Because I missed a day (or eight) you get this

More text. Because I'm grumpy.

And I don't want to upload anything or scan or leave my very comfortable position on the couch.

Paco has my feet warm, you see, and they have been very cold, and he is very soft.

And I'm not moving. And I don't have to give explanations.

I do it because that's how my mind words. The reasoning. Excuses. Whatever.

I'm feeling chatty. And I just ate a sandwich. But my toaster died before it toasted the bread. So it was cold. And I want to call my friend, T-G. Pikachu.

She isn't a pikachu, it's just her nickname.

She's at work, though.

But I'd tell her, like I'm about to tell you, that I am looking forward to tomorrow, to catching the bus during sunshine hour, to finishing the commission, to waking up.

That I saw a movie that I couldn't watch, because it hit closely to my heart and I didn't want to see myself. That the burden of video game heroes could be shared, I don't see why it has to be a solitary endeavor, gameplay fixed as it is. That the blue jays taunt to crows, but never bother to look behind them. That I saw a crow following its shadow. And that the toaster broke before it could toast my bread, and if that's not a metaphor, I'd have eaten a toasted sandwich.

I'd tell her all that. And other things, too.

an eyelash in your eye

Drawing isn't a method of expression for me: being angry, sad, or elated doesn't change how I draw--the only thing that does is laziness, and maybe sometimes shyness. But music--music is a whole other thing.

When I was fifteen my parents got me piano lessons. One night at dinner my father ask if I would be interested in learning. I said yes. Soon after he bought me a dinky little keyboard, the most basic model, and the following Wednesday I was driven to a house, left for two hours with a very lively woman and her piano.

She taught to read music. Two hours a week I would sit on her cushy chair, practice warm ups, notes, learn right hand, left hand, chords, melodies. We'd go over the same song for weeks until I got it right.

I loved it best when she would play for me, songs with too many jumps, shifting counts, too much black on a page.

Anyway--the point of this little trip down memory lane is that for the past--two weeks or so I've been reacquainting myself with music. With playing music, writing music, listening to music. It doesn't bother me that I'll never be anything other than mediocre at it, as long as I get to play I don't mind the long practices.

I've been trying to perfect this song, actually. I'm still very bad on it, but I'll get there. Whoever this pianist is, they play smoothly.

Let's say we did because we do.

I keep saying: today I will draw something for the blog! and I will photograph my last project, and post it up! But something always comes up. Like sleeping, and classes, and finding new places to drink coffee and get free wifi. Hard world mine. But that isn't interesting. Who wants to hear about things when they aren't shown? Ah, what sort of logic is that, some might ask.

Today I saw a friend who I haven't seen in more than what felt like a lifetine. In another life, in some parallel dimension, we might have married (subsequently divorcing soon after when our better natures came out). He's doing quite well artistically. Sometimes we get together in town and eat in some posh restaurant, and get into really mean arguments about what art is. I leave spirited, sometimes very angry, but always with a deeper love for what I do. If we had but lived forty years ago, what a team we could have made. But living in peace is just as good, I think. Ah, and here is where he and I would disagree! We are most fortunate to live where we do at this time, I think.

What is art. What does it mean to you. What would you break up and destroy for?

This one friend of mine was found by another friend of mine. Not of ours, which is much fortunate, for such mutual friendships--are weird. I was waiting for the second, when he brought along the first unexpectedly. They were in the same train. We had a nice chat while waiting for a bus. There is nothing more inspiring and infuriating when you have three artist disagreeing vehemently with the other two. Oh! What choice! What choice does come out when that happens. When there is enough love, competition can be put on the cool burner, the contents still bubbling away. A delicious curry.

Wanna do a small progress chart?

Is it a bit self-congratulatory? Maybe. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Has my art changed, how much, and how.

2005, for Stephanie.

2006, for Ali.

2007, for me.

2008, for AJ.

Well...I see a theme. Sort of.
Ah. I don't know what I'm looking for, exactly.

Oh yeah, they were all done with Photoshop. I guess I'll have to start keeping a tab on Open Canvas, and compare again in four years.

A little bit of that

Today is my brother's birthday. I wish I could show photos of him, but he would throw a fit, despite the fact that he very carefully does not read this blog. But that doesn't mean I can't say a few words about him and his influence on me.

He's my older bro, turning 26 today, and sometimes I love him, and other times I wish he'd move across the continent, and the only form of communication would be the occasional post card. But what can you do. Siblings.

Anyway, he's a great drawer. He does fantastic schematics and has the line work that I would kill for. If he'd ever draw me anything, I'd scan it in and show you, too, but he doesn't. And I'm too cowardly to go into his office to steal anything. He has me well trained.

Anyway, the point to this story is that back when I was five or so, and not too great of an annoyance of his time, or something, he would sit me down and teach me, with a ruler and very little patience, the finer points of perspective. We would sit next to each other on the dining table, and I would practice my one point perspective, my three point perspective, and my lack of perspective, while he went away drawing epic miniature war scenes with tanks and planes and little soldiers, and little forts. They were really great.

So. even though I feel like we are two very different people who will never agree on anything, and that we can be jerks to each other, I am comforted by this one thing we have in common.



I already posted this picture up, but it's the only one I can comfortably show of him. He's the one on the left. And the my mother to his side, and then my father*. I am the one taking the picture.

* I really meant our mother, and our father, except that no, whatever, I'm the baby, I claim full rights to them. End.

slow days of dreaming

When I was younger, that is to say, when I was wee and pre-teen, my parents used to take me to beach quite often--once a month, at the least. It was so close, only twenty minutes away, forty with traffic. And then when we moved to Oregon and we went to the coast for the first time, it broke my heart to feel the water so icy cold. I stuck my feet in until my lips took a blue hue and my legs a violent purple. I didn't go again for a couple of years. I think now I can appreciate it better, and honest, after so long a time, I really missed the sound of waves breaking, the particular odor that is the sea, and of course, the way cool sand feels against bare feet. I didn't miss the jelly fish swimming next to me, though.

summer 2006, I remember

One. Breathe it in. Out.

Pass.

Two. Breathe it in. Out.

Huh.

Suddenly, time slows down, and space slides to the side.

In his truck. He says, what?
And my words, they leave my mouth, float away and pop before I can even utter them.
He says, look up. And inside his truck, shiny stars and crystal on his ceiling top. Ah. Ah. Ah, wow.

And he smiles. I smile. And we wait. We wait, and I drift away on the current of this still time.

New and yellow, rough and white

Last night after I got off the MAX, around 1AM, I found out someone had slashed a tire on my car. I was very sad. Also, I really had to go pee. Of course I did not have the necessary supplies to change a tire. Or course not. So I make a quick call to my brother, cancel plans with my friends, and huddle in my car with the doors locked, and the radio crooning to me lowly. The anxiety becomes boring after the first minute. Also, again, my bladder is killing me. So I go outside, sit by a light post, the car door open so that I still have the company of the radio, and begin to draw.

WIP Naruto: Why Not

Some time ago I was chatting with my friend S.. See, S. and I often have little playful arguments. She'll bring up something stupid I did in the past (or recently) and I'll deny it and make sad sounds at the phone to her. Usually the sad sounds just make her laugh. Anyway, so this one time she might have said something like, I bet I can make you cry. And I said, yeah, whatever.
Predictably she has me sobbing defeat (sobbing with laughter) minutes later.

-OK, I say, What do you want?

-She pauses to think. Draw me Naruto.

-Yeah, I can do that, no problem. And thus I did attempt.

Of course the first sketch I did of it came out horrible. Seriously. It was hideous. But my S. is a good friend and she said, 'I really like it. It's very you.' Which, come to think of it, hmmmm, maybe it wasn't a compliment at all. Huh.

Well since I am in the throws of another art block (ok, maybe not so much art block as pure, unfiltered laziness) I decided to try again, but digitally!

It's not actually finished. But it's getting there. Sort of. Maybe one day. Possibly.

Daily updates are hard to maintain.

I first started drawing in the spring of 2001, right before I turned 13. See one morning as I started to make tentative friendships in my new school (I had just been uprooted from my hometown in CA to some horribly small town in OR), I met a girl. She was two years older than me, in a grade higher than me, and generally thought she was too cool for me. Which she really was. She sat next to this other girl (who, I will admit, never held much interest for me even years later), and they were both drawing in their books. I approached the girl, the first one, and asked, "Can I see your sketchbook?" She made a face and made a point to ignore me, turning to better hide the pages. People around me, my so-so friends in progress, laughed. I felt like an a complete tool and after standing there awkwardly for a minute, with her drawing in her book, arms covering anything I could possibly see, I left with my tail tucked between my legs. (Later, shortly after, actually, around June, I was able to charm her into being my best friend). It was that moment of social humiliation (for I was twelve and every rejection was humiliating) that I got it into my head to start drawing, too.