Thursday, June 26, 2008
Turning point
I am going to put together a graphic novel. It will be created digitally, designed in Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter, and published through Acrobat and/or the web. It will be tied into the story behind the "This is her Zen" drawing I have been working on for what seems like forever now. I've made some progress, but nothing worth posting images...mostly blocking in color, working some shading and contour on the girl, but nothing substantive. I've had no frigging time!! I'm hoping to rectify that immediately, but in the meantime, there hasn't been much to talk about.
Which brings me to another item that has been on my mind for the past month or so, this blog and the purpose for its existence. Over the past year and an half or so, I've posted just about everything that came out of my head. Most of it has been disposable, a few items may have had some redemptive value, and I may have managed to sprinkle a few insightful tidbits here and there, but for the most part it has been little more than a brain dump. I have said just about everything I have to say that might be of any value. At this point, anyone on the net can browse through my thoughts and draw conclusions on who I am, for better or worse. There are more than 300 posts here, a few dozen more on Myspace, and even a few on Tampaforums.com, of all places, going back to 2006. After browsing through random selections of all that material, I am just not sure how much real value there is to be found in any of it.
So maybe it is time to stop sharing what I think with the admittedly tiny audience I have here. Chances are high that my life will not change the state of human existence. The odds are overwhelmingly in human nature's favor, and writing about that is not helping anyone. The conformists are still winning and honestly, I am tired of thinking about the whole damn thing. As bored as I am with the idea of "average", and as frustrated as I am with modern materialism, I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating and struggling with the ramifications of materialistic ideology. All that is being accomplished by this effort is a rise in my blood pressure. Ultimately, the only outcome has been a dog chasing its proverbial tail. In that sense, I have been chasing my tail for well past a decade now and you know what, I still haven't caught it.
There comes a time when you have to accept the world around you for what it is and move on, or you run the risk of being perpetually lost in frustration. I can attest to this firsthand, as I have been lost in frustration for what seems like a lifetime now. I am finding that you do not have to abandon your ideals or aspirations, but you do have to accept that others (probably most others), do not share those ideals or aspirations, or at least do not feel adequately motivated to work toward them in hopes of making them a reality. So you do have to abandon a certain amount of hope and relinquish a level of perceived possibility, at least external to yourself. I find myself adopting a "we could live in an utopia, if only..." frame of mind, tempered by the understanding that my ideas of utopia are unachievable in a real world inhabited by real people. I think I might finally be OK with that. If it means interacting with people on a much more superficial level, then so be it.
Eventually, you have to find a way past frustrations with irrevocable aspects of human nature and move on. I am not sure that I have managed to completely divorce myself from those frustrations, but I have come a step closer to the disconnect necessary to be free. That's real progress for me, but until I actually get somewhere, I'm not sure there is much I have to say that is worth writing about, so for the foreseeable future, it will be updates on this art project, maybe a few unrelated drawings (I have another illustration project sitting on my mind right now), and possibly the occasional tangential anecdote.
Labels: life or the lack thereof
Sunday, June 08, 2008
This is her zen
Haven't made much progress, too much going on lately. Moved things around again, and I'm starting to work in some color using Photoshop. Still have a long way to go and no set deadline that I need to get there. This is all practice, so there's no telling what it might end up looking like.
The best part about digital art as a medium is that it is fluid and ever changeable. If you do not like an element's position or size, you can easily change it without having to over paint or cut and paste. So long as you are working in layers, it is simply a matter of changing the layer order, or dragging a layer's contents around the virtual canvas. No muss, no fuss, no problem. The downside is that the whole process is so sterile and devoid of any tactile, but that is the price you pay for ease of use. Anyway, I added a couple more elements, moved the others around, and I think I am getting closer to happy. Once I have everything roughed in, I am going to start experimenting with the look and feel before committing to a color palette.
Made a little bit of progress. Added a lion and a...unicorn. Let me just say that these are elements in a story I was once told. I probably won't share the story, but I will say that is has nothing to do with Narnia, I swear. The original is about 4 times this size, so some elements appear to be much rougher in this compressed version than the original, so try not to be too judgmental. Keep in mind that this is the first time I have ever drawn a unicorn and probably the third or fourth time I have ever attempted a lion. Luckily, all things are just shapes and shadows, so I feel like I am at least on the right track with both creatures. More components to come as time allows...
I think I am going to make an attempt as something I have seen real artists do from time to time. I am going to try and chronicle my progress on a digital drawing/painting I started to today. All I have now is a single image with massive amounts of white space. As I fill in that white space and start evolving the picture, I will try to take snapshots and post them here. Hopefully, this will be the start of something good. If nothing else, I am hoping it will motivate me to finish some images for once! Without further adieu, here is my first sketch...enjoy...or else!!
Labels: art?
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Picture time
In my youth, I saw people as strange and intimidating animals. Most humans I interacted with behaved in ways that I did not understand or relate with, so life progressively became more and more like watching a movie or a nature study. My interactions with others metamorphosed into entirely external acts, so that no one was permitted access to my internal world, and I did not seek out a passageway into theirs. I became more disconnected from the shared reality most of my peers were embracing. Things went so far that I eventually found myself completely disassociated from just about everyone around me. The experience evolved into something akin to the oft lamented sense that I was an invisible being moving amongst organic obstacles, rather than just another person moving amidst coconspirators in the human experience.
In high school, I faded into the background almost completely, and became part of the legion of anonymous faces which served as extras in the high drama played out by more popular and more flamboyant teenagers. Such anonymity is one of life's oldest cliches, to the point that feeling alienated has taken on a degree of normalcy. Nonetheless, it was a potent experience for me that defined a large portion of my personality to the present day. I came to understand the power of the human drive for conformity and also came to understand the tragedy of conforming. I did this from a distance, as I had very little ability to interact with my peers with any sort of effectiveness. My assumption was that they knew something I didn't, or couldn't, because their lives seemed utterly foreign to me.
So the choice was conform and embrace the world of who-hooked-up-with-whom-in-a-drunken-stupor-last-weekend-and-who-hates-who-this-week or step outside of all that and take your chances. I was too socially retarded to get laid, so there really wasn't a choice. Of course, no one wanted to be outside, as being outside opened you up to becoming a target, but I managed to meander through high school anonymously and with little drama. I was blessed with above average intelligence, but not to the extent that my IQ scores would qualify me as a genius, so I was just smart enough to realize the absurdity of what was going on around me, but not quite clever enough to exploit or transcend it. My natural reaction was to reject what I saw as base behaviors, but never really found a niche, so I began to conjure up a new reality for myself. Instead of subscribing to the idea that intelligence, introspection, values, dignity, and morality were the things of losers and fools, I chose to embrace these concepts and pursue them in earnest.
Today, I have come to appreciate some of my decisions at that time. It was right to explore the intangibles of my existence in an effort to expand my comprehension of transcendence. I was right to embrace ideals, rather than succumb to the delusions of material existence, but with every positive there is a negative, for every dividend a cost. Things began to feel hopeless. Most of my peers were going one way, and I felt compelled to go the other. Who chose the correct track is debatable. I can say with absolute certainty that my 20s would have been more fun had I embraced the get-drunk-get-laid-have-fun philosophy. That's one thing the masses might have correct, but then I would have had to deal with the compromises and stresses of relationships, so I might look and sound more like my 30-something peers than I would like.
In the end, I'm just not sure I have anything original or useful to say anymore. The fact is, people are generally boring and predictable. As a person, I am not exempt from that. I am so predictable that anyone who has known me for any length of time probably knows what I am going to say before I have finished formulating the thought, which is to say, I am boring and I am bored with myself. At 31 years of age, I find myself in a job I cannot stand, in a pattern of living that is generally uninspiring, and convinced that the only reasonable thing to do is change. Life is very grey and there are very few bright points to offset the haze. I'm tired of words, and more interested in images, so I think I will stop writing for a while and start making pictures.
Labels: life or the lack thereof
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
The South shall rise again!
A group of Floridians calling themselves The Sons of Confederate Veterans have been in the news lately for raising a gigantic Confederate flag on a small piece of property at the intersection of US 92 and I-75 Tuesday (June 3rd). Apparently, this is another group of people proudly claiming to be the descendants of Confederate veterans. As everyone should know, the Confederacy seceded from the United States in 1861, eventually leading to the slaughter that was the American Civil War. Confederate sympathizers and apologists like to associate the war with anything but slavery, but the fact is, the Southern economy was built on slavery and the decision to secede was at least in part inspired by the South's demands that slavery remain a legal means of conducting the Southern states' agricultural business. So the Confederate armies were, on some level, fighting for the continuance of slavery as a business practice.
In my mind, fighting for the right to own slaves is akin to fighting for the spread of cancer or claiming pride in being the descendant of Joseph Goebbels. The Confederacy was about maintaining an economy and a way of life centered around the treatment of human beings as property. Being proud of that is akin to being proud of a father who also happens to be a pedophile, or a grandfather who was a convicted rapist. Can you imagine standing up and shouting, "My great grandfather fought to protect an institution which was itself a crime against humanity and I am damn proud of him for it!". That is the sort of mentality we are talking about here and one would think that over 140 years on, people would get past it and move on, but apparently a very determined minority continues to hold on.
Being proud of the Confederacy is like being proud of Nazism, it takes a special kind of angry, ignorant whiteness to go there. Over half a million Americans died fighting over the Confederacy. Countless others died because of the Confederacy's preferred business structure, many of them dying in shackles on slave boats crossing the Atlantic. What is there to be proud of here? An unsustainable economy? A poorly planned war campaign? The dividing of a nation? The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people? These are all part of the Confederate legacy and these are all things modern Confederate apologists claim to be proud of. That is like claiming to be proud of being the offspring of Benedict Arnold. It makes no sense, but then very little does at this point in my life.
So Tampa will soon be blessed with a Civil War memorial and a high-flying Confederate flag. A flag that symbolizes division, racism, unnecessary death, and ignorance. Just one more point of pride for my hometown!
Labels: stupid is as stupid does