hey peeps.

today featured:

me posting up the beginnings of a giant love letter. (pictures to come)
me applying for my first illustration-type job. (not full-time. just commission. that's how it starts.)
me calling john hendrix and chatting with him about illustration. (yeah, it's not like he's famous or anything.)
me taking a 1 1/2 hour nap. (when you've been sick for a week, it takes it out of you.)

thank you for reading.






p.s. how many of you besides whitney actually want me to keep writing on this here blog? i mean, because i can just write it for whitney, but some more hands in the air would be encouraging.

blue or the color of my nupastel.

this semester i'm taking two figure drawing classes. meaning i have 12 hours of sitting at a drawing horse, staring at a half naked model, drawing.

at times, it's lovely, really. the human body really is a divinely designed thing, and i've had a positive body image since i've taken the class and realized that curvy human beings are much more interesting to draw.

other times, though, it downright sucks. i sit there, my back hurts, i'm drawing this model when other people around me are drawing the same model infinitely better, and it just sucks.

today, i felt, was one of those days. crappy crappy foreshortening, crappy crappy lighting. crappy crappiness. so, i began experimenting with my drawing, with my technique. omitting things, darkening things, and as it turns out...it became one of my better drawings.

the girl who is the best in the class thought it looked cool. brother barrett (the professor who wrote a book on figure drawing, that's how good he is) said it looked very interesting with the way i edited it. and i thought it looked good.

sometimes the most beautiful things in our lives come from the crappiest situations. you have to push through. you have to get out of your comfort zone, because when you're comfortable in life you're not growing.

i learned that today.

oh, how i love this movie.

"you okay?"
"terrified."
"why?"
"i've been looking out of a window for eighteen years, dreaming what i might feel like when those lights rise in the sky. what if it's not everything i dreamed it would be?"
"it will be."
"and what if it is? what do i do then?"
"well that's the good part i guess. you get to go find a new dream."

les dessins

because there is not a whole lot weighing on my mind today (at least not many things weighing that i want to share with the world), i shall post some recent figure drawings from my figure drawing class.

please enjoy. or not. either way, i don't mind.











i love me some gesture drawings.























and this model rocks my world.

i remember when going out for ice cream was magical.

almost as magical as sitting on a couch from ikea in a yellow room, talking about men and marriage and art. or sitting at a table, eating burritos, and talking about men and marriage and art. [and beauty.] or redoing a blog while her husband builds bridges on his phone.





yeah. those are pretty magical moments, too.

post valentine's day cards

this is what i did at the grandma house on sunday.
excuse poor image quality. i'm no photographer.

"A guilty conscience needs to confess.
A work of art is a confession."

-Albert Camus






here is my confession.
one year later.



excuse the poor image quality.

ess oh ess

focusing is a near impossibility right now.
usually illuminated manuscripts are rad for me. but my brain is just done.

too bad i have 1/3 of my art final to finish by tomorrow (and i haven't even started it).
also too bad: my quiz for new testament. and my breakdown to alycia today. good thing she's wonderful.

will get back to you soon.

something divine

spent the evening with an artist who showed me the ways of figure drawing.

the human body is incredible, isn't it?
after searching through sketches and eating a bowl of special k, i decided it was a one-verse-scripture-study kind of night. i was reading in alma 30 anyway, but this highlighted verse struck my attention:

"...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." (alma 30:44)

i started to think about the human body; what i had witnessed through sketches how muscles move and how beautifully organized our frames and faces and tendons are. think about the fact that we can make another body, that cells and brains and organs are created in us without us even having to think about it.

that, my friends, is a miracle.
and that, to me, is what also denotes there is a God.

a God who loves us. a God who is mindful of us.

no white flag for me

i experienced victories today.

firstly:
i bought an instruction book on how to draw anatomy for half price at the good old bee and en. [barnes and noble]

secondly:
i bought seven pairs of colorful socks for less than a dollar each.

all while wearing my beatles shirt.

I can relate...

This is basically how I am with my art supplies. Especially my Prismacolors.