Painting progress

So I took a little time away from going insane and decided to do some work on my paintings. The three piece ghost piece has been getting on my nerves so I just decided to sketch out some skeletons with ink and I painted them in with yellow. I actually used my finger for the yellow paint. For the "Gods Revived" painting I began to fill in the flesh/bone tone on the figures and started adding some of the cloth detail.

Projects

I took some time this week to start packing up my studio for the move. There are something's I will not be able to take to Texas with me. It sucks but I can sacrifice some studio space for a new place and new people. I also took the time to work a few projects.

I finally painted my longboard. I used the idea of the yellow bird that I did an illustration of not too long ago. Over all if think it turned out great.

I also started on a new painting of "The Gods". I did not like how the illustration on paper was turning out so I took the old painting of the god of capitalism and sprayed over it. So far I just have the layout and figures sketched out.

Finally I did a quick sketch of my comic characters in pen. I like the raw look of the gesture type sketch. I did not use pencil by I wanted to see how they would look just sketched out in pen.

Busy Bee

The past month has been rather crazy. I started taking two online courses. One is on the basics of adobe creative suite. I have a basic understanding of illustrator, photoshop, and indesign, so so far it's pretty easy. I'm looking foreword to learning how to use flash and dream weaver. The other class is on advertising and public relations. It's pretty self explanatory and basic common sense knowledge of how advertising works.

Besides that Jackie and I have been trying to figure out if we can make a move down to Houston, TX. We are both excited about being somewhere new, somewhere that provides opportunities for us to grow (unlike the town we are in). Hopefully we can both find jobs down there pretty soon.

So take all the excitement of college classes and trying to move, on top of the joys of living in our place, makes for a rather hectic month. By joys I mean utter frustration. We've had to have our furnace worked on twice and something happened either with the electrical or the Directv box that caused two TVs to fry. Fun stuff to say the least.

Longboard

So I decided to add some work to my longboard. I taped up the original the original work on the board and added some spray and some ghosts and of course I had to add a skull and banners.

Call ended

Here is a sketch I did last night. Just playing around with the idea of phones being an extension of our self identity. It also touches on how wired our hearts and emotions are to the internet and the Information Age.

The rose and the bird

For the longest time I have wanted to get a tattoo of a yellow rose. Before I was born my mother gave birth to boy, his name was Aaron Bard Adlon. Sadly he did nothing live to be more than a day old. Every sense I can remember, my father would always come home on that date (February tenth, twelve days before my birthday and seventeen days before my mothers) with yellow roses for my mother. Years later I would join a fraternity who's flower was a white rose. This flower represents brotherhood, something god blessed me with, not through a blood brother, but through the brotherhood of men joined by love, truth, and honor. Then a few years ago, my greatgrandmother (my mothers grandmother) passed away. Everyone in the family knew that she loved bird watching in her later years and her favorite bird was a gold finch (I believe, I know it was a bright yellow bird). I always find a strange connection in that my father buys my mother yellow roses for my brother, my greatgrandmother's favorite bird was yellow and that yellow has always been my favorite color. It's odd how we can find connections between the little things in life.

What is your education worth?

This post has been long over due.

In high schools across the country, students are being fed the same line; go to college to make more money. But it's not that easy. I find myself swimming in debt. My decision to go to college was not fully thought through. Now granted I would not be the person I am today if I had not gone to Gettysburg College. But there are so many things I would change if I could. I've learned more about what it really takes to survive in the real world over the past year and half.

Just because you earn a degree does not mean you will get a good paying job. Now granted I went to school for Art, but I have class mates that seem to be doing alright with similar degrees. Here's where I messed up. I never took the time to look into internships, never took the time to gain real job experience before I left college. The second mistake I made was not double majoring. If I had double majored in Art and Sociology (rather than just a minor) maybe I'd have a viable job. Maybe I would not be drowning. But I didn't.

The biggest mistake I made was paying as much as I did for college. I graduated with a BFA and enough debt to pay a mortgage. Not the smartest thing to do.

So here's my advice to anyone looking to go to college for anything.

- Work before you go to school, figure out what it is that you really want todo
- Research schools, find the right program
- Understand how student loans work, just because a bank lends you 40k does not mean that you will be able to pay it back.
- Double major.
- Find an internship to give you experience
- Finally, college is not for everyone, some days it feels like it's just a medal of social status that weighs me down