When you're strange; faces come out in the rain/shower curtians

Hello. I have something slightly different in store for today. This is our shower curtain.

Lovely, isn't it? (I happen to have a fondness for silhouetted trees.) Anyway, as you can hopefully tell from the picture, this tree has lots of little branches that converge to make all kinds of odd patterns. After looking at these patterns everyday for days and days and days, you start to see things. Lines here and there start to looking like faces and forms. Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? 

Well, after looking at all these faces in our shower curtain for nearly a year, I decided it might be fun (and probably extremely weird) to do some sketches of the stuff I saw and share them with you all.  So here we go.

So, do these things actually make sense to people, or am I just crazy? (Maybe I don't want the question answered! ^_^) Well, at least you got your weirdness quota in for the day!

Note: The title of this post is a line from the song "People are Strange" by the Doors. The first time I heard this song was by watching this super cool video. http://vimeo.com/3267562 You should totally go check it out if you want to see more cool/weird stuff.

sincerely,

me

Art piece for Faith through the Arts festival.

Hello to you all on this freezy cold January day! As some of you may know, I've been working on a piece of art to submit to the Faith through the Arts festival, a local religious arts event. The theme for the show was "Radiant Light" and you would not believe how hard it was for me to come up with an idea! I tossed around several concepts and even made a few artistic attempts before coming up with something I was actually pleased with. And here it is.

I'm calling it "Shadow and Flame", which hopefully isn't too cheesy of a title. When I showed it to Jon, he said the piece was "risky"; but art is supposed to be risky, right? I hope so. Well, I turned in my registration form and an image of the piece this morning. Now the only thing left to do is wait and see. I should find out Feb 6th. 

sincerely,

me

Fall '11 sketches

Here are my sketches from this fall. 

This one is based off of the ceiling of one of a church that my friends go to.

A few quick gesture drawings of my friend's pets.

A punk fox kid I did randomly

A quick collection of images and shapes inspired by a movie (Spirited Away) I was watching at the time.

More drawings of pets

Another composite style drawing of landscape elements

A composite drawing based on the motions of our pastor while he was preaching a sermon. (Don't worry, I was totally paying attention while I drew this. :-))

The backs of people's heads while sitting in church. (I promise I'm not a creepy stalker.)

We were playing through Mario Galaxy. ^_^

Little doodles

A few random, drawings; I'm still working on a stylized/cartooning look.

Quick study of two men repairing a room as seen from my studio window.

A cartoon style drawing of an outfit I was wearing.

For this one, I just made a bunch of scribble shapes and turned them into little things.

More people studies

I might end up doing more with this one.

So there you have it. I was hoping to finish my sketchbook by the end of December, but I still have a little ways to go. 

sincerely,
me

Thus begins the New Year

Hooray for another year! Did everyone have a good Christmas? Mine is a little difficult to summarize in one word. My Grandpa had a minor heart attack when we were visiting and Jon, Grandma and I ended up going to the hospital at 1:30 in the morning! It was a stressful and exhausting experience, but thankfully it didn't last too long. Grandpa's doing fine now; the doctors let him go back home a day or two before New Year's. Other than that, it was a lovely vacation! Jon and I traveled all over the place; visiting various family members and enjoying holiday cheer! We read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (which, by the way, is a hilarious story that I highly recommend. It might get added to my list of Christmas traditions), ate lots of unhealthy food, played the super fun game Telestrations, watched a few episodes of the Twilight Zone, saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie (which was quite good), played video games and hung out with lots of fun peoples. However, as much as I liked all the festivities, I'm definitely happy to get things back to normalcy.

To get this brand new set of months off to a good start, I decided to try something a little more elaborate than just a list of goals. So, I created the 2012 wall.

I started with a clear section of wall space in my studio. (Well, as clear as I could get it anyway.)

Then I added all the project ideas and goals I've brainstormed so far. I also threw in the months of the year so that I can keep track of when I got certain things done.

My plan for this wall is multifaceted. I want it to be a space to store and access all the ideas that go careening around in my head. Once I've had the chance to do some of those ideas, I'll be able to track the progress I've made and the goals I've accomplished. I'm also hoping it turns into a scrapbook of 2012; a collection and documentation of all the things that happened this year.

I also started an "ideas" jar. Anything that doesn't fit or hasn't made it to the wall yet can go in here till I get a chance to sort it.

I have a feeling I'm going to need a bigger jar though. This one seems too small already!

So there you have it, my wall sized planner, calender and to do list! I'll be posting pictures of its development and expansion over the months. One of my other goals for this year is to blog more often. Not so sure how that endeavor will turn out, but I'll give it my best shot!

sincerely,
me

A Merry Christmas to All!!

Well, the long-anticipated and stressed-over time of the month is upon us. We'll be traveling quite a bit between Christmas and New Years, so I wanted to write a blog post of seasonal cheer before the madness starts. Sadly, I have no pictures of art to post, due to holiday preparations and such. Since my last post, I have managed do some of the things on my Christmas checklist. Jon and I have been busy watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas, making batches of Christmas cookies and playing Skyrim and Skyward Sword. (Ok, so the last two aren't actually Christmas-related, but still, a good bit of festiveness going on.) It took me up till this point to get all my presents and most of my projects in order, but I think I should be set to kick back and spend time with my family. I really do love this time of year; its a good chance to be thankful for the things you have, the people you love and, of course, to remember that God was born as a tiny human so that He could eventual save us all.

In writing news, I did manage to finish a second draft of my story. It still needs lots of work, but I promised my mom she could read it over Christmas break, so hopefully it's a little more presentable now. I'm looking forward to having another test-reader; up to this point it's just been Jon and my friend Lauren. I'll be curious to see what Mom thinks of what I have so far.

And so, I bring this post to a close: A wondrous Holiday season to you all, whatever you happen to be celebrating, and may the New Year bring you much joy and contentment.

My lethargic Christmas Spirit

 I finally managed to post on a sunny day!!! Here is my newly finished creation.

I'm calling it "What are you look'n at?"

As far as the rest of my life, I'm getting by. I made Christmas ninjas earlier this month! (The one that looks black is really green, I just have a bad camera.) I think they turned out super cute!! ^_^

Other than that though, I've been procrastinating on my usual Christmas rituals. For some reason, I haven't really been in the mood. Here are some of the things I still need to do:

1. Read A Christmas Carol. I try and read A Christmas Carol every year in December. There are a billion movie versions of this story, but nothing beats the original. Dickens' descriptions of London at Christmas time are always so much fun to read. If you've never actually read this book, I highly recommend you give it a try. It's a bit hard to follow, but well worth the effort in the end.

2. Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (The animated one, just for clarification). This is probably my favorite Christmas movie ever; I have to make sure I watch this at least once, or it won't feel like Christmas. While I out grew most of the other kid's Christmas movies, I'll never be too old for the Grinch. I'll probably still be watching this when I'm 82.

3. Make Christmas cookies. My mom didn't make cookies too often when I was growing up, but she always had a few recipes she'd make at Christmas time. My favorites are Spritz, a butter almond cookie with a cinnamon red hot in the middle; Jolly Jelly Thumbprints, another butter cookie with jelly in the center and Gingerbread cookies. She also had this family recipe called Von Sprecken Specials (named after my great-grandma), which are a spice cookie with bits of orange zest in them.

4. Listen to Trans Siberian Orchestra. I actually have been doing this one. I have an entire Pandora radio station devoted to this group and other things like it. Occasionally I get some non-Christmas soundtrack stuff. Things like selections from Halo or Tron Legacy, but they're usually super epic sounding, so I don't mind.

5. Watch White Christmas. This is another favorite of mine. (I'm pretty sure all the Christmas movies I like were made at least 20 years before I was born.) It's not as well-known as It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th St, which are also good movies, but I still love it. 

Add to that list all the Christmas present projects I need to finish, which is like, 6 or 7, and you can see I have a lot to get done before December 25th. In fact, I should probably get off the computer and start working on them right now!

sincerely,

me

It's finished!! (Sort of)

As you might recall, I've mentioned a few times that I've been working on a story for the past few months. Well, I am pleased to announce that on Friday the 3rd of December, I finished the first draft. This is actually a bigger deal than you'd think because, as I've also probably mentioned, I've never gotten to the end of anything this big before. After giving myself a day or two to take a step back from what I'd written (which only kind of worked), I read it all the way through for the first time. Fortunately, my worst fears were not confirmed and I didn't absolutely hate everything I'd written, another problem that has plagued me for years. Reading through 28 pages was exhausting and there's plenty of work that needs to be done, but I fairly confident I'm off to a good start. Unfortunately, blogging about the writing process is not quite as interesting as looking at pictures, so I included a sketch that expresses my current state of mind.

I know, it's not a very good sketch. The sad thing is that I had a hard time getting even that to look acceptable. Anyhow, my art production has slowed way down do to this other preoccupation, but don't worry, I'll have some more stuff up soonish. (I hope.)

Seeing as how I'm starting to seriously pursue writing, I'm going to look into some ways to share some of the stuff I'm working on in this blog. I have a few other novel ideas I want to start on, plus the editing work I'm doing for this story and some other pieces of short prose. Who knows, I might even chuck in a bit of poetry for good measure, if I ever come up with anything good. Poetry is one area I'm interested in playing with, but know nothing about. 

sincerely,

me