Final Martian.

I've finished, or at least hit the point where I don't want to work on this thing anymore.

BEHOLD, MARTIAN.

I am fairly certain the brain line thingys killed me.  So many dadgum little lines to squiggle and wiggle and slither about.    It is a lot of work when you are a lazy person!

I see a lot that I could have worked more on but I could loose myself in tiny details and I don't want to do that.  I am going to find the next thing to work on and I am going to complete it in less than four weeks.

That's all for tonight.  Go'way.

Car drawing.

The first drawing I ever made any money on was of a blue 60 something Chevy. It was a pencil drawing on 8.5x11 paper and it sold for a whopping $20 cash.  We did a quick and dirty seal on it with some hairspray and that was that.  I spent a few hours working on it before the owner of the car ever saw it and quite honestly I had no intention of selling it.  Since then I've painted some planes and cars, mostly for my father some just for me.

I like drawing machines like cars or planes because they are ever so geometric.  The shapes that make them up are very easy to see and to translate onto a page.  One of the first things I've been told in my art classes is to squint.  You remove surface details and the basic shape of the subject comes forward.  From there you can construct the drawing as you see fit and it should work because the foundation is there.  I'm thinking that by this time next year I would like to be able to go to car shows with a portfolio of my pictures and sell commissions.

I think it would be good for me for a few reasons.
1. More practice never hurts.
2. More travel with the family never hurts.
3. If the car owner likes my stuff and decides to buy then that is money in my pocket.
4. If the car owner shows it off it could mean potential new business.

I don't want to come off as sounding like money would be the only reason because it wouldn't be.  If you've never gone to a car show and spoken with the owners then you would understand that any complement to their car is very much like a complement to them.  They spend hours and thousands of dollars in order to make their car exactly what they wanted and very rarely is it anything other than a labor of love.

My father, in my lifetime has rebuilt 5 cars from scrap or better to functional and pretty road machines.  He's been doing it for a very long time.  His baby though, the one that took him ten years is actually a copy of a car that he customized when he was younger.  A 53 Studebaker that he chopped the top off of.  He was forced to sell it by his father after one too many speeding tickets.  It goes without saying that the guy he sold it to totaled it soon after.  Me Da Frankenstein'd the replacement together from 4 or 5 other Studebakers.  I quite distinctly remember that one was used for short track racing.

Ten years, who knows how much money over that time.  I painted him a picture of it for his birthday some years ago.  It still hangs with pride in their house. The point is that these sorts of people love to see their hard work appreciated and I personally like letting people know that sort of thing.  

Romance isn't dead, its just resting.

Years ago I had someone tell me that I was a romantic.  Not the "ooooh flowers leading to champagne and candles" sort of romantic but the sort of person that gravitates towards either idealized concepts or stories that bleed into your imagination and let it run away.  At the time I thought it was a small complement and nothing more.  As I've grown since then I've found that it is less of a compliment and more of an observation. IE: "You've got jam on  your shirt".  

Thinking back on it I feel kind of dumb because it is that blindingly obvious that I am a romantic.  From the games and movies I enjoy to the books and music.  It is no more mysterious than when someone cold reads an audience and finds that someone knew someone who died recently, ala psychics.  Just someone picking up the clues and putting two and two together.  Does it lessen my enjoyment of fantastical things?  HEAVENS NO.  It just means that I can recognize a pattern.

In that vein I'd like to talk about the Romantic movement in art.  (1800-1850ish)

This period was defined by people breaking rules or telling more obtuse stories in their pictures.  Something that by the virtue of a pose and some props would allow the viewer to ponder upon what may be happening or just be lost in the spectacle.  This is probably best illustrated by Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog"

Apparently the French enjoyed showing doomed heroes or useless struggles.  

"Massacre of the Innocents"

Both paintings, in their way and just by the virtue of being, tell a similar story but the kicker as with most Romantic art is that you choose that story.  Maybe that is why I like Mass Effect.  We might know where it goes, but how it gets there is up to us.  I don't know.  I think I may be done for today.