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.

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.

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.

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!

Thing From July

I have no idea what this is all about:

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Pretty cool though, huh? I've been doodling more of those line things that appear above the robots hand in the "fresh fish sticks" panel. I like them. Maybe they're my new thing? I'll have to do some more elaborate ones and see what happens.

I gotta draw more. . .

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.

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.