i love scotch!!!!!! it tapes everything!!!!

It's no secret that my only vice is scotch. Well, that is, aside from cigarettes and compulsive vulgarity. or extreme criticism. Or....................it goes on. 

But I love scotch. I mean, i LOVE it. 85% of the works I've created in the past few can clearly be attirubuted to scotch. Why the f**k else would I draw so many bunnies in various situations.........that was too open ended.

But scotch - despite providing a conduit to creativity, or at least an excuse to b creative, it has also provided the impetus for countless conversations that were, at the time, profoundly deep.........but when the shit wore off, I can honeslty say the conversations were interesting at best. 

regardless, scotch has brought my best of friends together time and time again for drinks, sticks, tears and jeers, and they keep coming backl. that may be because the f**king scotch is free. Or because they like the temporary profound conversation. Or not. 

But at the end of the day, who cares - a little bit of scotch takes the edge off of anyone, and ets you forget, if only for a moment, that meaningless laughs around the table, at times, have more meaning than the worrisome bullshit we're all so consumed with very time we wake up. 

I draw - and I like to think i draw quote well - but there are still those who willingly shit on my ability as nothing more than a distractionn from real talent. At first, I took these criticisms to heart, but then I looked inside myself, then stopped looking inside myself and looked outward towards the very critics that wwre so easily passing judgement on the very works which I put out for public eyes and realized, "hey, the peple talking shit are a bunch of goth-emo worthless sacks of shit that haven't contributd a flkying fuck to society, so who gives a rats ass what they think because at the end of the day, no one will fuck them. And so they spend their time talking about my art, which is time weel spent in my opinion."

man scotch makes you ramble. And not type very well. Or draw very weel. As a matter of fact,I burned a cd for my friend who was over just now, enjoying some scotch no less, and I wrote the title of the cd and kind of went over the dge with my sharpie and marked a drawing I made ast night. Not happy about that, In fact, i hope his cd player blows up temporairluy. or not. i hope he likes the cds. it was four.

scotch. I bet elvis liked scotch. William wallace did. and i'm sure if it was around in the time of jesus, he would've said " man. this is pretty good. Maybe I'll stick around for and extra 12 years to enjoy this to see how much better it gets." didn't work out that way, but the movie was excellent.

Assumed civility. Do you have it? ointless plugs:

Theory Tested.....Now bring on the placebos!

Sort of. Well, it seems someone actually reads this blog and bothered commenting on my last post. So much so, that the comment I received yielded some results - as I stated it would. I do tend to draw what's easiest for me. That, in turn, slows down my progress since I don't push myself as a starving artist would.

And so on, my biggest problem is drawing chicks........or females or w/e the preferred nomenclature these days. That said, my wife made a comment the other day that simply resonated in my head for hours about how shy and conservative she can be, and bam - my hand and the two muses made this baby in my head:

I thin it came out alright - but as always, I was already sick of it in a few hours. Can't help it. 5 minutes after I finish a piece, I think I'm the best artist in the world. But when I look at the same piece after a little while, I think I'm a complete asshole that doesn't have the first right to draw. It's a driver I guess.

Funny thing though - the person who commented who provided half of the impetus for this piece hales after almost 3 years of silence. It's pretty f'ing crazy how time flies. Especially among friends. If I haven't mentioned it in an earlier post, I'm a very extroverted and friendly guy - well that's how I am on the outside anyway - but I don't makes friends easily. That is, I don't accept every f'ing retard into my life that does nothing but talk about sports and the latest porn sites - not to get all high and mighty, but I like my company to have certain blend of wit and disdain for society - it makes for some interesting conversations - and fashion statements at times.

3 years huh? Fuck. In 3 years I've advanced 3 times professionally, finished college, got married, got a dog, become even more distant with my family, re-discovered my passion for art, downloaded god-knows-how-many songs, seen about a billion movies, drank over 1,000 beers, and also developed quite the fondness for scotch - actually that fondness has been around for a lot longer, but I can afford a lot more of it now thanks to that professional advancement schtick.

But 3 years - makes you realize how fragile relationships can be, and makes you appreciate all the more the ones that have gone the distance.

Or not. 

- m -

WTF?: Let 'er rip already.........

So you want to know the worst part about being an untrained, self-proclaimed artist???? You tend not to associate with your own breed. By that I mean, you are rarely in the company of true artists - i.e. the pretentious flakes that feel the need to dress as outlandish as possible because it helps to define or differentiate them from the rest of the crowd, or as I once heard it put, "normies" (non-art folk). Well - as I typically react - f' that. 

So back to the worst part - critiques. I work in the business world, and somewhere along the lines, someone decided to come up with a bullshit term for criticism so nobody's feelings got hurt - 'feedback' - what a stupid term. When someone recognizes you for something, it's called praise - when they completely tear your ass, its called 'feedback'. Last time I checked, feedback was the fucking noise that was produced when two stereophonic electronic devices emitting the same frequency came into close contact. Now it just means, "your an asshole, you need serious improvement, but let me communicate my feelings to you in a diplomatic way by not using any profanity to clearly state what I feel." 

Well, enough with corporate culture.

When your an artist, you tend to share your works with the people closest to you - it's instinctive - if they're your friends, that pretty much means that they have an opinion in which you share, or at least respect. well, when it comes to art, there couldn't be a more counter-productive environment than that. Your friends are not art experts (that is, unless, they are - i.e. they're a curator or art history major or something). 

For example:

I'm  personally pleased with this piece, but it's LOADED with mistakes!!!! Of course, any friend who sees it will automatically tell me "Dude, that's awesome!" - now, that doesn't mean that I'm unappreciative  - believe me, I pretty much put up with my parents for most of my life telling me that art is a bullshit career, and that it will never amount to anything - so I seriously take ever positive comment I get to heart, because it only motivates me to keep going.

BUT - because my friends are only so savvy about art, and what it takes to think of, sketch, line, and color a single piece, it's the equivalent of me complimenting an architect/construction manager on completing a new building because of how nice it looks. The thought, effort, doubt, etc. are pretty much void from then on.

So WTF? What does it take to get feedback from strangers - I DO have a professional reputation to uphold, so I can't exactly parade my work, in-hand, at an intersection and ask for honest opinions from strangers - after all, I'm from Miami so that could end REALLY bad for me, but what then? i wouldn't pay someone to sit and think about my work - that too would be biased based on the what I pay them? I don't want to take it to an art/design school frankly because I've seen/followed the art that comes out of those places, and the professors could seriously use a fucking art lesson from the same company that makes "paint by numbers." I mean seriously, just because some introverted reject welds some bullshit metal together, or they smear some paint on a canvas with their fingers or genitals DOES NOT qualify them as artistic genius'. 

Now THAT is feedback. Or maybe it's the scotch talking. But, there in lies my problem - without the hard criticism to flag the shortcomings of my work, how am i supposed to get better? I'll pretty much go in a self-defined direction that could end with me producing the equivalent of some hello-kitty bullshit. Not that I wouldn't mind the revenue from that brand, but I'm not in art to turn a buck. I put up with assholes on a daily basis at work and the street so that I don't have to deal with them in my 'arena of interest'. 

So what do you do? WHAT do you do?

I guess I'll have to continue to be my own biggest critic. And MAN am I an asshole.

m

(Other work - now critique i dammit - shit on it!!!!!!)

and so on........

Well, it's been almost a month since my last post - the reason being, I've been busy as hell. Good busy. As I mentioned before, I now work for Big Brown, and today marks the end of my second week there. Jeeeez. Talk about intense. I've been in management training this past week, so I haven't been near a computer the entire time.

The goo news is that the wife and I were able to get away for a week finally - just us down in Key West. Personally, I think Key West is an average vacation spot - unfortunately the weather was total shit. We made the most of it and actually had a great time. A week off before starting the next chapter in y career was JUST what the Dr. ordered. 

In other news, my version of CS2 completely  c r a s h e d  on me. I went in to withdrawal mere hours after this incident. So at the moment, I'm running on a trial version of PS from CS3. Seriously, I have no idea what to do.

So here's the art I've put together in all this time - please excuse the lines - I know they're shit: