Why I made Serenity Sketch

In short, Serenity Sketch exists because I needed it first: a way to slow down, make something with my hands, and let it go.

Our Lead Designer, Meggy Pepelanova, had been nudging me for a while to write the long version. So here it is.

The turning point

You reach a certain age when you start thinking seriously about what impact you’re having on our world. If you’re bringing something beautiful into it.

For me that was 2022, when I was in an intense, performance-focused Wall Street career. I was grateful for what it gave me, but it paid no heed to my creativity. I could feel how lopsided I’d become after years of pouring myself into whatever got rewarded around me. (I wrote more about that in In Praise of Pause.)

I attended my first ever meditation retreat, hoping it would help me hit the reset button. But meditation surprised me. I half expected it to leave me aloof and empty-headed, yet instead the space it carved out actually stirred new creativity. I know you’re not supposed to be thinking about stuff while you meditate, but I must admit more than a few sessions where I was struck with artistic inspiration while repeating my mantra.

I started writing and painting again. And around the same time I discovered a genre of artistic video games: weird, spiritually profound, emotionally mature. Outer Wilds was the big one for me.

Back home, I tried a few meditation apps to keep my Practice going. They felt disembodied and soulless next to the ritual of the retreat, which had a whole liturgy and cadence to it.

Soon I longed to marry my experience of quiet introspection - and the alive-ness it was awakening in me - with my love for video games. While so many folks use digital games as a numbing distraction, I wanted to instead present play as introspective self-care. And to present “boring mindfulness” as something embodied. Serenity Sketch was born!

But why water painting?

The whole app is built on one simple act: painting with water on stone, and watching it evaporate.

Which turned out to be the perfect embodiment of the transformation that was happening inside me, as I embraced more quiet, less striving, and kept unearthing my own creative instinct again.

For one, impermanence invites play! When nothing you make is going to last, there’s not much point in being careful. You try the squiggle, the odd shape, the thing you’d never commit to paper.

It also invites perspective-shifts. Water doesn’t dry evenly, so half a stroke disappears while the other half lingers, and suddenly you’re looking at a shape you never painted. A branch turns into a river. So you keep going, following what emerges rather than what you planned. It’s so fun!

Last, impermanence leaves no time for judging what you make. Whether it looks “good” or “ugly”, it’s gone in the next breath, so who cares? My best strokes never come from the “me” who plans and judges, and that “me” relaxes a lot once it knows nothing is being kept.

A quick aside: I originally assumed water painting came from Zen Buddhism. But while the principle of ephemerality and non-grasping is certainly there, the practice itself is actually quite modern. It’s called dishu, aka Chinese water calligraphy, and it took off in Beijing’s public parks from the 1980s onward. Mostly retirees with homemade sponge brushes, writing poems onto the pavement that evaporate within minutes. Here’s a great video on it, from a Dutch researcher who’s made some really nice studies on dishu.¹

What the app believes

Creativity is our birthright as humans. And you don’t need the label of “artist” to tap into that. Just some self-trust and curiosity. (Liberate to Create goes deeper on this one.)

Similarly, you don’t need to be a spiritual guru to tap into the profound. What you do need is to slow down, pay attention, and learn to listen to yourself. That’s why each Practice ends with a few questions instead of a score.

Self-care and mindfulness don’t need to be boring and heady. A better on-ramp is something physical and embodied. I’d love if Serenity Sketch happened on a real physical stone! But an iPad or touch device is an okay compromise.

Mistakes are welcome here too. In the Practice of Imperfection you paint over a messy, half-remembered version of an example Glyph (eg a mandala), and you’re never asked to fix it.

If you’ve ever finished a Practice in Serenity Sketch, and sat with the ending a little longer than you expected to, that’s the game working as intended.

Where Serenity Sketch is going next

What’s out now is the Path of Initiation, the first Path of a much larger Journey of Letting Go I want to build.

We chose to start with ‘taster’ Practices of 5 themes: Child’s Play, Lineage, Imperfection, Resonance, and Cycles. Each one is a doorway to a future Path, and I’d be thrilled to build all of them…and more!

I’m only one person (plus a few extremely talented freelancers, when I have the cash to pay them!), and this kind of app deserves to be made slowly and with care. So I can’t promise dates. Much depends upon…

The honest constraint

…funding! We hope to realize the bigger Serenity Sketch vision, but frankly it depends on the reception and financial viability of the project. If you buy the full Path of Initiation, you’re helping fund the next Path. So thank you.

And if that doesn’t work out, I’ll learn to Let Go of that too :)

Thank you

Whether you play one Practice or all of them, or if you’re just reading the blog, thank you for spending some of your quiet time here. I do welcome you to try one of the Intro Practices…I think you’ll enjoy it.

If you want to follow along as the journey grows, subscribe to our newsletter, or find Serenity Sketch on your social platform of choice.

Keep painting, it all fades anyway.

Josh