Studio F/ARTs from January

Lovely people of the internet.

Before getting into this month’s updates, I wanted to talk about my observations from living on the internet. You see, 2026 marks the 20th year of me quietly thriving in cyberspace with my visuals and stories. It started with Eggshell Minds – The Unconsciously Conceived Conceivable’s Of A Grey Pulp In A Psychedelic Prison (with two spelling mistakes in the subheading). Back then I was just a young gun talking about love, heartbreak, teenage angst and the gloriously horrible art I made back then. Even then, Eggshell Minds persisted between 2006 and 2013 and had a total of 6 followers.

Then, I moved to Singapore; and tumblr and instagram happened. My tumblr was active till 2018 and had a total of 36 followers. A solid gain of 30 more humans. A win I would say. And though I have been regularly inconsistent on Insta, a total of 2,273 people show their generous interest from time to time 🙂 A crowd compared to the 36!

This is all to say, that in 20 years of being a student, artist, freelancer, founder of monkeyverse and now Baanar, there are a few things I have learnt about writing online and the ‘crowd’.

Just because you build it doesn’t mean they’ll come, is true for all intents. The process itself guarantees the joys and suffering, but the urge to reach an audience and generate an interest requires a certain kind of strategic shameless confidence. Which to be honest, I have second guessed through out my journey. And I am sure others out there feel the same. There are myriad justifications that have come up over the year, but at this point in my life, I think they have all been unnecessary and futile attempts at sense making. It could be a lack of confidence, a trauma, introversion, irrational fears, or whatever narrative I might have unconsciously subscribed to. It matters, but it doesn’t!

Look at the cognitive dissonance. I put my work out there, but I hide it. It’s like creating silent folders in cyberspace. Doesn’t that contradiction speak for itself?

But now I realise that writing online has never really been about marketing or promotion. This has always been a thinking tool, not a publishing channel. It is a way to introspect in the open. I feel it is an effort to clarify my own positions more than to persuade others. I mean blogging specifically. The real value of these efforts has been to witness and evolve over years.

Sharing, over a long enough time, stops being about publishing and starts behaving like memory. Not the clean, factual kind, but the fuzzy, emotional one. I don’t go back to old posts to remember what I did, I go back to remember how I was thinking, what I was worried about, what felt urgent at the time. Patterns reveal themselves only in hindsight. Ideas I thought were passing obsessions keep resurfacing years apart. The archive makes it clear that growth isn’t linear, it loops. In that sense, the blog is a time machine. A slow one. Built sentence by sentence.

Inconsistency is consistency. Today, everyone talks about how you should post everyday, or make reels once a week or whatever gimmick there is that is being sold by platforms to keep you glued in. And if you are an aspiring influencer, that is the journey. But as an artist. Long gaps between posts are actually necessary. They give space to think and ponder. To twiddle thumbs. Returning after a silence feels more honest than forcing updates all the time. The difference between being consistent and being coherent over time cannot be overstated.

I wont write too much about this, instead, just skim through my portfolio, blog and instagram.

Keep in mind, that I have all of the passion and none of the ambition. I am deeply interested in the process of creating art but have lesser interest in conquering the creative world. But in a sense I has made inconsistency work. It has allowed me to build slowly, with intension, toward what matters to me.

Being an artist is complicated and the journey is almost always meandering and full of holes. And like I said, even though I have not been a shameless artist, I am very aware of what I want and how to get it. If you, like me, have a strange blend of interests, then building a highly curated strategy should be your goal.

Instance: My objective between 2016 and 2024 was to collaborate with people I admired. And that was it; that was my focus. So I designed all the platforms I was on to look like a portfolio. At first glance 2273 might not seem like 10K, but I would be understating the fact that the gang comprises of humans I highly respect, have worked with. And people who have helped me learn, grow and evolve.

The point is, better have a really good torch if you are stepping into the deep dark woods.

The truth is that in the process of running a design studio, and the creative blogs before them; I have had proverbial heart attacks, actual panic attacks, lost my marbles many time, been sad, angry, happy, excited. The whole catalogue of emotions and reactions. The worse decisions have been made along with the best, and small things in hind sight appear to be big, and big things small.

This is the nature of change. So keep changing. But if I would do it again, the only thing I would change would be the unnecessary stress. And own my content sooner (Start with wordpress).

As monkeyverse has organically evolved from a freelancer sitting at a desk, to a one person studio, my goals also keep shifting. What seemed like a big task five years ago, is now the mundane. And with it comes new dreams. Now the goal is to build an independent audience for the thousand arms, baanar, and a few other projects that are in the works. But that changes the mechanic and toolkit with which to deal with outreach.

But always own your stuff! This is a long game, and platforms come and go.

Having committed to becoming a shameless artist after 20 long years! And subscribing to the idea that all ideas and outputs are equal — unbaked, half baked or fully baked. They will all be shared with the same spirit. But ‘shamelessness’ does not equate ‘strategy’. As much as I would like to remind the world that I shit twenty four carat gold with every mark and word. That obviously is not true. Hence, there has to be some notion of a strategy. And this is coming from a pantser! Imagine.

A very long time ago, when I was in my late teens, a very wise man asked me: ‘Who do you write for?’ I remember fumbling an answer back then, trying desperately to sound smart. But after two decades, I can speak with confidence that the art that passes through me reveals to me, and only me, truths that are only for me. It is an exploration of the ‘spirit’ in a sense. The surrender to a craft is a journey of a thousand lifetimes. Yet, the same spontaneity that draws on the process of creation does not work for building an audience. It needs a more structured approach and an awareness of who the audience is and what is being offered to them. So find that out, and find that out quickly.

For example, so far this blog has been about me processing and making sense of the journey. And everything has been to build a portfolio for collaborations. But going forward, the strategy will be tweaked to meet frameworks of marketing for an audience and not client building. And in my case, will obviously be maximalist and over the top.

To make a point. If you read Karthi Subbaramana’s blog you will find that we are diametrically opposite in our approach to how we write and share. I love that she writes in small bites, has no social links, no call to action buttons, no urgency. Just well written posts. It feels highly refreshing. A reminder that it doesn’t always have to scream to exist. But that is not me, sir!

Subtlety is not my forte. I am more about — Sign up, follow me, read more, follow me, do this, do that! These are my links, monkeyverse, baanar & the thousand arms. And you show me love. Write to me, et cetera, et cetera. You get the point.