Published February 24, 2026 · 14 min read
People do not expect a painter to also be a builder. The image of an artist is someone lost in creative reverie, detached from the practical mechanics of business and technology. That image is wrong. The same impulse that drives someone to create something beautiful on canvas can drive them to create something useful on the internet. The medium changes. The creative energy does not.
This is the story of how SpunkArt — a Chicago-area abstract artist with over 300 original paintings — built a parallel empire of 120+ websites, 300+ free tools, 75 premium tools, 22 ebooks, a crypto gaming platform, and a network of 16 prediction market sites. All while never stopping painting.
The question comes up constantly: why would a painter build websites? The assumption is that art and technology are separate disciplines practiced by separate kinds of people. But they are not. They are both forms of making. A canvas is a blank surface you fill with marks. An HTML file is a blank document you fill with structure. Both require vision, taste, and the willingness to iterate until the thing works.
The first website was born from necessity. SpunkArt needed a home online — a place to show work, connect with collectors, and tell the story. That first site could have been a Squarespace template. Instead, it was built from scratch, by hand, because that is how a maker works. You do not outsource the thing that matters. You learn how to build it yourself.
One site became five. Five became twenty. The process of building was so creatively satisfying — so similar in its rhythm to painting — that it became its own practice. Each site was a new canvas: a new problem to solve, a new design to execute, a new idea to bring into existence. The painting practice did not slow down. It was joined by a parallel practice that operated on the same creative principles.
"Building a website feels the same as starting a painting. You have nothing, then you have something, and the process of getting from nothing to something is the most addictive feeling in the world."
Spunk.codes is the flagship of the digital empire. It is a comprehensive suite of browser-based tools for developers, designers, creators, entrepreneurs, and anyone who needs to get things done online without downloading software or creating accounts.
The free tool library covers every category a modern builder needs:
Every tool works instantly in the browser. No downloads, no signups, no data collection. The philosophy mirrors the art practice: create something excellent and put it directly in people’s hands without barriers.
Alongside the free tools, spunk.codes offers 75 premium tools with advanced functionality and 22 ebooks covering subjects from AI prompt engineering to SEO mastery to vibe coding. The premium tier exists not as a paywall but as a depth layer — free tools handle 90% of use cases, and premium tools serve the remaining 10% for users who need advanced capabilities.
Spunk.bet is a free crypto casino built on the same principles as the art: accessible, generous, and built from scratch.
A free crypto gaming platform where players earn SPUNK runes, compete in tournaments, and win original ordinal inscriptions as prizes. Ten games, zero fees, instant play. Daily faucet gives every player free SPUNK to start with.
The platform features 10 games, a daily faucet that distributes free SPUNK runes to every player, tournament competitions with real ordinal prizes, and a referral system that rewards community growth. The entire platform runs on Bitcoin and operates without house fees — the opposite of traditional casinos that extract value from every transaction.
Building spunk.bet required learning blockchain development, smart contract architecture, real-time game mechanics, and cryptographic fairness proofs. None of these were skills from art school (which, as a self-taught painter, was skipped entirely). They were learned the same way painting was learned: by doing the work until the skill caught up with the vision.
The predict network is a collection of 16 prediction market websites spanning different domains and topics:
Each site in the network was built and deployed using automated generation tools, allowing rapid iteration across 16 domains. The generator system can spin up a new prediction market site with full functionality in minutes — a testament to the automation-first approach that characterizes the entire empire.
The predict network demonstrates a core principle: when you build the infrastructure to create one thing well, you can create many things quickly. The generator that powers all 16 prediction sites is the same kind of systematic thinking that allows a painter to maintain consistent quality across 300+ paintings. Systems, not heroics.
Every number in that grid represents something that exists in the world and serves real people. The tools help developers and designers work faster. The ebooks teach practical skills. The prediction markets engage communities around forecasting and analysis. The casino provides free entertainment with real prizes. The paintings hang on walls and transform spaces. All of it was built by one person with a relentless drive to create.
The honest answer is: the same way the paintings were built. One at a time, with full focus, shipping constantly.
The websites are predominantly static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript hosted on GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Workers. The choice of static sites is deliberate — they are fast, free to host, nearly impossible to break, and require no server maintenance. For a solo builder managing 120+ sites, operational simplicity is survival.
The process of building 120+ sites was accelerated by automation. Generator scripts, template systems, and deployment pipelines reduced the marginal cost of launching a new site to near zero. The first site took days. The 120th took minutes. That is the power of systematic thinking applied to creative output.
There is no secret technique. There is no shortcut. There is work — consistent, daily, relentless work. The painting practice teaches discipline: show up, put paint on canvas, do not stop until the work is done. That discipline transfers directly to building digital products. Show up, write code, do not stop until the site is live.
The Midwestern work ethic that shaped the painting practice shaped the building practice too. Make it, ship it, move on to the next thing. Do not wait for permission. Do not wait for perfect conditions. Do not wait for someone to tell you it is ready. Ship it and improve it in public.
The question "how can a painter also build websites?" assumes these are fundamentally different activities. They are not. The overlap is profound:
The artist’s eye for aesthetics directly influences every website in the empire. The color schemes are intentional. The typography is considered. The layouts breathe. These are not the usual developer sites built for function and ignoring form. They are designed objects that reflect a painter’s sensibility.
The first version of anything will be imperfect. Ship it anyway. A live imperfect site serving real users is infinitely more valuable than a perfect site that exists only in your plans. This is the same lesson painting teaches: the first layer is not the final layer, but you cannot add the final layer until the first one exists.
The 300+ free tools on spunk.codes generate more traffic, trust, and long-term value than any paid product could. Generosity at scale builds audiences that paid marketing cannot reach. The same applies to art: giving paintings to friends and family built a collector network that no advertising budget could have created.
If you are going to build 120 sites, you cannot build each one from scratch. Templates, generators, and deployment scripts turn hours of work into minutes. The creative energy goes into design and content, not into repetitive setup tasks.
Every site in the empire is self-hosted, self-managed, and self-owned. No platform dependency, no third-party gatekeepers, no venture capital strings attached. If GitHub Pages disappeared tomorrow, the sites would move to Cloudflare. If Cloudflare disappeared, they would move elsewhere. Independence means resilience.
The entire empire — 120+ sites, 300+ tools, 22 ebooks, a crypto platform, a prediction network, and 300+ paintings — was built by one person. The lesson is not that everyone should do this. The lesson is that the limits of what one focused, disciplined person can create are much higher than most people believe.
The empire continues to expand. New tools are added to spunk.codes regularly. New games and features are added to spunk.bet. New paintings are created in the studio constantly. The pattern has not changed since the beginning: make things, make them well, put them in the world.
The roadmap is not a corporate document. It is the same creative impulse that started the first painting and the first website: what can I build next that does not exist yet? What problem can I solve? What can I create that makes someone’s day better?
Whether the next creation is a 36x48 abstract painting or a new developer tool or a prediction market for an unexplored domain, the energy behind it is identical. The medium changes. The drive to create does not.
See the art that started it all, try the tools, play the games. Everything was built with the same creative energy and Midwestern work ethic.
View the Gallery Explore spunk.codesFollow @SpunkArt13 on X for new paintings, tools, and updates across the empire.