knowember 2026
well, mr. birming, i've partaken in your bear plugins and blog trends many times over the last couple of months, so why not one more? this is RNOTTÉ's Knowember! time for you to get to know me a little better.
A photo
this is my iPad, where all the magic happens for my digital art. on display here is Procreate, the best drawing app for iPadOS, bar none. it is on here and Procreate Dreams where all my website's assets (barring the cursor) were drawn, from the cute characters down to the buttons. the crux of my animation work is actually done on another app, Looom by iorama.studio. but taking a photo of that app would reveal in-progress work, and i can't have that! ;)
Name or nickname
my alias, RNOTTÉ, has an interesting history. it is a combination of the first letter in my real name (it's Ricco, in case you were curious), plus the italian word for night, notte. why did i add an accented É, you ask? because i've had more people mispronouncing the alias than i can count; i've heard "ar-NOT", "ar-NOT-ee", "ar-NOHT"... it's pronounced "ar-NOH-tay". with an accented É, i make that more clear. if you've been pronouncing it correctly all this time, thank you! if you haven't then now you know.
Where in the world I blog from
i am from Illinois, the land of cornfields and very out-there artists. seriously, have you been here and seen the art scene? it's incredible. i'd say some of the best visual artists and experimental musicians in america are from right here, in the Land of Lincoln.
What my blog is mostly about
i write about what it's like to live as an artist in this nonsensical tech-dominated world we live in. in my opinion, the tech and art sectors are like 2 different countries; nigh incompatible with each other sometimes. and i have a lot of opinions on the differences between them. i've written about mindless consumption of content, whether old stuff is better than new, how much i can't relate to modern tech culture, website design as an art form, showing other artists your support, and looking back on old work. among many other things. the life of an artist is a strange one, and i'm here to bring that strangeness to light. lately, i'm trying to talk more about the art, and less about the tech.
oh, and as of late october, i add little doodles at the end of my journal entries, to give them a little more character. let's close out with this one's!
