Day 82/365: Don't go.

Today, you get a random conglomeration of pictures.
If you don't want to hear about my day, just scroll down until you see pictures, because I am going to put some BS about my life here.

I was actually busy for most of the day, including the part where I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt1, and then How to Train Your Dragon. And did dishes several times.
Although... the time I was online I was pretty wrapped up in reading cracked.com articles.
This is random, but I'm getting quite bored of a bunch of my facebook apps again. I don't play nearly as many as I used to, and it seems like the ones I play now are just getting... old. I'm getting bored with them. I'm thinking of taking a hiatus/quitting most of them for a while.

It's one thing to play so many apps it takes you several hours just to check them all when you essentially have no life and nothing going on. It's another to actually start getting shit together and start making things happen (albeit small things, but nevertheless things). I feel like maybe I'm starting to move towards actually having stuff to do in real life (abbreviated as "IRL" for all you internet tards) and maybe not feeling like wasting time playing facebook apps.

I'm still a bit nervous about the paper route, and having to field doubts about that (mostly from my father, who keeps saying I need to get a real full time job and not some piddly newspaper route). Yeah, well 76 bucks a month might suck as far as income, but it's 76 dollars more a month than I make now, so he can just shut up.

Speaking of jobs, I have an interview at Best Buy on Tuesday or Thursday (I have it written down on a notepad at the table, but I'm too lazy to go check) at 2. I'm trying to remain positive about that, but I've been interviewed by Best Buy before and still not gotten the job. I looked up a site on how to answer their interview questions, so hopefully that helps. I mean, there's got to be something I'm doing wrong in the interviews.

The thing is, a lot of them ask about "Talk about when you missed a deadline, tell me about a time when you had to work as part of a team to reach a deadline, blahblahblah", and unless I use some BS from my time as a college student, I really can't think of anything that fits that description.
I have never worked at a job with specific "tasks", "deadlines", and all that shit. When you wash dishes, you get to leave when all the dishes are done and you've swept/mopped your area and drained the dishwasher. There is no time I have to be done by. When I cleaned hotel rooms, they had an average amount of time they wanted it to take you to clean each individual room, but there was no set in stone time we HAD to be done by.

Still. This time I'm going to try really hard, and look really nice. And really, if I get the Best Buy job, that might affect my decision to keep delivering papers. If by some stroke of luck I got the Best Buy job, I would probably only deliver papers for the summer. I'm almost secretly hoping that's what happens.

Okay. That's enough rambly BS for one day. Let's get on with the pictures.

A cute tumbler I got for a quarter at a second hand store. There was a set of four, but I only bought one, forever messing up anyone who had wanted a complete set. Hey. Three is a lucky number in Japan. Little girls' tea sets come with three cups. Look that shit up.

An old picture of me. I miss not having bangs. I loved having bangs, but I've decided to grow them out. And it's going to be a pain in the ass all summer. XD

I wrote "Steve" in the sand, and then overlaid a picture taken by Ross Halfin. I hope typing that name doesn't set off some internet bots who get this picture taken down. I really mean it as a tribute to an adorable, talented, but ultimately troubled man who was taken from us too soon.

Lyrics from "Photograph" by Def Leppard, written on the beach.

A picture I took because I wanted to use it as a background to an image blend I wanted to make. Not sure if I got around to this particular one.

Pretty sure you've already seen this, but I don't care. Writing cursive in the sand using a piece of driftwood isn't as easy as it looks. LOL.

I'd love to write this again and then have Rick stand next to it so all you'd get is the name written in the sand, and his cute bare feet. I can dream, can't I? Lol. I actually have another picture idea for if I ever have that opportunity. It would require his wife being present. But basically, I would have him wearing a guitar, with his right arm on the neck of the guitar. His wife would be standing to the left of him, with her left hand strumming the guitar strings. I used to never tell people that idea because I was afraid someone would steal the idea, but let's face it. 1, it probably isn't an original idea, and 2, even if it is, I'll probably never get the chance to actually take that picture. Even if I get to meet Rick someday.

So I beg you. If you have this opportunity, TAKE IT. Just get Rick to autograph a print and send it to me, please. 

I know this is just a screenshot of my desktop at one time, but I don't think I have that actual picture anymore, so I decided to post this.

I think this picture is pretty good, but I might be biased because it's also really nostalgic for me. And if you're not me, you won't understand why.

Someone spray painted a peace sign on a civil war memorial in town. The city has since cleaned it off.

Honestly, I know it's like, defacing city property, but for fuck's sake, it's a PEACE SIGN painted on a war memorial. If it were me I'd have just left it there. But Clear Lake has to worry a lot about their image (since we have a fuckton of people living here in the summer).

The antique store you see on that corner? It's gone now. It went out of business, and got torn down. 

Tomorrow's theme is "don't wait up", and I'll be honest, I've got no clue in hell as to what I'll do for that.

Day 81/365: Distorted.

For today's entry, you get a bunch of pretaken, premade stuff. I already explained a bunch of shit in what was supposed to be yesterday's entry, so I won't go on about it again.

However one thing is a bit different. I'm having another episode of creepy music induced paranoia.
I was browsing cracked.com, and even though I've read this article before, I like re-reading certain articles.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19094_6-songs-that-were-decades-ahead-groundbreaking-music.html

The mistake I make with music that scares me is that even though I KNOW it's going to freak me out for hours afterwards, I can't resist checking to see if I still find it extremely creepy.
Well, I do. Go look at that article. Love without sound is pants shittingly frightening for me, but for some reason I still clicked on that play button and had to listen to half of it.
This first reared its strange head in college, when I was in psychology class. Even though I had to drop that class,  the one thing I remember is us talking about subliminal messaging, and part of that was about backmasking in music. I think that was actually one of the triggers of my strange paranoid behavior.
The teacher played us a clip from a website, which I later looked up. It's the stupidest thing in the world now, but listening to the backwards Led Zeppelin clip back then? It scared me so much that for three days and nights, I slept with the lights and the tv on.

Now, admittedly that was pretty crazy and I've moved on from that sort of stupid shit behavior, and largely I am a lot less paranoid about some of that stuff. However, I find that I go through waves of being a little too paranoid. Most of the time I'm okay, but the paranoia will spike and drop at certain points. Tonight is just a spike.

Honestly though, creepy music has a strange way to just... ugh. The creepy music or whatever will get stuck in my head and will just loop over and over until I'm really freaked out. That will be easy to combat with an mp3 player that I occasionally wear to bed anyway but... I don't know. During the times when I feel really good and almost normal, I like to think that all those stupid, paranoid, socially anxious times were just me overreacting, but then I hit one of the spells.

But I can already see I've gone WAY off topic, so let's get back to it, shall we? Now, for today's theme, I looked up the keyword "trippy" in my deviantart gallery, because I think trippy stuff can have a lot to do with distorted shapes, figures, and all that jazz.

I haven't done this style of drawing in a long time. It's hard to believe that I, with my short attention span, can stare at a drawing for hours, coloring in spaces that large with extra fine line sharpies, but I think that gives a certain rhythm to my drawings.

Drawn with a mouse, using the pen tool in Paint Shop Pro 8. Yeah, you get perfectly smooth lines, but I just feel like the pen tool is more trouble than it's worth. That being said I do really like this style but it just feels to me like something a normal person could churn out in MS Paint, but that it takes me hours to do in Paint Shop Pro.

This was worked on little by little, completely while staying after work back when I washed dishes at a bar/restaurant. So there's a good chance I was wasted while working on a good chunk of this. Most of it I like but some of it feels a little insane and sloppy. Which is how I get when I draw drunk. I do come up with some good ideas but I am not good at drawing at all when I'm drunk.

Although, to be honest, this was done way back in 2009, and I have improved a lot since then, I think.

A good chunk of this was worked on in a local coffee shop. It may be a little stereotypical, but I really love drawing in coffee shops.

This was done during a time where I was on a binge of listening to the Alan Parsons Project, and my drink of choice was amaretto. To this day when I see this drawing, or think of the song I used lyrics from, I think of  a sweet, almond taste. It's weird.

Inspired by some ivy that had started growing on one of our window screens.

Trippy picture of my brother from when he had long hair. That lyric belongs to Cher.

This isn't distorted in the typical sense, but it's one of very few pictures in my gallery that could be construed to have a creepy vibe. I don't like being scared/freaked out so I try to avoid that kind of thing.

This picture is simply being included because I like the vibe; it actually has nothing to do with today's theme. I just miss it in the sense that I used to get all these ideas for still life photos, with trinkets and jewelry, from stuff I've gotten at second hand stores. I feel like I've lost a little bit of that. Sometimes I feel like there's a wall in my brain. On my side, there is a big vast black expanse only very rarely permeated by creative things; more or less it feels like a barren wasteland.

But then you have the other side of that wall. There is a vast forest of creativity, and every inch of it has creative, colorful life. And if I could just figure out how to tear down that wall, I'd be so much better than I am right now.

Of course, there is a different meaning that I could gather from that. Maybe my mind put up that wall for a reason. Maybe I wouldn't know what to do with so many ideas coming to me all at once. As someone who can have highs and lows like a manic depressive, it can be overwhelming when you want to do everything at once. You want to draw a million different things at once, watch a million different movies, and listen to all your music at once. But you can't decide what to concentrate on, so you end up doing nothing.

It's weird. I'm in a trippy, not quite sane mood so I'm sure that's helping. Well. It's helping my writing, I think. I usually think I sound like shit but when I hit spells like this I feel I get a bit more eloquent.

That could all just be in my head too.

Tomorrow's theme is "don't go", and I'll tell you now, whatever I produce for that will more than likely be Def Leppard inspired. I've become a bit smitten with them (and Duran Duran) lately so... get used to it.

God damn I can't stop rambling. Just stop reading now. XD

Day 80/365: dirt.

Blogger was down last night when I was going to post yesterday's entry. I kept trying back until I went to bed, and nothing. Still down.
It was even down for a better portion of today. Right now, you'll get yesterday's entry, and then later on in the evening, you'll get tonight's, which will quite frankly probably be pre-done drawings and pictures, because today has just been a shitty day. I've been in a daze the whole time. I went to bed at 11, but didn't get to sleep until well after midnight, partially due to the giant thunderstorm we had last night. At one point, there was a thunderclap so loud that someone's car alarm went off.
I woke up at 4:45 this morning. I had intended to start practicing waking up at 5am, in anticipation of the newspaper delivery route I'm going to take on. I took one look at the clock, went "Close enough, I'm awake. Now I'm going back to bed".
I woke up once at 6, and then got up for good at 7 or so.

I got an email from the newspaper guy telling me to call him on Monday so we can set up a time to meet and fill out paperwork and such. Now, when I got the newspaper route I had before, that lady didn't show me around the area I'd be delivering, but back when I had a shopper route, someone did that for me.
Now, I biked to every street on my future route, but I would still feel more comfortable if someone took me on the route.

I remember where things are by sight. I can't tell you what street names and addresses are but I know how to get places due to the pictures in my mind. So it helps to have an established mental photograph I can kind of refer to. There's a reason that years after the fact, I still remember most of the houses that got shoppers and newspapers from when I delivered before.

I'm a bit nervous still, but this route is going to make me 76 bucks per month, minus the minute cost of the rubber bands and plastic bags I'll need to buy (which you get through the newspaper people), and after my summer job, if I have trouble finding a real job the paper could potentially be my only income source.

But anyway, the art. I already wrote a novel for yesterday's food journal entry so there's no need to go into it here.

Today's (Well yesterday's, depending on your outlook) theme was dirt, and since I was feeling particularly bad about my inability to acquire a job, I decided to do something with the phrase "I feel like dirt". I was inspired by someone I watch on deviantart: http://monavx.deviantart.com/
They do these amazing, adorable journals, with just a bit of text, and picture to go along with it. Well, I wasn't really feeling it as far as the pictures go, but I wanted to do some sort of word art. I sketched it on notebook paper, and since I wanted to keep the sketchy, rough type feel, I didn't clean it up or anything. I smacked some cool color balance on it in PSP8 and called it good.

I did peruse dafont.com, a great free font website, because there's no way I'd have thought of all those on my own. 

I also kind of wanted this to be longer, but as it is my wrist was really starting to bother me by the end of those two pages. I might continue to do things in this sort of style, maybe adding little drawings. 

I did toy with the drawings idea, but I was having one of those days where every single sketch looked wrong, wasn't working out, and it was just frustrating. At one point I threw my notebook and pencil and said a few choice swear words, actually.

Tomorrow's (err, today's) theme is "distorted", and as I said, those will be old pictures and drawings, because I'm just not feeling it today. I am a little inspired (thanks in part to my renewed interest in Def Leppard and Duran Duran), but the way I feel today is more like doing a bunch of little random doodles and then going back later to see if any of the little bits could turn into a finished piece of art.

Before I forget, here are links to some of the fonts I got inspiration from or flat out copied. XD

-http://www.dafont.com/alisha.font

-http://www.dafont.com/captainswabby.font

-http://www.dafont.com/blake.font

-http://www.dafont.com/tattoo-ink.font

-http://www.dafont.com/riesling.font

Day 79/365: Dessert.

Today, I did make something new for you, but it's my first time trying this kind of thing and it really looks quite abysmal.

I never draw food, ever, EVER. And I'm not great at drawings that don't show outlines. Still, I feel that as my first ever attempt at drawing a cupcake, it could have gone a lot worse.

Anyway, to make up for the shittiness of this, I'm going to post a few old pictures as well.

A piece aptly titled "Pour Some Sugar On Me".

Another shot that I don't like as much but felt it was prudent to include.

I titled this one "How Sweet It Is".

I want to try this sort of idea again because I feel like it could be a lot better. I actually can't believe I thought this was a good shot in 2009. Ugh.

Another idea I want to try again. Although it would be hard to get the natural lighting just right again.

Tomorrow's theme is "dirt", so... I don't know. I'll figure out something to do for that. It'll probably be a picture, but you never know, maybe I'll get an idea to draw something.

Day 78/365: Desire

It seems I spoke too soon about my art block going away. I kept sketching and sketching, and nothing was coming out right at all, so I resorted to taking a few pictures, which I put together.

These are a lot of fun to do. They look weird, but they're fun.

I really meant to do a drawing for you guys, but today was weird.

I biked to the library at about 10:30 ish or so. After noon, maybe around 1, my brother lost his balance and cut his foot open on a decoration in his room, so dad and I went to the ER. He ended up getting these butterfly things (dunno exactly what they're called) put on the cut because he would have only needed one stitch. 

So we spent a couple hours there. And stuff.

My brother isn't in any pain at all, but it's just annoying for him. It bled like crazy. There was a big pool of blood in his doorway and there was blood splattered on the sides of the doorway.

He should be back to normal in a week or so.

But yeah. That's why I wasn't at home drawing. I also had dishes to do, and I also actually have some laundry I need to get out of the drier too. I'm off to take care of that stuff.

Day 77/365: Death.

For today's drawing, I went the sugar skull route again.

I've become quite enamored with the simple yet complicated designs of some of these. It would be fun to go completely overboard and just fill the entire skull in with crazy patterns and stuff. Right now I like that there's a bunch of white space because as fun as going acid trippy apeshit as far as complicated, colorful patterns go, sometimes that can be a bit overwhelming.

Today has been... weird. If you were wondering. It was thunderstorming like hell this morning, and it's just been super windy and rainy all day. It was cloudy and grey for most of the day but within the last couple hours, the sun has come out and now it looks rather nice out.

Still, it's way too windy for me to bike anywhere.

Tomorrow's theme is "desire", and there will be some new art for that. I don't want to jinx myself and say that I'm out of the art block woods yet, but my renewed interest in Duran Duran and Def Leppard is a bit inspiring so we'll see how that goes.

Day 76/365: Days.

Well, as promised, I have a bunch of new pictures for you. Well, if 14 is "a bunch" were you come from anyway.

This isn't necessarily the best picture but I thought it would work well in a page layout or something... something where there would be a bunch of text in the gigantic white spot.

Since I'm on the other computer, I can't remember what tomorrow's theme is. So it'll just have to be a surprise. Lol.