BLENDER SESSIONS
This is an archive of a series of experimental sessions (2024-2025) for creating in the 3D program, Blender, as play research. It was guided by the below ethos:
learning technology backward and wayward; loose-sketch love notes from a trickster; negotiating a digital landscape as a toddler negotiates a sandbox—as terrain for possibility.
failing body, way of light.
failing body, way of light.
session 10 / mar. 2025
Notes:
organic matter. blood clot. tear drop over skin ocean. pores and folds. flesh and vein. infinite world of cellular body. imagined bodies, in the light of a petri dish. an expert tongues, complex symptoms. diagnosing failure. white coats, white rooms. an expert tongues, i dont know. a dying body, an evasive body.
if resilience is marked by adaptability, then what is more resilient than the change of body—rogue proliferation, rapid life-bearing death? perhaps answerability is its own form of dying. perhaps dying is more mysticism than clinical medicine. perhaps the treatment is an IV infusion of belief. perhaps the treatment is light shedding light. perhaps movement (metabolism, digestibility, energy turnover) is more life-giving than a cure.
eye of seer.
eye of seer.
session 09 / feb. 2025
Notes:
i opened Blender midway through the first episode of a TV show recommended to me, inspired very specifically by the glassy eyes of the characters.
took a baby step into shader nodes, a world that’s very intimidating. more haze. soft glow. bloom effect. sky world. i was amazed to arrive at something even remotely resembling an eye, and was even more drawn to abstraction — this looks to me like sun + moon.
orchid glistens.
orchid glistens.
session 08 / feb. 2025
Notes:
continuing to seek iridescent, soft qualities in Blender. early parts of this session were giving me “space-future,” which felt a bit too sleek and predictable. but i enjoyed moments of mirror-play (e.g. sun-side vs. moon-side of a sphere).
the thin-wireframe object here is like shedded snakeskin—or below, a tangled thicket of dry grass. pencil-sketch lines. the main shape looks like an orchid. sparkly-pink illustration, dragon fruit colored, metallic sheen (moonlight sheen? nightclub sheen?). also points me to georgia o’keeffe.
Additional session sketches:
mind birthmark.
mind birthmark.
session 07 / jan. 2025
Notes:
i find myself honing in on these sessions, wanting a more focused direction from them. i loved, loved the 3d shapes getting reduced to complete flatness. they look like manga book illustrations, gestural strokes, ink drawings.
what is it—water, leather, slick oil? terrain, musculature, preying creature? the stark black and white evokes something visceral for me, which reflects recent music influences.
p.s. blender crashed while working on this, and i lost most of it. it now exists only as these images (‘:
Additional session sketches below:
enrapturing portal.
enrapturing portal.
session 06 / jan. 2025
Notes:
i wanted to challenge myself with trying to model an object and chose the railing next to me in a coffee shop. a duplicate with effects added ended up looking like an elongated, distorted shadow at sunset.
the object in front of it looks like some kind of sculptural mirror-like plane, caving around the railing like fabric or water, pulling in. it feels like a liquid portal.
(MVPs: screw + ocean modifiers)
Additional session sketches below:
80's future spacecraft.
80's future spacecraft.
session 05 / dec. 2024
Notes:
i won’t lie. i found this ugly—crude textures, simple colors, obtuse shapes, nothing matching. it made me think of a digital 3D spacecraft in some live action 80’s sci-fi, or something that would live on the early internet. i tried to make it uglier, and i couldn’t. i learned it can be challenging to make something ugly (perhaps more challenging than trying to make something pretty).
this was one of those sessions where bizarre effects happened that i didn’t understand at all. a needed palette cleanser after the “polish” of recent experiments.
(MVPs: text + text effects)
Additional session sketches below:
in the spider's web.
in the spider's web.
session 04 / dec. 2024
Notes:
this session ended up taking a photorealistic direction somewhat coincidentally—but it was really refreshing to work with “real space” after a lot of abstract visual experiments.
the ultra-thin wireframe feels like iridescent spiderweb, and the sculpted object like a winged insect. in an earlier version (below), the coil’s material looked like paper, kite, synthetic cocoon. i added simple beams to give the structure gravity and couldn’t unsee A Bug’s Life movie.
(MVP tools: screw modifier, “Sun” light)
Additional session sketches below:
crystalline ocean netting.
crystalline ocean netting.
session 03 / dec. 2024
Notes:
color-attentive session. i just wanted something nice—pretty surface, pretty colors. this birds-eye angle feels like braided sweater, cotton candy glitch, teardrops with emotional charge, swelling song through stained-glass window, pixels at the speed of light. can’t tell if this has physical volume or is purely digital.
the surface / material was created first using a cube (pictured below), which reminded me of Chinese jelly candy from my childhood.
(MVP tools: ocean + wireframe modifiers)
Additional session sketches below:
toward hand of sky.
toward hand of sky.
session 02 / nov. 2024
Notes:
the focus this 3D session was sculpting organic shapes. earlier in the day i had taken a walk at golden hour, feeling connected to hills and rock formations. heading home, i turned back to see a sky holding pink fire, cloud plumes, and setting sun.
my inspiration was in photos of aquariums and waterlife—but what read in blender as “ocean scene” actually ended up feeling the least alive and compelling. so i tried other elements, colors, environments, to seek a more nuanced felt quality.
(MVP tools: the Spin tool, various sculpting tools)
Additional session sketches below:
infinity color room.
infinity color room.
session 01 / nov. 2024
Notes:
a large part of my process in Blender has been messing around with buttons, dials, and tools until something “hits” different. with this background, the flatness and uniform color pattern felt like a reluctant occupant of 3D space—in strangely satisfying ways.
also reminded me of the virtual city, Oz, from the anime movie Summer Wars
(MVP tools: voronoi texture)
Additional session sketches below:
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