Spaceship Earth

I spoke to Max just now, he’s a childhood friend of mine. In my dating profile for Match.com, that’s actually where I met my wife, I put that I like to spend time with my friend Max about life, the universe, and everything. She is a big fan of Hitchhikers guide, so the reference was a hit. Basically you can say I owe my marriage to Max. We were just on the phone and he said he was going to call me back in 10 minutes, I figured this would be a good time to muse on the sort of things we were saying to each other. I always say my relationship with people is that I think people only talk about themselves, so we say things about our lives, the other person hears it through a filter of their life and says something about their life which gets interpreted as the same topic. This is the beauty of words and language in general, you can say one thing and mean another. No one can tell you what you mean and you are not obligated to explain yourself. Some take this as an opportunity to say things at random, claiming that can be language too. I suppose it does, but I don’t think humans were meant to live like that.

Things are going well for me though, I’m accomplishing what I set out to, I’m dwelling on the past too much, I’m breaking and I’m building. I’m still here writing this blog so I guess that’s something good. I don’t know if it will say something bad the day I put it down, but part of me hopes I never put it down. Now my wife just got home and she brought Christmas cookies, I hope everyone is getting into the spirit of the season. Happy Winter Solstice if I forget to say it then

Can’t Control Yourself Any Longer

Practicing with ink this weekend

I’ve got some important new reporting from the front lines. They are varying, today I’ve been drawing thick lines, thin lines, even doing some shading with lines. I actually did a lot of shading today. I’m in a part of the Bridgman book where he starts to talk about shading. I’ve really been enjoying looking at my drawings lately. There’s going to be one that I’ll post on my instagram tomorrow that is only the stomach of a male twisting, but that’s the beauty of art is that there’s beauty there. How is there beauty in some twisted lines of graphite rubbed into thinly sliced trees? That’s why I say part of my soul is put into these things. If a piece has life, that’s the creators life we’re seeing. I think it’s something everyone knows but is hard to accept that the point of studying and the repetition is only to increase the likelihood of being able to breath life into a lifeless world. It feels good when it happens and at this point I’ve built, for me, a pile of enough bad drawing to be a little numb from failing those. I think the idea of being ok with failure will be something everyone faces their whole life because as we succeed, we raise the bar on what we expect of ourselves, or at least I do. The drawing I shared here recently of a man in a suit got me annoyed because I inked in the lines over my drawing and I screwed up the eyes. I think the picture can be saved still, but it will never be the image in my head so I lose a lot of interest in finishing it. It’s funny too because I recently listened to an artist talking about eyes can make or break a piece, so he doesn’t like to wait too long to do them. This instance of failure on the eyes hurts a little more than if I fail drawings, one because it’s more permanent and two because more time had been invested in it. That’s the cost to playing the game of life though. You win some, you lose some and the more I play the more I’ll win.

Cinco Geckos in Chinos

A sketch for a piece I’m still working on

I might watch The Pursuit of Happyness later. Yeah, I’m as surprised with the spelling of that title as you are. I hope it gives some motivation to keep pushing myself through whatever may come my way. I got the idea to watch it because I was listening to a motivational highlight reel while drawing and one of the speakers was the man the movie is based on. He said some good stuff, the take away was “I drove here”. He spoke about cleaning himself up in a public bathroom while waiting for the shelter to open and asked how he got to this point. He drove himself there. There was no mistake that his actions played a role in getting to that point. It’s important to remember when we are attracting good things and bad. I myself would like to attract dedication and patience. I’ve been thinking about this drawing trip I have coming up at the end of the month. I’m going to some tiny home in some mountains an hour away for two nights. My plan is for the only activity I have available to be drawing. I will eat, sleep, and draw. I’m sure I will somehow fail miraculously, but I’m certainly going to get some drawing done and will learn a lot from the experience. I should check out more library books for that weekend. I think I can check out 110 items at one time, which is insane. I had to renew my library card today. I hope that’s not an annual thing, but I can’t really complain for the quality and the price. I might take my bike to a bike shop tomorrow because I’d like it’s brakes to improve. I have no idea what I’m doing and would like the biking experience to be a lot better so this weekend I also took off some dead weight off the bike. The rack on the back of my bike actually broke while riding home from the library in the rain. Those types of miserable events are how I know I’m doing the right thing, it’s never easy.

A Warm Bath

Here I come sneaking in at the end of the wire. It’s 9:40 pm and I’m getting ready for bed. It was a fun weekend in Helen, GA but it’s time to get back to our lives. I love my wife very much and I’m grateful that she pushed me to go out this weekend. I realize that without that I would probably become more and more recluse. If I was accomplishing my goal I would also be doing less normal life in exchange for more drawing. I got some nice inking in today and this evening. I was really worried I wasn’t going to get my drawing in while we were out of town because with pretty much every hobby or interest once my recluse schedule gets broke, my interest is lost and I don’t want to go back to it. Thankfully I got home and got back on the horse studying and drawing. I opened up the two books I got from the library to random pages, just so I could have interesting things to study at any second if I look up. 

Since tomorrow should be a pretty normal Monday, I should be going to the gym when I wake up. Hopefully it’s painless, but only time will tell. I’ll try to work with myself if I need it, I don’t think I will though. I’ve been a chip chop chap lately. My gym membership with the YMCA is going to be up at the end of the month, so I have to check out the other gyms in town and join one if I want to have any hope of staying in shape. I could always trade the weights for running, but I don’t think I’d like to do that. Things should be pretty much the same in the gym, actually a bit of a change is welcome right now to keep my interest through the winter.

Let the Fireplace Blow

Alright lets get down to brass tax, I’m in Helen GA, it’s like a German town in the middle of the mountains. It’s a very weird place, I don’t know how to describe it. I guess my best attempt is quant German town meets Jersey shore because it is pretty touristy with t-shirt printers and lots of gift shops. I’m surprised how cheap the beer is. We went into a sort of comic shop where they sold armor and weapons, that was fun to look at. I gotta get some of that stuff some day, probably just a metal helmet so I can practice the diffusing of light as it rounds armor. I also bought my third cigar while exploring the main street. That’s been a fun hobby to start exploring. We’re also staying at a golf resort right now. Neither of us play golf, but Winnie(my dog) has been loving it. The weather was rainy and cold last night so no one has been out and Winnie has been running wild like a farm dog. I know it might not be the most moral thing to let him run on the golf course, but he didn’t do more damage than a group of people walking with spikes. We’ve got a nice little bungalow on the side of a hill too, here’s a picture from the back porch. It was awful driving up here last night because it was non stop rain with hairpin turns. It was the second time we’ve gone crazy in the car and the first was driving across Texas. I like to say a good test of a relationship is going on a road trip together. Everything is good between us though, we both recognize we were only grouchy because of the drive. It was funny cause after about an hour of driving I had to switch over to my wife and than after an hour she didn’t see a stop sign so we switched again. It was a really rough drive, but now that we’ve made it we can enjoy the beauty

Light in the Center of the Iris

From last weeks books

I’m doing pretty well today morning pages. The good news is last night I woke up in a terrible sweat, hopefully that meant I was sick and am now on the other side. I did wake up feeling pretty good. Here’s the thing though, last night was also the live drawing session. I knew to take art seriously I have to be going to that as much as I can, so internally a lot was riding on the experience just like a lot was riding on going to the library last week, the cafe and gallery this week. It’s been a pretty impressive week for an ole’ crumb bum like me. I can never know if I feel better today because I was relieved that the live drawing went well or because I really was sick, but like so many things in life it was probably both with even more variables.


Today was also cold and rainy, my favorite type of day and as planned I rode my bike to the library to draw. I had a good drawing session and was able to get through 2.4 (I calculated) pages of drawing. I’m coping every drawing in Bridgman. Only a couple weeks ago I would only get through a single drawing a day and not always that, today I probably did 10 and I gotta tell you they look a lot better than a couple weeks ago. I’m really excited for how things are going and very relaxed to know all I have to do is keep working. I have some sort of road map to follow and it puts my mind at ease. Another thing I’m doing with the library to entice me to keep going is last week I checked out two drawing books and this week I returned those and checked out two different books. This way I’m forced to consume them or miss the information they have, plus I’m constantly getting new information. Even if I accidentally get a lame duck, I’ll only have it for a week. I think it will keep my artistic mind open and flexible while learning a lot too.

My Pencils are Sharpened

Some initial sketches of a pig man firing a blunderbuss that I posted on my instagram @drawingmylifeaway124

It’s 12/12 make a wish, and if you’re in Europe it’s also 12/12, so isn’t that special. I’m still feeling weird today. Last night my wife said she took pseudoephed, a nasal decongestant, and I thought I was saved. This does fit a lot of the pains I get from sinus trouble, in fact when I’m done with this I’m going to give myself a little sinus massage, pressing and releasing. I took some pseudoephed also today, but I’m not feeling too much better because of it so that’s a little disappointing. What I’m really scared of is that now there’s nothing standing between me and my dreams except doing the work. I’m afraid that my body wants there to be things in the way so I can I have something to blame. I don’t think that’s it though because I feel really beat up, something is definitely up. I also had the thought that I could be plain old fashioned sick. Whatever though, for the most part I’m pampering myself to help recover and I’m meeting my daily drawing goal.

Tonight I’m going to a place called Townsend Atelier in town for their weekly live model drawing. It’s not a traditional atelier which I think of as a school where you attend for years and are basically an apprentice, but they have a lot of high quality art classes and we’re lucky they bring in a lot of great artists to teach. There’s also this live drawing which I need to start attending every week because drawing from life is the best thing I can do and I can at least schedule for it once a week. It’s three hours of drawing, usually one pose of a nude model. We’ll draw for 20 minutes, give the model a 5 minute break and repeat. I’ve gone in the past and tried to work on one drawing, but I don’t think I’m good enough for that yet so my plan is for each 20 minute block to be one sketch. Right now for me it is more about producing quantity over quality. Not to say I don’t want quality, but I will make mistakes in those beginning marks that if followed to the end will leave me with a wonky picture. I think it will be a better use of my time to do 10 or so beginning phases to work on my foundation.

Frozen Grass, Fragile Needles

I’m still feeling pretty pooped today. Who knows what’s going on with my body, but I figured I would try to get my morning pages down as soon as I can and spend most of the day recovering. Nietzsche had some sort of sickness most of his life that left him only to be able to write a couple of paragraphs at a time. I wonder for how long it was going on before he thought anything might be wrong. Maybe I have a sickness, I’m pretty sure I have something like pneumonia, but that’s another story and probably not what I’m feeling today. I want to say that I feel slugish because the weather, but it feels like something more. Anyway, as I said I’ll put an emphasis on recovery today because I can see myself crashing around the corner. Last time I saw it coming I wasn’t really able to prevent a crash though it was manageable. Like always I probably didn’t give myself the rest I needed and we’ll see if I’m able to take care of myself today. My mind wants to do anything and everything, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I have two different people living inside of you? One says lets push the limits and see what the world has to offer, while the other says to calm down and take things one step at a time. 

My wife gave me a plant for a Christmas plant yesterday. There’s actually two in there and in a couple days I’ll separate them, I just want to give it some time to acclimate to the new surrounding before stressing it out again with a repotting. I also brought in another one from the greenhouse for my sad plant series. I’m very lucky to have my wife. I don’t know why she wants to give me things, but they are nice to receive. I wish I was good at presents. I guess they’re more of a modern idea in the sense that life gets more comfortable so we have to create new jobs which comes in the form of making and distributing of consumer goods. Since I strive for a simple life where a person spends most of their time preparing food and staying warm, goods don’t make sense to me. Obviously I’m a hypocrite because I buy fast food and have a heater in my house, but that’s because I’m human and the easy path is there. Those same instincts get indigenous peoples into trouble when introduced to these luxuries. Again the spirit is willing, but their bodies have a lower tolerance for things like refined sugars than someone of European decent where people have been eating it for hundreds of years. This is also why we must be wearing of technology, no one knows the effect of social media on the body after 20 years of it.

I Love Rainy Days

Good news morning pages, I keep getting distracted by drawing and forgetting to write you. You could say things are going well. How are they going for you? Today was pretty interesting for me. I just felt beat up today, so after I took care of my wife’s breakfast I went back to sleep. Even after that extra sleep I wasn’t feeling better, so I thought it might be allergies. Maybe it was because I put in eye drops, took a nasal spray and felt better. It didn’t hurt that I also made myself a pancake for breakfast. After I got situated it was time to figure out my day. I knew I had to draw but decided not to go to the gym and it’s raining here, so I figured I could take care of somethings on the other side of town. I wanted to experiment with going to a coffee shop and drawing for days when I won’t be able to ride my bike to the library, rainy days like today. 

I drove to the coffee shop Stone Cup Cafe if you’re ever in Chattanooga, they have a pretty view of the river and I love looking outside in the rain. I got my coffee and was getting things situated, when I found out I have a wobbly table. That’s the last thing you want with a laptop, sketch pad and a big cup of coffee. I switched to another table and had a pleasant drawing experience.

A few doors down from the cafe is the local art association I joined recently, I wanted to stop by and start building a relationship as well as ask questions and look at art. That was an exciting experience and I hope to be going there to meet other artists and do art critiques with them. When I got home I was so pumped by the good day I was having, I used that to go to the gym and did the workout I should have done first thing this morning. On the way to the gym I saw a girl standing at the cross walk that I thought had a very artistic image, so when I got home later I did this drawing. I think it could be really good if I did it in ink and water color, maybe even adding an effect of rain.

Woke Up Cold

How are we already a third of the way through December, it seems like Thanksgiving was just a couple days ago. I went to the store yesterday and thought they might be low on supplies because of black Friday, but that we apparently forever ago. Quickly approaching the end of the year, celestial dates mean a lot to me for whatever reason. What has happened in 2019? A lot of things have changed, a lot of things have not. Hopefully every year brings new fortunes, ideally I would get healthier every year and it may still be the case, but someday that will be impossible. The new year is weird, it is pretty meaningless aside from the reminder that time will keep passing regardless of what you do. 

I was thinking in the shower that I used to wait for the time to be right to do things. I’m sure I still do that to some degree, but I try to say that there will never be a perfect time and if I start now then I will be better prepared to take advantage of the perfect time. For me, like most people, the new year is a perfect time to do something new. In the past couple weeks I shifted more to art and I hope that’s what 2020 has in store for me, but even if 2020 doesn’t want to cooperate, I will try my best to work towards my goal. I think about drawing a lot now, it was something that I knew would happen after the first few days. My mind is like a cave, when a noise is made inside it will echo through out, so now when I close my eyes there are echos of the drawings I work on. I like drawing in my mind, but I’m sure it isn’t as helpful as drawing with the hand so when possible I have to remember to switch over.