Life is Food.

Miss me? Of course you didn't! Otherwise you would comment on the entries.

But enough about you. Here's me. Or what I did this afternoon anyway. . .

That "Life is Good" thing popped in my head for no damn reason today. And I thought it would be funny if instead it was "Life is food." But who thinks life is food? Vampires do! Voila! Then instead of giving the peace sign, I figured the middle finger would be best. Double Voila!

That's really all I got.

Matchstick Bot

Remember last time I was talking about how I was drawing with matchsticks? Sure you do! Well here's another one that I did
Again, it's a combination of ink-pen and match-stick. All of the shading is done with burnt matches. I think that I like the treatment of this image better than the previous image, but I like the previous image better than this one overall, this being more of a doodle.

I have been thinking about the white border more lately, though. I hadn't given it much thought in the past, but I'm starting to think it has significance beyond "I like how it looks". For one thing, it gives the image a bit more definition, a space if you will. Something I'm generally searching for is a definition or space. But on another level, that definition is also a sort of a surrounding feeling thingy. Sort of like it's captured in that defined space, unable to move outside of it, where there is (often) color, or shading, or depth, or something more abstract. As such, I've added another tag "border" so I, or you, can look at all those things together and maybe get a better idea as to what's going on with it.

Or maybe it just looks good and it's easy to do.

The future . . .?

Well, recently my girlfriend in Iraq broke up with me. She said it was too hard being that far apart, especially with such a time difference. See the time difference made it hard to find a time for us to talk that wasn't cutting into the other's work or sleep or something. She started working more to occupy her mind and it just sort of pushed me out. Now I can at least kind of understand what she's talking about. And believe me, there's more to it than I just said, but I'm not going to go into her personal life with perfect strangers who don't even bother to post comments (yes, you!).

That all went down 'round the New Year. But lately, she wants to talk more. She's lonely and homesick and she's having a hard time finding a sympathetic ear. I can't stand to see someone reaching out and not finding anything. That just sucks. So I want to help her. I want to listen and be her friend and keep her spirits up, especially since she's serving our country in a desert combat zone. Regardless of feelings about the war, or war in general, our troops deserve to be supported.

But the tricky thing is, if I open back up like this, I'm likely to get hurt again. I tend to fall easily and she is easy to fall for. So I drew this in DS Colors!:

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And then the next day I drew this:

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You may notice that both guys are looking up into the sky. I kind of wanted to draw a UFO or something, but it would have been to close to them to reflect the idea that whatever it is that has their astounded attention is still a ways off. And I wanted to use the words "Not again", but I didn't want it to be that obvious. But the point of both of these drawings is along the lines of "I can see it coming, and I'm just standing here, watching it get closer. I'm not running. I'm not trying to get out of its way or get closer. It'll probably hit me, though, if I just keep standing here. . ." And that's about how I feel. Paralyzed with fear: Help her and hurt me and then hurt her? Hurt her and help me and hurt me? Hurt me, her and then help us both? Help her, me and then hurt all around? Some other combination of hurt and help? I just don't know. . . You may note that both are bald and have a "soul patch", even though they're "self-portraits". I still have some hair (and while my usual self-portraits are fairly bald, they still have some hair) and a full goat-tee. I have been focused on the chin area of the facial hair of late, but I doubt that has any real-world significance. It could explain the drawings a bit, though.

Now for a few words on media. The bottom drawing ("Shit") is a combination of ink pen and match sticks. The hard lines are all Bic pen, the shading is all matchsticks. I recently had a conversation with someone about the merits of charcoal and the merits of graphite. I generally prefer graphite, probably because I've all-my-life drawn with pencil. But charcoal is fun too. Partly because it's messy. You get done with a charcoal drawing and you know you've been drawing! Graphite is a bit messy, too, but not as bad. Graphite gives you a sheen that charcoal doesn't. Charcoal gives you a darkness that graphite doesn't. So it's whatever works for you that matters in the end. At any rate, I've been using stick-matches to light my cigarettes and I decided to draw with them. After a couple of silly little drawings all in burnt wood, I decided it would be cool to mix it with something that gave a more stark and definitive line: ink. I like the results, though I'm clearly out of practice with charcoal.

Bubble-Bot

I doodled this guy while nursing an incredibly sore back:

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I was lying in bed, watching some Flintstones episodes I had taped off of Cartoon Network several years ago. They were using a lot of circles in their promo stuff and it made me want to work with some circles. Now, I'm not that great drawing circles that are round. They're always pretty oblong and mis-shapen. But what can you do? (Practice? Ha!) This drawing is no exception. But I actually like how the "circles" look in this. I can't explain it, maybe it was the pain pills? But were that the case, I wouldn't still like them, and I do still like them. They just work well with this. The shading turned out pretty nice, too. I keep swearing that I'm going to get my pencils out and start working with them again, but then I go and do something like this with a Bic. I like the shading alot. It's very simple, no gradients or anything, but there are at least 3 distinct levels of shading. The lines are simple, the shapes are very simple, why shouldn't the shading be simple, too?

Maybe that's why I like it so much. Simplicity. Things get complicated sometimes and I just dont' want to deal with all that. Classes started up again so work is busy as hell. Equipment failures, annoyed faculty, annoyed staff, annoyed students. Preparing for upcoming terms while putting out the fires of this one. House is a mess. Sub-freezing temperatures and inadequate heat. My girlfriend in Iraq dumped me. Did I mention the house is a mess? Don't get me wrong. Life is not bad. It's just complicated. I don't like complications. I like simplicity. So that's probably why all the simple shapes and lines and coloring. And the robot's there no doubt because, in my mind, robots have it easy. Do what you're programmed to do, that's it. No deviations. Ah, the life of a robot for me!

Billy n Me

Flipping through the sketchbook the other day I found this one:

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Before you strain yourself trying to read my terrible handwriting, here is what the text says:

Billy stabbed me on the bus when
I was 8. I bled from my leg & I
cried. I got embarassed that I cried
so I didn't tell my mom & it got infected.
My mom yelled at me.

When I was in Middle School I punched
Billy in the mouth and he bled. I laughed
about it because of the irony. I got
sent to the principal's office.
My mom yelled at me.

Four years later Billy and I shot
a BB gun at the old man across
the street. I hit him in the foot
and Billy hit him in the shoulder.
The old man screamed and fell over.
He bled from his hip.
My mom laughed at him.

This never happened. I never got stabbed. I never punched a kid. I never shot anyone (old or otherwise) with a BB gun. My mom would never laugh at an old man who had gotten shot, fell over, and started bleeding. In fact, she wouldn't have laughed if even only one of those things happened to an old man. Also, I never hung around with anyone named Billy. It's just one of those names.

But I decided to put this here because after going back and re-reading it and re-seeing it, I really like it. The original part of the drawing (the left side) was no doubt a drawing about tension, pressure, stress, depression, etc. all fucking with my brain, keeping me from thinking straight and feeling good. The words came next. I have no idea what it's about, truly. Again, it never happened. Not remotely. But that sort of thing could help to explain why a person was a bit muddled and confused. Trying to hide fear and pain from "Mom" which leads to worse pain and then getting in trouble for it could make one confused about what to do when something happens that you don't want "mom" to know about. Trying to fight back and winning, only to get in trouble with authority all around makes you wonder if it's worth it. Being reckless and mean causes "mom" to laugh could completely distort your sense of right and wrong. Which is probably already fairly distorted to begin with. Especially if your best friend stabbed you in the leg on the bus when you were 8. So anyway, the "poem" maybe "explains" the trauma our hero is going through on the left side of the page. The drawings above the words are illustrations of what happened at the different ages in our hero's life. I wanted the drawings to be simplified, like they were done by someone who hasn't much talent. (Fortunately that's about on par for me!) That goes well with the way I drew our hero in the first place.

Toasty

I drew the image for this a couple weeks ago and then, since I don't have Photoshop anymore, I threw it into Photostudio 5.5 (which came free with my scanner!) and tweaked it, added the text:

I think that this would make for a pretty cool sticker, wot? Myself, I would assume it's a beverage of an adult nature and therefore quite tasty. One day, when I'm more motivated and less lazy, I'll get this made into a sticker. For now, I'll just pretend.

Dots-N-Lines

The drawing bug bit me again recently. Finally. So I drew this:

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I really wanted to do a drawing with the dots n lines (like this one) that had the robot in the middle of all the lines and dots. So I did that part first. Then I drew the box around it to give it a "completed" look. Then I thought that there should be more boxes with more stuff. So I drew the rest of the boxes and then filled them in. First was the one on the bottom right. The original idea was to do some of my columns, but I screwed up in ink so I wound up with what I have there. It's not bad. Next was the self-portrait. Usually I fill in the area around the head, but decided that I was too lazy/impatient so I went with dots. That seems to stick with the theme of the first two boxes (in the order they were drawn). The area up top remained blank for a couple of days, unsure of what should be in there. I knew I wanted a "scene" of some sort. . . but what? Then out of nowhere I decided I wanted to draw a mushroom cloud. They're easy and they look like they mean something whenever you draw them into anything. After the ground and the cloud were done, I thought it would be fun to put a sun in there. It was originally going to be a happy smiling sun, but I messed up the eyes (in ink, of course) and it looked a bit sinister. I figured it must be happy that the earth was finally feeling what it feels ALL THE TIME! I added the flying stickman (always a fun image to me) and the dialogue.

I want to do more with the dots-n-lines with the robot. I like how it turned out. I need to get the pencil set back out and spend some real time on it, make it look really nice.