I’m drawing a brocket deer, tiny, shy, and endangered, and it hits me how much it feels like artists today. Both live in worlds where everything is sacrificed to the god of money and convenience. Forests get bulldozed, attention spans get mined, and creativity gets undervalued. The brocket deer survives quietly, unnoticed, only truly appreciated by those who bother to look.
Write about your first computer
I remember my first computer, an MZ700 with a built-in tape drive, humming and whining like it had a life of its own. I had no idea what I was holding, but I knew it could create magic. Ten pages of code from a magazine, typed by hand, could conjure a spaceship, a dot, a pixel man wandering into a wall forever. No undo. No shortcuts. Just me and the fragile thrill of bringing something into existence that did not exist before. It was not efficient. It was pure nervous system magic. That feeling is the same one I chase now when I draw, write, or make something by hand.
Fast forward a few decades and suddenly a plumber could come home, tell a computer what they want in a two hour action thriller, and get something better than most studios manage with a hundred million dollars and twelve executive producers. Infinite content is the default of the future. Anyone can generate a movie, a song, a book, a painting, all perfectly polished, flawless, complete.
Does that perfect flawless art have soul? It is fast, precise, but it does not hurt. It does not stumble. It does not breathe. It does not carry a nervous system in it. Human art is flawed. It is messy. It is slow. It is ink stained and trembling. And that is why it matters. The brocket deer does not need to be perfect to be real and neither do we. Our mistakes, our imperfection, our stubborn flawed humanity, that is the signal. That is what survives. That is what carries meaning.
AI can generate a thousand perfect deer. I only need one imperfect one that feels alive.
That is the work. That is the balance. That is the future.
Brocket Deer Original Pen & Ink Illustration is now available – $95AUD
Paper size is 20cm by 20cm, own a this original piece straight from my sketch book.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 