A forested path.

Practicing environments~ \o/

40 mins in Painter 12

Black Cat

Had to put one of my cats down a couple of weeks ago. Miss Seven came down with kidney problems rather suddenly, and it was either that or let her suffer through it for my benefit.

Fuck that.

Two weeks later, I'm still having dreams that she's still there. I keep hearing cat food rustling in the bowl, and little claws tapping on the hardwood while her sister is curled up next to me. Then I wake up and remember that she's not there. She was my buddy for twelve years, so I don't know how long it's supposed to take before I don't feel shitty about it any longer.

I miss that high-pitched, irritating meow that couldn't be quieted no matter what. I miss her incessant cuddling at the most inconvenient times. I miss her commandeering my pillow and purring me to sleep. I miss catching her stealing our socks at 1:30 in the morning, every morning, like clockwork.

It never gets easier, does it?

Fuck.

FFS #1

Welcome to the first edition of "For Fuck's Sake!", a list of shit that annoys me in my dad-to-day dealings!

For Fuck's Sake: "ombre" is a card game, not a gradation of color.
For Fuck's Sake: it's pronounced "new-clee-ar" not "new-kyoo-lar."
For Fuck's Sake: you CAN turn right on a red light in the state of Wisconsin.
For Fuck's Sake: "irregardless" is not a goddamn word.
For Fuck's Sake: being nice and/or courteous to people is not hard. Just fucking do it.

<3

The Room at the End of the Universe

While digging through some old notebooks of mine, I found the moleskine (grid-lined paper FTW! \o/) that I took to the hospital with me when I had my gall bladder taken out. I don't remember writing this at all, but I found a story scribbled into the back of the book in my handwriting. This was very likely while I was under a little morphine haze, heh.

The Room at the End of the Universe

Once, long ago, a man was sentenced to his doom. Rather than remove the man from existence through conventional methods, the leaders of his society constructed a machine to rent his body asunder at the molecular level so as to be completely, utterly, entirely rid of him.

Whether or not his crimes merited such a sentence -- or if he committed a crime at all -- has long since been forgotten. All that is certain is that the man still remains, regardless of this machine.

It is a little known fact that if one were to travel to the end of the end of the universe, to the place where time falls apart, the place that only the most fanciful minds can dream of and only the maddest of minds can comprehend, there is a door.

Behind the door is a room, and the room is infinite. It is devoid of light, sound, color, air, good, evil, silence, and all other things we as mortals simply cannot exist without. Still, this room is populated by two things: a single mortal, and the Strings of the Universe.
It is unknown how the mortal arrives in this room, but it is certain how long they stay. They remain mortals when they enter the room at the end of the universe, and so their term there is limited by their mortality. When the mortal's time is expired, a new one is brought in to replace them.

It is further unknown whether the Strings of the Universe are indeed multiple strings, or if it's a single string infinitely overlapped upon itself. The strings are likewise as infinite as the room they occupy, and they control the universe, as their title suggests.

The Strings of the Universe are time, space and circumstance manifested in a malleable form. They can be formed, plucked, gathered, tangled and combed; and when they are, they change the known universe. They are the nerves and tendons that put every that was or ever will be into motion.

I've been here for eighty-seven years, in the room at the end of the universe.

I didn't know where I was when I first arrived. I doubt anyone does. I was surrounded by countless sinewy pillars that reached into nothingness with the same grateful stretch that a tree makes for sunlight. They were the Strings, twisted into familiar shapes and resonating memories of the previous mortal who formed them. Touching them explained everything, and the feeling of the Strings beneath my fingers made everything clear.

Morphine's one helluva drug, kids! Only use under medical supervision~

Collected Curios #2

I found this song and was moved by it. I couldn't find the lyrics anywhere, so I thought I'd make a transcript:

~~~

Kalai - "I Am a Man"

(?) ...to my birth
Unaware of my worth
Benign and absurd
Silent and unlearned
I fell down to the earth
I was cursed and immersed
But I rose up from the dirt
Free

(chorus)
I am a man
In a no man's land
And a native son
Of my sovereign
And I'm forming a line
And I'm making a stand
And I will not comply
Or disperse or disband, child
Because I am a man

You can't take what I am originally
You can't bind and amend
The powers that be
Cuz I believe that I'm led
And I'm led to believe
That I was commended to be
Free

(chorus)

I'm free as a bird on a buffalo's back
Always ready to ride when I'm under attack
I was handed the truth now I'm faced with the facts
And I'm willing to fight for a living
So I'm forming a line
That's right, I'm making a stand
And I will not comply, disperse or disband
I may be a man in a no man's land
But I'm a native son of my sovereign
Oh yes I am a man

~~~

Huh. This song reminds me of my dad.

===

I need to read more; there are SO MANY BOOKS out there that demand my attention. Stacks, piles, scads, ganders of books, all waiting to influence my imagination and having to take a number. It's like my imagination is some kind of DMVish hell for literature.

I haven't been reading quite as much lately because I've been writing and drawing more. I guess that's not a bad trade-off, all things considered.

===

I'm still struggling with some... feelings. I'm still trying to decide if these feelings are as simple as me being selfish, or just phase that will pass, or something natural and instinctual that is at odds with how modern society works. Or, perhaps, all three. I'm sure psychology, being the pseudo-science that it is, could argue for or against all three suppositions flawlessly.

===

Having a fresh tattoo on my wrist makes it very difficult to pwn at computer games without a little bit of physical pain involved XD

Permanent

Finally, after 9-ish years of deliberation, I've gotten my long-overdue tattoos!

The top is a David Byrne lyric on my right forearm. The second is Leeloo's element markings from the Fifth Element on my left wrist.

That's one itch scratched... now I just need to go on a vacation of some sort or another, and I'll be good to go!(?)

Gestures

Wooooooo gesture drawing! Look at all that delicious spine stretching and posture exaggeration!

I have to say, for not having done gestures for several years, I did a pretty damn good job with this first bunch :3 Each of those poses took me roughly 3-5 minutes to work out, so I've got some refining to do with my process. As well, I have five days to finish the other ninety gestures, so... this'll be a short post, I think.

The instructor's method of teaching, as well as the format of the class, is working in tandem with the way I process information very nicely. It took me three hours to get through the first hour-long lecture, which I consider to be a good sign -- it allows me to digest the information in bite-sized chunks so my mind doesn't wander too far from the subject at hand.

And now it is time to dance.

I mean... work. Now it is time to work.

>.>

Thoughts on Work

Here is a list of jobs that I've had:

• janitor (ages 9-14: mom's after hours janitorial business) 
• newspaper delivery (ages 9-14: helping with mom's second job) 
• hostess/bus girl/waitress at Mexican restaurant 
• game store clerk (would not wish this on my worst enemy) 
• book sherpa for antique book conventions (worked for tips, which were usually lousy) 
• adult video store manager (hilarious) 
• janitor (student work program in college) 
• receptionist (student work program in college) 
• vet tech at "The Cat Doctor"
• salesperson at ultra expensive asian "antique" shop (complete with bored, rich housewife owner) 
• janitor at a Public Museum (awesome) 
• blog designer (worst clients ever) 
• freelance illustrator (current) 
• t-shirt designer (worst company ever) 
• small business owner (current) 

Looking at my track record, I feel disquieted that I haven't learned a useful trade of sorts by now. What's that you say, Fictional Heckler? "You're a formally-trained illustrator, so quit your bellyaching?" Well, I don't really consider Illustration to be "skilled" work, to be perfectly honest. Anyone -- no, shut up, anyone -- can learn to draw, and teach themselves to do it just fine. It's not like engineering or the medical sciences or plumbing, where people's lives are at stake if you don't learn to do things correctly.

But that's just it, isn't it?

Art IS like engineering, or the medical sciences, or plumbing. If you really give two shits about your field, but don't have the means to buy yourself an education, you'd still learn the trade that interests you to the best of your ability. Sure, you won't be able to legally open up someone's chest and start moving shit around, or start building bridges or designing manned spacecraft to carry people to Mars... but you'd eventually know how, which is the important part. Right?

Right?

I read a very interesting article in Psychology Today, The Trouble With Bright Girls, where it is hypothesized that "...bright girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice." I feel like I'm at odds with this very problem; through my adolescent years I was lauded and praised for being smart and talented, but I was never really given the tools to expand upon these concepts, which were fairly abstract to me at the time -- it was just kind of a thing that was. It also became clear that being "smart and talented" was not quite enough to get me good grades in school, and my mother liked to stress that "getting good grades" and "being smart" were the same thing (I later learned that this, in fact, is not the case). So when I was downgraded from the Gifted and Talented program to the Normies program (my word, not theirs) in middle school -- no doubt because of a distinct lack of homework done on my part -- no one really thought to ask what was up. Maybe the school system was right: Jack's a girl of normal intelligence after all! No one get too excited, she's just normal! Everyone get back to work, especially you Jack! That kind of a downgrade is actually kind of a big deal in the mind of a 12-year-old, and it definitely shaped my school years to come: I was average, and that was that.

The main question is, though: did it affect who I am as an adult?

The short answer: Well, yes, duh. Everything that happens to you shapes you in some way. The long answer is a bit more complex. I think I was scarred in some ways by my mother's point of view... as a woman of color in the United States, she did not have the easiest time growing up. She started a janitorial business because her line of reasoning was "I can't do anything else, so I might as well make money doing what I can do."

But mama, I never asked out loud, for fear of evoking the Wrath of Mom, Can't you just learn to do something else? Something that makes you happy? As an adult, I know the answers to these questions: my mother does not take kindly to change to this very day, and she also had two daughters and three jobs that she needed to juggle. She never hinted that these things were a problem, though: taking care of business was a lifestyle in our household. You went to school five days a week, you worked six days a week, and you cleaned the house on Sunday. Also, life probably isn't going to get much better than this, so buckle up.

Fuck, those were some rough years.

Things changed when I moved in with my dad, though. I was 15 years old, mom decided to move to Oklahoma to take care of my ailing grandfather, and dad made one thing very clear to me on day one:

"I didn't make it past my sophomore year in high school, Jack. If you make it past that point, you're already more successful than your old man."

My dad dropped out of high school to join the army, and he made a 22 year career out of being a combat engineer and drill sergeant. I knew this, and I considered him to be successful, but those words stuck with me hard. Those words saved me from the destructive mindset that I had acquired in my adolescence, that my abilities are "innate and unchangeable". More importantly, it helped me come to the understanding that life did not end in high school, and that grades and paperwork were not, and could never be, an accurate measure of who I was. Only I could decide that.

I still struggle with the destructive mindset, though, even in my adult years. Being part of a society that reinforces that bullshit is not helpful. Still, I keep trying to learn new things, I keep running my business (because business is a way of life -- some habits never change), I just... keep... living.

Because in the end, that's all we can do, isn't it?

Collected Curios #1

I'm going to start visually separating my subject changes in this blog. It was painful to read those last few posts the way they were. XD

===

This GIF perfectly encompasses how I've been feeling lately. There are so many feelings that I can do nothing about, and it's eating away at me. There's some delicate shit in the balance over here, and I don't want to fuck any of it up by saying things that can't be unsaid. I feel like I'm hiding something that I shouldn't need to hide, but I'm doing it anyway just to keep my current relationships (which are extremely important to me) in-tact.

===

Analytical Figure Drawing starts Monday. I have access to the first video tomorrow, though, and I think I'll have access to the forums, or an assignment, or something. Anything to keep my hands and mind busy will do! After this class, I'll be one step closer to realizing my imagination in illustrative form in the way that I see fit -- I'm excited a way that only an art nerd could be!

===

When I was dropping off packages the other day, the fella who took my mail crate smiled at me and told me to have a nice day before I left. Writing that sentence makes me realize how depraved I am of human contact from shutting myself in my studio for weeks on end, but that is not why I write about it today: I write about it because simple gestures like that always seem to mean the most, especially when you don't see them coming. That shit brightened up my day in a way that I never would have been able to predict, and I think it'll help me to remember to leave the house every once in a while. :P I still hate people on the whole, though. People are assholes.

Except you. You're cool.

Build that Wall and Build it Strong

I've always had an affinity for slow, sad, romantic songs. Music to chill to. If I were a musician, it is the type of music I would make.

Some days, I'm an accidental vegetarian. I like meat, and I'll eat it without remorse. There are days, though, when I will happily eat mushrooms prepared in nine different ways. Or all of the sugar snap peas, ever, followed by a pint or two of blueberries. Don't ever, ever let me loose in a blueberry patch, or I will devour that crop single-handedly, like a goddamn locust.

I've been feeling increasingly unfulfilled, as of late. This worries me. I've always worried too much about everything; a trait I picked up from my mother. Now I'm worrying about worrying too much.

Every single bag of popcorn I've made for the last couple of months has scolded me not to use the "popcorn" button on my microwave. I feel like someone, somewhere just dropped the ball on microwave/popcorn industry relations and just walked the fuck out on that job. Apparently, Mr. Redenbacher's HR team never quite got around to refilling that position. Let's get on that, guys.

Fuck, I want need a new tattoo. REAL BAD.

Book Learnin'

In a little less than a week, I'm starting an online class in Analytical Figure Drawing. I'm excited, and also nervous: my three-year stint with college (nevermind the fact that I barely passed high school) was troublesome. Institutionalized learning, as the American education system has it worked out, has never been for me, and I will rant about it in detail here one day. I'm hoping the "online" aspect will work out better for me... listen to instructor for a few hours a week, grab my assignment, do it on my own damn time. Boom.

While constructing my profile for said "master class", I was asked to list a few of my favorite artists. These are some of them:

• Wayne Thiebaud 
• Bengal 
• Jean Giraud 
• Yoshitaka Amano 
• Kaethe Kollwitz 
• Afua Richardson 
• Paula Rego 
• Bruce Timm 
• Shane Glines 
• Pascal Campion 
• Ragnar 
• Bill Presing 

While making this list, I learned a few things about myself as an artist. I like strong linework. I like stark, crisp color contrasts. I like women with some goddamn curves. I like saturated color.

In high school, I sustained a concussion during a rugby game (this is on topic, I promise), wherein some of the cones in my right eye were dislodged or jumbled or knocked out of whack. I learned several years later, during an illustration class, that this fucks with my color perception on a fairly regular basis. I have a difficult time distinguishing certain shades of red and green -- the more desaturated the color, and the closer the chroma, the more difficult a time I have telling the colors apart. This, I'm convinced, is the reason why I've developed such a strong preference for strong, bold colors in my own work, as well as the work of those I admire.

I'm beginning to notice that I'm one of a handful of women taking this class, as well. I'm holding on to the cynical (and somewhat douche-baguette-ish) hope that the teenage prima donnas will be at a minimum.

"Thanks, Ray" and other musings

I owe Ray Bradbury so, so much. I read and re-read the Illustrated Man anthology of stories so many times  through my primary and secondary school years, that I'm pretty sure his writing has shaped the kind of person that I am today. I saw him at Comic Con in 2006, when I attended a panel of his there. He was ancient then, barely able to hear the audience's questions when they boomed at him from the speakers, but it felt like I had reached some kind of untouchable goal when I was there, basking in his presence as he selflessly doled out advice. At the time of this writing he's been dead for a few weeks, and I'm glad that his energy is back with the universe. Not the frilly, new-age "spirit" sort of energy; I'm talking BTUs and shit. Energy that you can measure. But I digress:

Thanks for everything, Ray.

Right. Moving on to a random string of thoughts!:

I find it curious, how much I need to write. Professionally, I am an artist; specifically, I'm an illustrator. People pay me to tell stories with pictures. Still, I've always had a strong urge to manipulate words in such a way as to stir the imagination. Drawing pictures in other people's minds, so to speak.

Writing lists is one of my favorite things to do. Here is a list of stuff about me, ranging from basic to private:

• I'm a woman.
• As of this writing, I'm 26 years old. Fun fact: I actually needed to bring up my calculator just now to subtract years and calculate my age. >.> Addendum: age is not an important thing to me.
• I'm really good at pretending that I don't give a shit about what other people think.
• I've been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, with a sprinkling of anxiety to taste. While none of these things are severe, I diligently take pills for each of these conditions, because I'm deathly afraid of becoming like some of my bat-shit crazy relatives.
• I'm a gamer.  
• I'm too hard on myself, and I'm lucky to be surrounded by people who remind me of that.
• On most days, I think about sex as much as the average man. After many years of conducting informal surveys, I'm convinced that this is normal habit among women.
• I prefer animation over live action.

The jury is still out on whether or not I'd be okay with being one of the first permanent settlers on Mars. I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series over the span of the last few months, which thankfully does little to romanticize the notion. Still: Earth is kind of fucked. It's also kind of my home. My cultural and psychological sense of "home" is also fucked. Thinking about it has given me a very interesting lifetime goal to accomplish, though: I'm going to learn and refine as many skills as I possibly can, so that I would at least be a prime candidate for initial Mars colonization. I'm also determined to be the first person in my family to visit space. I am a lofty goal-setter.

I need a vacation. I need (crave) human interaction. I need to stop being afraid.

And now, I leave you with this lighthearted GIF: