Art Cla$$e$

I hate art classes for some reason. I think the only thing I might have ever gotten out of them is dispensable knowledge and the opportunity to best somebody at something. I suppose that now that my view of art has been somewhat warped over the years dealing with whether I really loved it or if I wanted to be rich and famous.

I still can't be certain. Everybody wants to be recognized for something and many people want to do new things to entertain others that they also enjoy. I suppose what everybody wants if nothing else is to find their spot in the world.

How the hell will I ever know if my reason is the right reason? Anyway, I have always, since Elementary, had this thing about arriving at results in my own particular way, even if it wasn't my particular style. There were ways I was taught how to use crayons, chalk, etc, but I always used them in a way I felt was logical for the medium. Most of the time it turned out good. Often the best out of everybody's.

It's kind of the same now. I still hate art classes and I still don't like the teachers methods alot of the time. Without making everything philosophical or representative, I'll talk about now, in my real drawing class. I'm having problems understanding how the teacher wants us to use charcoal and why. I think pencil would achieve the results she is trying to achieve much easier than trying to make charcoal perform with lights and darks. Too much blending and erasing. I'm used to building up and correcting with graphite.

To my credit, I've grown somewhat emotionally from my youth and I realize that there is something to be learned. Something that I might have known before. I really am trying, but it's frustrating feeling uncomfortable doing things I feel like I should know how to do. Like a basketball player who has nice handles, but realizes in college he needs to work on his defense and his jump shot.

Try as I may

Try as I may, I haven't been able to draw worth crap this weekend. Maybe that means I'm not motivated. Maybe I just can't get loosened because of recent stresses still hanging over my head. If I thought I was feeling bad before, I don't know if I feel any better after my Oz marathon. I might even feel worse. Since I couldn't draw I finished watching all those downloaded Oz episodes I had. Since I didn't have cable for most of the second half of the series, I missed alot. Good stuff.

I thought I felt a tad bit of catharsis after watching Oz, but what I felt after I woke up that evening was sort of a void. I had been feverishly watching Oz for some weeks now. I know at some point last night I had that kind of feeling that Oz's ending would be grand. That all the answers to life would be contained right there in the extended length final episode. I was good, but no keys to life. I hadn't even noticed all along that the series was slowly ending the last two seasons. Winding down and wrapping everthing up in a package. Not everything was all so neat, but it was as good as I could expect. No disappointments.

I know I'm bored, but what really bad is when you know you're bored, but you can't do anything about it. Well, I'm gonna try my best to warm up and get something done or else I'll probably end up in worse shape than I was before. It's odd that things like cartoony looking cartoons should be easy, but they really aren't. They require a humorous frame of mind which I really don't have right now.

As much as I would love to just say that regularity is the key to ridding all my artistic problems, it seems like my emotional state is alot more important part than I would've thought. Who'da thunk it huh?

Ch4ng3Z

This year has brought alot of changes in me internally. Many if not all good, but when does a person, despite all good intentions, have to realize that it can't all be good. What if when this bad thing, is really a good thing to you (me), but it will also bring more bad things with it. Possibly life long negative effects.

If I could do anything--and I have tried--I would, but I don't think there is much I can do to stop it from happening. Better to take a risk than to just accept the bad indefinitely. Otherwise it just be unhappy and it might get worse.

So here goes crossing the dessert, just to come to that ominous mountain. The mountain is steep and rough, I could die climbing it. On the other hand I wouldn't last out in the dessert trying to go around it. Hope there's green grass, fresh water springs, and plentiful food on the other side. I'll settle for an oasis and a shade tree.

Zero Hour

I'm writing this now that I've just finished the redesign of my site, Scenarios, after only a month. Can't say it's a record, but it is a quick redesign by my standards. This would be my third design, one I'm pretty happy with. I suppose I didn't really know how I wanted my site to look at first. Consider that a rough draft. This new one is completely a design of my own.

It's quite peculiar how long I've been doing "creative" things that I still have no idea how the creative process works. Or else I have some kind of epiphany, thinking I've final got it. That I'll never despair or lose hope when things aren't turning out the way I envisioned them in the beginning.

I thought that I knew that when anyone first starts out doing something that they are a little confused, lost, frustrated. They don't know if they will ever figure something out (even when millions or billions of other humans across the centuries have did it before). That goes for XHTML, programming, writing, anything a person is new to. In this case it happened to be web design.

I don't really know why I've never built a web site before other than messing around with a free authoring program or the included stuff with graphics programs. If I can find the answer to that, then I would know why I don't have an "eye" for web design or any design for that matter yet. I've never really been the kind to just want to draw pretty squiggles on my paper or do newsletters. Bluntly, I've always been pretty boring when it comes down to design other than maybe trying to make another spandex super-hero costume.

Let me not beat myself up, that's not entirely true. I have always been in the business of designing characters of my brothers and my own, furries, as well as super-heroes, and normal people. Character design is design. Especially when it comes to cartoon characters who use the same look all the time except when they occasionally either change costumes or wear something else over their built-in costume. Hair, jaw, nose, shirt, shoes, damn near patented, repeated expressions. That's design. Whether I knew it or not I guess.

All the processes start out the same I guess. Even if I don't usually get inspiration for just making things look pretty.

It took me about the same development time as the previous site. Not so long designing the damn thing, the larger part is spent working out the bugs. I mean, this time I swore I got everything right, no flaws in the HTML, nothing. But when I started adding the scripts and putting the files on the server, it stopped working, so I had to take hours trying to figure out why. Usually I don't figure the problems out, so I end up having to take it apart piece by piece to see what part is making the code not work. It was an incorrect usage of a link in the iStrip tags is all. I was relieved when I finally figured it out. The rest of the pages were a snap.

Still don't have the comic up yet though. Luckilly tomorrow, whoop, today is Labor Day. It is right? I really don't look at calendars much and don't want to.