The Art of Erik Stell

I once watched an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, where Jake Sisko was really beginning to explore becoming a writer, and he encountered (in true Trek style) an alien creature that fed on creativity.  At one point he reached for a “pad” to begin writing, but she took it away from him and handed him a pen and paper instead.  He looked confused, but she admonished him, saying that writing with a pen and paper develops a stronger tie to what the writer was trying to accomplish.

Sometimes I wonder about that…

Almost a year ago, I bought myself a really nice Wacom Tablet for use in digital art.  It’s been great, and I use it pretty regularly, but I can’t help but feel this disconnect when I use it, vs when I am actually drawing with a pencil and paper.  When I do use it, it’s mainly to rough out ideas that I can easily manipulate until I’m happy, that later get drawn/painted by hand.

I’ve been a digital geek since I was a little kid, tried and true.  However, back when I was writing a lot, I didn’t use a computer at all.  For reasons I can’t explain, it just felt more natural to pull out a notebook and pencil and write that way.  Granted, it made for extra work later as whatever I wrote had to be typed into the computer (a process made more difficult when you consider how horrible my handwriting was).  I think I still have some notebooks with pages that never were transcribed.

Sometimes I wonder if there is some kind of invisible threshold that makes it harder for me to connect with creative works done on the computer vs being done more traditionally.  Perhaps this is why a lot of artists and writers I know of still do things “the long way”.

I don’t really do any writing anymore, as my ever shrinking budget of spare time makes it difficult.  At some point I had to chose between writing and visual arts, and obviously visual arts won out.  Since then, Gatekeepers Prophecy and Brand of Kinserigad both sit dormant on my shelf.  I think that if I ever start working on one of them again, I’ll go back to the more “analog” route, and hand write everything.  Call it a waste of valuable time if you want, but for some reason it feels more natural that way.