— Issue #7
​Read this newsletter in 'light mode'

Hello! I have a lot of new followers, and I'm very grateful that you're all here :) In case you want to read my previous issues, you can find them all here.

Thank you for opening my newsletter and wanting to read about my latest artwork. I've been working non-stop on it over the past weeks, and I'd love to tell you about the whole process from beginning to end.
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After Cult, released through SILK Art House in October and sold for 5 ETH to Eoj, I moved forward with the idea to create unique works that each have their own distinctive narrative.

For a new piece, I quickly made a sketch that I instantly liked, being playful and fast. This is maybe my favorite part of the whole process, being totally free and just trying out something in the very first phase.

I started sketching because of a post by my artist friend ProperPablo (see above). It inspired me to do something fun and joyful, without any direction or deep thoughts.
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I went for a color that represents happiness for me as background and just started to line draw. And all of a sudden it turned out I had drawn something that resembled a dog. To be honest, I'm not even a huge fan of dogs (you're reading from a 'dad' of three cats here). I only interact with them through my friends, so it kind of amazed me as well when I saw how the first sketch turned out.

I liked the shapes of it though, and decided to use the initial sketch as base. Now, I started to draw the same image from the first sketch, but in a different appearance. Because there is no dog in my life with me being the owner, I drew the leash and the dog using pointillism lines. This was a way for me to make the dog and its long leash a metaphor, to symbolize something that feels like it’s holding me back, but isn’t actually real. It’s not a real dog; it’s just the idea of one.
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In contrast, the bone (the toy), is fully visible. It's the thing the dog plays with: me, us.

After the first outline, I wanted to draw attention mainly to the person with the dog and the wide, beautiful horizon. It was a challenge, because I really liked the first lines as they were: I enjoyed seeing just the yellow field.
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At the same time, I knew the work was going to need way more depth. I didn't start adding other colors until much later though. Within this part of the process, I just wanted to figure out the behavior of the dog.

During the creation of this artwork, and in recent months in general, I’ve noticed my subconscious reaching for more visual and realistic ways of seeing the world — not only the abstract. Even though I’ve been working mainly on fully abstract pieces before, I'm now really enjoying to create some sort of characters. There’s still so much I want to improve on though: poses, faces, animals, objects…

However, I’m trying to blend both directions. I don’t yet know how deep I want to dive into figurative art, but I'm definitely looking to explore some more.

Big changes above! Not only yellow anymore and added a lot of details in the black sky, and different textures everywhere.
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The dog now looks like a mystic persona in the work, giving me dreamy vibes. Also, I tried to put a dog's 'home' in the artwork, but I didn't come up with something I really loved. On the full process video you can see the 'tries' and 'errors' - and how it went from only yellow to this iteration.

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In this newsletter, I've tried to compile the most important steps of the creation of the work. There's only so many images I can share with you here, but the one below I particularly like because I tried something very different with the colors than the actual final version might suggest.
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Again, you can watch the full process video to understand the depth and the paths I choose better.

I actually still really love this version. It feels like a dreamworld to me, as if the character is showed to me as an imaginary persona, resembling me and/or resembling the people around me.
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The yellow circle and oval give me satisfaction and the shapes feel very nice — especially being so vivid against the white background.
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But...

... I also love how the black gives more depth to the work, in my opinion. It makes the work look like a bigger universe. As if the character is not really in a dream, but in his own world, within his reflections. And also, 'stuck' through his own limitations — shown by the dog and the leash.
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The leash is long, but it's still a leash with a start and an end. A limit we as humans don't have in a physical sense [we can roam around wherever we want to go], but we do have these constraints in our mind, I feel; the ones we let others or ourselves define with no good reason.
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That's also why I'm thinking of putting a subtitle to this work: Don't let the dog guide you. We should guide the dog instead.

Here above I tried to add a lot of my familiar elements (the 'dot' and the 'moon' in different bright colors - you can read more about these in my previous newsletter).
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However, I didn't enjoy how much attention the 'moons' were taking away from the leash. I liked how they looked in the composition, but it felt too much.
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Besides that, I didn't really know about the colored ball (right bottom). This also felt it was getting too much attention in the whole of things, so I removed it and ended up giving the 'moons' thinner lines with more details, connecting them more to the ghost-like dog also — resembling the night and the many worries we can have that time of the day.

And so here it is: My Dog Has a Long Leash
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​My new 1/1 artwork.​
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​Hopefully I could give you some food for thought and a nice breakdown of my creative process. I've been thoroughly enjoying to write these articles/reflections on the work as a way to document my practice - for you and also for myself.
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With this work, I didn't want to go too deep into the meaning for me. It's definitely there, but in this case I feel my personal interpretations are going to cloud another one's opinions too much. In general I believe this work is pretty 'open'. There's a lot of depth for me in the black part, with all the details, and I love the ground on which the paws of the dog made their presence.
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I wanted to give you some insights today, but other than that I'm very curious what you see in it and feel while looking at the piece.
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Thank you everyone, for reading and following up my career.

And remember, don't let the dog guide you - whatever that means for you.