What the fuck is on my mind? Let's talk about how my experiences with art led me to where I am now. This history of art in the Life of Sin.
My earliest memories of art are from when I was probably about 5 years old and my mother being very impressed with a picture I had drawn of some dinosaurs. I think she was particularly impressed with the snow cap I had drawn on a mountain in the background of the picture. So instantly I recall getting a little ego boost out of this. I also recall my dad doing a hand paint project with his hands and mine. I believe it was black and red paint. I also remember doing marble painting...damn that was fun. I should do that again.
As I type out that memory, I am feeling a bit emotional in recalling how fun art was, and the memories that were made from it -- and I feel a little ashamed that now that I do it for my main source of income, I have lost connection with that fun in a big way. The song "Slow Hours" by weird inside just started playing as I typed that out -- gotta love those synchronicities. The title doesn't mean anything, but it's a bit of a melancholic song.
It all goes a little fuzzy for a while with regard to my art memories until about 4th or 5th grade when I recall being really into watching Dragon Ball Z and drawing my favorite characters. I only really remember drawing Gohan and I brought it to school so proud to show off.
I had done it from observation and didn't trace -- but I recall the kids at school still ridiculing me saying that I must have traced it, it was too good. You would think that this was encouraging as a testament to my skill, but I was actually embarrassed and discouraged. I recall not wanting to draw much more after that. I also don't remember expressing my embarrassment to my parents, and so I didn't get any feedback on how to handle it.
Fast forward to middle school and I started to get really into dragons. I drew them all the time - they were my favorite subject matter to draw. I used colored pencils for most of them. I remember being incredibly frustrated because I couldn't get them to look more realistic. I kept giving them anime eyes from DBZ and I didn't know how to draw their bodies. I also only felt comfortable drawing them from the side profile of their faces. I remember being really into drawing all the scales around the face. I was always super into the textures that I saw on the creatures from Jurassic Park. The way the scales fell around the face, was pure art in nature, so wonderfully done - not just haphazardly, but with thoughtful design...and as an adolescent, I couldn't seem to grasp how to move past that obstacle in my artistic path...so I gave up art more or less as a consistent fun thing that I did. I was frustrated at my abilities and thought I just didn't have it. I saw a few other kids whose artistic talent made me feel even less worthy to be drawing...like it wasn't my thing after all.
Fast forward again to high school. I remember being in art class and struggling with one particular photo-realism project because I had chosen a reference that had a bit more texture than noticed before. So overwhelmed, I rushed, and it didn't turn out great, and I was once again discouraged and don't really remember any of my art projects from high school. I do remember that there was a friend of mine who was better than I was and seeing his art made me want to give up again.
I have had a trend of giving up on art because of being intimidated by those around me that I perceived as better - without any understanding of what they were doing or had done to achieve that level of skill. I took it at face level that I didn't even belong in art - like I was not worthy.
Yet I have constantly pursued it, like a compulsion - I must have kept sketching constantly in school, because I have friends now that tell me they always thought I did cool drawings...and I'm sad because I think I forgot about most of my art experiences out of shame for not being on whatever level I thought I was supposed to be on.
Like art desperately desires to be expressed through me, creativity is my compulsion, and I have allowed shame to imprison my expression and stunt my growth.
Later in school, closer to graduation, my best friend, A.J. discovered the program (Adobe Illustrator) and shared some of his new digital art with us. I was blown away by what this software could do, and what it would allow me to do. I watched as A.J. excelled at the program and I just did my best to keep up.
Once again one of inferiority complex scenarios began building up insidiously toward my own best friend. It would take a good while for it to burst and temporarily disrupt our friendship as I got jealous, and other life situations pushed me into dark mental spaces.
At the crescendo of that, I moved to Hawaii to stay with my parents and attempt to go back to school and finish my degree. Well I just could not focus on school, and still was obsessed with doing some graphic work, like building a cool brand that would take off. So I started to design stickers of all sorts, or anything I thought would stick out here in Hawaii. Pineapples, and hiking stuff, and diving stuff, and Koa Wood, it was just a hot mess of design ideas popping off to try to make something work. All while I basically ignored finishing my NEARLY COMPLETE degree program. Some sort of weird graphic compulsion.
I broke my ankle at the beach just a few months after moving here and was bed-ridden for about 2 months. During that time I got one of my wildest design inspirations yet...dicks. I was taking painkillers, and sneaking what weed I could while living at home with my conservative Christian family. This led me one day to have the strange thought while taking a pee, that it would be hilarious if somebody made a bunch of dick stickers and called them Dickers.
That was in the fall of 2017. I thought I could make it a hit! I did all sorts of crazy designs (which I WILL upload later). They haven't fully taken off yet - but one of these days, mark my words...
I kept making the dickers for quite a while, even a bunch through COVID as I thought that might be the time to make them go viral. I didn't manage to get them off the ground then either. BUT I did manage to get a tattoo apprenticeship at the very end of 2020. It's so crazy because only a few months before COVID happened, I was in a tattoo shop getting my hand tattooed as I decided I wanted to pursue art and tattooing full time.
There was a guy there who had no clients and was bumming out about it - yet the whole time I saw him there he was just playing on his phone. I remember telling him that if I had a job as a tattoo artist, I would be drawing every opportunity I got. In hindsight, that was not exactly true at the time. It has taken me a lot to get into drawing consistently as I still struggle with my motivations and deprogramming the negativity that scared me away from it so many times in my past.
Shortly after I began my apprenticeship, I was tattooing just a few months later at a time when I had literally come down to my last $500 of money. That was it.
I will write another post about my apprenticeship up to now, but that is all for this trip down memory lane. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next one. Use code READING15 for 15% off your next order in the online store.