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.

You Thought It'd Be Easy?

Drew this in Colors! while whittling time away at work tonight:

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I've been doodling those lines/circle things for a little while. They seem to fit well with the robots.

I've been missing my girlfriend, who is stationed in Iraq. It's not easy. We both have our difficulties with it and sometimes they collide. Recently they collided pretty hard and it looked kind of bleak for a little bit there. I think it's going to be okay, but it will continue to be hard. I can't wait until she gets back. Anyway, that's what the words are all about. I wanted to draw the 'bot and to draw the dots and lines, that's why they're there. I like that it's rough, too. Times are rough, to an extent, so the 'bot and etc. should look rough, right?

Nothing else really to say about it right now. Watch for more dot-n-line stuff, though. I'm sure it's coming!

As the French say, "Happy Thanksgiving!"

The 5 Turtles/HI-5

I've been meaning to draw more so I am. I drew this today in Colors!

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For some reason, I've been wanting to draw hands. So I drew a hand. And it was boring. I liked it okay, but it needed more. So I added the lighter lines but it was still lacking. Then, for no apparent reason, I thought there needed to be faces on the fingers. But the faces alone didn't finish the drawing so I added the (poorly drawn) arms and hands on the faces on the fingers of the hand. Cosmic, huh? Then, as is my wont, I needed to add background and text. "The 5" something kept popping into my head. But the five what? Well, turtles of course. I have no idea why the 5 "turtles". But it fit and it didn't make me angry so I kept it. Right after that I drew this picture:

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Yet another hand. I drew an automatic hand waver some time ago that I really liked. I'll have to find it and add it to the blog when I do. But I must have really liked it since I made an automatic high-fiver this time. I like the tag line "Who needs friends?" With an automatic high-fiver, you could get accolades whenever you wanted! You wouldn't need anyone around to make you feel like you accomplished something worth sharing. Kind of defeats the purpose of the high five, I suppose. I mean, the point is to share in your joy, right? Well, whatever. I'm drawing again!

C'est ne pas une cigarette

I've been slowly getting back to the swing of things. I'm doodling a bit more and I'm Colors!ing it a bit more. Witness this following example:


I had been thinking about my cigarette holder and thinking about how it had been a little while since I drew it. I also wanted to play around in Colors! some so this seemed like a nice union. I wound up liking the text a lot. The settings on Colors! let you control the width of the brush by the amount of pressure you use with the stylus so I fired that up and played with the lettering. I think it's a lot more interesting to look at than the more uniform text I usually do (see this?). I've done a couple other things using that lettering technique, but I didn't like the results as much. But I think that I'll try using this same technique to draw the outlines of characters or what-have-you. C'est la arte!

Am I Green?

Hola, Gang! I haven't been doodling much lately. Or drawing. Or sketching for that matter. But I have been playing with Colors! some more. Here's one from the other day:

It's a self portrait again. The eyes are upside down and everything is green for some reason. I can't explain either of those things. Well, alright, I just wanted to see what the eyes would look like upside down. But I couldn't tell you why. And I like the color green. But I couldn't tell you why. The eyes don't really seem upside down, though. They're just there, seeming normal. I suppose sometimes our perspectives shift to something completely unexpected, but nothing really changes. Whether we don't learn anything from it, or we learn that "the other viewpoint" isn't really that different than our own. . . Something to think about I suppose.

Floaty Bot

Well, this isn't any good, but it's something new. I was killing time one night on the NDS waiting for a friend to come over and this little guy was born.


I got tired of focusing only on large things (like the head) and wanted a more "complete" thing. So I made the little bot and, for some reason, put a drink in his hand. Kind of looks like he's welcoming someone (the viewer?) into his home, or what-have-you. "Over here is the den, which we use as a sort of gaming room when company comes over." Or mayhaps this is a cosmic bar, and we're all meeting for drinks and he's welcoming us to whatever the pan-dimensional equivalent of a table is. "Have a seat! What are you drinking?" And all those bubbles are either other "tables", other portals to/from other dimensions, or a physical representation of intoxication. The latter is what bubbles usually mean in my work.

Maybe I should call this one "To Good Times" or something. . .

Thoughtful Me

Ah, the Nintendo DS. If there is any finer portable gaming system I don't want to know about it.

Here is another image from DS Colors! It's an elaborate doodle, which is what I would have a degree in, if they offered it in school.




Please don't ask me to explain the words. Other than defining them, I have no information to provide regarding why they are there. I just thought that there should be words on it. In fact, here is the same image prior to adding the words. You decide which you like best.

Man-bot

The idea for this hit me one night in bed. Why do cool ideas always hit when I'm trying to sleep? Anyway, I got up and did a quick sketch so I wouldn't forget about it (how many ideas have I lost by not putting them down? I figured it out one night but didn't want to get out of bed to write it down). The next day I made this image in DS Colors!.

I like combining man and machine into a Manbot of some sort. I've drawn robot bodies with a person's head and people bodies with a robot head. This is the first time I put a human face on a robot head. It's pretty cool, conceptually anyway. It obviously needs some reworking, but I may need to practice a bit more before I tackle this one again.

Columny Thing

This is sort of an introduction, for you, to one of my other drawing staples:

These Columny Things

Several years ago a good friend gave me a copy of Juxtapoz magazine. It was the first time I ever saw "low brow" art that was done so incredibly well. I was hooked. That first one inspired me to work with color so I drew a segmented column with pastels. I really liked it so I wound up doing a bunch of stuff with that concept. Pretty soon it was the main thing in all my drawings. Now it's moved on from the main thing to one of the main things.

I drew this in Colors! I'm starting to get a better idea of how to use it and what I should be trying to do with my natural dispositions and what-not. I scribbled this one, but I'm getting better at making smoother color transitions, so keep your eyes peeled for a (slightly) better version of this one in the nearish future.

Sock Monkey. delirium.

Here is another image from Colors! I'm now playing with the idea of "sketching" with the stylus. The program is really pretty versatile and I'm learning a lot about using it and I'm enjoying using color (something I don't do a lot of in analog work because, well frankly, I suck at color).



"What," you may ask, "does 'Sock Monkey. delirium.' mean?" I don't know. I like to put words into my stuff. I generally go with things that sound good to me at the time. There may be some actual reason that my sub-conscious brain chose those words to sound good to me at that moment, but I'll be damned if I know what that reason is. Sometimes I choose words based on how long they are, or how they look on the page. Rarely do the meanings really have anything at all to do with why the word, words, phrase, what-not were chosen in the first place.

Robot from the DS

I've been using that Colors! program some more and I'm beginning to get a feel for it. Here is one of my 'bots.




It's pretty straight forward. Nothing much to comment on. I am enjoying working with the shading using the stylus. It's more like drawing than it is like working on digital images. In Photoshop (because I am using a mouse) I don't feel like I'm drawing. I love to draw so I miss that in my Photoshop stuff. With Colors! I get to draw digitally. Which is the only way I like working with color. (I'm not any good with color. Most of my drawings are pen and ink or pencil or charcoal.)

If you have a Nintendo DS and you're into the home brew thing, check out Colors! in the link section. And check out their gallery for some stuff you just wouldn't believe came from this little app!

Self Portrait

Fairly recently I acquired a Nintendo DS. Then I got a little drawing program for it called Colors!, a simple little program that is a lot of fun to use and quite versatile, especially for its size. So I've been playing with that.

Here is a self portrait that I did on it.




The program is capable of considerably more elaborate images than this one, I just like to do simple work. Of course, that's partially why I like the program so much.

I tried to use some of the features to make some shading, but I have no idea what the hell I'm doing so it didn't turn out great. Oh well, live and perhaps learn.