Hello True Art Believers!!!

                It's the first week of February, let’s do this!!! Time to Crush It!!!  I say that phrase to my co-workers often.  Usually to get a little chuckle or laugh, but also laced with a little bit of seriousness.  I try my best to crush the day.  Especially in the mornings, it is the time I can schedule the easiest.  In the evenings "Crushing It!!!" can be a little ambiguous.  It's the effort that counts I suppose. 

                I would like to think that I crushed the previous month "January", knocking out close to thirty illustrations, maintaining a journal, and adapting to a seven day a week schedule with relative ease.  I say relative ease with a grain of salt because there were roadblocks.  I stayed at it, pushed forward, and remained consistent. Even though I would have loved everything to have gone smoothly, I could not have asked for a much better month (January).  There was one-day last month that I wish I had not been hungover, but I made a choice the day before to let loose.  Which I regretted almost immediately.  It was not worth the loss of productivity.  Not to mention I just felt awful. Six hours of revelry for forty-eight hours of feeling just all kinds of awful and losing all the time to do things that needed to be done.  It is what it is, not worth crying over it now.

                But February, let me tell you, it’s going to be awesome.  I can't wait to tackle new commissions and continuing my work on my digital illustrations.   Slowly I will be getting my feet back into my studio.  It has been tough getting down into the studio with my limited time.  I used to paint two hours a day, but the only reason why I was able to accomplish that was that I sacrificed every other aspect of my life to make time available to me.  Part of it was sleep.  Something I am no longer willing to sacrifice, not with a daughter demanding so much of my energy. I am already running thin on the sleep front. This February will be a different scenario, a lot of the urgent and important tasks will have been done and some the frantic hustling to get everything organized for the beginning of the semester will have tapered down by then.

                I hope the end of the day will be devoted to painting in my studio and hopefully many of you will be able to see some of my creations to come.  Again, I can't forecast my artistic future, no matter how much I would like to know for myself.  But currently, I am just content being able to sneak in an hour of drawing a day.  It's not the worst situation to be in, but I can’t wait to start making some more serious work.  Pokémon are fine to draw as studies and to learn the fundamentals of sketchbook pro, but I would still like to make something more tangible. 

                Again, just like with all my blog post I find myself going into weird rants about my time and the importance it is to me.  I guess it is kind of like when you were a kid in school and you spent your time staring out the window, yearning to go out and play, but you can't, you’re stuck in school.  Nor are you rebellious enough to skip school, so you stay in school.  That is my situation currently, but only I am at work.  It's a catch twenty-two, I need to work to make my art, but for me to make art, I need to not work.  So, I am constantly juggling my time.  I'm not complaining, or am I?  At least you may relate to the struggle.  But maybe instead of art, you'd rather be fishing or working on your motorcycle. 

                Who knows maybe that will become a reality for you, just like my dream is making amazing art full time.  February is a steppingstone to accomplishing that.  I hope you have been enjoying the Pokémon that I have been sprinkling into these blog posts.  It has been quite fun working on them.  I have been learning a lot using the drawing program sketchbook pro.  I had this old Wacom tablet that I bought years back with the money from a commission and I figured why not use it.   I have been trying to do one digital illustration a day for about thirty minutes a day.  Sometimes I spend even more time on one drawing.  Usually, I do this on Tuesday and Thursday when I have a bit of extra time before I leave to go teach at a college across the river.

                That will explain why sometimes I have more complete drawings over others.  To be honest I prefer having them unfinished.  There are times when I am working on my drawing and I do not know what to do next.   That’s from a mixture of not being experienced with drawing digitally and not used to drawing in a more cartoon, graphic style.  I truly am enjoying the process and seeing the growth in my ability to use the program.  Some mornings I do have a bit of doubt when drawing on my tablet and I can feel my hand movement tighten up.  It is hard to explain; probably, only athletes, artist and people having to make a speech experience it.  When that happens, I have to remind myself to keep moving my pencil and trust the process of drawing.         

                It works most of the time, but there are days where I get into a perfectionist positive feedback loop and I will draw and redraw the same line on my drawing.  Artists can their worst critic, often to their detriment because it can render them paralyzed.  I've been there and it is not a fun spot to be in as an artist. 

                WOW!!!  what a rollercoaster of subjects being tackled in this blog.  At the very least I get an "A" for effort.  Probably one of my best skills, effort. There are many pros and cons to that quality.  The cons for me is I make mistakes often and still don't learn from them.  It can take me like three times as long to learn something than other people because I want to know without a shadow of a doubt that I have exhausted every option with regards to my mistake.  I think this is a good quality because I have usually experienced more mistakes than the average person and I tend to know more solutions.  This only pertains to art, not much else, well, maybe fitness too.

                The mistakes also include this very blog post. Even now I am not sure exactly how to pursue my blog posts.  So, I am pursuing different avenues on the overall theme of my blog.  Who knows! Maybe the theme and direction are that it has NO theme and direction.  That might be part of the charm of it.  It might be nice that I’m not trying to cater to any specific person.  *shrugs* Again, I wish I had something more concrete to talk about.  I guess deep down the generic narrative of talking about my art as if it is some poetic metaphor on the beauty of life does not appeal to me.  Nor do I want I put a front and write about how my art brings me happiness and that it's nothing but a joy to create. I don't want to romanticize the reality of painting.  It's time-consuming, hard work, and can be a bit frustrating at times.  Partly because I am always challenging myself, but also because I struggle with making art with the finite time I have available to me. So I’m constantly juggling myself and putting many hats throughout the week just to have some sense of order in my life.

                I think I have exhausted all the relevant thoughts and stuff that is occurring in my life.  I hope it brought you some value in your day, and maybe learned something out of the jumbled jargon.  Have a wonderful day!

Cheers,

Matt

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