But I still love Chevy's

Just when I was starting to feel OK about my height, I got mortified at our family's favorite restaurant.



I mean, I'm only 23 and that guy was 5 years younger than me. But apparently no matter what I wear or do I will always be about 6 years old. At least to Chevy's.



The latest landscape. I'm starting to get these cloud thingies.

birds

I have no idea if I'm improving. I'm getting faster, at least.

landscape8

I went through some pretty ugly landscapes before I landed this one. Kind of funny how you think your getting better then you get a lot worse before you get better again.

Did that make sense?

todays landscape...

Yesterdays went so bad I didn't post it. but here's todays. I'm working on clouds. Again, I've no idea who took this photo but it helped give me great practice so I don't take credit for the composition at all.


But I did paint a portrait. And I hated it. So I'm not posting it. I'm not good at painting realistic things with Painter, and parts of me are like "why are you learning how to paint digitally when you already know how to do it by hand again?"

Man, the only problem with getting in a rut and stopping what your doing to 'discover what you like' is that you end up worlds behind where you should be. Maybe its a good thing I can't get a job and I have so much time to do all these studies?

Whats really funny is that I also have all the time in the world and my social life just dropped a lot. This would be a huge problem if I still wanted to date. But I'm quite lucky, yousee, because I'm so sick of relationships that I don't mind spending a lot of my time with my tablet and the end of the garden's tomato crop. Otherwise this might be a huge depressing problem.

PS, saw Nine and I didn't like it. Its like watching a video game: Not rendered to movie quality, the storyline was quick and choppy, no depth to the characters, but at least the character design was spot on.

clouds bleagh

Clouds are so fussy. I keep thinking that in time they'll get easier...but its been years and they're still tough.

my latest mailer.

landscape 3

again, I can't take credit for the composition. I was thinking about it...and legally can I even put my signerature on it? So I didn't. This is just for practicing.

more

so here's today's landscape


And I decided to start doing heads again, mostly because I found this one with crazy lighting and I wanted to try it out. I'll probs never do that to myself again.




Also, a business identity for a client.

art!

I know I haven't been updating any art at all lately--in fact it looks like I haven't been doing anything. Thats because...I haven't!

The great thing about graduating during a recession and then being unemployed without any ability to get any work anywhere (even in retail and food handling), is that it gives you a lot of time to figure out what you want to do versus what you're doing. This is because there could be nothing else in your life to possibly distract you.

So anyways, I looked at all of the career options available, and I knew that some things were going to happen because I can't stop doing them (like writing my little stories) but other things would involve some more effort and would require a lot of time (like a career in a company).

So I made a pro's and con's list for every career I've been interested in, and I think I should say for anyone who's going through the same exact thing, is that when I looked at it from far away I realized that every creative career, let it be in Film, Video Games, Books, Graphic Design, Architecture--they all had the same problems with the same types of people except we give them different names. Projects will always take 2-12 years to finish. Accountants will always get in the way whether they work for a book marketing company or the City Commitee. Creative things will always be watered down to Hollywood soup cuz it sells.

So I may as well fess up to reality and do what I'm good at, because being unemployed, while it is nice for self reflection, is quite depressing.

So I'm going into a type of artistic deep-cleaning. An art DeTox. I need to get back in business and draw every day. Get it so I can draw on a professional level. So ya, I'll update on this blog again.

PS Don't take a class on CAD. Its illustrator but stupidly ugly. Not even they-didn't-know-any-better ugly. Its just ugly. So ugly. Like they tried really hard to make the ugliest program make some of the most beautiful things. I hate CAD. But I'm learning it because 1.) apparently I might need it one day if I'm reaaaaally in a bind and 2.) apparently non-art people respect a CAD professional when they want to hire you as a designer. Sure. and 3.) this class is mindlessly easy and I like to draw everyone else in the class in my sketchbook.

Ps, want to see my sketchbook?



this whole page sucked and then I got a hand, and I was so happy that I felt like only posting the hand



more hands.



no one can read my handwriting. The great thing is it doesn't matter what personal things I write in my sketchbook. No one will ever know. If you can read this you get a prize.






boy on the left posed like that for me. He's my old Yoga buddy.



I always draw fat cats and girls that are super pissed about something.

So I've been looking at the Avalanche Artist's blog, and I found a fun excercise where you take a drawing you found on the internet and then take only an hour to take it from start to finish. I think I'm going to start doing one every day. Here's today. I ran out of time to finish the trees and its overall bleah but one day...one day I can do these conceptual landscape thingies. Make em glow. One day.