A Month Without A Laptop

Hi everyone,

Life gave me a lemon yesterday. My laptop died.

In a way it was great timing since I’m currently packing for GenCon and plan to stay about a month in Kentucky after that. Which means I’ll be away from my apartment, and thus my work space.

To be fair the laptop was four years old, and was originally bought for just writing science papers. However, I also used it for creating digital art and videos. I tried streaming for a bit with it but my laptop couldn’t keep up so I decided to drop that until I upgraded my computer. But because I pushed it so hard so often, I think this is why it died so quickly for me.

And that’s okay. I had a good run with it. It helped me get my college degree, to explore and eventually acknowledge that I want to be defined as an artist. It was even there to help me connect with friends far away. And celebrate holidays with family when I couldn’t come home.

At first, when my laptop crashed, it stressed me out. How was I going to work on my art in my hometown for this next month?! I have multiple sketches that need to be transformed into digital version for Redbubble! What about the commissions? What am I going to do?!

After sitting down and talking to my fiance, I realized that I could make this lemon into something beautiful. It’s the perfect moment to start transforming and transitioning some of my online work around. The three big points are summarized below:

1. ArtsyRobotz will soon be a blog just about art. This has kinda been happening for a while now, but it’s finally time to make it official. There will still be geeky fanart and art studies inspired by my favorite geeky things. But I’ll also focus on portfolio builders, art studies, and bits about my journey to becoming a better freelance artist.
2. Boards and Crafts is coming back. During this month or so without a computer I can immediately get to, I’m going to use this time to think up fun crafts to create inspired by tabletop games. I also would like to create blog posts about just the life of being a board game geek and the community around it. All the crafts inspired by tabletop games (even the ones that monopoly has a themed version with it, etc.) I have on the ArtsyRobotz site will be moved to Boards & Crafts to still keep it on the internet but focus my sites a little more on each task.
3. I’ll be upgrading my computer setup. This last point is probably obvious, but if all goes well I plan to get a new computer crafted to make me become more efficient in creating videos and digital artwork. In the meantime I have plan B’s that I can use to help make sure I don’t fall behind further on my digital projects.

Until I have a computer I have easy access to, I’ll be using my phone to create blog post. So please forgive me if the formatting and spelling is off.

Also, during this period of not having a laptop, I’m going to use it as an opportunity to practice my traditional art techniques.

If you have any suggestions of a subject I could work on and then share the tips I learned when drawing them, let me know. (If you want a shout-out with it, please put a link to your site along with your suggestion in the comments.)

Here’s to a cool, tall glass of lemonade! May it help make the lemons of life not seem so bitter.

Cheers,

Jessi, the ArtsyRobotz

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.