Portraits Galore

Just sharing some of my newest drawings today! One of them is from much earlier this year, I just edited it some more.

Tweedleedlee!

Progress

Over the past weekend I finished painting my living room walls, so now instead of the baby blue that didn't go well at all with my furniture and decor, I have greige walls that can probably end up going with anything no matter how many times I change my tastes.

Anyway, I've also been thinking about filling up my walls with photographs, and not necessarily my own. Looking through my digital curation of art on For Nostalgia, I've been trying to come up with a way to describe my taste in aesthetics, and I think my favorites all have to do with capturing a glimpse of a real moment of motion in time or space, which really isn't saying much because that's what a photograph generally is. HOW TO ESPLAIN? All I can say is that when I really sit down to look at them, I become emotionally affected.

Oh, hey. I got some new glasses. I would post selfies but I haven't taken the time to capture them yet.

Words

I have a strange, friendly relationship with an anatomy and physiology professor I had taken a couple of classes with while I was in college. At some point he noticed my artistic abilities and suggested that I look into anatomical illustration as a career option. I never did head in that direction, obviously, but I appreciated the attention and encouragement. He ended up being my go-to professor for letters of recommendation, even after he moved out of state to a different university, and somehow we've managed to keep in touch at least once a year emailing random hello's and exchanging art clips or playing Draw Something. This year he was reminded of comics I used to draw by one of his student's doodles:

I used to have a crush on him (I might have been 18 or 19 at the time), even though he's not particularly amazing looking and is also perhaps 10-15 years older than me if I could guess. That happened to me a lot in college, though, with a bunch of my professors. I think it's the intelligence I'm attracted to, it kind of outweighed everything else. Nowadays, I still hold some adoration towards him just for remembering about me, one of thousands of students he's probably had over the years. That's pretty unusual...

But there was a potentially embarrassing moment one lab class when everyone was taking each others blood pressure. Mine was elevated, which raised some concern, so my professor performed the test on me himself. I got nervous from his proximity, so it went up even more. Haha. Oh god.

Changing the subject!

As I attempted to drift off to sleep last night, I had a recollection about an idea from the beginning of a book I once started reading and never finished. The plot is hazy in my mind, but the main character got himself into a situation where he was required to define words utterly and without holes. It started off with small words like "gate" or "tree", but then he was challenged by abstract nouns like "courage" and "liberty" which as you could probably imagine would be a lot more difficult than describing concrete nouns.

Anyway, all of this made me think about words having to be defined by other words, which are defined by other words, and I wondered if there is like a first word that is so self-defined that it was able to describe another word, which could describe another, and so the tree of words developed.

That's silly, though. I'm sure people just started defining words by pointing at things and giving it a name.

Downers

I've come to that awkward moment where the development of my critical eye has surpassed my skill level. I don't like most of the art I have produced anymore. I see all the flaws and things that could have turned out better. It's not a very fun place to be in, nor is it very motivating to continue, yet I still know I want to get a professional grade DSLR camera some day.

The home I'm buying is still in escrow, and yesterday a bunch of people came by the house for home and pest inspection or planning the kitchen remodel. Weirdly, seeing our neighbors next door arrive with their three little kids was a wake up call that everything was actually happening. "Those people are going to be our neighbors." Before I was kind of like, "Weee tra la la la la new home! Packing is fun!", and now I'm starting to freak out a little bit over the prospect of being responsible for maintaining a house and putting the money into doing so. Planning the layout of my living room furniture has been a challenge too, because of a fireplace in the middle of the wall and the orientation of my sectional versus where the television should be.

Meanwhile my mom has been freaking out since day one because she's emotionally attached to our current house. She got so stressed that I had to massage out all the knots building up in her shoulders and neck.

With all of these thoughts going on, plus a couple of coincidental mishaps at work, I started feeling terribly anxious and had a hard time calming down. Pretty sure the coffee jitters didn't help. Yikes.