A New Hobby

My uncle was a huge artist during his high school years. He really wanted to become an artist as a profession, but my grandfather wouldn't let him, and so he studied architecture in college. Recently my cousins have been visiting more frequently, for no particular reason, and my uncle has been seeing more of my art stuff, just because I almost always have my sketch pad with me in the house, and he comes over and looks at my stuff. I feel bad for him, and even worse that he's doesn't even doodle (maybe he does, but I've never seen him draw anything). I sometimes wish I were my cousin so that I could have a dad that knew about artsy stuff, but then I remember that that side of the family is very Christian. But still, it'd be fun to have someone teach me arts stuff. My cousin can't draw for his life, which doesn't mean much, I have gotten so much better just in the past couple months, but if I were my uncle I'd at least want to try and mold my child into whatever I couldn't be.
My cousin is really into music, and he is always talking about his orchestra class. I used to be like him. I remember I was the saxophone kid prodigy. I picked up the clarinet in a matter of weeks after quitting the trombone in the third grade (it wasn't really because I didn't like it, I was just way to tiny for the instrument), and that talent continued when I started the saxophone. I was really into it, I loved music so much and for a good point during my fifth and sixth grade year my dream was to become a musician. That dream quickly died after my saxophone teacher, Igor, made me hate every thing about the instrument. I liked playing, but everything became about NYSSMA, and my parents didn't really care what grade I got, and neither did I, but Igor did, and so I was forced to spend hours practicing music I hated. He tried to even it out by playing a couple of Beatles songs at the end of each lesson, but by then I was too tired to even enjoy that. I got back into music when I started piano lessons, and even more when I took the three months of guitar lessons, but those ended along with my saxophone lessons because I am too afraid of running into Igor at LISMA, and I'm too lazy to find another piano or guitar teacher. I always think that my cousin will start to hate what he plays, like I did, but he's surrounded in an environment where he can't possibly hate it. He's loved by his teachers and nothing is really expected of him, he goes about his music the way that he wants. The sad thing is that he plays the cello, and he is so far behind from every the thousands of cellists who've been playing since they were four, while he only started a few years ago. This kinda got off topic, but I give me another paragraph to connect it all together.
I really really like all the drawing and painting I've been doing. I like it enough that everyday for the past three weeks I've drawn something. I haven't been this committed to something ever. Even with the things I like, I can't manage to do them every day. I want to get better, I want to invest those ten thousand hours and I'm starting off pretty well. The thing is that I don't want it to turn out like it did with my saxophone. The second that this stops being fun I will probably stop. I know that if my cousin didn't absolutely love what he was doing he wouldn't be doing it. And my uncle is more proof, he loved art, but once it was ruined for him by my grandfather he never went back.


I started drawing another charcoal, and I bought paint and tried it out. I also put up what I've been working on for Ganes.

For the charcoal, the arms are too short and I need to learn how to draw hands.

The face was something I did because I had a lot of extra orange and a little extra blue from the soda bottle painting. I came out better than I had hoped, so that's why I put it up. I notice now that the neck is a little off, but I didn't expect it to be perfect.

I drew an empty soda bottle that I had on my desk. I've only been drawing for a couple months, and that time has been almost exclusively with either pencil or charcoal, and this was the first thing I've painted own my own. 

This is my STAC Art project. The art movement I'm using is German Expressionism. I'm going to use paris craft for brain, it'll come out of the head and land in the top left corner of the page and I'll have a little on the iPhone. I used charcoal for the head, hands and phone. I use acrylic paint for the pool of blood and the floor. The more I look at the left hand, the less I like it. I wanted the fingers to be long and thin, so that it'd look creepier, but something about it bothers me now.