I’ve been hammering away at pieces of silver for the last few months, inexpertly crafting bits and pieces for myself and loved ones. I’ve cut & soldered & beaten & ground & polished and even as a beginner it has been possible to create a few things of beauty.
I can’t help but contrast the joy with which these were received with reactions to my attempts to be creative using software – I recently downloaded Sketchbook to create working drawings for digital projects and uploaded first plays with it to much hilarity from others but we all know if it’s not online then you aren’t making anything and then I also downloaded Blender again to revisit my cackhanded efforts at making 3D models and I have sat impatiently through the video tutorials for beginners and my raggedrobinfey.fbx still doesn’t look like I want it to but you can’t just pick up a hammer and a blowtorch and see what happens.
I prefer picking up materials that I can experiment with – clay, plaster, paint, metal, fabric – without the barrier of having to learn what every fecking button on a laptop can do. But maybe I have just forgotten the past fifty years or more of familiarity with clay, plaster, paint, metal, fabric and all the tools that go with using them and if I want to make the VR/AR/MR pieces that currently sit inside my head, without waiting for a magic pot of money to pay someone to do what I want done then I need to learn how to use Sketchbook and Blender and Unity and put the resulting messes up and not worry what people will say about my initial attempts. It is exciting to play with new software, just not as easy as throwing a flame and beating with a hammer.