An argument with myself....

As I was leaving my class on Wednesday, I had a horrifying train of thoughts flash through my mind. "Art is meaningless. It doesn't help anybody. All it can do is entertain." As a Christian I know that ultimately I'm called to love and help others, so I was really disturbed by this... So I debunked it. My argument is as follows:

There are three things I know are true and biblical, so I can trust them.
1. God gives us the desires of our hearts. "Psalm 37:4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

2. God gives us our talents, whatever they are and it's up to us to find a fitting use for them. "1 Peter 4:10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms."

3. God cares about art. When the tabernacle was being built God directed the leaders to hire an artist whom God had given the talent especially to create the articles which would be used to worship. Exodus 31:1 Then the Lord said to Moses, "See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship."

So then, my conclusion to the matter is that I am going to create art because God put a skill and ability inside of me to be creative just like HE is.

Aside from that, I also know that art DOES matter. We are surrounded by it every day and even those who don't give a flip about the visual elements, principals of design or sociological themes of art, can be impacted simply through the visual pleasure that it brings. 

Point being: Whatever way I can find to use my abilities to speak a message, help someone or give God recognition I'll find it and I'll do it. Because as long as I give my art meaning, it's not meaningless.

Burning the midnight oil... again... I need a vacation.

Tonight I celebrate with you, because like one month after the due date, I've FINALLY finished my ceramic body armor!

The painting took WAY longer than anticipated. I was really surprised because I feel like I did such a terrible job with the painting and I thought that I did really well with acrylic in my 2D design class. Maybe it's because I'm burned out... Though this semester has been fun... I do have to say that I'm ready for it to be over.
I think that mentally this semester has been a stretch for me. I've had to do lots of papers and introspection in order to complete my projects so I'm just mentally drained.
I think it was a good thing for me though. I'm the type of person who gets caught up in accomplishing a goal, or finishing a job that I take very little time to stop and recollect myself. This course and the project requirements gave me the opportunity to accomplish this.

Up late with my puppets

Hello world, after three attempts I was able to spell world right. You know what that means right? It means that it's 12:27am and I haven't written anything on my blog yet. NOOOO!
I was reading a blog of Nocchi's from Perfume, and she was posting really late at night because she couldn't sleep. I, on the other hand, really, really, really, really want to sleep but have to post on my blog so I can't. What a world we live in, huh Nocchi?
I'm here at the least favorite part of an art project.... the deadline.
I'm usually pretty good at making deadlines, not procrastinating, working consisently and working smart, instead of hard. However, something about finals, triggers all the stupid cells in my brain and I swerve into this weird zone of difficult and overly complicated projects.
This project I'm working on now, "the puppet show", started off as a simple, 4 or 5 character story.
But then, I randomly decided to veer off and do a puppet rendition of these little bible comics that I had drawn up when I was first starting to draw.
These are super fun, and I'm enjoying the project, but here we are at 12:27 and I just barely finished putting together the 16 puppets for the show. Wow....

Maybe it's that when you (and by you, I mean me)  start to invest in something that you enjoy or care about it starts to pour out of you. Which is why when ever I get to pick a project for my finals it always becomes more than I can handle within the time limit, because it's something that's been building up in me my whole life.

I'm so tired. I think that was a hundred words... good night.
Thank you for staying up with me, Thai.

Identity Theft

So here in lies my desperate attempt to blog about something, stay on topic and relate it to art somehow.
I feel that I haven't been doing a very good job thus far, but here we go!

My friend recently found out that there was a mess up somehow with his SSN and since before he was born, a sex offender has been wracking up a scroll length criminal record that applied to my friends record as well.
Since he was sixteen he's been unsuccessfully trying to get a job and wasn't able to understand why, not knowing that the whole time his background checks were coming up with red flags for acts that he did not do.
Thankfully, since he found out, he's been able to take the proper steps and the issue is being resolved.

It's sad for me to think that mistakes like that can happen and that a person's whole reputation and character can be pinned on a number.

The bible says that "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." So I can see how something like this happening is mortifying and why protecting your "number" is so important, but I still don't know how well I'd take it if the same thing happened to me.

As for myself, I express my thoughts and ideas through my comics and pictures. Of course, my style leans towards the Japanese manga style. So, my thought is, because it's such an easily identifiable style, would a person's impression of a different show that they've seen ruin their opinion of the work I do, or devalue my work as art?
But in reality, the style and stories of Japan has truly ingrained itself in my psyche. Just last night I had a dream that was completely in the manga style.
I drew a section of it when I woke up from the dream, and oddly enough the girl resembles a character from a show that my same friend showed me a clip of a while back... the hairstyle anyway. It would be funny if she had had an eye-patch.


















Well, I've still got my resolve, and I don't really plan on changing my whole genre for the sake of a fearful thought, but at the same time I do wish to legitimize my style so that anyone could look at it and be pulled in to see what it's about.