Between Lines and Colors - A Writers and his Palette!

Images. Words. Connections.

Where? How? Who? When?

Last year, I wrote a lot and often found myself describing images that lived inside my mind. These could be memory flashes from a now-distant childhood or youth. Events along my journey through the day and life, big or small.

I found great joy in sharing my words with my unknown readers. Writing about emotions felt therapeutic, and at times, it was a way of feeling like I had something to say to the present world about a bygone time. Perhaps it was a hope that I wouldn’t be forgotten. Or that what was once part of me and my upbringing and life might live on, even just a little bit.

I began my writing career on Medium. I quickly found an audience and even earned a decent amount of money writing there. But I always felt like something was missing—a kind of engagement. I had around 1,400 followers on Medium, but whenever I posted a new story, maybe 15 people would read it. And on the rare occasions when I managed to get a story boosted, perhaps 200 would read my words. It disappointed me, and I started looking for other opportunities. With the recent chaos surrounding earnings on Medium, I’ve lost all desire to share anything there.

Like so many others, I discovered Substack. I quickly gained around 100 followers, and today I have 139. However, the growth of new followers has stagnated for me. I’ve never had anyone willing to pay to read my Substack—it’s not really in my nature to be a great salesperson, which is necessary to become a well-paid Substacker. Well, that’s okay.

By chance, I found out about Vocal.Media. YES, this is it! From the beginning of my acquaintance with Vocal, I saw the opportunity to earn a little—yes, the amounts earned per read are quite small compared to the good old days on Medium, but in return, I’ve discovered an entirely different level of engagement among readers and writers here on Vocal than I’ve experienced elsewhere.

It meant the world to me!

Enough about why I’m here; now it’s time to look ahead and share more about why I’m writing this text. The challenge of writing about what creative development I envision for myself (and for Vocal) in 2025 got me thinking.

Last year ended sadly for me—but now I need to focus on myself and move forward. Around Christmas, I started feeling the urge to pick up an old hobby: painting. I was too late to add the necessary supplies to my Christmas wish list, but then again, who would have given me that as a gift? I’ll have to manage that myself. I checked my old stash of oil paints—all dried up—and my brushes were stiff and unusable.

I found my old metal box of watercolors and began painting a few small pieces. The first ones looked like something from early school art classes. I’m not very good with watercolors. I need to get proper painting supplies—oil or acrylic paints and canvases. Luckily, I still have my easel.

The Name of My New Year's Project

I have chosen to call my New Year's project "Between Lines and Colors – A Writer and His Palette." This title embodies my desire to intertwine the written word and the art of painting. It will be the cornerstone of my creative work in 2025.

My creative resolution for the year is to slow down the process for individual pieces. I will write and paint simultaneously, then photograph the painting once it’s finished and publish my text alongside it. I believe this can be an exciting process to challenge my creativity. At the same time, I plan to put each painting up for sale, available exclusively through the article or story it’s linked to. Don’t worry—they’ll be affordably priced, and I’ll ensure safe shipping no matter where in the world you, the buyer, are located. Can it get more personal? I don’t think so.

The first painting accompanies this story. It’s only a watercolor since I haven’t yet had the chance to visit a proper art supply store. But that’s coming soon; I have several consecutive days off starting Thursday afternoon, and I’m looking forward to buying my new brushes and paints.

I’ve also done some linocut printing in the past, and I’d like to revisit that and connect it to writing about my thoughts behind the images.

For my 2025 New Year’s project, I imagine my written words accompanying the images could be both short stories and poems. There might be a bias toward poetry, as I increasingly find it to be my home base for expressing emotions. Through this combination of words and images, I’m giving my work a third dimension, so to speak, and I’m excited to develop this new side of my creativity.

In a world where everyone has access to images, sound, and text, and where competition with TikTok’s flow of quick stories grows—(yes, just look at Substack, which recently launched a “go Live” feature)—I think it’s important to place a stronger focus on artistic expressions. My contribution is the merging of my graphic skills and my written words. I believe this can leave a deeper impression in the reader’s memory and inner world than just a text with a stock image from Unsplash. I also think it will give me a deeper connection to my thoughts, allowing me to formulate them as I simultaneously create the image.

Now, you might say I won’t be able to publish many poems and stories if I have to paint at the same time. However, I reserve the right to “do things as usual”—writing the text and quickly finding an image, whether it’s my own photo or sourced from Unsplash.

For my New Year’s resolution project in 2025, I plan to publish a story with an accompanying painting about once a month. I intend to mark these stories or poems with a special subtitle to signify that they are part of this “art and text” work. They will belong to project "Between Lines and Colors – A Writer and His Palette." This way the reader will know, that it is a special story.

Does this sound like a completely wild idea? I’m sure I’m not the first, and I’m aware of the “Art” community, but I see the opportunity to connect my art, both with pen and brush, across all the other communities where I “normally” publish my stories.

I’m looking forward to truly diving into my New Year’s project and am eagerly awaiting the first results and your—my readers’—reactions.