Studio fArts from March: Between Movement and Meaning

Hi.

You know what. I bore easily. Which is a strange thing to admit when you’re constantly working.

I feel, a lot is constantly happening. Projects move forward and are shipped, posts go up. Clients and audiences react. T-shirts get printed. Blogs get written. And yet, most of the time, it feels like nothing is really moving.

Nothing is going anywhere. It’s the strangest thing. 

In Dec-Jan-Feb, while I was properly sick. And since. Everything has been coloured different. But, now I’m back to building things that may or may not matter. So the question shows up again: What does it matter?

Keeping busy. Following dreams. What a strange way to spend a life. Especially when everything in the world seems to be on fire. (Respect to the people who don’t struggle with these inane questions and just persist.)

And speaking of inane. I have been studying business and strategy — mostly through MIT OpenCourseWare. It’s not some grand plan. But to be clear, ‘monkeyverse’ happened out of a skill: To be able to visualise ideas. And I have been lucky to have found people who have supported me along the way. Especially the loving people at Quicksand and Antariksha.

But I have been stuck between being an artist and something else for a long while. To be able to build Baanar, I think I can not rely on those skills. And this urge to grow in a new direction and find some form of success has put on a totally different path. And I am loving it.

I also stumbled upon Roger L. Martin. I haven’t read his book Playing to Win yet. But I’ve been listening to him talk. And something about the way he explains strategy; not as planning, but as a set of choices to generate expected results from unexpected circumstances; has quietly rearranged how I think about everything I’m doing right now. For example my attempt at building in public using calm marketing.

I’ll share more structured notes on this in the coming months. For now, if you’re trying to understand the difference between strategy and just…doing more things. He is totally worth your time.

(And if you know others I should be reading or listening to, write to me. I’m still very early in this.)

Speaking of growth and progressions.
This month I crossed 100 blogs on this website.
A hundred!

Written. Drawn. Published. Mostly read by bots. Which is funny.

Someone did subscribe to the newsletter though. And then some more.
It’s slow. Almost invisible. But it’s happening. Growth.

There was also a strange moment during the kickstarter of All Will Rise when a few people commented that they were certain that the art for the game was AI-generated.

Now, of all the things going on, that was not what I had expected.
Funny.

But to get to the point.

This month on the The Thousand Arms felt like a constant pull between chaos and control. The visuals refuse to settle. Every time something feels resolved, it breaks again. But in the process I am learning that I have to redefine my ideas of ‘refined’, and ‘final’ work if I am to wrap up this project.

→ Read Looking for feelings in the art direction process

Even though I have been sick and moving again, Baanar is beginning to really take shape in the real world. Some of the cotton apparels are up, the produce is moving slowly. And I will be adding some no-chemical soaps and lotions in the coming months.

It’s all a long way to go. But you know, slow and steady, hopefully wins the race 🙂

→ Read Amazing 100% Cotton TShirts. Finally!

This project continues to evolve slowly.

With the art direction and visual language now set the world is starting to feel a lot more normal. And then, unexpectedly, the Kickstarter has been, and continues, to be a success.

Not just financially, but psychologically. It made the project feel…witnessed. If that makes sense. Which comes with its own pressure.

→ Read Making of All Will Rise — Explorations & Visual Development

→ Read Then 1,200 People Said ‘Yes’

I also put together some notes on calm marketing for Artists.

It’s less about generating performance in the generic social media style. Though that works like a charm. It is also very daunting for a one person business. So far, it has felt a lot slower. But also a lot more honest. Which I am getting to enjoy.

→ Read Calm Marketing for Artists

Some things I’ve been reading / thinking about:

There’s something quietly obsessive about a project like this. The Journey to the West Library feels more like a long act of devotion. Every character, every translation, every variation is held up to the light and examined.

What I find most interesting is how it reframes the idea of storytelling. Instead of treating the text as something fixed, it opens it up as a living system; translations as interpretations, interpretations as new stories. It reminds me that worldbuilding isn’t always about inventing something new. Sometimes it’s about returning to something old and looking at it hard enough that it begins to unfold again.

We tend to reach for big, structural explanations when we talk about capitalism; systems, classes, and power. Marx gives us that language. But Hume, comes at it from a stranger, more human place. He looks at habits, emotions, the irrational ways in which people make decisions. And suddenly capitalism doesn’t feel like a machine anymore. It feels like a pattern of behaviour we collectively keep reinforcing, often without fully understanding why.

When reading this, what stayed with me is the idea that economic systems aren’t just built on logic, they’re built on belief. Trust, desire, imitation. And if that’s true, then changing the system isn’t just about changing policies or structures. It’s about shifting perception itself. Which is uncomfortable, because it places responsibility back on the individual—but also strangely empowering. It suggests that even small changes in how we see and act might ripple outward in ways we don’t immediately notice.