I started making digital art in 2007 using ShiPainter Pro. In my first drawing I just colored each pixel individually because I didn't know how anything worked. The website I was drawing on let you watch replays of how other artists had drawn their pictures. I spent hours watching and experimenting and figuring out how things work. After I encountered more and more bugs, I moved to Paint.NET.
After a few busy years I started drawing again in late 2023. And as the bots take over the large social media sites, I made a personal website for my art.
Now I draw exclusively in Paint.NET.
The above is what I originally wrote a bit more than a year before it says that this page was published. Now I'm adding to it. For future reference, I'm writing this part on May 29 2026.
A few days ago I discovered web revival. In case someone who grew up with social media is reading this, the internet used to be different. People used to have their own personal websites just for fun and link to each other and interact in forums. Places where discussions can last however long you prefer and other people can join it at any time without it having been buried by an algorithm. And there was personality in how you designed your place instead of everything having to be white, grey or black. It used to be completely normal to reply to something a week after it was posted. The internet wasn't designed to make you feel like you had to be present for things all the time so that you wouldn't miss something. Computers weren't telling you what to look at.
While everything I wrote above the horizontal line is true, it's also a facade. It's what algorithms had train me to think was acceptable to say. I was attempting to fit myself into one small box. Noah S, the one who draws animals in Paint.NET. I was trying to be marketable because of the societal attitude that a hobby isn't worth having unless you turn it into a side-hustle. And it wasn't always like this. Websites used to be something you did for fun. Just for fun. I hope that people who read this in the future will wonder why I'm emphasizing that, but as I'm writing this the internet is extremely commercialized. While I never played with barbie myself, I heard from someone else that their website used to have fun games for kids. Now it's only a store. I used to play minigames on the official pokemon website. That's gone. The internet that's easy to find today is only there to make money and to trick people that they too can get rich on it. The wast majority of people don't get rich, they end up being the products for a few billionaires who own the big places.
Web revival is a counter-movement against this. To make the internet fun and colorful to be at. To create places where you aren't hidden by an algorithm for posting the "wrong" thing. To make friends across the world. We have this invention that allows us to communicate with each other, to find people you're compatible with. And it's being used to make the rich richer. It doesn't have to be like that. If you're still reading, you probably have some interest in what I've written. I have links to other personal websites in the sidebar and on the webrings page. And they have links to others. This is how it used to be. If you go surfing there, you'll find websites that you like and websites that aren't to your taste. But there will be another wave to take you to someone else's site whenever you want. And it won't be chosen by a computer. The (mostly) 88x31 buttons can give you some sense of where you'll end up.
I was never going to make it on the commercial web. I have more health issues than I can count (and I tried) that keep me from keeping a regular schedule. I originally started building this website a bit more than a year ago, but the past year has been a complete mess. I'm now slowly getting back into doing things for fun. And I want my website to be a part of that. Aside from the past few days I haven't drawn anything in a bit more than a year. I burned out when trying to keep up at social media and feeling like it wasn't worth doing if I wasn't marketable by keeping pace with healthy people. When I started building it I was talking with a friend about how the colors have been drained from the internet and how I hoped that personal websites would make a comeback. I picked the colors to bring back color. That was my first small movement towards web revival, even if I hadn't heard of it at that point. And I felt like I couldn't do anything else. I was getting my own personal corner on the internet, and I still took for granted that I had to fit into a marketable box. That's so messed up. Today I realized that I don't have to hide my other passions here in order to keep it on topic and marketable.
So here's my real introduction.
Hi, I'm Noah S. I won't give out my age, but I'm old enough to not be keeping count of it anymore and as you can see above I have clear memories from before social media. Any pronouns are okay for me. I'm autistic, nonbinary and aroace. Aside from art, I'm very passionate about paleontology and shipping. I mean actual ships. Like Lusitania or more famously Titanic. I also like writing long texts. As you can see. When Twitter came out I didn't understand the point of it since you're limited to only short messages. I had the same reaction to Tiktok.
Here's a drawing I made of Lusitania earlier this month, on the anniversary of her sinking. It was also the first picture I drew in about a year. And I didn't post it because I didn't feel like it fit. She was an amazing ship. The biggest of her time on her maiden voyage in 1907. And made the at that time fastest crossing of the Atlantic. This drawing is set before 1910. In January 1910 she went right through a rough wave that pushed parts of the superstructure (the white part) back. Everyone who was on board survived.
In the future, I won't be boxing myself in and trying to be marketable to an algorithm. I'm going to be building this website for fun. My health is going to force me to take breaks, but I will come back. I will add my Lusitania drawing to the gallery on the front page and to the jigsaws. And I will do what I feel like with my website. Instead of being for my art, it will be my art and my contribution to the indie web. I will let my personality show instead of trying to be a perfect product. As it says in the bumper stickers that I added yesterday. I used to be a perfectionist. I'm better now.
