Today’s newsletter is a bit short, but it will not shorten what you may get out from this. Today, I am highlighting a specific chapter where Austin explains how walking helps clear up our minds if we want to think straight.

Solvitur Ambulando

• Two millennia ago, this was said by Diogenes the Cynic. It means, “It is solved by walking.”

A lot of artists that Austin mentioned in the book took strolls and walks around the city and out into the countryside. One of them is Henry David Thoreau, whose philosophy is rooted in simplicity, self-reliance, and humility. He used to walk four hours a day walking around the woods outside Concord. He wrote:

Walking is Beneficial

• Walking is good for physical, spiritual, and mental health.

• It is good for releasing inner demons as well as battling our outer demons.

  • Outer demons are the ones who try to sell us their vision of the world through fear and disinformation. Some of them are very familiar to you: corporations, social media, marketers, and politicians.

  • If we do not walk outside and we keep ourselves glued to the screens, we cannot see the outside world for what it really is and we cannot have our own vision of it in which we can use to combat disinformation

When we are glued to our screens, we lose our senses and is warped to the thought that the entire world is a troll/maniac/pervert or worse. But when we start walking outside and come to our senses, some ugliness still remains. But still, you get to see real people, birds flying, and all the small pretty stuff that you’ll appreciate when you focus your attention to it.

What does this mean to artists?

I really think that walking for a bit after grinding for hours on work eases my tension. I get to move my legs around to prevent cramping, I get to drink water to hydrate, or even get a quick 30 jumping jacks to re energize myself!

But most importantly, what I also think is that since art requires the full use of our senses, walking really gives us that benefit of relaxation and clarity as well as a break from watching too much stuff on screen. Prolonged screentime has made us lose our senses and our sense. As Austin stated, this effect has been some kind of a spiritual numbing.

With that benefit in mind, I can truly say that it helped me recover from an artblock that I currently have as of this writing. That feeling of getting stuck as an artist while working on a project feels like days of toiling and agony. Even though we know that art takes time to make sense of everything, there’s a slip in everyone’s minds that it may have been taking so long to finish it. So what else can we do?

We’ll go outside and explore the world on foot. We’ll walk around and see everything. We’ll walk around and take a break from glueing yourself in the screen for hours.

Trust me. The demons and art blocks hate fresh air.

Keep on going!

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Quotes to Live By

Artist Feature - Jayrah Alegado

Introducing Jayrah! Jayrah is one of my classmates in college, and she is one of the great artists that I know. Read more about her and consider following her works!

About Jayrah

ayrah is a digital and a traditional artist in Davao City who studies Multimedia Arts. She specializes in digital illustration and traditional painting.

Her Works

In her digital illustrations, she likes creating surreal kinds of artworks as it enables her to express her creativity and thoughts. When it comes to traditional painting, she loves creating landscapes as she finds herself at peace and serenity while painting them.

Words of Wisdom from Jayrah

Thank you, Jayrah! If you want to follow her works, check out the links above!

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That’s it for today’s issue. See you next Thursday! Keep on keeping on ;