I quickly scratched in some thoughts…

“April 30, 2013
I sat at the small creek, picked up this shell and two others. I watercolored the majority of it until I became aware of soft raindrops. Collecting my things, I resorted to a stadium nearby with a tin roof. I sit with my bike on the bench and wait anxiously to hear the rain hit the tin. But I am enjoying the cool wind and clear light before the down pour. Why haven’t I ever fallen in love with the weather only minutes before the rain? The squirrels scurry away, birds gather in trees. It feels like the beach.”

Humans make me cry. I am an overall emotional person and feel for everyone – everything.

I observe Shark Week. A part of me dies when Jeff names a no. 2 pencil “Steve” and breaks it on Community. I sympathize with everything. As a result, I easily cry a lot.

I love humans. I spend time imagining myself in their shoes, coveting their personality, thanking God I don’t have their personality and observing them. I watch people everywhere and study faces, behavior and their mere existence. Like my mother, I typically prefer portraits rather than landscape photos.

People are simply intriguing and it has been a desire of mine to capture their beings in sketch form. When I doubt my ability to do something, I find beginning very difficult. It is almost painful to press my pen to my paper. Though with the first stroke across the surface, I feel deep contentment and satisfaction in the small accomplishments.

This is a record of my first human sketching.

I find the most time to watercolor when I’m aiming to settle down at night. My thoughts die down, I sit on my bed in the dark and press brush against paper for a solid 10mins.

This particular night, my goal was to simply create a watercolor of an already watercolored floral print. I cover myself with inspiration every night and trace over my floral bedspread with my fingers. But this time, I traced it with brush.

Zine 1 of my new zine project, Still Life With Peasants.

“I have begun to perceive the word ‘peasant’ differently after six months of Tumblr indoctrination. No longer are peasants ‘coarse, unsophisticated, boorish, uneducated person[s] of little financial means’…” Read more of the manifesto…

I have begun to perceive the word “peasant” differently after six months of Tumblr indoctrination. No longer are peasants “coarse, unsophisticated, boorish, uneducated person[s] of little financial means” according to Dictionary.com but “those who are ignorant or intolerant of awesome things” as Urban Dictionary beautifully states.

From my perspective, the majority of my peers are peasants. If they would simply sit still, I could show them how I see them. Thus, the birth of my zine project, “Still Life With Peasants“. Each issue addressing a single peasant in my life, their newly constructed habitat in my mind.

I hope for this small project to grant me a new way to see these people. I easily view their lack of interest negatively instead of using their existence as a creative tool.

I collected mini paint chips from Home Depot and I plan to assign each paint chip to a matching object in my life. Today, Glidden’s “Refreshing Mimosa” paint chip closely matches the color of my new Anthro tea cup/mug. It reminds me to surround myself with things and people I wish to affect me. What goes in comes out. I want to surround myself with beauty. Not specifically an abundance of material things, but objects that reflect who I wish to be. I am going to fake it until I make it. Not by being someone I’m not, but making a habit of things I wish to be apart of me as a person. We define ourselves by the lifestyles we choose to live.

This is an visual exercise for me, to connect colors to thoughts and material objects to memories. Stretching my creativity and mind has become desirable and fortunately, achievable. People such as Austin Kleon (author of “Steal Like An Artist“) have encouraged me to continue these mind travels and I felt moved to write to him. Austin Kleon has a “praise file”, a space in which he stores encouraging emails. I decided I want to be apart of his collection, hopeful to make an impact some day. I sent it off thinking about that crummy day he may have soon. In a moment of discouragement, he would open up his praise file to read my email along with many others.

My nose is bothering me, it whistles softly so only I can hear. I sit in my favorite spot, the rocking chair. I love the blue fabric and the wooden frame. The zebra pillow works well with its vintage style. Peppermint tea fills my nose with warmth, I am thankful I chose to save it for Christmas. Peppermint reminds me of the cold and I wondered about it today. What is cold? Specifically cold weather. Where is the line drawn between a refreshing cool air and cold that sucks the nerves out of your body? What about cool warmth? I walk outside into 30F weather from an uncomfortably hot home. After a silent moment of relief, I feel nerveless again. How much time does my body take to register the temperature change? What temperature is my body content and comfortable at? I love to leave a chilly restaurant, stepping into the sun’s warmth. It almost burns for a moment before chill-bumps clothe my skin in satisfaction.

“You can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.” -Albert Einstein

As a newly Christmas tradition follows, the Hughes family and my own beloved family visited U-Paint-It to paint Christmas ornaments. Our very first visit, about three Christmases ago, I was very ill-prepared. My circular ornament portrayed the silhouette of New York City. I do not recall specifically painting it as New York, but my mother confirmed the fact this week as we reflected on past made ornaments. What can I say? I had to make a quick decision.

I brought a bow tie with me last year. More specifically, Finn’s bow tie. For Christmas, I purchased him a bow tie set, one with a dainty bell and another with charming mistletoe patterned fabric. *sigh* He was soooooo cute. Anywho, it made for a pretty dern cute ornament.

On Friday, my typical early morning consisted of playing with my birthday art pens (my family knows me so well). I sketched a few ideas for an ornament before settling on a jackalope. A ZOMBIE jackalope.

After an outline, I filled him in with Christmas-y colors and attempted to contain giggles. This guy is just too adorbs. I may or may not have kissed his jackalope nose.

He came along with me later that morning, I roughly sketched his portrait onto a flat ornament, a different style than the usual choosing. Tucking him away, I decided I would send him off to my Uncle Mark and Aunt Denise, the generous grantors of my new art pens.

After hours of ornament painting (the boys started getting hungry), we left for the mall. THE FOOD COURT. I ordered Chinese and settled into people watching. This fellow made me laugh, he daintily chewed his food, but took to making an odd face as I captured a photo of him.

Happen to have any Christmas traditions?

I can legitimately claim we have been through the thick and thin together. Whether through peaks of chocolate chip cookie dough or the soft volume of buttercream frosting…you have always been there. I admit there have been times I have overlooked your presence in favor of a wooden spoon or even my finger, but I always loved you. I regret the times I neglected your need for a bath, letting you soak in banana bread batter. It hardened between the layers of your plastic, I was never able to completely remove it. From that moment on, you were the last utensil I looked to when forming a team of butt-kicking brownie making tools. If only I had known your time would come so quickly. Was it accidental? Was it suicide? Had you fallen from the top rack of the dishwasher into the boiling water of cleanliness or…did you jump? Ignorance is bliss, but not even bliss can soothe this broken heart. Rest in peace, dear spatula.