Hi! I’m back.

You’d know that if you’ve been reading my other blog though. Have you? Well you probably should.

It’s not totally filled with religious crap. There is LOTS of art stuff going on there too ya know. You have to understand, this is the project I am going to be working on for a year or more, so I’ll be talking a lot about this stuff, but I’m not trying to be preaching it. I’m just doing research for the back layer designs of my paintings. There’s a story there. There’s a reason.

I just do not want to become annoying with it. I’m sure I already am! I’m almost half way through it. The kabbalah stuff anyway. There’s only 22 letters. Ya gotta bear with me. I’m not trying to be “super Jew” or anything.

One of the tricky things is how to decipher what to write over here as opposed to what I post over there. Pretty tricky sis. I bet you think I have some kind of premeditated formula or something, don’t you? Ha! You’re so wrong. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

What I do know is that yesterday I was typing about some things on the other blog that made me want to mention some things over here. Excuse me if I recap a little bit from what I was saying yesterday, but I was talking about the paintings that are going to come (one day — soon. I mean, I’ll get to them any time now) and how excited I am about making them!

I was saying how I felt weird about posting my preliminary work.  And I really do – on either blog! It’s not like I have purposely been hiding it, but I guess it’s that I have been purposely hiding it.

I mean, what artist really wants another artist to see how they got from here to there, unless they have Leonardo da Vinci sketches, studies, or highly rendered layouts with grids and rulers all worked out for the proportions they are going to enlarge their perfect sketches to onto their perfectly primered canvases? There are artists like that! And sure, I’d show that shit off too! “Please, come into my studio, see my preliminary sketches? Aren’t they pleeeasing to the eye? I’ve even made some of them into etchings. Would you like some whhhite whhhine??”

Yeah, then I’d have no problem scanning up all my little sketches to show you basically what’s been in my head before I put paint to canvas. That would be easy. They just seem so, I don’t know, private.  Are they for you?

Yesterday for instance, I was talking about how I had a couple different directions where I wanted to take a new concept in my head since I’ve been out to Joshua Tree. I was explaining a little bit about how I work and how I don’t like to waste much time.

This is why I’ll go with the quickie sketch, except when I want something more rendered. Then I will “quickie” it in watercolor – because this will help me find basic lines.

And I know this does nothing to keep my actual drawing skills sharp. In fact, I admit that when I don’t sit down to draw realism – which, mind you, I am able to do (not from life though, only from 2D references) – my skill muscle gets all weak and flabby! It gets a little harder. I am a little slower. I just don’t need to do it very often. I frankly don’t want to do it unless something calls for it. A tree, a sink, a brain, an element I want to look real.

However, it’s true what they say: If you don’t use it, you lose it. 

So, I had this idea to put scaffolding in the paintings, like against the rocks. This was before I went out there. It started out as climbers, their gear, which reminded me of scaffolding, then window washers – then window washers on scaffolding washing the rocks, then maybe just in the backgrounds. Anyway, I was exploring how I want to work with them.

Like this. It’s just a little bit different in the way I wanted to go about it:

Those two are the same rough concept.

Yesterday I said, what if I want to go the route where I use the more “rendered” window washer guy? Then, I would simplify him until he had the least amount of lines so he was just recognizable as what he is without him looking “real” or illustrated. So I’d probably fill a small sketchbook until I liked him in a variety of positions.

But then I said that I wasn’t leaning that way. I was going in the other direction (like the top drawing), and I was afraid to show the rest of the sketches in this book.

Well, here goes!

These are obviously getting a lot simpler, and in some, the window washer is not even making an appearance. I think he’s on a smoke break, or he’s in the loo. Maybe I fired him. Times are tough and everybody has been out of work lately. Why should he be any different?  He should be standing in line with the rest of this country for his unemployment check.

I didn’t mean to fire him. It’s not like I’m taking a bigger paycheck now that he’s gone. I will most likely hire him on various freelance jobs. We’ll see.

In the meantime, These drawings sure suck. I know that’s what you’re probably thinking. I don’t care. Really. I like second, third and last the most. Those are my favorites. But if you ask me on another day, I might be with you and feel that they all are shit. I’m fickle like that. Some days I think I like the work and some days I know I’m a hack.

I think the trick is to keep your balance somehow. However you can do it. I do not have a problem while walking this tightrope and falling on the megalomaniac side, but if and when I do, I welcome it. I think it would be good for me. My issues are that I fall A LOT on the other side, and a fall a long way down.

But you must ask, how then do you continue? How do you continue to create art, pursue a career in art, and publicly exhibit your own work if what you say is true?

That is a good question!

I learned a long time ago, that life lesson we all know. Or maybe we all don’t know. There’s a lot of people that actually don’t know: Do or die.

Do or die might sound super dire for those of you that think art is “cute” or a “choice,” but as a child NOBODY believed in me. I am really not exaggerating when I say nobody. If I didn’t believe in myself, then who?

Think about being a kid for a minute and think about who you lived for. I can’t answer that for you, but it was most likely the person or adult that believed in you. Probably way more than you even believed in yourself. You probably didn’t even think much about who or what you were, or maybe you didn’t think much about it at all because you probably didn’t have to. You were too busy being a kid! That’s what you’re supposed to do! 🙂

Well, you had every reason in this world to live!

Now, I’m not saying “you” like it’s everybody besides me. You may be in the same boat as I am/was – or much, much worse. I am not alone, and this is not a contest. I am just saying it is how I learned: Do or die.

So, it never matters to me if I like my stuff or if I think it’s a pile of dung. Those days come and they go. What matters is that I believe in myself even when I don’t believe in myself.

It’s my job.