Earnest Work

Remove the padding and junk, drill holes for drainage, use side ear holes for rope to hang.

Then plant.

I’ll just start off by saying I know I don’t have very much content or follows and that is a whole thing. I made this blog Years and Years ago like high school... Then I forgot about it. My e-mail account along with my blizzard account were compromised by a South Korean IP address. They also got me banned on Diablo 3 and Starcraft. My Tumblr my account was littered with weird DMs and posts of what I guess is vanilla porn? SO, the account is flagged but I still use it because, why not? It’s basically a LiveJournal in its weird way now and I accept it.

I finally after over 6 long years found an engine for my truck. The gentleman included a brand-new block and a everything I would need to rebuild that engine. So, I wound up with 2 Engines. Pretty much putting a lot of my artwork stuff on hold to hold true to the grease monkey I am at heart.  Working on my truck with my family and introducing my son to this world has become very therapeutic.

I have had some pretty rad ideas so this is more a note for myself in that aspect for my art. Art Nouvea meets Cyberpunk posters? Comic book style themed like the warriors but local because it’d be fun to draw up the local scenery. A painting rendition of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories. I tend to draw really creep crap to begin with so this seems in my realm.

 I’ve also been doing a ton of self-introspection and cognitive thinking adjustments. I realize more than ever I have been throwing myself into relationships as a way to avoid confronting my own problems and thereby hurting others and myself. Was not cool in any way. I’ve become pretty ashamed of my choices.  I always thought I was incredibly open and was a fairly vulnerable person, however it was all face value. It’s really hard to be vulnerable and develop a sincere connection especially after years and years of problems. That is life though right? I heard somewhere about this belief in reincarnation that we only choose the lives we think we can handle and challenge us. I’m learning to understand where a lot of my anger lives and why it’s there and to change that way of thinking. I’m constantly rephrasing negative thoughts and comments with, instead of thinking like it that way maybe blah blah bla blah. If anyone has better methods, I’m open, I’m sure I must be irritating everyone with it by now.

 The largest change I’ve done is reduce drinking. I know I do have a drinking problem if left alone. For years this was a coping mechanism because I hated my life in the military and felt so damn alone at times. It normalized itself into my life and really took a chunk that I can’t get back. I will have a beer on a weekend with family but I won’t allow hard liquor into my home anymore. I’ve done month long breaks of pure sobriety and felt amazing. it was a weird and toxic way of thinking that began to develop believing I couldn’t be that same person sober, paint, be fun, or that I needed it to feel comfortable.

 Over the years I’ve lost a good number of friends and ended relationships poorly. I’m sorry. For the friends that I have had stick around through my bullshit you are gold on a plate of pure sunshine and rose petals.

A note on cyber security & why you should care

Every picture, every text, every location, site history, and even your conversations are stored by your Internet service provider, your cell phone provider, and the companies you’ve agreed to the terms and conditions. Facebook is the most intrusive of any of the tech companies. There Terms of Service you agreed to allows them to change, redact, and add anything they want. Ever have a conversation with someone with your phone in your pocket and notice later after browsing that you are seeing ads about the topic you discussed? When your phone screen is off, it is constantly making note and recording. All this data is available for sale by these companies for various reasons and accessible by our government.  

This a gross breach of trust and misconduct by any standard. How can we protect our information, our pictures, our conversations, and still be have an active influence on social media? You can’t.  Unfortunately, if you’ve agreed to the TOS with these companies not much can be done about deleting that data.

Starting forward you can limit your digital footprint. Limit your social media usage, for me it causes anxiety so that is to my benefits I limit that. There are various browser extensions that will comb through your social media pages and delete, unlike, and unpost for you autonomously. Go through your phone and look at what the apps you have downloaded want access to and make that change to limit what is only necessary.  Avoid interlocking all your apps, software, platforms to a social media account as this can be a hellish nightmare to undo.

A reminder that nothing in the cyber landscape is secure by any means. Every software, application, hardware, device, and platform is vulnerable. The vulnerability has just not been made public as access for a backdoor or the system has not been targeted.

4 years of progress reworking the same painting.

Oil, Acrylic, and Paint Markers. I just wanted to do my own version of this, I went back and forth between realism to cartoonish back and forth that I honestly wanted to stop.

I had this wood painted and stained for a project I had no idea I wanted to do.

In the end I just threw this on it and it felt right.

I’ve worked on and Off an art project to creat the 7 deadly sins.

This would obviously be gluttony

I made the guy a catholic priest for the obvious implications and the desire for flesh. I’ve always liked the artwork of Vince Locke so I wanted to attempt a piece in his style.

Done with Oil, Various Inks, and Copic Markers

This was made as a gift, and I spent too much time on it.

I used various inks and copic markers.

Made with a wooden clay box.

Applied a polyeuthene coat to the wood. Used plaster, clay, various paints, and wire for stitches.