IT'S A WRAP!!!

It's a wrap... or maybe it's a burrito from Chipotle. I have eaten so much burrito that I know all the perfect combinations depending on my mood. Well, they usually involve steak, spice, sour cream, cheese, rice, pinto beans and A LOT of Guacamole... and that is my healthy meal. But I'm not going to delve on my eating habits, at least not on this entry. The reason it is a wrap is because the semester is over. Sure, I have to be back in 2 weeks in order to start the second semester, but the good thing is that now I can assess my efforts! The problem with art courses is that the teachers rarely give you a grade. It is much more complicated than that, and the reason is that they have to measure improvement, technique, ability to comprehend the material, attendance, and the infamous participation. I know by fact that participation is not my strongest suit, sometimes because I just don't feel like saying anything, other times because I don't feel comfortable making a critique about my classmates works. Still, I know that you need to participate to improve the dynamic of the class, but at my age I simply don't care, I just want to learn what I am paying for. Also, art students improve at their own pace and the teachers have to measure that! I've seen masterpieces from some classmates and horrible horrible artwork from others! Oh the HORROR!!! I'm glad to say that I am above average but my weaknesses are other man's (or woman's) strength! In any case, I would expect, based on my effort, that I get A in all my subjects, but that is what I don't know yet. Still, If I get a B I will now know that I have to put more effort in that class, but seriously, more??? I guess I could push it a little more but then I would have absolutely NO LIFE outside my drawing table or my easel!

Which painfully reminds me of an anecdote that happened to me in a social event. I was in a wedding and an acquaintance (if this wouldn't have happened maybe I would refer to him as "a friend") asked me the typical "fill in the uncomfortable silence" question: What are you up to? I have to admit that I always say that I am studying art (and just ART), and based on their response or attitude towards my answer I can expand it to illustration. If they're still getting the idea and want more I will proudly say that my major is cartooning. Still want more clarification? My final answer: "Comics". To tell you the truth, when someone do not understand they stop at my first answer, but sometimes curiosity is an extreme impulse and when they get to the comics part they just get lost in translation. I told this acquaintance of mine that my plan is to study 2 years for the Bachelor in Fine Arts (BFA), 2 years for the Master in Fine Arts (MFA), and finally 1 more year as an Optional Practical Training (OPT) in which I can work in the United States. He thought he understood and replied with this: "Oh, so you are taking 5 years off!" Let me say upfront that this is an insulting remark and you should probably say it, in any situation, at your own risk! Still, I didn't succumb to my animalistic nature and like a passive aggressive yet sarcastic adult I let it go! I know most of the people don't understand what the hell I'm doing and believe me, if I would tell what I'm doing to myself from six years ago maybe I would say "you are crazy", but to endure what I'm going through to be rewarded with that comment it is just unfair. Like one good friend said to me "get used to this because this will happen from now on until the day you die". Ok, I'm going to change the subject because thinking about it just boils my blood up too much and although I can accept criticism very well I know I'm not mature enough to respond well to those derogatory comments.

New York is freezing, and it's supposed to get worse in the next couple of months. If anything is telling me to quit this challenge is that, but just for a second when I'm clenching my teeth on a windy corner waiting for the sign to change. I'm getting prepared because no matter what I will finish my career. Still, when I upgrade my wardrobe with a new fluffy jacket the temperature just happens to drop. It seems that I will always be cold or that I'm too stubborn to wear my heavy-duty jacket. My logic is that if I use that jacket now, then in February I should get what? An Eskimo suit? Now you see, my plan is to get acclimated to this horrendous weather! UNAGI (a state of total awareness in a highly disciplined form of Kah Rah Tehy, or Ross, who cares!) I have also perfected my skill of walking looking down due to the cold. My first instinct is to hide my face in the jacket just like a turtle. Because you're freezing you don't really care what you hit as long it's not a speeding car. You have absolutely no idea how many times I have played chicken with people walking, and sometimes they just DON'T GET OUT OF THE WAY either!!!

Ok, ready to see some artwork? I'd really like more PARTICIPATION from my readers!!! Anything you like to say will really help me a lot to improve. Also, if you can forward this blog it will be greatly appreciated. Damn! I'm falling again to marketing and advertising!!! No, this is about art and thou shall get ART! Beginner's art, but art nonetheless!

Let's start with my favorite class, that is, drawing! I have to admit that even I can see the progress in these 4 months. Sometimes it's very frustrating, because unlike any other class or activity in art, you can wake up one day and be shaky or tired and not being able to draw anything, at least compared to your own standards. When this started to happen I knew for a fact that something was messing up with my abilities. It could be anything actually and I did have very bad weeks but it is fair to say that as I write I have my superpowers back! Unless I had too much to drink the day before. Drawing with hangover is just way too hard, but I guess I even have to master that skill ;) I will begin showing 3 drawings that I made in-class. 1) The drunken clown. He was a model that I think is kind of bored with modeling because the second he laid down he put a red ball over his nose and said to us "imagine myself as a drunken clown" PERV! I think that is how he gets his kicks! 2) Teddy Bear Girl. This was a female model, obviously, which happened to bring a teddy bear! I have no idea why they are bringing these gadgets! This was made with ink, not happy with the result of inking my pencils. 3) Shy girl. I drew her from behind because I was too lazy to change my spot on the studio. Still, I really liked how this one turned out. Also we had a little bit more time with this one than usual.

For homework I had to copy a drawing or a painting from a famous painter. The teacher gave us a list and I chose Van Gogh out of those artists. Another homework was to draw the texture of a fruit, and I think I really nailed it this time. You can even see the texture of the rotten orange. Yes, I don't know why I buy fruit if I don't eat it, EVER!

Also I wanted to show you what I do on my spare time. This is an independent study because a fine arts class (like the foundation drawing I am taking) do NOT teach you any rules, you just have to learn from observation. I mean, it's fine, but I need more. I know now that in my second year I will be getting more rules on proportion, perspective, shading, etc. This is from a video tutorial I am taking at home and it's called "The Structure of Man". These are my notes on all the rules to make a skull! NERD!

In my painting class we had to learn to paint a human body. So we finally got our own model in the painting studio. This was done in oil on canvas and took us a lot of hours to finish. I did two paintings, one of her face and another one of her torso. The face was done first and if you look closely on the second painting, you can notice the improvement of the flesh tones. She is not as skinny as it looks!

I've had tons of homework involving human forms, but to simplify I will add just two of them. One was of a hand and its shadow. The shadow was supposed to be fantasy. The other project was to draw our self-portrait using our fingers, NO BRUSHES! This is a tedious work and I can just imagine how happy I would have been with the result if I'd used at least one brush.

In my storytelling class we had to draw a 6-page comic. I can't imagine how many times I have read comics in 15 minutes, which usually contains 22 pages, and never considered how long it takes to make each page. Of course I'm slow because I don't draw as a professional, but I can only guess that when I draw better I will be doing more complicated panels so the time will be practically the same, or even more. I spent 54 hours doing this 6-page comic from thumbnails to inking. To best clarify the process, it is divided in 4 parts: 

1. Thumbnails. - Original layout of the panels done in a loose but somehow comprehensive way. I spent 10 hours doing this, but mainly because I had to corrected it and do it all over again, so I would assume that it takes around 5 hours to create the thumbnails of a 6-page comic. This does not contain the script. In this case, the script was written by me, but because it falls more on the writing domain I did not included it in this breakdown.
2. Pencilling. - The most fan part of it all. This is when you actually draw with hard pencils (I use 3H). It could get very frustrating specially when you are drawing the details of the background, the perspective, and camera angles. I drew some pages drinking beer and they turned out much better. I spent 21 hours drawing. Not all of them in one sitting though.
3. Lettering. - This is a very slow process and not very rewarding, but you have to do it. It took me about 7 hours to draw the word balloons and write in the dialogue.
4. Inking. - This is when you have to apply indian ink to your pencils. It is a long process and you tend to mess up a lot! There is nothing more aggravating than watching a drop of ink stains your page. You can correct it but it will never be a virgin page anymore. It took me as long as 16 hours to finish the job. Also, Drinking & Inking, not a good idea!

To finish the process of creating comics you need to color it, and print it. It is fair to say that if you work for big companies like DC Comics or Marvel Comics you just have to do your thumbnails and your pencilling, because they have professional inkers (who could diminish or enhance your artwork), letterers, and colorists.

I will include 2 pages of my 6-page comic titled "Good Night Ops", and along with them I'm attaching the thumbnail version for you to get a clear idea of the process.

Finally, for my sculpture class, like always I have very little to say about it because it is just so damn weird. Still, I had an outside project that my brother did for me. He is, in many ways, more creative than I am, and I was really fed up with other projects. The project was to make something creative but in an incremental approach, in other words, adding more stuff to the artwork. The end result was "paper cuts", a narrative story of the people from Paper Town made exclusively with paper! (The background was made in Photoshop, obviously) An original artwork by Oswaldo Molestina. His drawing skills are kind of basic and that is what makes it so fun and great! Thanks Ovadi! :)

The last project was to build something in a box! Weird! and at the end it looked like a Voodoo totem or something like that. Still, it contains every little thing that I found on my apartment, but it is fair to say that a classmate named Kellsey gave 50% of her junk to me. Thanks!!! (I know! I'm slacking in this class!)

I know this has been a LONG entry, and I have to apologize for that. In the foreseeable future I will try to make them shorter. Specially since it seems that a good friend of mine doesn't have the time to read all of it, so if he ever gets to this part of the blog he just have to text me the phrase "Long live the Flash" and prove me wrong.

Remember that: "hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning", and also "forget insults and only remember compliments, but if you succeed in this... please tell me how!"

Happy holidays and godspeed,

José Luis

THIS IS NOT A BLOG!

I can't believe I have been in New York for three months by now. There is always an abrupt reminder each month that passes because I paralyze the humongous mechanism of the city by standing incredulous and ashamed at the same time in front of the entrance of the subway station because of insufficient fare. You see, I can only buy monthly passes for underground transportation and this was my fourth, but I guess you figured that out already. Since we are talking about my favorite way of transportation I have to say something that really "grinds my gears" (Family Guy people, try to keep up!). It is unavoidable to fathom why people cross the yellow line (as in DO NOT PASS) in order to watch the end of the tunnel to see IF the train is coming. Well, I guess it is an act of impatience, but why my God why??? Is not that they can do anything about it. I have to confess that when I'm running late I do that too, and that is why I hate that so much!!! I am a free thinker, at least that's what my Foundation Drawing teacher keeps telling me, so why am I SO predictable. On the other hand, is so nice to get to the subway station and the train is waiting for you. (Can't help thinking about Uma Thurman, Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction) Ok, moving on...

It is important to say that I am not eating right, so please, if you see me, I know I have gained some weight. Some people even had the nerve to assert "You are not running anymore, right?". It is just so difficult to eat healthy in this city, and believe me when I tell you that the occasional pimples in my head are due to the Lili and Loo Chinese restaurant two blocks from my apartment. At first I thought I was deaging somehow, as Benjamin Button, and had found the secret of immortality (although he dies an infant, horrible horrible movie), but then I realized my joints still hurt, particularly when I am at the floor trying to do some painting for homework and after a couple of hours it is just impossible to get back up. Still, I am managing and from time to time I eat almost healthy food. At least I am running again since my Achilles tendonitis seems to be cured by now.

Let's talk about my Foundation Drawing class, shall we? We have been doing a lot, and I mean A LOT of figure drawing. This means drawing a nude human model. We get men and we get women, and we have to draw them in detail. Some of you would say"drawing a nude man would be awkward" and yes, it is, but as time passes it is just another drawing with tonal values and shades. Still, I do not stay much time drawing certain areas if you know what I mean. On the other hand, drawing female nude models is more relaxed and fun since we only get Victoria Secret type models, such as this one:

And this one:

To tell you the truth, the "big momma" was actually very nice and a very good model. You know immediately that she's been doing this for a while (maybe since 100 pounds ago!!!) I tried another more artistic approach using another technique of pen and ink:

I have by now hundreds of these figure drawings but I am not going to bore you with those, instead, I am going to bore you to death with this abstract drawing made with charcoal:

But you may ask, "What does it mean?" The answer is "who the hell knows", and I was the artist!!! The only thing that I can tell you is that I drew this when I was listening to the song "Someone to talk to" by The Devlins. The curious thing about an abstract drawing, or painting for that matter, is that it seems so random, but you need to have an intention in order to be validated as art. What was my intention? Does this represent a message or a state of mind perhaps? You draw your own conclusions (No pun intended) but after that, be sure to send them to my e-mail because I am not sophisticated enough to decode my own abstraction! It's like the word "Composition" in a drawing or painting. We artists all know what it is, we can actually perceive it and even comment on it, but to actually comprehend it or define it is harder than it sounds. It's like the "bouquet" for the wine lovers. They know spot on not just what the bouquet is, but they are able to decipher the odors and even describe and classify them. Still, that word, especially when a teacher is criticizing my work, baffles me.

I also had to draw what I see from my window's apartment. What we got "NEW YORK, NEW YORK"

Now that you have seen that I can actually draw (at least a little bit) I'm going to show you some bad drawings from my Storytelling class. I was considering not uploading them but it would be unfair to you just to show the pretty stuff. At least in the future you are going to see some improvement (I'm already working on a 6-page comic which is turning so much better). This is a story about a man who gets trapped in a steam shower. It is based on a true story. I can validate that since it actually happened to me!!! :) It is only a 3-page comic (that took long hours to complete) so try to enjoy.

Now for my Painting class. A very important lesson, you don't use black to make shadows, you can either use blue, green, or brown, but never black! I had no idea and I almost screwed my painting when I tried to shade it. Anyway, I've been having so much fun in this class. We had to do a personal still life with 3 small objects that mean something to us. I chose a lead Flash figurine, my New York City Marathon medal, and an Ipod Nano new generation. I think the items are self-explanatory. This was the work IN CLASS so it took a lot of hours to complete. I could easily estimate between twelve to sixteen hours. Then, we had to do the same composition on a smaller painting but based on the style of a famous artist. I chose Van Gogh (he was a very disturbed person, but I felt a connection to him because he started to study art around his thirties... Wait a minute... does that mean I am disturbed? Maybe? Perhaps? Well, who cares! I am a FREE THINKER after all).

Also we had to do a homework based on another artist. For this project I chose Roy Lichtenstein. He was a famous pop artist from the sixties who based his paintings from comics, advertisements, and magazines. He loved the serial commercialism of these media. He once said: "Comic books are, to a large extent, a mechanical representation of a romantic situation. I think there's a lot of this in my work. It seems to be mechanical, therefore anti-art, because art is supposed to have feeling. But of course the passionless style is my passion". I would have to agree with Roy on that one "The passionless style is MY passion".

Finally, I have NO IDEA what I'm doing in my Sculpture class. The instructions given to me were simple: cut, bend, assemble, and paint pieces of wood. This is the result of nine hours of work:

Yes, I've been here for only three months and my life has changed drastically, bu somehow it feels right! It feels that I am right on track! I know I just throw a lot of information at you, but my blog is like a ride, or an accident, it happens very fast and has a lot of details and information, but at the end you just can't remember a thing! (I know some smart asses will say: "This was anything but FAST", well, my quip to that is: "maybe YOU are slow!". Yeah, I'm fun! :) So, inspired by Rene Magritte all I can say is "This is NOT a blog".

Godspeed,

José Luis

LOTS OF ART!!!

I am on the road to becoming an artist, but… what exactly is an artist? One would say that an artist is a person with the ability to produce art, but then it becomes more ambiguous because really, what IS art??? Some would say that art is an expression of the artist in order to evoke a response from the viewer. In other words, art is subject to interpretation. I had to go to a lot of art exhibitions in the last couple of weeks; some were good and some were bad, some were hard to elaborate and others looked like children were playing around and the outcome was that particular painting. I am not going to post those pictures because there are a lot of them and you’d have to be involved in some kind of art making to somehow appreciate them. I am learning to do so but it is hard, to open my mind and really get a painting or a sculpture for that matter. For me it is as if I open a bottle of wine of Premier Cru Château Margaux. I know it is a great wine, but I don’t think I could elaborate on why this specific wine is that good. Well, art, as wine, is an acquired taste, but you have to be very sophisticated (which I am NOT) to create or critique on those pieces. I just see good, bad, or repulsive, in some cases.

Either way, art is good because it is an expression of someone, it could be beautiful or grotesque, but it always has a meaning, even if the author doesn’t know it. The main question here is what is art to you, or in this case, to me! I have done some pretty bad artwork (as you will see), but some seem to like them. There was this case when I did a project for my sculpture class and I created an object using tongue depressors. I spent around 5 hours gluing them together and at the end I knew it wasn’t a work of art and it was obviously very cheap (250 tongue depressors cost me around 4 dollars), but at the subway one girl came to me and smiled when she noticed the “sculpture”. (Maybe she was flirting with me but I am totally clueless on the subject ;)). This made me think that if this obsolete abstract piece of “art” (I can think of a better adjective for it) could make someone smile, then it is a good work of art and it should be exhibited. Well, I wanted to test this theory so coincidentally that day we went to 5 exhibits. One of the exhibitors specialized on creating a lot of random stuff using garbage, very similar to my homework; so I put my piece on the floor near some other sculptures to see what happened. This is for real, people went on and admired my sculpture, and I even heard one interpret why the author made this thing. Seriously, art is everywhere… and since then, I am finding art in the most unusual places.

Ok, so I want to be a comic artist. Is it still art? Hell, yeah! Next week I am going to post some comic artwork and you better like it or else… But honestly, I have seen original art from comic artists and they are so exquisite that I know by now how difficult and time-consuming they were.

Another thing to considerate is that when you create something, it is YOURS! It has a certain connection to you. For instance, I made another sculpture (This class is so fun but I really don’t want to keep doing this!!! I’d rather be drawing) that when I left it on the table around other pieces made by my classmates, I was really connected to mine. I protected it. It had no life but still I knew every detail of it, I knew how it was assembled and how it was painted. All the decisions for it to become what it is were mine. Somehow, and this could sound really creepy, when I turned around I felt its eyes on the back of my neck (No, I am not doing drugs, I am just expressing myself as an artist ;)). I think this is the only way to actually OWN something. Buying something does not make you an owner, anybody, with enough money, can do that, but to create something, even if it is crap, it is your creation, yours and nobody else’s.

                 

Besides sculpture I do other stuff too! I also paint and draw. I did four paintings and one big drawing! First I am going to talk about my painting experience. In class we had to paint a white still life and give the composition some values and tones. I spent around twelve hours doing this painting, and since it was my first oil painting I think I did OK. I noticed how in my first class I was messy and could not handle the brush well, but since it was an in-class project I got better by the end, which made me fixed some mistakes at the beginning, others were impossible to rectify. We used the mix of two composite colors and added white to make specific tints and some black to create shades. Let me remind you “this is NOT my BEST, this is my FIRST!” So if somebody want my first painting the bidding starts at $200 ;)

The next projects were homework and I spent like 4 hours on each one. I used acrylic on a board canvas. The Mondrian inspired project was intended to use as many colors I wanted the way I wanted them. It was an exercise on mixing colors. I got an A so I guess I did OK. The other I enjoyed more because it was more challenging. I painted my running shoes using just orange. Of course you can see more colors but only because I needed to use some whites and blacks in order to give some tonality. I really liked this one, specially since I am a runner.

 I also had to do a Sol LeWitt inspired painting on a 6 x 6 in. wood panel for my art history class. I just taped it and painted in black and white. I didn’t feel like doing more, above all because the teacher told the entire class that my last project was the least intellectual (the nerve on that guy!). I did NOT do my best effort with my latest job but he was enchanted, mesmerized, fascinated with this piece. He told the entire class that this was the best response to LeWitt since I extended the painting to the edges, so it focused more on the object rather than the illusion of painting. I nailed it with this and all of it came from within me, I just did not know it when I painted it :). Who knows, maybe there IS an artist inside of me!

Finally, my beloved drawing project, this is what I really enjoy the most. My assignment was to take three objects from home and draw them. Once I watched my fellow classmates turn in their works I knew I overworked for this one. Don’t get me wrong, there are some talented guys in the class, but even they did not spend so many hours with this project. Like I said in one of my tweets: “I am not the most talented, but I am for sure the one who works the hardest”.

Since I cannot finish my entry without mentioning anything pejorative about my classmates, I will only say this: I am learning a lot of slangs from them. For instance, when you say “two thumbs down” it means, as we all know, that it sucks, stinks, or it is just bad, but when you say “two thumbs away” it means that this is just not worth it, the absolute worst, so bad that it has crossed the point of no return. Also the term “rad”, which I will write down the definition from the Urban Dictionary below.

Rad.- An abbreviation of 'radical'--a term made popular by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Still primarily used by people on the West Coast who find words like 'cool', 'awesome', and 'tight' to be tired and overused; 'rad' is generally considered to be a much higher praise than the aforementioned superlatives. Also used as a general expression of awe.

So, these couple of weeks were RAD!!! ;) I know! it is totally lame that I am learning this shit, but really, I spent 24 hours a week with them, and it always comes from the same girl. Maybe she is lame and I am catching lame words. Was it a joke, a gag, some uncool word to say for a couple of laughs? I honestly can’t tell, and don’t care that much either! As WTF means “why the face” to Phil Dunphy from Modern Family, now RAD means “cool” to me. Have a RAD week you all!

Godspeed,

José Luis

THIS IS MY DEATH STAR!

I was watching a silly movie… Fine, I admit that I watch a lot of silly movies. Ironically, I read a lot of mature, or to say the least, intellectual comics.  So this movie is named FANBOYS, and it is about a group of close friends who grew up in the 80s with the privilege of watching the Star Wars movies when they still seemed as MAGICAL and playing with their toys, now overflowing in the market in order to satiate Lucas need for growing his empire. I totally lost track of what I was saying due to this fanboy rant! Anyways, these friends want to go to Skywalker ranch to steal the pilot for episode I before its official opening debut. It is a highly stupid comedy, full of Star Wars references, but there was one thing that picked my interest.  One of the friends persistently told the other guy who was losing his faith in stealing this movie that this particular moment in his life was his “death star”. As I HOPE we all know, the Death Star was a huge empire base created by the empire to destroy entire planets (If you really don’t know what the hell I am talking about, please do yourself a favor and watch the original trilogy. It has special effects, some muppets and very incestuous connotations but it is a really fun and intelligent movie!!!) Luke Skywalker (if you don’t know who he is then I can’t do anything to help you!) was practically a nobody, but he had one achievement in his life that changed his course completely. He fired an impossible shot through a small hole from the base and blew up the entire Death Star. Nobody believed he could do it but he did it anyway! I know by now that I have lost some of my audience, but please be patient that I am getting to my point. I think life presents you with lots of opportunities to succeed; saying that, it also give you one life changing opportunity (maybe two if you are lucky) to be what you are supposed to be, to prove yourself what you need to do in order to triumph in life. This is the moment that you have to get some courage and shoot the Death Star.

I realize that I am not making much sense, but you see, I learned something today (South Park reference ALERT!!!), that you have to live YOUR life and nobody else’s. I was at the NEW YORK COMICCON, which is the second best comic convention next to San Diego Comicon. It was a lot of fun and I had a blast wandering the halls full with thousands of exhibitors, but where I spent almost all of my time was at the “Artist Alley”. My life is drawing, or at least that is what I want my life to be, either by mimesis or creation, but I want my art to express itself. I think my drawings express the essence of my life in its purity. And what shocked me most is that I could see hundred of artists that are maybe feeling the same thing. Why? Easy, I don’t think anybody will feel any social pressure to get into cartooning! It is ridiculous to even think about it. I cannot imagine any parent saying to his child “you MUST study cartooning because that is a honorable and decent career that will give you a lot of money and recognition”. No, I don’t think anybody will hear a “must” in that context. Maybe once you made up your mind about this career path, maybe they could say to you: “you MUST be better at what you do” but not before. I think an unhappy cartoonist is a hungry cartoonist, and I am sure there are lots of them. Still, I am hungry for that lifestyle… I don’t know, maybe I will not need to sell a $40 sketch to a fan to survive, but I definitely want to be able to do it. And in case I do need it, I’ll have my preparation and experience in other areas to back me up.

All those artists in the artist alley saw me as a fan, a geek, whatever adjective you think is proper for us, but when you are in there, the only weirdo is you! Think about it, thousands of people discussing how Flash could help solve the energy crisis without collapsing the speed force, or for instance, how Darth Vader eats! It is crazy, and maybe trivial, but it is the way they have chosen to live. To say it better, they have chosen to expand their capacity to analyze characters, plots, continuity, stories and in doing so making the trivial not only important but vital to the common geek. VOILA! I think most of those artists are geeks themselves and sometimes they treat you with the respect you deserve. Some are nice, and some are way over their heads and think they are THE shit! For those stupid bastards I can only say this: beware! They do not see me as a competitor, because I am not, but I will be. This is not a discussion. I will be!!! (yes, an artist treated me bad and I am pissed!) In any case, I don’t like when people forget where they come from. They were geeks, and now they make fun of them. And to tell you the truth sometimes it is unavoidable. There are way too many extreme geeks out there. American pop culture is very weird; I do not even understand it well. Of course I like what they like, but they idolize, obsess and pay tribute to those idols. It is as if they have nothing else but the need to express themselves this way. It is weird but sometimes you cannot help feeling sorry for them.  But what I really like about them is that they really don’t care. They dress up as comic book characters and they are happy to pose for you, and I am the one who is taking his picture, so I guess the joke is on me!

I had a really good time at the convention, and although it is kind of frustrating to be the one asking for sketches when you want to be the one sitting drawing, it still is a cool place to be. This is where I heal my hurts, and by doing this I get fuel, an extra life if you want. It is as if I don’t need anything else at that point. I know that I need a lot of things, and I also know that when I get there I will need more to fill my unfulfilled life, but I try not to think as the goal oriented man that I am, but rather as a man who is enjoying the view more and more each time I see it.

I hope I did not bore you with my complicated, sometimes contradictory feelings, but it seems in this case they blossom in the fall!

Oh! I forgot to talk about my classes! I will only say this: Why kids sleep so much??? They finished early their work, they sleep, they see an instructional art movie, they sleep, sometimes they even sleep working! It is amazing and I cannot understand it, but oh hell yeah I can remember! Good ol’ times! Next blog lots of pics since this week is going to be deadly!

Godspeed,

José Luis