I became a verified artist on NFTShowroom! My first Mints.

I have been collecting NFT's for some years now and I know that many people, even my close friends, have little interest in them as a Niche, or even go on the offensive by telling me to sell sell sell, but then on the opposite side of them, I find a colorful, wacky, and strange still-emerging world of people who have a passion and need for NFT's as a medium. If you stray even further from the Mainstream you find yet even more communities and platforms powered by a myriad of blockchains. I think it is too much for anyone. I am cursed by my curiosity. I am still to this day Chain-agnostic; because who could believe that they know everything well enough to be maximalist. We are only 14 years into blockchain; could you have accurately guessed how far the internet would go after only 14 years? How long was the internet public before you saw or used it? I don't mean to be pro or anti in my rambles, NFT's just exist, and so I do collect and create some. In my efforts to stay current with developments in the wider crypto space, I was brought back to Hive as a platform. My dear friend Hive account@sciencevienna joined NFTShowroom a long time ago and I had neglected to go through the steps to purchase one of his creations. For the holidays I decided that it was time to invest some good energy in getting that much-needed art fix.

I managed to set up a hive keyring and I acquired one of his pieces. YES!!!
here it is:
https://nftshowroom.com/gallery/sciencevienna_public-pleasures-vienna_cryptoartists-in-residence?collection=true

But then I needed to explore setting up my profile. This is where I got sucked into creating NFT's on Hive.

If I wanted to become a verified artist (You must be verified to create on NFTShowroom) I would need to submit to verification. I did the thing and luckily enough I was verified. What power!!! I promise not to wield this NFT creation power with wanton abandon!!! Nay shall I feign pity on the .... omg.... i could ramble all day sometimes.

Anyways, I wanted my first mint to reflect on how, compared to other platforms, I sailed through the signup at NFTShowroom. I took the NFTShowroom logo from the internet and spent time retracing it with vectors and used those as a mask over an image from Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/sunset-sea-horizon-sun-sky-ocean-298850/) and then I took 2 images from Pixabay (link to those images here: https://pixabay.com/vectors/boat-marine-ocean-sailboat-sea-1297042/ and https://pixabay.com/vectors/birds-silhouette-animals-flying-5081316/ )I tinted and layered them over the masked image to create my first NFT on Hive.
it looks like this:

here is the link to it on NFTShowroom: https://nftshowroom.com/gallery/empath_empath-originals_sailing-on-the-nftshowroom?collection=true
Hope you enjoy it! I find it calming to think of just sailing down a lazy river with the birds flying happily.
I purposefully used existing free licensed art to show that I am not super picky as an artist. I wanted a vibe and I found it for myself. Don't take things to seriously and try to force it, have some fun out there! Hopefully, the composition of these into something new made it a worthwhile activity. It was for me.

For my next mint I wanted to think of some kind of character and when I think of Hive, of course, bees come to mind.
But I didn't want it to just be any bee. I want it to be cute, I want it to be fun, I want it to be something that I can develop a concept or story for. I tried a yellow bee and, while drawing, I had an epiphany to put a break in the stripes to feel more like the hive logo, and in that thought I also had the idea to make the bee red instead of yellow to feel even more "on-brand" and after bothering my friends with images for a while. I decided to use PhotoMosh to animate the background and rendered an animated gif to end up with this:

here is the link to it on NFTShowroom: https://nftshowroom.com/gallery/empath_empath-originals_be-excited-about-hive?collection=true
I listed one of the 3 editions for sale for 40 Hive.Swap just for fun.
Please don't ever feel obligated to purchase NFTs. I live by purchasing what I like.
I drew this one completely myself while dreaming up a PFP collection; he doesn't have wings because I just didn't like my wings.

Thank you for taking a look. Hopefully, this will give me the motivation to come around more often and create. I procrastinate. But I am always hoping for success for my people grinding away on Hive and I have much respect for people who can be so organized to write quality content! It's hard.