EDIT: Moved this to the top so you aren't immediately scared away by the text :)
It's been awhile, eh?
I've been feeling kind of stuck, lately. I have about three and half months left before I find myself in graduate school, and as I look back on the nine months I've been out of school, it occurs to me that I haven't really accomplished anything. I've drawn, yes, but not as much as I should have. And I haven't created any complete works yet (remember that aviator-technonecromatic-falcon picture from way back when? Haven't touched it since), which is, without question, tragic. Yesterday I picked up an old (we're talking 1999) binder chock full of colored, finished pieces, and while they weren't technically very good (okay, any good), they made me wonder... where has all my motivation gone?
(Into Hershey's New Cookies 'n Cream!... sorry, I couldn't resist. That was for you, Kacey.)
To be honest, the vast majority of my time has been sucked into online shopping and reading blogs and comics. That's all well and good, because I love shopping, and blogs, and comics. But I think maybe it's time to stop spending so much time on what other people can do, and focus primarily on what I can do.
Mariela Marigold is still alive and well after almost a full month (tomorrow is the last day until that milestone, so unless I suddenly implode, consider it reached!), which is encouraging – and while nothing there is groundbreaking in the least, there are certainly plenty of drawings I've done for MM that I actually like, and these are at least the first baby steps towards the realization of my vision of cartooning and fashion combined (perhaps this is my crusade: to convince the world that these two aesthetic schools, though they are endlessly pilloried and disparaged, are unquestionably two forms of art, unequivocally and undeniably? I probably have more potential in this than in championing justice in global food distribution, anyway...). The goal is to continue that, actually draw that comic, submit some designs to Threadless, and paint, self-doubt be damned!
Let's see if I can do it.
There's another reason I decided to post again, besides penning this dingy slip of a manifesto, and it revolves around the simple desire to share some random thoughts, that germ of a yearning which has its hands in the birth of all blogs. (This is kind of emo, isn't it? But also kind of Victorian? Vemo?)
Random Thought #1: I always see people talking about their fashion inspiration celebrities. There's a term for these makeshift muses but I forget what it is. In any case it's always been kind of irrelevant for me because I don't follow celebrities. But I will try anything once so let's say my fashion muses, when forced to be encapsulated in a figure deemed celebratorial by our society, are Zooey Deschanel and Michelle Williams. Zooey is kind of quirky looking which is I think is what separates anonymous-looking starlets (regardless of their actual anonymity or non-anonymity – try saying that three-times-fast) from interesting-looking ones. Michelle with short hair is perfection.
Okay, really I just wanted to talk about girls that I think are super cute. I might dedicate a whole post to this topic later, helped by my obsessive internet image hoarding. In any case take all that drivel up there with a grain of salt because I have no idea what Ms. Deschanel and Ms. Williams have actually been in.
Random Thought #2: I forget what random thought #2 was supposed to be.
Random Thought #3: Somehow, while jumping around from blog-to-blog, I discovered the work of Henry Darger, and now I am mystified and enthralled. Okay. I don't know how famous he is, but in case you guys are as clueless as I am, Mr. Darger was a recluse who wrote and illustrated a 14,000-odd page epic called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. It already sounds amazing, right? What else sounds amazing? Ranger girlscouts. Yeah. Check out the essay and some artwork here for a good explanation of what this is all about. I may post some of my favorite pieces later. The whole thing is... well... unreal.
And finally, some drawings. (You didn't think I was going to leave you empty-handed after so long, did you? Well... I was. But I changed my mind.)
These are colored pencil drawings (I looove my little box of Faber Castells) that I intended as under-drawings for oil studies, but who knows if that'll happen. They're both based on photos from Vogue that I'm too lazy to scan, better luck next time:
Sorry this entry wasn't more interesting. But, dude, you're reading a blog. What did you expect?
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