"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
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 - all that. 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, that with the obsession with labelling your artstyle and categorizing it and aestheticizing things for the sake of wanting to be something specific. Mellowing yourself for the sake of being accepted and liked, either following trends or just limiting yourself just enough so your work won't be labelled as weird, ugly, or unrelatable. Saying that you'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 make fun of you for it. Whichever form of creative self-doubt rooted from this constant online nurturing of irony poisoning and insults towards the self you may feel (people online seem very scared to give themselves and their works merit and I still wonder why).
On the long run I don't understand what people think they'll gain from basing their entire creative journey on reputation and likeability (outside from having to build a social media audience/etc. to make money and you know, pay bills and living expenses. That's a whole other thing that doesn't have to do with what I'm trying to say here). I'm talking about the general work you put out for yourself and how dangerous it is to fall into the trap of making things for others to like, to show others you have something rather than just naturally having it, and to become something you think others will like you for rather than celebrating your true creative self.
Being creative has been tainted by this constant need to be perfect immediately and nothing else. Only the best of the best can be presented 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. Sketchbooks being expected to look like 2017 watercolor blotched Calarts accepted portfolios, calling THAT scrapbooking and on-the-spot drawing when a lot of the time sketchbooks look like total bullshit of great variety. All this inevitably builds this back and forth cycle of 'How is this person so effortlessly flawless? Is there something wrong with me?' I see a lot in the art community or whatever. This constant need to be perfect immediately and nothing else... you'd be surprised at how many pieces that are so clumsy and ''''uncharacteristic'''' even the artists you look up to make LOL and that's just fine, because THAT'S normal.
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. Do what feels like 'doing you' and not what appears the most polished or ''''aesthethically pleasing'''' and so on, and avoid blindly following the words you heard on some rando's art critique Youtube video telling people some regurgitated bullshit about not ever using black lineart or how you MUST be using THIS sketch structure 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 x intead of actual guides that can help you improve and find ways to aid YOUR way of working and learn how to draw things so you may adapt them to your process, not find a new one. Art 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 (not how) you make: all your art needs is to be important to you, for it to come from a personal desire to translate the world and what you love as you see it, to take what you love 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 as you enjoy 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), but for the love of god at least let things exist and breathe!! Let yourself make clumsy things and just let the embarassment 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 - but thing is, 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 degree. To be fair I have a mental illness with obsessive literally in the name but that's another story. I like to be chatty and honest, yet at the same time I don't deal the best with vulnerability or being under spotlights. 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.
