Sam Hardacre

Nick Cave on ChatGPT (read by Stephen Fry)

Beautifully sums up why creative people, and humans in general, should approach reliance on AI with caution. As humans, we so often feel helpless in our own smallness. Yet we still find the resilience to do and make beautiful things and this is where the meaning of life resides. Nature

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

A few months ago, I found myself with a free Saturday afternoon. The kids were at my Mum's for the day, Lu was getting her hair done and on this particular afternoon, The Piece Hall was hosting an afternoon of music including a local band I'd recently come across, courtesy

An illustrated journal

If you've been following along with my blog recently, you'll have noticed a slight increase in frequency of posts and some of those posts relating to my various endeavours to keep the creative momentum going and I've got another one for you! You'll also notice that this isn't the first

Hoa

I wouldn't define myself as a gamer by any stretch. I've had a Switch for a couple of years which I play periodically, generally I go through phases of playing a particular game for a while before taking a break from playing at all. When I first got my Switch,

One sheet of paper...

I've been struggling with motivation to get my comic finished. It's been a month since I last wrote about my comic progress, partly because there hasn't been all that much to report. I enlisted some help in getting some of the flat colours done on some pages which moved me

Neil Gaiman interview with Tim Ferris

I don't subscribe to Tim Ferris's show (maybe I should) but I randomly came across this interview with Neil Gaiman where he talks about his process. You can watch the full interview here and below read a few summarised take-aways. * Rule for writing: You can either write or do nothing,

Back to the camera

I recently came across the Camp Snap Camera through Instagram, a "screen-free digital camera" with the aim of giving you the freedom of taking pictures like you would with a phone but without the distraction or temptation of looking at apps while you're out and about. Those who've been following

Reading goal for 2023: revisited

We're into October now so it's been 9 months since I set myself the reading goal for this year. I'm going to be honest from the outset, I doubt I'll hit the goal of 50 books. With 31 books left and only 75 days to go, I'd say it's pretty

Ethan Hawke on Creativity

I've seen clips of this video before but I've never watched the whole thing. It's only 9 minutes long so I recommend you give this a watch during a coffee break or something. This part in particular hits me hard: Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about

Thoughts on AI

As an artist, I often get asked what my thoughts are on AI, specifically AI-generated images. The very short and straight-to-the-point answer is: I don't like it. And not just because it relies on stealing the work of artists the world over. One reason for me goes much deeper. I

Commonplace books

I've been finding myself leaning more towards traditional or analogue ways of doing things. I haven't used my Kindle regularly for years (only recently for our trip to Malta), favouring actual printed books. Having tried journaling digitally for convenience and have it fall by the wayside, I now favour writing

Don't get ahead of yourself...

Don't get ahead of yourself...

Progress on my comic has been slow. General day-to-day life takes it out of me a lot and generally by the time I get a chance to do some work, around 8 or 9pm each night, I'm knackered and just ready to shut off and rest. Couple that with the

Takes me back

My pal Kraig sent a message on a WhatsApp group with a link to a Studio Ghibli playlist on Spotify. I put it on this afternoon and left it playing in the background. After a while, the track above started playing and it triggered something in me. I think I'm

Music to work to

It's Friday afternoon, I'm doing a very monotonous task at work (lots of re-formatting content, lots of copying and pasting) and I'm listening to one of my "go-to" playlists on Spotify, one of their curated playlists: Cinematic Chillout. I've been listening to this playlist for years now. Back when our

Malta, August 2023

Malta, August 2023

Since 2013, we've been going back to Malta every couple of years to go see Lu's family out there. The last time we were there was 2018 and when we learned we were going to have another baby in 2019, we figured 2020 would be good year to plan another

488 miles for 5 minutes

Last week, I had the gut-wrenching realisation that I'd lost my passport. As we're just a few weeks out from flying to Malta for a holiday we've been postponing since 2020, it's safe to say panic immediately set in and prompted frantic searching up and down the house. I'd used

Memories of Jedi...

This week's podcast discovery is Missing Frames, a show where the host is joined by guests who haven't seen a particular film (sometimes they'll have one guest who has seen it, one who hasn't), they have a short discussion beforehand, go away and watch the film then come back to

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Last week saw the release of what is said to be the final Indiana Jones film, at least with Harrison Ford playing the character (I think the jury's out on whether Disney/Lucasfilm will go ahead with some form of prequel series on Disney+). Understandably, the last outing back in

Art History of Studio Ghibli

Art History of Studio Ghibli

I meant to write about this last week and totally forgot. On Wednesday, 21st June, I went with my buddy Kraig to a talk about Studio Ghibli. The title was "The Art History of..." but right out of the gate the speaker, Dr Shiro Yoshioka, let us know the title

Juno

Lu's cousin recently adopted a cat and soon found herself with a litter of kittens to deal with. We already have a cat so initially didn't entertain the idea but once pictures started getting sent around, we decided to give one of them a new home. So we're now back

Gardening stuff

Gardening stuff

One of the reasons that made us choose to move into our house back in 2021 was the garden. We came from a house with 3 tiers of decking and a driveway at the front, not much greenery and not much space for the kids to play safely. We now

Life in Numbers

Life in Numbers: May '23

Creeping towards the halfway point in the year, it strikes me how fast this year is disappearing. It doesn't feel all that long ago when I wrote my January post. Podcasts: 32 episodes, 42 hours I had a week off this month which usually means my podcast listening takes a

Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts

Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts

I've been a fan of Foo Fighters for a long time. I was a fan of Dave Grohl even before Foo Fighters were a band. So when the news hit of Taylor Hawkins' passing last year, there was a sense that maybe the band wouldn't continue, Hawkins being just as