so you fancy yourself one of 'em drawers...

i like to draw. i don't, actually.

well, i like it in principle. visual art is uniquely present. music draws bumpy lines through your attention, writing creates wispy images, but drawings are just kinda there. frozen, but there. in front of you, unmistakable and unambiguous.

but holy fucking shit is the act of drawing frustrating. i suppose it should be no surprise given the sort of impatient person i am. i try to do everything all at once. when that doesn't work, i've learned to keep going and power through the process -- but there's always a little Something in the background, a Something whose patience slowly ticks down.

and Something likes to come and claim its due fuck shit up, rather soon.

hey. you made a promise.

yeah, i did. here's a collage of some drawings i made this week.

i drew a little bit nearly every day this week.

let's look at the to-do list. as far as drawings go, the items are:

• concept art; location of the prototype
• ui design; player menus like the inventory
• concept art; the zombie enemy (name to-be-revealed)
• concept art; key art (vague, yes)
• concept art; literally as many sketches as possible
• concept art; items

i'm writing this specific part of the post past midnight on 2026-07-21, so i don't know how much of the stuff on the to-do list won't be in the collage. but i can still say with confidence that most of it is not. c'est la vie, non?

now for the why not

drawing is hard. in major part because i don't, as per the first digest, give myself licence to be messy and make bad things i can iterate upon. but there's more. there's always more...

jerrygame has a particular shape in my head, in an "experiential" and a "visual" sense. getting the experiential sense out of my mind as gameplay through code involves a tactile process; i add a feature and critique the feel, and adjust levers depending on the direction i need to tug in. now, weirdly, something that helps this process go smoothly is that i'm open to iteration. i discard ideas with no difficulty if it turns out that they simply don't work.

getting the visual sense out of my mind as art through drawing ends up feeling more imperative... after all, "i know what good art looks like, and i know what kind of art would fit jerrygame. so, i just need to make that. and if it doesn't work, then i'm not doing it right." i'm resistant to iteration.

i want a specific result when i draw for a project like this-- no, more aptly, i want a result that conveys a specific feeling. but a drawing is something concrete, you see, it's crystallised. thus the problem statement: create something solid, physical, crystallised, that will convey a certain feeling. i'm sure this is a sense you can refine and calibrate, but i'm frustratingly terrible at it.

but wdbros, your art is good!

thank you whoever wrote that, but it's not good enough. or, maybe it is. to be honest, i feel more frustration than i care to convey with words about this topic, and i have for a long time. my art is technically good okay passable, but it appears that i've neglected practicing making illustrations in favour of just drawing to get better, and it's biting me now. quite hard.

that's what this whole thing boils down to, huh? i'm good at drawing, not making illustrations.

oh well.

you know, reader, seeing it laid out in front of me like this makes the issue feel smaller. from here it's easy to think and say that i just have to stick with it -- i'll get a sense for making illustrations for jerrygame in no time, and i'll have art and assets out the wazoo or something. wasoo? british spellings.

but... well... i suppose i can stick with it. maybe with a little begrudge-ment, with Something biting at my shoulder. usually people get better at the things they do, so i have to keep making illustrations, right? and then it'll all wor

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