Monday, October 27, 2014

Enough

Sweater: Romwe (similar)

I've had enough of this awful southern weather. I want to curl up into heavy drapes and bathe in earl grey again. I'm too tired to write more. Sorry.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Affordable Originals

COVENANT (sold)
FAUSTUS (sold)
CIBORIUM (sold)
DIONYSIUS (sold)
REPARATA (sold)

Around this time every year I like to stock my shop up with smaller affordable prints in order for my customers to either snag things for themselves or finally get something they know a friend would really adore. I know how difficult the holidays can be when you love this time of year so much! I love giving people gifts but sometimes you can't always get everyone something as special as you'd like to. I struggle with not being able to give every single person I know something neat every year.
So this year I thought we could all help each other out! I know nothing quite compares to an original piece of art work (prints are cool, but it's not always the same - no matter how much they look like the original). And I needed some practice. 
I'm awful at drawing hands. In fact, I usually just hide them in my drawings. I think they're one of the coolest parts of the human body but I can never get them quite right. So this was a chance for me to create something small every day that I needed practice with, and to also escape the looming onslaught of working on a single gigantic piece every single day for two months. That just happened, actually. I just finished a large 20x30 collaborative project that confined me to my office floor for two months! So it was really liberating to do something kind of noncommittal but still of good quality every day. I have a really hard time committing to doodle projects like "Inktober," where you doodle in ink every day all month. I think it would be fun, but doing that kind of thing even for practice makes me feel more and more like I'm just stacking up unfinished unfleshed business. I could definitely use an attitude adjustment about that.
Anyway! I hope you guys can snag some of these before they're completely gone! I plan on doing a few more 2.5x3.5s as well as some 4x4s so you haven't missed your chance yet! As of today, the first three pieces in this post are still available here. Happy holidays and merry arting!  

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Angel of Death

First layer of lines and face details.
Defining lines, darkening details, a bit more shading.
Filling in details and a lot more scribbling.
Final pencil render.
Fine tuned, cleaned up, and embellished in Photoshop CS6.

This piece was inspired by a lot of things - such as the Borg Queen and Elizabeth Lavenza's face after Victor mutilated her (Frankenstein, Helena Bonham Carter).

But it was primarily inspired by The Angel of Death from Guillermo's adaptation of Hellboy in the Golden Army. The  creature below is described in The Book of Revelations in Chapter 4. Spooky stuff.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Liquid

Photography: Misty Madonna

It felt sooo good to get in this waterfall! It had been so long since I was able to immerse myself in fresh water. I can't even describe the feeling. Thanks a ton for giving me a pretty tour of Tennessee, Misty!

Friday, October 3, 2014

Royal Fatigue

The glorification and glamorization of busy.

PART I

-- Bertrand Russell

Disclaimer: this primarily of advice to myself and to my fellow entrepreneurs. It may be applicable to most of you reading, but please do not take offense if you truly believe that your use of time and your attitude about that does not apply to these words.

For a few years now my life has gradually become an invisible but full fledged tax write-off. I categorize every experience as if it were an expense. Those time expenses that can benefit my workflow or my business and general survival -- so that my brand will live too. Gone is rest and leisure unless categorized under "reference material" or "studying" -- all for the purpose of applying any sort of profitable time into work. I have trained myself to become a workaholic to the point that my body physically reacts negatively to rest. My body will not allow itself to relax. It's the strangest and most contradictory form of selfishness I've come to know.

I've been reflecting on these problems for months and constantly find myself struggling with it. I struggle with balancing living life and the pressures of productivity like a smoker who has been working on quitting for a decade. I realized a few things during this time. It's not just me. This is as much a cultural norm as pumpkin flavoring in the fall.

I thought for forever that I was simply genetically predisposed to have obsessive work ethic. Members of my family have literally gone nuts as a result of nipping these behaviors in the bud too late. But then, after those people in my family fixed themselves, I wondered what it was that still seemed to pressure me to be twice as productive as the day before. I of course am responsible for my actions, but something outside of my own attitude still loomed over me. 

I want to be productive, I want to use my time wisely, and I want to benefit from my work... But what room for benefit do I have if all of my time is spent working?

I soon started to notice, mostly upon my fellow entrepreneur friends, that rest and leisure are now seen as an expensive luxury, instead of as necessity. It's a rare treat you receive after traveling X amount of miles or answering Y amount of emails. All normalcy looked as if it had escaped from my fellow artists' lives. Their work is their life. As is mine. 

Being too tired is so glamorous, isn't it? Busyness and fatigue are badges. Those badges no longer represent fathers and mothers who have resentful children because they're not really with them even when their parents are present. Those symbols project "I'm going places, I'm getting more done than you are therefore I am more successful, I am worth more, I'm tired because the world needs every moment of mine, I'm busy because I'm important, I'm important." 

You know how you feel when you look at old Hollywood photos? The glamour in partying, leisure, vacation, gigantic libraries, camping. It was all so gorgeous and interesting. Now, all my feeds tend to be about hopping planes to New York, reading books for blogs, meeting friends for meetings, and posting photos of food from those meetings. Is there nothing left for ourselves to be done in private, anymore? Nothing that can't be judged by our followers/subscribers/customers? 

Say you are very good at balancing your business and you life. That's great. You put your computer away at five and take the rest of the day for yourself. But. Now I'm guilty of this. You're also the first person to take a photo of your glass of wine or your meal or you cuddling your cat. Like how a new mother shows off her child. You are making your recharging time your work. Any person with a business knows that social media can be a full time job. Stop that. This time is for you, not a chance for 73,000 other people to give you their opinions on your food and drink. These photos or your Netflix binge and check-ins to restaurants at airports and clubs in big cities become their own badges. A public pat on the back for a reward that you allowed yourself to experience because you were productive. Let everyone know you deserve this slice of pizza today because you finished an eight hour shoot.

You could have called your mom in the time it took for you to choose a filter and come up with something interesting to say. What of those two thing is more valuable than the other? The last time I talked to my mom was almost two weeks ago. Not because I don't want to, it's just that doing anything outside of working sounds like the most daunting task in the world. Ironic, right?

Now, I know all too well the importance of social networking. It seriously almost does require 24 hour activity in order to sustain relevance. But it must to stop somewhere.

Since I've been in Nashville I've been trying to get out more. Going to events and parties and openings and the like. It's been a blast and I've met some interesting people. But let's be honest. It's been for work. Not just for the sake of it being fun. It's networking. It's making appearances to tweet about later. I probably would have had a lot more fun if I wasn't thinking about what other people thought about my work or what I was going to say about my going out later.

We are not super humans. When we try to expect that kind of performance from ourselves, we will always fail and that feels awful. Particularly for a person like you and I. Every day this week has been awful for me. I ran out of juice. 

It's an ugly cycle. Getting up before the sun does, fitting in a workout, coming home for breakfast, ripping into work during breakfast, taking a break to shower, and then spending the next twelve hours finding and making up ways to be productive... there's not enough coffee or B12 in the world to sustain that kind of lifestyle consistently. And I know that. But I still do it. I fear losing the glamour of busy. I fear sitting with only myself and focusing only on what's in my head because I know there's not a whole lot left in there at the moment other than a to do list for tomorrow or the movie I watched last night. This makes me so tired, but not in the ethereal moody way you see on tumblr. 

A popular internet figure posted this pretty photo on their tumblr. It's partially what compelled me to write all of this. This is another somewhat relevant piece of media that came to my attention after finishing this photo set.

This week I've been too tired to work the way I usually do, but have also acquired a tremendous amount of guilt from being normal and watching an entire Netflix documentary without editing photos or video or checking email while doing so. That moment I took for myself felt wasted, but waste and productivity can mean completely different things to the next person. For me, it was an accomplishment.

Give yourself some credit. Stop trying to feel guilty. For me, reading a chapter in a book is an accomplishment. If I can do that without checking my email, I've done a good for that day. For some of you, being productive might mean getting the kids to school alive. That's great. Don't define your levels of success, productivity, or even leisure based on your favorite model on instagram. You will make yourself sick. It happened to me because of me. So be wary of your expectations of yourself as well. Your self worth is not measured by your busyness, whether it be private or public.

I'm going to work much harder on this in the next couple of weeks and I'll report back to you with a few new photos as well. I encourage you to at least reflect on your attitude toward yourself in correlation with time. Perhaps considering if it's something you need to tweak some. Maybe you don't need to change at all. But we would never know that unless you took a break to think about it, right?

Please feel free to supply your thoughts on this matter or to follow up with me if you have decided to change anything!
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