View from my desk

It's been a slow day. But on the bright side, I got to use my $2 letter stamps, which I bought on Friday night. Important to note is the box of Twins tissues, with many fewer of them used than I thought I would use.

Trombone

I just think it's time to give up on ink. There were several failures preceding this, and in every case using my usual pen would've made it look better. So there you go.

Pattern

The good news is that I've moved up to a commissioned work. The bad news is that it's to match the pattern on our bath towels. Oh, and Marcia reserves the right to reject the final product. It's good to have client!

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Now playing: Insingizi - Vinqo

Flickr face practice

Last night at c-group ($20 word for Bible study) someone posed the question: If I was convinced God didn't exist, would I be drastically different?

At first I said, "OF COURSE!" I wouldn't have my current job, or likely live in Colorado, or be married. And I'd probably be an alcoholic and denying it. Big changes. But would I be much different? The more I thought about it, the less I thought I'd be a different person. My life would be drastically altered, but I don't think my personality would be. I'd still be a smartypants, still be artistically inclined, still refuse to believe that I kind of look down on a large portion of society. Maybe it's my insistence on the implications of environment. But in that case, why hasn't living surrounded by Christians affected me more? I don't know, it's something to think about.

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Now playing: Explosions In The Sky - First Breath After Coma

Fortune

I attempted the "ink on twig from backyard" method with this one. Now I will attempt the "whittling twig from backyard into something resembling a workable nib" method. Stay tuned.

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Now playing: The Get Up Kids - The Worst Idea

Fake Posters

Sometimes I can't continue pretending that it wouldn't be the coolest thing in the world to work for Aesthetic Apparatus. I think I consider that my dream job.

[Don't show up at First Ave for this show. I made it up.]

[Sigh.]

A Dream of Flight

I'm trying to get more illustrative and move away from the purely fine art direction by working on my hand-lettering. This one would be for a short story about a young boy who wants to be an airline pilot but can't because of a crippling fear of the color green? Maybe?

Yesterday

Yesterday was slow at work so I took a couple hours to do some book design research at Borders. It made me feel smug and superior to see all the horrible design mistakes. (To be fair, I was in the self-help business section.) It really also helped to get the yeasty artistic secretions going. Good stuff all the way around.


Around here we (I) call it bloodfire.

Flowers

Are these daffodils? Or daisies? Wikipedia was no help.

Too cool for school

It's summertime, y'allz. For me, that means cowering in the shade during the day, living it up in the evening. There really is nothing like a cool summer evening after a blisteringly hot day. It smells different. (And for me, "blisteringly hot" is anything above, say, 80 F. I'm Norse, there's nothing I can do about this.)

I found a picture of this guy months ago and always knew I wanted to do it right. The rest of the picture of him cruising in his sensible sedan, pretty hard core if you ask me. So no, it's not me.

A busy weekend.

Maybe I've found a signature style?


This girl was making a silly face in the picture from which I copied. I didn't intend it to look so dark, but I think it pops.


"How could it have taken me so long so realize that pen drawings and sloppy watercolors are meant for each other?"

This might be the drawing I point to when my subconscious screams about a white background. Not diggin' it as much as extending that yellow.


I replaced my typical Russian lit classic with a sketchbook this time. My wife thinks this is proof that I could do a children's book. I'm secretly inclined to agree.

Hillary-ous

I never could get over her fierce fight to count Florida and Michigan AFTER agreeing not to last year.

"I demand you count all the votes for me when my opponent wasn't on the ballot! This is not Zimbabwe!"

A dish best served DEAD

If I ever wrote a murder mystery novel, this would be the title. It just occurred to me that something like this usually happens on 48 Hours Mystery. You know, a woman turns up missing, and suspicion surround the husband (it's always the husband), and they confiscate his computer and it turns out he did a Google search for "how to kill your wife and get away with it hahahahaha!!!" right before his wife disappeared! Because we all know that the interwebs are the ultimate authority on fooling the law.

Poor guys

Poor ShamWow! guy. You can have the cure for cancer and still not move it with that kind of ad campaign. Come on, you can do better.

And poor Flip Saunders. Second best record in the NBA? Here's your pink slip. Anybody would look good after Larry Brown, but didn't Detroit notice that Flipnosis can't coach in the playoffs? Like three years ago?

Buck up guys. Things will get better.

When a church dies...

Two months ago, on the back of the bulletin, there was one announcement and 17 people with contact information. Seventeen people to contact to get plugged in at church, but only one activity worth mentioning. That, my friends, is the writing on the wall. A community such as that surely must be dying, and in fact has now died.

Do I blame the overseers, who pruned the vision of our little congregation? No. Do I blame our leadership team? Yes. Fourteen people whose passion should have built up our church, yet squabbled so much that we didn't even know who we were anymore. If they cared so much about reaching people in the community, it would have been a drastically different story.

So what now? I feel relief and happiness. I have held the belief that people should be there for their church, and not the other way around. I am not a consumer of worship. I stuck it out for over three years with this church, hoping things would turn around. I have compromised my own faith and my wife's faith in doing so. I have compromised on expecting solid teaching, on the prominence of Scripture, on a diverse community, on dozens of things related to the church experience. No more.

We are liberated, and are going to take full advantage. We are church shoppers now, and won't buy until we feel there are no compromises to be made in doing so.