Retro Nostalgia

Some people move on quickly, surely, and indefinitely. I, however, am one of those who linger. Being indecisive and slightly passive, I tend to let things go longer than need be. Procrastination some might call it, but that doesn't quite seem to neatly fit into the description of my actions. It's more like second-guessing or being unsure, although neither of those is correct either. More than anything else, I am merely waiting. Waiting for something more to happen, waiting for the inevitable to occur, or simply waiting for the moment when I'll look back to that moment I spent waiting and wonder why that was what I chose to do with it.

 Nothing of this world lasts forever. However, this is a fact that deserves great celebration rather than metaphoric tears. It makes each and every experience unique, important, and incredibly valuable. Would a perfect day be so fantastically free if you lived it perpetually for years? Would a remarkable friendship really be worth saving if it were not constantly threatened by time? Would you really make the most of an unusual opportunity if it came around more than once? 

Often times I reminisce the days when my art had been very different from what it is now. If it had not been for my childhood friends' fascination with Sega video game icon Sonic the Hedgehog, I may have never learned to draw at all. It was through sheer determination and initiative brought on by slight obsessiveness and a desire to learn that brought me to this moment in time, and so brought me to create this quirky fan art piece. It was an old drawing I drew merely to test the inking capabilities of some new fine-tip pens I bought, and ended up running across some time later while going through old sketchbooks. On an unexpected whim I decided the picture would look simply divine colored and, scanning it immediately, I went to work. Making the decision to digitally color this piece, I had to put seemingly endless amounts of frivolous patience into bringing this strange piece to life.

Etched Lines

Imagination feeds the soul. What with all of the creative streams of thought an artist conceives throughout the day, you'd think that their souls tended to be comforted. I've found this assumption completely untrue, as the artist portion of my soul is always hungry, and never satisfied. It seems that once we have a little, we must have more. There is no end to the conquer and destroy behavior that accompanies our delving into the world of art. We are constantly searching, learning, improving, discovering and creating. There is no rest for the wary. 

A by-product of our fanatic obsessiveness includes original artworks and characters that our wayward minds had invented all on our own. My good friend Eachey had often referred to the process of designing a character as "creating life". I have, over time, brought to life an amazingly vast number of characters, whose designs range from the bleakly mundane to the most exotic eccentricities. I tend to draw characters my age, it seems, unless I purposefully set out to not do so. I don't always create human characters either, so it is not entirely uncommon to see many minutely rendered fantastic beasts as well sweet monsters bordering the line between comic style and anime amidst my broad art portfolio.

These are roughly sketched thumbnails portraying just a  few of the characters I've created in the past year. The girl in the flouncy dress I call Zecarii, the wolf or dog-like creature is called Dazzle, and the last is a character I call Zach. Both Zecarii and Zach tiptoe along the fine line I mentioned earlier, that sets comic art apart from anime or manga. All three characters were originally meant to be used in the graphic novel I frequently mention wanting to create- and perhaps they will still be used for that purpose.

   

"Who Ya Gonna Call?"

 There are a lot of things a person can devote their life to as far as hobbies go. Collecting franchise merchandise belonging to the Ghostbusters and other nostalgia inducing 80's films just happens to be what my dad chose as his favorite past-time. In fact, just this evening we went to Wal-Mart to buy a binder and card sheets for his newly acquired collection of Ghostbusters2 trading cards before picking up our order at the local Pizza-hut. I don't know anybody else with a pocket-sized  Mini-mate Marty McFly, complete with an orange vest, sitting behind the wheel of a Lego-like Mini-mate Delorean-It even has the tiny license plate identical to its larger counter-part, which reads "OUTATIME".

My dad was the one who came up with the idea of me creating an original Ghostbusters fan art piece, and after hearing all of the ideas he had and listening to him share his opinions on the matter, I knew I had to come up with a design that would do the project he had in mind justice. I went all out on this illustration, making sure the initial design was gold from the beginning. The store-front background and the word "Ghostbusters" being spelled out on the street were last minute decisions of mine, although I'm glad I chose to put them in there.

For my dad who is a HUGE Ghostbuster's fan, I dedicate this picture to you. You are what made this blog happen and its your support and encouragement that has kept me at it. Love you, dad.

Serpentine

For those of you who don't know me, I have several unique obsessions. For example, one of these  is my strange fascination with the taste of gravy. I could eat gravy multiple times a day every day. I'm not sure why, but there's something about the savory twinge of salty taste and the liquid consistency of such texture that I simply can not ignore. Some people love their chocolate, and some people can't go without their daily coffee. Get between me and my favorite snack, and the consequences could be disastrous.

On a slightly different note, another of my obsessions includes drawing dragons. I had, and perhaps will always have a peculiar love for scaly creatures. When I was much younger I spent my summers in our backyard, hunting for snakes and bugs, pretending to be some sort of scientist, or Steve Erwin from Animal Planet. Our family would go swimming sometimes, driving out to the country, and I would fascinate myself by trying to catch the tiny brown and blue lizards that made their home among the rocky crevices where the water level had long ago abandoned. 

I remember distinctly being in the fifth grade and going to the Boys and Girls club after school until my mom was off work. They had an arts and crafts room, and it was there with some of my friends that I learned how much art meant to me. While I was there I would draw dragon after dragon, all kinds of species that I made up as I talked and laughed, having not a care in the world. I remember showing the adviser for the arts and crafts room one of my drawings, one of a particularly detailed (for a fifth grader) red and black dragon made out of coals inspired by a figurine I saw in Wal-Mart. She looked over my drawing and said to me, "You're so talented. But it's funny that you like to draw things like that." It was probably the first time I felt seriously offended by an adult. Was it funny that I had some individuality? Was it funny that I didn't like what other girls my age liked? I didn't stay hurt for long, however, and I soon moved on to the other pressing issues an elementary student cares about- many of which I can't quite remember.

I entered this original piece in our school art contest the past school year. It received 1st place in the drawing category of the contest (paintings and mixed media were also entered).

Sand and Seafoam

One thing people can't say about me is that I have no originality. I'm most original and imaginative, however, if left to my own devices, and not forced to work inside a box, something that many of the art classes I've taken force you to do. When I feel a surge of creative energy, I can often create something amazing in only a matter of minutes. When I'm forced to follow a tight structure, and I haven't yet gotten that burst of inspiration that makes hours of artwork fly by in moments, the work becomes tedious and agonizing-nothing short of torture. Another issue of mine is deadlines. It's not that I can't meet deadlines quickly, it's just that knowing I have to be finished with a drawing in a certain amount of time in order to be graded makes my mind work sluggishly slow, impeding my creative process. Out of class I can decisively choose something to draw on an impulsive whim. In class it could take me several days to choose what to draw for a project due in several weeks. Besides these several artistic short-comings, and my ability to quickly improvise where art is concerned, I've passed all of the high school art classes I've taken with flying colors.

This drawing shares some of my originality with the rest of the world. A small tidbit from a world of my own creation, this creature is a siren-like monster that I created for the purpose of existing in the graphic novel I wish to one day write and illustrate. Part-woman, part sea creature, with a tangled mess of what I imagine as unruly red hair and a crown of seashells encrusting her hairline, she's both vicious and cunning. One of the ideas associated with this drawing was individuality. Mermaids are typically said to be part woman and part fish. If this was true in any way, why wouldn't there be hundreds of species of mermaids to accompany the hundreds of fish species in the world? In this way, I drew my first of what may be many seawater beasts.