Concept Art. Monster. December 22, 2025.

I am in despair. My eyes are red and sleepless it’s the third or fourth night without rest. Time has fractured, days have merged into one endless, stretching now.
My wife left me with the children. And in this world, I am alone.
I live in a rented apartment, in a foreign country. I have only a week and a half left here and then emptiness. There’s no money. No work. I send my resumes again and again, clinging to hope, but the response is either cold rejection or deafening silence.
Everything I can do and truly love is to draw. Since childhood. My godmother taught me, and since then, it has become a part of me. When I draw, the world quiets, the noise fades, and I retreat to where I feel at peace my inner world of imagination.
In the 90s, when computer games first entered my life, it was as if a portal to other worlds opened inside me. I began to invent and draw my own universes, monsters, and characters, as if trying to bring out what lived within me. I had entire sketchbooks, filled and scribbled from cover to cover. One of them I fearlessly and boldly called “The Freaks Album”. In it, comics, strange creatures, grotesque forms were born, and each page was a story of its own.
At the same time, comics began to appear around us. I didn’t enjoy ordinary books back then, but comics yes. I devoured them, studying the drawings, the movements, the emotions. I especially loved the stories of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for me, it was a whole world full of energy, character, and freedom.
Soon, one day was forever etched into my memory the day I first saw Mortal Kombat 2 in a computer arcade. The air buzzed with the sounds of the machines, screens flickered with cold light, and around me sat boys like me, holding their breath. In that moment, something almost magical happened as if the world paused for a second.
It was pure awe, a sudden lightning strike. I played and without looking back, ran outside, afraid to lose what I had just seen. I ran home because I knew I had to draw immediately. These characters had already settled inside me; they would not leave my head, demanding to be transferred to paper as if even then, long before everything, they had chosen me as their guide.
I drew everything I absorbed with my eyes from fantasy films, games, and comics. From this, my own worlds were born. Line by line, I created beings and universes I could only dream of back then. I did not know where this path would lead, nor could I imagine that one day my childhood fantasies would become my profession.
Time passed, and I finally landed my dream job the one I had dreamed of my whole life. It was 2010, and those years became some of the brightest of my life. I worked in my beloved craft, drawing, creating worlds and characters, and each day was filled with the light of creativity. Later, I mostly freelanced, creating fantastical, fantasy, and historical images, breathing life into the characters I imagined.
In 2021, I joined a game company. There, I drew and created historical heroes Vikings, knights and every stroke, every detail brought me true joy. It was my favorite work, my element, a place where my dreams came alive.
In 2022, everything changed. An offer came to relocate to another country. My family and I made the difficult decision to leave, because we could not be accomplices in what the regime was doing. The choice felt like a rupture with the past, with the familiar world, with a part of myself, but it was the only right decision.
Then came 2024 a black stripe that crossed out everything that came before. I was fired. And since then, no matter how hard I try, work has not appeared.
Now I lie on the couch and cry. The tears come not from one feeling, but from their overflow despair, loneliness, exhaustion from living without support. Inside me, that little child who always lacked warmth, understanding, and quiet care is awake again. I have always felt alone, misunderstood, like a stranger in any space.
I hesitated for a long time should I write these lines? Will anyone understand? Judge me? Take me seriously? Now it no longer matters. Think what you want. Call me weak if that makes it easier.
Every day I sit down to draw, as if for a lifesaving ritual, to remind myself that I can still create. But doubt rises again and again, like a cold shadow wrapping around my shoulders. One part of me wants to show the world my work, while another whispers, quietly and venomously: “Who needs you and your scribbles, if they won’t even hire you?”
I do not seek excuses. I just wanted to be heard. This is the cry of a soul left alone at a crossroads, where every path hides the unknown, and every step feels impossible, as if time has frozen and only the silence around whispers answers that do not exist.

Sincerely,
Eduard / EdiktArt