wow... this place really dies when people actually have time to do stuff. It's almost as bad as the l1me.tk board. But not quite.

As for me? 3:30 in the morning? yep. Gotta get up at 7:00? Yep. Gotta work tomorrow too? Yep.


Internet junkie?

yep.

I seriously think the internet is ruining my life. It's so EASY to justify it though. I tell myself it's all productive... and I really do kind of believe it... but something in the back of my mind is telling me I'm just wasting my time. I tell myself that spending hours surfing art&design forums and graff sites is EDUCATIONAL. I'm not even a poster at most of them... just a lurker. Shit. But am I really actually doing myself any favours by 'schooling' myself in online artwork and art discussions? Would my time be better spent actually DOING it? I'm not sure. For the non-artist it would be easy to say "yeah, you can't learn by not doing it", but they don't know shit. In all honesty I find that being a better artist has almost EVERYTHING to do with learning how to 'see' things and relatively NOTHING to do with how to hold/move a pencil. But when I say 'learning to see' I mean it in 4 ways:


• 1. how to truly percieve observable reality (do you have any idea how hard it is to actually 'see' something as it really is? have often do you stop to notice what colour a shadow is?)



• 2. the understanding/conceptualization/internalization of other artists' styles/techniques through study of their pieces.



• 3. Focusing your mind's eye so that you can 'see' an image in your head and also manipulate it plastically and make transformations of the object in not just 3-dimensional space, but also 'imaginary/impossible' spaces. And not just a single object either, try manipulating the virtual space of the image itself. (ie: optical illusions/M.C. Escher's work etc.)



• 4. learning the universal canon of aesthetics. Islamic textual design, King Akhenaten's canon, a 'death's head' inscription on a 16th century grave marker, the 3D wildstyle burner on the side of a train, the cave paintings of Lascaux France, the Chrysler building... all of these are 'beautiful'. They seem to have so little in common... and yet there's something present in all of them that makes them innately humanly aesthetic. And yet it's so hard to KNOW that aesthetic. Is it the 'flow'? Is it the symmetry? Is it the emotion it conveys? It could be a billion things... but it's probably not just any of them; it's ALL of them. In fact, it's probably an incredibly precise ratio of them. Something so intricate that it cannot be taught through written word. It defies description. Either you know it or you don't. And if you don't, you keep looking. And slowly, slowly... you begin to wrap your head around it, get a FEEL for it... I don't know if it's possible to ever understand it completely, but as an artist you are nontheless compelled to try.



I've only ever attempted to write 5 or 6 graff pieces in my life... and those attempts span the course of 3 years. However, the 1st attempt could have been drawn by a 6-year-old whereas the last attempt is relatively skilled. How can a person improve so immeasurably in the course of 6 drawings? It seems impossible, doesn't it? And yet I'm faced with these perplexities, these miracles everytime I draw something. Art can never be learned by producing artwork. It can only be learned by exercising the '4 ways of seeing'.

And yet the question remains! While it's obvious that viewing art is helping me as an artist, would my time be better spent learning the '4 ways' through actual production? Obviously, it must be a ratio: one who only draws without reference is doomed to forever commit the same mistakes, but one who only views artwork can never consolidate the ideas through the practical application of commiting the concepts to paper... and to take it even further, how valuable to society/humanity is an artist who has spent a lifetime to master 'aesthetics' but has only produced 3 or 4 works of art? The fundamental question of quantity vs. quality arises.

But on the other hand, is fuelling this addiction for artistic perfection ultimately even purposeful at all? Maybe I should just give it up altogether... the daily all-night internet binges, the occasional 6-hour sketching sessions, the 4-hours of sleep per day... maybe instead I should just learn my university material for once.


What even compels me to continue doing this day after day for the last 20 odd years?



Maybe I'm just wasting my life.




Maybe I've already wasted my life.

Gemini: (May 21—June 21)
By this time next week, you'll be a living example
of what it's like to get blued, screwed, and tattooed.

huh, what does this mean?

blued? what? and tattooed? i don't think so.

yeah... I'm pretty sure that's what we called. But maybe it was our end. I dunno. Somebody called Gary's phone while we were in the Black Dog and we couldn't even hear who it was. We didn't recognize the number either... so yeah. That one's still a mystery. haha Whatever.

no wait dude, that is mad wack. cause Pete called me up during the night, so i'm sure my phone was on the entire time...you sure it was the right number? 970-3728..? *shrug

k that's fuckin' wack. i don't know what's the deal with that. sorry.

eric... we DID call your cell. Like 10 times. hahaha

It said "this customer is not available at the moment, please try again later".

Before I disappear completely... Happy belated birthday Jeremy... Sorry I couldn't go out to your party, apparently I'm more of a shadow then I realise...

Yep alone again... I guess there nothing to do today... I guess I'll disappear for a while...

I could stop by Culligan, I'm headed out that way in an hour, anyway...

Excellent... I'll pick that up from you at some point