen along, and I just love when personal websites feel like that. Ironic to say this after this whole essay, but I tend to second-guess myself to an obsessive, sometimes destructive degree (OCD moment). I like to be chatty and honest, yet at the same time I don't deal the best with vulnerability or being under the spotlight. I put so much of myself out in the open with this site and at times I stop to ask myself… wtf am I doing, will anyone care? Am I making a fool out of myself? And if you experience these thoughts as well, the one thing I'm going to tell you is to knock them away as far as possible. You have no idea how fun it is to get these glimpses into people's lives and minds through their sites. I may not know what you're talking about but that shrine about your interest is a delight to read because I can see the enthusiasm in it. I've never heard of this music album but the way you express how the lyrics make you feel will stick with me whenever I'll come across the artist's name again, and so on.
What I'm trying to say is that we're not always gonna be proud of everything we make, but the joy that comes with sharing parts of ourselves like this and how it can connect with others completely overweights anything else. Your art and site, or whatever else that applies, doesn't need to prove anything else but that it can make you (and by result someone else like you) happy.
Keep creating, I beg you. Understand yourself through it, talk to yourself through it, hold yourself accountable through it, and give yourself peace through it.
Thank you for reading if you did. You're free to disagree with all of this and that too is the beauty in sharing. Again, I suggest you go rest your eyes a bit. Bye bye.