Amber as a Sky Doll

WEE HOOO.... I got the week end off. I am going to go draw my ass of!

Sky Dolls Sketches and Thank You's

Did these sketches based on the art work of sky dolls, I love or Barbucci/Canepa so I wanted to sketch some stuff and maybe turn one of my characters into a sky doll for fun.

Special thanks to all the people that took time to comment on my blog. I really appreciate it. I Think I have officially decided what I want to do. I feel that the longer I ponder over these things the more time I will waste so I want to put a plan in action and just go for the gold.

I want to thank you all for your opinions on this matter. I think they were a deciding factor in making the decision I made today. Especially the comment "*your time is too important to waste. minimum wage jobs are not worth your time. but if you can get paid better, get paid." Mama's about to put in some work. I need to prove to myself that I can do whatever it takes and turn my past mistakes on there head.

Indecision Kills!! Well, it could..

I have been listening to and reading a great deal of literature about being successful and being able to enjoy your life and live fulfilled. One of the common themes is live your passion and work hard to achieve your goals. I stopped to ask myself was I really doing that. Living my hearts desire.

The women in my family seem to believe that they need to take care of everyone, give up themselves to care for other people first. Give other people what they want first and take care of their needs second. Help the family, get to work on time pay your bills on time.

What is so funny is being an artist goes against all these things sometimes. The normal way of living. My mom just can not accept the idea that the guy who runs Bazillion pictures is "late" to work everyday. But it is his company . He does what he wants. They open at 10, he gets there at 11. Big deal as long as the work gets done right. I think the only people that get there earlier are the accountants lol.

I guess what I am saying is that I am everything BUT normal. To some degree conventional ideas of working for a living just don't apply when you are an artist.In the conventional world images of nipples are bad and must be erased. In my world it is like "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO DRAW NIPPLES TODAY CAUSE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!" (Side note: I am not gay.)

I was talking to a friend the other day about how I have been so frustrated cause I keep hiting walls in my career. I am consistent for a little while and then some crashy even like almost being homeless or a car wreck just happens out of the blue. Suddenly my life spins out of control and I put the things I love most on the back burner to try and get ahead instead of using them to help me propel myself forward.

If there is one thing I think I do well in my life it would be drawing and nothing else. I don't wanna run cash registers or be an accountant or for that matter WORK AS AN IN HOME CARE ASSISTANT!! GRRR!!! But my mom wants me to live by these conventional standards, have a car go to work like everyone else.

It drives me nuts. Here is how a conversation with a family member goes when we talk about my work.

Them: "So Arie what are you going today wanna go out."

Me: "Yeah, sorry but I got to work."

Them: "Great I am glad to here you finally got a job. Where are you working at."

Me: Weird look, "I work at home remember."

Them: "You do?" Puzzled Expression.

Me: " Um yeah, remember I was telling you about that sketch card set I was working
on. Gotta do 100 cards and I have those commissions to complete."

Them: "Oh yeah, I remember. So then you haven't found a job yet. Hey can you watch
my kids tonight I wanna go out with my friends."

Me: "Groan...sigh...no I have to work."

Them: "I thought you said you didn't have a job"

Thus, continues the never ending battle. I good friend, Wilcox, said to me one day when I was inconsolable about my situation and I wanted to run away, "well, ok, why don't you leave then." I was confused and then he said, "Look, Arie, Do you really expect things to be any different a year from now?"

And the truth is No I can't say I do. I will still be making just above minimum wage, and living with my mom if I don't find a entirely different approach. I run all these ideas through my head and everyone has consequences. The only one I really like the idea of doing is completely stopping what I am doing right now and focus my whole life on my art and my internship. I mean , seriously every job I get is a temporary patch for me until I am able to get that job I always wanted to have.And when I end up quitting I still don't have what I wanted or accomplish my goal.

They say "If you have always do what you always did, you always get what you always got." So here, is where the indecision comes in. Do I drop everything and start fresh with a new mind set and dedicate as much love time and effort to my craft as what I do to my crappy job, my family members and my friends? Or do I stop attending to them and listening to their advise and plunge in head first to see how long I can go without air?

I mean I feel like I am barely breathing as it is. I feel like with out my art I am dying slowly because I am not living up to what is meant for me. Then there is the fear of the economy and can I really get another job if this doesn't work?

My job is finally offering for me to get my med certification after waiting for 6 months. My mom says I should go ahead and get it so i can do this kind of work anywhere if my art doesn't work out. But even tight rope walkers, with enough practice, can perform without a safety net. People will always have a need for art.

ANyway I would love to hear some opinions. Oh! and enjoy the nipples!

Sexual Harassment

So for a while I was being sexually harassed on my job. I finally made it stop but it took some time. Seems now though that the guy works even less now than he did before I got him to stop. Anyway enjoy.

Extending Arms

As an Artist who wants to go full time and do this as my living, as opposed to, working on jobs going things I am not interested in like flipping cheese burgers. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make my dreams possible.

I think it is something every artist, that is serious about there career, has to take into consideration at some point. How do I make working for myself profitable enough to be financially stable? Well, I think the first thing you have to do is get out there and start asking some questions. Talk to other artists that actually do make a decent living doing what they are passionate about. It can be hard though because many of us honestly don't find ourselves around other artists that are doing the same thing. That is if we are able to be around other artists at all.

I was listening to Bobby Chui today, and you may hear me mention him a lot because I love his work, and because he is very successful as an artist. He was able to turn his one man show into a corporation. Not only that, but it lead him to be able to do character designs for the new "Alice and Wonderland" Tim Burton film. He is making a huge name for himself, in fact, as the next Disney, because of his appealing design work and his drive. He also is a teacher, as much as, he is an artist. In his video blogs on youtube he offers a lot of advise about turning this talent that many people possess into a career.

Lets face it. It is hard to be a artist and get taken seriously if you are not creating art do to being tied down financially and working in a field that is taking you away from being able to actually create. You can't just walk around telling people you are an artist, but not actually having any artwork to show them. One of my biggest issues the last 6 -9 months has been not being able to do my thing.

I started this job that literally took up 16 hours or more of my day on a sometimes daily bases. But, the bills have to get paid so what can you do. Last year at this time I was living soully on my freelance work and now I barely have time to give you guys a new sketch to look at. I have to squeeze it in during the day between the diaper changing and the drive between jobs. This is absolutely no way for an artist to live.

One of the things Bobby Chui talks about as being very important as a commercial artist and a freelance person is having lots of arms extended to help you actually be able to sustain your living as an artist. I know way to many comic book artist that complain about having to make it 6 months before getting a pay check on a book they might have worked on. In fact, it took me almost 1 year to get a $50 dollar pay check from a certain company that I did 50 sketch cards for last summer. In a time when I really needed it I was not very happy to have to wait.

Which is why we need to have more than one arm extended in this field to help up make ends meet. This means, selling prints, original art, commissions Personal Sketch cards, t-shirts, our own comics, sketchbooks, you name it. There are a lot of options. We have to find ways to promote ourselves and sell other things besides our talents. Especially, when first starting out.

It wasn't till this past year that I realized just how important this could be. At one point I got into a cramp and I took the last of my convention sketchbooks and put them on ebay and sold every last one of them to get myself a train ticket to visit my family for the first time in like 2 years over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

The crazy thing was I never actually expected people to want to buy them. I had been looking at those books for months, in fact, I probably had them for a year. The lesson I learned though was valuable. There was a value to what I did even if it was just for fun in my spare time. People wanted to be a part of that.

They say, why work hard when you can work smart. I am coming to understand that saying more than ever now cause drawing 100 individual pinups just so you can make enough to pay the rent gets old really fast.

So one of the things I want to do in order to turn my life back around is extend some arms. In the coming future I want to start making prints and books of my work available for purchase. It is very important for my career that I am able to be financially stable if I want continue as an artists and not as a glorified maid.

Buffy the Vampire Sketch Card

Thought I would share my process for doing sketch cards. It is very similar to when I do my pinups But I change it when I do them on preprinted sketch cards cause I have to transfer the layout sketch over to the card with tracing paper. I might go over that one day. Tracing paper is your friend.

I had some scrap paper laying around. so I used a piece of that and drew out this sketch . I like to use a light box to trace my artwork to do the finished line work. Many people people don't like to trace or they see it as something bad but honestly it is a great tool for cleaning up your art as well as making changes and adjustments. You will be surprised to find out how much pros tend to trace there own work to get the desired effect they want in an image. (Now tracing someone else's work is an absolute no no.) But never think using the light box as a tool is a bad thing.

I don't have the inks for this Because I jumped right into the coloring but I hope you enjoy the finished product. One day I might go over how you can use the Dr. Martin dyes to paint.

You Are What You Think

"I repeat that your place in life, including your material environment, is determined by the thought-form you habitually hold of yourself. When you make a thought-form of yourself you can hardly fail to form in your mind a corresponding environment. If you think of yourself as an incapable, inefficient person, you will think of yourself with poor or cheap surroundings. Unless you think well of yourself you will be sure to picture yourself in a more or less poverty stricken environment. These thoughts,habitually held, become invisible forms in the surrounding mind-stuff, and are with you continually. In due time, by the regular action of the eternal creative energy, the invisible thought-forms are produced in material stuff, and you are surrounded by your own thoughts made into material things." Wallace d wattles The Science Of Being Great.


I posted this quote today because I felt that it really rang true in my life. I think some parents really believe they are doing all that they can for there children, to give then a good life. Though they may do somethings the right way, they don't recognize how there outlook on life directly effects their children.

Good example, I have a great nephew and he is 4 years old and absolutely adorable little boy. Now, I have a sister, she is 49 yrs old and he spends most of his time at her house because, she babysits him all the time.

My sister recently went natural. For those that don't understand what it means to go natural, this refers to African American hair and not chemically straightening it, but letting it remain it's natural kinky texture. After years of not being able to get her hair to grow and breakage she decided to stop getting her hair straightened, but was very fearful because she didn't want other black women to look down on her or say she looked ugly or looked like a boy.

My sister has this habit that when she is unhappy with her appearance. She will stand in the mirror and call herself ugly and tell herself how ugly her hair is. To cover up the look of her hair, she has braid extensions and weave put in so she doesn't feel ashamed of herself.

So one day, She didn't have the braids in and my little nephew saw her. He walk up to her and said Granny you are ugly. Now granted he is at her house all the time. He frequently hears her refer to herself as ugly. A child his age doesn't understand the concept of beauty outside of what he observes around him. So she comes to me, I have a natural too and have been growing my hair out for a very long time. She is crying about how this little boy called her ugly. I said who is he to have an opinion of you and your hair. You need to love what you have because it is beautiful and soft.

My point in this story is how our view of ourselves directly effects our environment and how the people around us view us. I have grown up in a toxic thought environment just as my sister has and there is a chain reaction that happens when you think negative thoughts about yourself. Whether it is because someone made fun of you as a child or you were a poor unsuccessful adult. And eventually your thoughts manifest.

I thin girl that believes she is fat may find herself gaining weight because her self loathing leads her to eat. A man that believe he is not good with women will find it awkward to talk to them and will not be able to have a love connection. A person that fears getting Breast cancer because someone else in her family had it, may one day wake up with a lump in her breast. Our thoughts become our environment, our life style, and make up everything we have in our life.

In the bible Jesus talks about how a man that lusts after a women in his heart has already committed adultery.

So today I challenge you to observe a negative thought you have in your mind about yourself on a regular basis and challenge it. You might find your life will start changing. I use to act as my sister did. When I went away for school and the people I was around changed, I found myself looking in the mirror and thinking about myself as a beautiful person. When you do that people see your confidence and want to be around you. So my second challenge is that you challenge other peoples negative thoughts about you. They may be a direct reflection of what you think of yourself.

God Bless,
Arie

P.S. More Bobby Chui for your now go draw.

Black Hawk

Actually, this drawing is inspired mostly by the hair style. Hope you enjoy.