Some #art thoughts I've been struggling with:

1. I'm learning to do oil painting. I have a lot of cultural baggage about painting, from outside. Oils as high culture, mastery of art, pure fancy creation.

2. I'm deep in a math art place, variations on Menger sponges and related ideas. Stark geometric objects, fine hard lines and proportions.

The two fit together weird; I feel like my subject is fighting my medium, and yet feel like using tools (stencils etc) to mitigate that is "cheating".

And that "cheating" sense is something I'm trying to power on past, to say, fuck it, there's a whole history of modern art unmoored from fusty Old Masters mystique. My hand is unsteady? I need a sharp straight line? Do whatever makes it happen!

But it's still there in the back of my head, in the wrestling match between different things I could do when I sit down to paint. Better to use a tool, force a straight line? Better to freehand and train my unsteady arm? Better to find a compromise? Etc.

@joshmillard i used to do geometric drawings and i had the same internal debate.

you can take an experimental approach to figuring this out though. do some works using more tooling and some with less and compare how you feel about the experiences and the results!