...stuff

I have decided that I am drowning in STUFF. crap, bullshit, knick knacks, call it what you will but I have too much of it. I decided to be ambitious today and unpack the last 6 boxes I have stacked up in my room upstairs and in the proces of unpacking these, I became angry with how much stuff I have. Why? Why do I have all this crap? What purpose does it even serve? Except to take up space and piss me off? And now, I come down to the kitchen/living room level and I'm looking around and getting pissed off at how much crap is here too. I need to unload. I need to just go crazy and throw stuff away and not even feel bad about it. I need to not feel guilty about throwing away that stuffed bear that I got in a stocking when I was 15, or the ugly bronze lamp I picked up at the thrift store when I was 22. I just feel crowded and claustrophobic. I'm sick of being surrounded by so much junk. I'm sick of having to find places to put all the junk and then hating how cluttered it all looks. So, I'm going to clean it. I'm going to throw stuff away without remorse. Tomorrow, I'm spending the day getting rid of crap.

...dude

So, last night I got a little bit drunk and texted my neighbor and said this, "Still awake? Have any alcohol you want to share with a poor schoolteacher? Or is that obnoxious of me to ask?" WHO DOES THAT??? What a ridiculous text! So, now I don't know if I should apologize and laugh it off or just drop it and say nothing. I barely know him which is why this text is so ridiculous. Seriously, sometimes I amaze myself.

...free concerts

Yay for the Gallivan Center and free summer concerts. Tonight is Josh Ritter. I'm riding trax up there with my neighbor and his friends. Then after, going to Area to rock out old school on 80s night for my friend Jeff's birthday. It's going to be a busy few days. Friday night is Michelle's birthday which means girls night dinner and bowling! Then Flogging Molly saturday, work sunday ten 3 days until I leave for Seattle for a week. Hopefully in that time I get to see Tina, who is in town and cute boy who gets back from his trip this weekend. And there will be drawing and bike rides of course.

Speaking of bike rides, I got home at midnight last night and decided to go for one. Probably not the smartest decision to go on a solo bike ride at midnight but I did it anyway. Went to the coffee shop and tried to draw a lamp for L which turned out super shitty so I trashed it and decided to go with lollipops. Got bored and pedaled home, in time to talk to my neighbor and his friend about bikes. Hence, the plans to go to the Gallivan Center occurred. I'm glad I get along with my neighbors, I've lived so many places where I don't even talk to them and here I am friends with them, it's pretty rad. And I love riding my bike. I almost never want the bike ride to end. I need new road tires because I'm riding around on mountain bike tires which makes it a bit harder but I still love riding it. So, yay for bikes too!

Here's C:

...the letter j

Maybe this has become too much of a dumping ground. All I really write about is stuff that us bothering me or that I am pissed off about. Complain, complain, it's really not that attractive. I try really hard not to complain in real life because I get annoyed with people who do that (especially certain teachers at my school). So, then, blogspot becomes my backup complain enter. I'm really a very happy person. I love life. I should make number stickers that say "Don't judge me by my blog" or "I am not my blog." HAHA! What a good idea.

So, I have been working on this series of drawings of my own illustrated alphabet. This is A.

They are on 9"x12" Bristol in Sakura Micron pen. I am up to K except that I skipped J because I could not think of a good one. A is acorn/apple tree, B is bottle/bubble, C is carrot, D is dragonfly/doorway, E is earring/eye, F is fish, G is graveyard/ghost/girl, H is heart, I is ice cream, K is kite. But I cannot think of a good one for J. Joker, Juice, Jam or Jelly, Jack in the Box...none of these really appeal to me. Usually I just know exactly which one I want to draw, it just jumps out at me but this is not happening with J. I will probably end up doing juice and not being entirely satisfied with it. I just finished H last night and today I will start on L for lamp/light. I was going to draw a lighthouse but my lighthouse just ended up looking very phallic so I changed my mind. I'm excited about this series. I find that if I give myself assignments, I don't get artist block. It's when I'm trying to pull a single idea out of the air that I get stuck, usually I get really stuck when there are too many possibilities. So, I give myself assignments. "An illustrated alphabet" and then automatically, there are 26 drawings to complete, each with specific parameters. I have some other assignments in mind when I am done with this one. Numbers 1-10, I'm going to use insects, like 1 butterfly, 2 ladybugs, 3 spiders, etc; the Kings and Queens in a deck of cards; Alice in Wonderland characters; maybe the Twelve Dancing Princesses. I don't know, the first two for sure, the second two are maybes. There is an artist I like named Stephanie Pui-Mun Law who is illustrating a Tarot deck. This is the Fool card. Her stuff is so organic and gorgeous, I love it. A Tarot deck would be such an ambitious undertaking. The alphabet is proving to be more ambitious than I planned. The first three took me like 8 months but the last few I have been cruising through. I needed to get the hang of it I guess. I really like my drawings. I get really into them. I find myself getting lost in the lines. I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to my drawings, very meticulous about the lines. I have Micron pens all the way from .08 to .005 just to make sure that my lines are as perfect as I can make them. But I love that feeling. The total immersion in something. I love it when I get caught up in a drawing and then when I take a breath and look up, hours have passed. I take such pride in my work. Maybe that's why I'm scared to show it in galleries or anything because I get worried that other people won't care. I worry about other people's opinions. I know I shouldn't, I know I should just go for it but I get nervous. I have come so close to having gallery shows or having my stuff displayed and then backed out at the last minute or never come through with it. But nothing is ever going to happen if I don't try. I'm hoping living in an artist' community will help me. It will be expected of me. We have our own gallery that is opened up during each gallery stroll and they ask people who live here to contribute to that one. Also, my neighbor two doors down wants me to work on some paintings with him. He wants me to draw things on canvas in my style and then he will paint them and abstract them in his. It's a good chance.

Here is a picture of my new tattoo. It's all scabbed up and tight feeling right now and pretty annoying actually. But it's pretty. And I'm not even going to lie, tattoos on your foot f-ing hurt.

Last few days: saw Journey in concert, got a tattoo on my foot, went to the bar a lot, made a stupid decision, went on a date with a very cute artist boy, slept in a bunch, ate rice and cheese burritos from Beto's, got in a fight with my sister, went to a sex toy party, got drunk, smoked too much. I've been busy.

Sometimes my roommate drives me fucking crazy. He was talking today about how he took his daughter to the pool to go swimming and got pissed because half the pool was taken up by "fat asses jumping up and down and waving their arms. fat people should be banned from the pool." So, I got into this argument with him about it because it pissed me off that he said that. Oh so, because he is scrawny, he has more of a right to be in the pool than fat people? At least those people are doing something about it, at least they got out of their house and are trying to fix their current situation. I pointed out his hypocrisy in the matter too...he bitches about overweight people and how much they bug him because they don't do anything about it, they just eat and don't exercise and get fatter yet then he turns around and bitches about how much he hates fat people at the pool and the gym, getting in his way. WTF? Am I the only one who sees the problem with this? So, what would YOU like them to do? Where does he deem them ALLOWED to go? Fuckin bullshit. I told him that he is like the stupid kid in elementary school who made fun of the fat kid in order to hide his own intellectual faults. I am still annoyed about this and we had this discussion almost an hour ago.

My neighbor two doors down asked me to collaborate on some paintings with him. Sweetness.