I created digital art for an entire year using only my iPhone 5S. Why?
BY ALESANDRO ROMERO
In 2015, I decided to create a new digital sketch (i.e., heavily edited digital imagery) every single day. The project is titled #alesandrome365 and its been five days since the final post.
I’ll start by saying I didn’t go to art school. A part of me wishes I did, but my business degree and marketing savviness have come in quite handy as a millennial graduating into the impending economic disaster of 2008. Its given me stability. Its given me interesting experiences and perspective. Most importantly, its kept me not broke; this has allowed me to create art — in a variety of mediums over the last few years —strictly because I’ve wanted to. Not to justify an expensive art degree or for profit. Now, before I get torn up by the internet, I would now be 10,000% better at art if I had gone to art school. I acknowledge that whole-heartedly.
Heck, I might still consider going back one day.
Despite never studying art history in depth, I know general world history and economics well-enough to understand the evolution of the arts and its impact on culture. A life long interest in museums instilled early on, plus a working knowledge of the differing schools, styles and movements keeps me relatively honest and respectful of those that came before. A healthy appreciation for the art establishment balanced with a conscious understanding that, ultimately, all art is subjective to individual tastes, personal opinions and zeitgeist.
I’m a bit of an autodidact when it comes to the visual arts.
Learning how to use digital design tools has been a hobby of mine since my first computer: Photoshop, Flash, Maya, Sketchup, InDesign — you name it, I’ve probably tinkered. In some cases — Photoshop, for instance — I’ve become such a proficient user that I can easily credit a good percentage of my career success on knowing how to use it (more on that in a minute).
A digital art enthusiast you could say.
Having worked in digital media (agency side) for six years — preparing myself for the inevitable move to a tech company — gave me a unique and insider look as to how quickly social media and mobile technology were going to shake up personal creativity and self-expression. 2013 came around and it was a no brainer to join Autodesk, one of the leaders in 3D design software.
None of this, of course, explains why I would spend my time on this project; specifically, creating digital art on a mobile phone everyday for an entire year. An iPhone 5S no less. Well, because it turns out those little computers we carry around in our pockets every day are the new canvas, the new Photoshop, the new AVID, the new crazy-expensive pro camera, the new $10K design software stack that used to be out of the reach of most people—I may just have been the last one to notice.
The themes explored were relatively tame (the grandiose scale of the universe via my limited understanding of astro-physics, the ethos of the human creative spirit, geometry in Nature). This work wasn’t ever meant to make a statement in contemporary political discourse or take a stab at those big meaty problems, like climate change or terrorism.
No. This project was something else.
This project was about discovering the limits of what a life-long art enthusiast could do with this little machine. As it turns out, quite a bit. You see, very smart and capable Silicon Valley types have decided to invest their energy, time and money into building apps that augment social media self-expression. In the process of building apps for merging selfies with glitter backgrounds or layering motivational text over a mountain backdrop, some really valuable mini-tools with robust functionalities for creating real, objectively impressive digital art now exist.
The cynic in me can’t help but think this was not their plan at first — everything was built and made for perfecting the selfie with friends pic. Ah, but once a legion of “mobile edit” enthusiasts began to form on Instagram around mid-2014, I knew the time had come. It was then I realized that these tools and devices had limits that had only begun to be explored.
Knowing this I set out on my goal.
The project was also about trust. Trusting myself to deliver on my word. To set an ambitious, public, objective and come through on the other side was single-handedly the most I’ve ever left myself open to ridicule, humiliation and disappointment. Add to that an audience of friends and acquaintances that understood very little what I was trying to accomplish and the idea began to sound stupider every day. It became increasingly clear that people in my life were not fans of the work. Some I would consider close friends did their best to ignore it —doing some remarkable conversation acrobatics to talk around the project, never once asking what it was about. I avoided bringing it up for the most part.
But being out there on the ice, on that frozen lake of life, alone, I realized: this is going to be one of the most important things you’ve done in your life. And that’s where amazing possibilities become clear. When you trust yourself, when you focus, when you really believe you can add something to the world, that’s real confidence. Not temporary, vain bravado —the-I’m-so-great-sort— but the kind of subtle, base-layer confidence that keeps you warm and strong when the brutal, cold winds of social norms want to blow you back into your place.
And beautiful things started to happen.
Ultimately, this project was a celebration of creativity. The beauty of seeing imagination come to life with this new, powerful medium: almost magically, in the palm of my hands. At the beginning, the idea of creating something every single day was incredibly daunting. There were days and weeks where everything seemed bad, forced even. Some days I was stressed or even angry that I had to post. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was doing the work. If there’s one thing I learned above and beyond the many lessons of last year, is that creativity is not a scarce resource. Its abundant and flows freely if nurtured. It feeds upon itself. The creative spirit inhales the scraps, the works in progress, the unfinished drafts, the terrible ones and the boring duds — they’re all food for its insatiable appetite. Like a muscle, you train it, its gets bigger, it can lift more weight and it will help you do better in other areas of life
So thats what I did. With my crappy iPhone 5s — and its constant nagging about lack of storage — I built that muscle. 1% everyday like one my favorite writers says. And perhaps, thats the most important thing to take from this. The tools are there for the taking: more powerful, more robust, more accessible and more free than at any point in history. And creativity exists in us all (to differing levels, sure, but its there) all it takes is trusting yourself and doing the work. Now I am one million times better at so many things: design thinking, spatial reasoning, Powerpoint presentations, visual development, understanding form and aesthetics, art appreciation, copywriting, social media behavior and mobile design technology than I was a year ago.
You see I won’t be a famous artist and my work won’t sell at Art Basel for millions of dollars, but I feel more energized and more unencumbered by society’s expectations than at any point in my life. I’m a better human. Arguably a better business person. A stronger man.
It’s made me a force to be reckoned with.
I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
