You. It's You.

I've always liked to draw. I used to doodle ninja turtles in all of my notebooks. They were frozen in a perpetual fight against nameless lopsided villains. I was never one of those kids ,though, whose drawings made you think "wow, this kid's actually pretty good".

I finally stopped doodling and didn't draw for the longest times. I never took an art class in school because I was always in band or some other elective. When community college rolled around, I decided to put myself in BASIC DRAWING 101, because, well, because I could. Maybe I could feel that child with the crooked Ninja Turtles within me, desperately wanting to get out.

I really liked it. It almost came easy to me. I did, however, have to keep erasing and erasing until I finally got it just right. Charcoal became an amazing thing to me, and shading was this mystery of science that had eluded me for so long.

After I finished with the class, I kept drawing in my free time. I'd buy crayons and draw brightly colored faces, deeply lined with many colors for shading effects. It's really similar to my photography philosophy (another hobby that I'm spread too thin to properly pursue). All of our family pictures growing up lacked the same single element: our family. There were nice pictures of mountains, and hot rod cars, and birds, but who were we at the time? How old were we and what fashion trends had we succumbed to at the time? Who knows. People are the most important thing to document.

Tangent over.

So I'd always draw people. Mostly faces. And without fail, every single time, someone will come up to me and ask "Who is that?" "Who are you drawing?" as if I had someone posing in front of me, or maybe I knew someone who had a green tinted face. Why does every drawing have to be of somebody? Why can't it just be a face? Start with the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the eyebrows, hairline, and the chin, and how it turns out is how it turns out.

Depending on how crass I felt, I'd sometimes respond with "I'm drawing you."

At some point I moved on to painting. This was a big scary world that I've yet to conquer, or even do more than dip my toes into. I got a portaits books and found a recipe for flesh toned paint and went crazy. I couldn't quite get the mix right, though.

I made purple people.

After a while, I figured out my problem.

Too much blue. Way too much blue.

I only have one of my paintings left. The rest I've given away. My favorite one, though, I still kinda wish I had kept. I didn't paint it for myself, though, so it wouldn't be right for me to keep it. It was painted over Christmas break for a friend. We agreed to bring something back to each other. My problem was this: what could I possibly bring back from Kansas City? I painted her a picture instead.

At least I have a couple of fuzzy cameraphone pictures of it.
Honey, I'm a prize and you're a catch and we're a perfect match
Like two bitter strangers