The Art Projects in A New Chapter

With my new diary here I want to cover other aspects of my life..that I didn't particularly speak much of before. For example, I never really wrote much about my art work at my previous diary.

I am not going to call myself an artist because I feel like it is an extremely complicated topic. I see myself more as a hobbyist..it is a term that I feel much more comfortable with.

I have always been interested in art. I remember back when I was a child..I spent some time growing up in a very Mediterranean/Spanish colonial home. That makes it sound way more grandiose than it actually was..it is just that the design featured the open patio in the back. I remember running in there and drawing whatever I felt like drawing. I would use crayons, acrylic paint, pencils, markers, etc. Looking back at it, I am quite surprised my parents let me. The walls were in pretty bad shape so I am pretty sure they were just waiting to paint over it.

When I was about 6/7 years old I entered an art contest. At the time, we were living in Costa Rica. My Godmother, saw an ad on the paper regarding a children's art event. She handed it to my mom and my mom encouraged me to go. We went to the store and bought a bunch of nice supplies and paper. I was to embody something that represented the country. My father took me to the contest, I believe it was a Thursday morning.

I remember sitting towards the back and just going to town with the markers and pencils. I drew the beach, wild animals, wagons carrying coffee, people shaking their hands and going to school (ironically, looking back, Costa Ricans are the happiest people on earth..so I am sure the judges enjoyed my assumption that all Costa Ricans are friends/friendly), etc. It took me about 40 minutes to finish. Most kids spent around 3 hours working on it. When I turned in my work, the lady kept asking if I was sure I was done..my father did the same.

My dad was slightly pissed, probably because we had to wait a few hours for a decision to be made. We drove around downtown San Jose and I believe we visited the office of one of his friends. My father did not seem completely convinced that I was going to win but I don't blame him haha. When we arrived, we went into a big room with all the young "artists" and waited for the announcement. I remember being so excited about what the gift could be. At the time I was all about the Ninja Turtles..I wanted their van so bad.

Eventually, third place was announced..second..and first. I was first. I was not expecting to win. I went up to the stage with my dad and they described why I won. I didn't give two fucks. I just wanted to open the gift. It was heavy. Maybe it was a Super Nintendo or a Sega Genesis. When we got into the car..my dad told me not to open it until we got home. "I wonder what it is" "Didn't you hear silly? art encyclopedias. 3 volumes" "-what? awww.."

I actually still have those encyclopedias today and they are some of the best I have seen. One is focused around the Vatican art collections alone. As I got older, I kind of put art to the side. I was never satisfied with my drawings. There was one particular moment that marked me tho. Prior to the moment, I was big into drawing comics with my friends from Argentina. We would come up with the craziest crossovers..ranging from a Predator fighting Zodiac figures to Wolverine traveling in time to fight dinosaurs. Out of control awesome.

When I was in New Jersey, I remember riding the bus and sitting across a young girl. She was drawing a horse. It was a perfect horse. Not like the piece of shit horses I would draw. It was a long time until i touched a pencil (for drawing purposes, I was in 4th grade when this happened.) I am not going to psychoanalyze myself and make this entry 10 pages long but..I was bitter at how easy she was doing it..totally jealous..and how hard it was for me to do it.

Fast forwarding many years into the future and here I am. For some reason, one time I was searching for pictures of the Norwegian musician Abbath. I found pictures of a clay figure a girl had made for her boyfriend. For some reason, I got the instant urge to buy clay and get working on it. The first I bought was air dry, I was not a big fan. It took forever to dry and it broke apart very easily. After conducting some research, a few months later I started dealing with more sophisticated materials..such as sculpey and super sculpey. The amount of detail I was able to capture really hit me. Not like that piece of shit air dry clay that breaks apart and takes 4 days to dry up.

Fast forward about 2 years later and here I am. I feel like my skills have improved to the point that I can capture facial likeness. I have also learned how to capture the human anatomy better. At this point, I have also invested a significant amount of money towards supplies. Skill takes you places..but I have realized that you can only go so far with certain supplies.

As of right now, I have aspirations of making somewhat of a profit from my work. I have already made a little here and there from selling some. What I ultimately would like to do..is launch some sort of business that does statues/action figures/etc. Right now I mostly work with material from movies, games, comics, etc but I pull off my own creations every now and then. I have started investing towards superior materials and who knows? maybe down the future this will materialize into something larger. It is a compliment when people buy my art..money is nice, there is no lying..but that someone thinks that its good enough to take home..is exhilarating. It is sad, like letting a child go out into the world, but knowing someone liked your figure so much they will put it in their bookshelf..is something else.

The pic below has various figures. Some are older, some are newer.