Palstic Bags and Liver Failure

Turns out that it has been a really long time since I did much with colored pencils. I used to be really good at using colored pencils but I guess you really can forget how to ride a bike.

Last night my experiment with colored pencils didn't turn out so well. I tried a self portrait and ended up giving myself a black eye, prostitute lipstick and an overall unhealthy jaundice look.  I scraped the picture and I will not be showing everyone how hard I just failed at that. I have another picture I drew of Mika *cough* Michael. Remember, he's the character that hears the girl in his head and she sees images of him in her head? Yeah. Still trying to work out some of the details on that one. Anyway, here is a fairly successful example of a colored pencil (well, color stick) drawing I did of him. He too looks a little sick, way too yellow. Maybe I think everyone should be having liver failure.

I guess I could post a little of what I have written in this story. I decided to call it Plastic Bags because I felt that was what the story wanted to be called. Just brainstorming and doing a little character development I came up with this description of the main girl:

There was absolutely nothing extraordinary about Artemis except when extraordinary things happened, then she was brilliant. But no one knew this about her.  She didn’t even know this about herself.

       

One time, when Artemis was ten, her grandma’s friend, Paula, told her grandma that Artemis was “plain as pudding” and “seemed a bit simple.” Artemis thought this too, as no one had ever corrected her, that she was simple and plain.

      

Artemis had nearly dropped out of high school because the classes were so boring to her but she knew that her grandmother would have wanted her to finish and so was the only thing that kept her going until the end. She even messed around with an art college for a whole year before dropping out of there. Too many things happened that were out of Artemis’s control until she ended up the small South Texas town of Victoria where she worked as secretary at an oil company during the day and as the ticket taker at Chucky Cheese at night.

       

Art was the one thing that Artemis felt she was above average at. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t know how to draw. She used to draw what every little girl likes to draw, horses and fairies and dragons but around her fifteenth birthday, Artemis drew her mystery man for the first time. 

Dun dun dun. There we go. Another blog successfully completed and a little bit more of myself put out there on the internet for everyone to read!

Until the next time.

KB

When I Get Stressed Or Depressed, It All Comes Out As Creativity

I have being having problems getting along with my grandfather lately but he can't possibly be in the wrong so I have taken a few days off to cool down and not talk to him. I drove by one of the houses he is working on today and when I saw him, I got a little angry so there hasn't been enough cool off time on my end.

My uncle Jim put it perfectly when I asked him how he puts up with my grandpa and he said "Well, you only get one Dad." Which I guess is also true of grandparents in my life (single Mom family here and I haven't seen my Dad/Dad's family since I was 4. Well, with the exception of my only cousin on that side. He's awesome and he found my brother on the internet and reconnected.).

Well, anyway. I get really listless and pathetic when I don't have a purpose. When I do have a purpose, nothing in the 'verse can stop me. When I have a purpose AND I have a problem, I get super creative. No purpose? No art, no writing, no cleaning, no exercising, nothing. I watch a lot of TV and I eat a lot of random things that I can find around the house. Like I said, pathetic.

Usually I sketchbook like I have an addiction. I draw constantly. For the past year, I haven't been. I think that may be part of my problem, that I'm not drawing enough. Actually, since I started working on my art show, my sketchbooking has been going down hill in quality and quantity. I was encouraged in college to not draw everything that I wanted to because when I draw for fun, I usually draw comics. That wasn't the path that my art teachers wanted me to go down and so I hyper focused on doing portraits, which I love doing. It's just that my teachers weren't satisfied with just portraits.

When I did a painting of my grandmother that I took from an old photograph, my teachers kind of freaked out about it and got me to do a bunch of them. I said okay because I wanted to graduate and because I really liked finally having their approval. I didn't actually like doing the paintings. I mean, I didn't hate it but there was zero creativity in doing them but there I was, every waking hour that I wasn't in class or at work, painting from these photos.

I could tell you that my painting technique was what was creative about my art but that is sort of a lie because I just paint without thinking about it. A guitarist doesn't think about which position his hands need to be in to get the note out, he just does it. Same with painting. I just do it without thinking that if I used a dry brush in this corner then I can get this effect and if I use wet in wet here then the colors will do this and get this effect. No. I just instinctually know and my hands just work toward the image I've got in my mind. When working from photos though, the image was really static and right in front of me. I don't really want to do that again. I love working from life instead. Or just my imagination, I haven't done that well in a while.

Anyway, the work that I have done most recently from my imagination and under stress are these sketches I did in my business class. They are illustrating a story that came to me while my grandfather was in and out of the hospital last fall and I was cleaning his house so that he could live in it when he got back home. He's a hoarder and I spent hours and hours all by myself over at that house trying to give him enough room to roll a wheelchair though it. I was so successful that I made way into rooms that hadn't been accessible in years. Of course, when my grandfather finally got home, he was just mad about everything I had done and accused me of throwing stuff away and losing all sorts of things. We have gotten into another one of these arguments lately and I don't know how much more I can take of this mental illness that is eating away at his life and now, my life as well. That's what the pictures are about.

What really got me through some tough times while I was alone at my grandpa's house was imagining that I would turn the corner and I would find that there was a magical path to another world. It was sort of like the junkyard in The Labyrinth but it opened up onto this old-timey circus, the kind with a bearded lady and a strong man and a completely tattooed human. The kind with the world's smallest horse and dogs dressed up as elephants. There would be tightrope performers and sad clowns, not with crazy hair and polka dot costumes, but the kind with tears and tailcoats.

And then my grandpa went back into the hospital while I was working over there at the house and all of a sudden my circus imaginings seemed so stupid.

I felt lost and like I was adrift in this black pool where there were creatures and shifts that I couldn't see because I was looking up, floating on this black pool.

And then I was pulled down into the blackness and my life's blood, my essence, was drawn out of me and I lost myself and I became part of the darkness.

That is what dealing with someone who has a mental illness, like hoarding, is like. You want to escape but they draw you back in and then they suck out everything you are and you become part of the illness. It consumes your life like it has done to them.

I don't really know what to say after all that. I do feel a little strange that the thing that my imagination conjured up for me to escape to was the circus but it was a dark and scary kind of circus, like it didn't seem much better than the place I already was.

Quick Update on My Newest Story That I Am Trying Desperatly To Get Myself To Work On

Hi! So I'm really excited about this new story because I wrote six pages on it yesterday of actual story and not just brainstorming and talking to myself (you wouldn't believe how much I do that).

I also checked and found out that, of actual story, I have 6,000 words written for it! That translates to roughly 22 pages of writing!

I was really happy when I found out, then all of my creativity suddenly rushed out of my system and I couldn't think of anything more to write. I hate how that happens. I couldn't just sit around and be unproductive though so I headed over to Hobby Lobby and got more supplies to frame up my art stuff with.

I did write about how I have art work going up at Cafe Brazil off of 75 and SMU right? Did I also write that my brother texted me... Yes! Yes, I did. I was told I am probably the next artist going up at JR's, a bar in Uptown, and I freaked out because I didn't have enough artwork. Turns out I do have enough artwork, it's the getting that artwork framed I haven't done and now I'm struggling. I also need to take pictures and post them on my website so people can see them there.

Yesterday I finished framing up a vertical landscape painting, a painting of my friend Jamie, and another one of my friend Darby. I have probably ten more paintings needing frames and such. I need to get that done very, very soon but instead all I want to do is get on my computer and write. Which is productive and something I need to do as well but THIS IS NOT THE TIME!!!!!

My creativity has a way of doing this to me every time. I need to paint, so all  can do is write or vice versa. You wouldn't believe the beautiful paintings I did the weeks leading up to a story deadline or the lyrical writing that came out of me when my show was so close I cried myself to sleep because I didn't think I would make the deadline for it.

Some other, light hearted things, I watched Nicholas Nickleby (2002) with my mother last night. She is a big Dickens fan but she had never read Nicholas Nicklby (and neither have I, but I hate really depressing stories so I never was a huge fan of Dickens). We even have a bust of Dickens in the den here at the house (he likes to dress up for holidays like Christmas and Mardi Gras). I got really into the movie though and ended up yelling at the screen a LOT. Especially when Nicholas Nickleby beat people that really deserved it. Also, the end was totally unexpected and I was left a little dumbfounded. It made me want to read the story (but I probably won't because, as horrible as everything was in the movie, I bet it's worse in the book).

I also watched Silver Linings Playbook and I don't know how I felt about it. I got into Nicholas Nickleby a lot more than I got into Silver Linings Playbook and I can see how critics really loved Silver Linings Playbook but I've seen better movies. A movie with the same kind of feel, even dealing with mental illness, crime, and a family falling apart that I thought was much better was Robot and Frank. That shit made me cry. And it didn't puss out in the end and make everything happy. Maybe that's part of the reason I wasn't all that impressed with Silver Linings Playbook, it didn't go very extreme in anything. Like, the main character is bi-polar and has been put in a mental hospital for beating a guy nearly to death but it never felt like there was a huge range of emotion in the movie. It got to a certain level of emotion and plateaued.

While I'm bitching about critics liking movies that aren't as good as ones that they seem to hate, I want to talk about Man of Steel versus The Lone Ranger. Critics loved the Man of Steel and hated The Lone Ranger but I am completely on the other side of the fence. Man of Steel had so many problems (and I'm not saying this as a major Superman fan, which I am. I'm saying this as someone who welcomes GOOD interruptions of an already great story). There so many problems that at the end of the movie I (accidentally) shouted out "What the hell was that?" And then my mom hit me to shut me up because it seemed like the rest of the theater really enjoyed the movie.

When we went to see The Lone Ranger, I was blown away. I was actually blown away a few days after watching it too. I realized that the narrative structure days later and it was like the heavens opened up and God said "Yes, you can do that in a movie." It was like in high school when we read Wuthering Heights and the teacher explained about how the story is told in the book. It is told by a man who is piecing together the story from a bunch of people who just heard about what went down so it's already three times removed from the main characters and you can't know what is real, what people have made up or what actually happened. That's what they did in The Lone Ranger (obviously not with the finesse Emily Bronte did). The Lone Ranger starts in 1930 with this kid who is dressed like The Lone Ranger because he really likes the show that comes on TV when he goes to a fair and ends up talking to an old Indian who tells him the story of the "real Lone Ranger." What every critic seemed to miss is that there is no proof that this old Indian is really Tonto (in fact the kid doubts it OUT LOUD), there is no proof that the story he is telling is true, he gets things out of order and misses things that the kid has to remind him about and he back tracks in the story. If that isn't enough proof that this old Indian is an unreliable narrator then watch the parts about the Lone Ranger. The action is so wild and the situations are so ridiculous that it is obviously a story someone is telling a child. I fully believe that the movie wasn't trying to redo the original Lone Ranger, that's why they had the little kid in the beginning, they were creating a totally new thing that exists beside the original. The Original Lone Ranger exists in the new movie. I don't know how else to say all this. I also wrote it all here because no one in my real life wants to have discussions like this with me.

Okay. I guess this is all I'm going to write right now. I didn't get anything done in my writing but I did find a picture that I'm going to go paint now. Thank you Facebook and thank God I have gorgeous friends.

KB

Panic This Afternoon

I just spent two hours writing my latest blog and then it all just disappeared. Wow. Now I'm a little mad about that. Anyway. I guess il just have to write the whole thing over again.

I don't know if I've mentioned this but I am an artist as well as a writer.

I do watercolors professionally (here's a link to my website!) but I like painting and drawing almost anything. I post most of my non-watercolor work on an account on Deviant Art (another link!). I know, it looks like a totally different art did the art on those sites. I think I should put more of that other illustration stuff on my watercolor website but like I said, it doesn't even look like I did it.

Anyway, the whole reason that I wrote this post (and then had to rewrite this post) was because I wanted to tell everyone the good news. I was working yesterday on my websites, this blog, reading some books on copywriting and just being super productive when I got a text message from my brother, Garrick. He said Stu thinks that I'm the next artist going up and that he'd call me soon.

Everything screeched to halt (which was impressive since my butt was pretty firmly planted in my big squishy couch) and I started to freak out. Stu was the manager at this bar in Uptown Dallas called JR's and they are pretty dang popular. Stu lets artists come in and hang their work and it often sells. Garrick had introduced us quite a few months ago and there was a long wait to get on the walls at JR's. I had actually forgotten bout it and when I got that text I freaked out. 

I don't have any work that would sell really well in that space. Even if I did, hardly any of my work is framed and presentable. Garrick said not to worry, that I have like one or two months to get everything together but he obviously doesn't realize how much time it takes to start, finish, press, frame and get everything together to sell it. So this means that I'm going to get very busy very very soon.

I also started another blog, this one for my license plate business. I know that's a really weird thing to sell but its really a niche market and I've got it pretty much covered. I want to cover it even more, that's why I started the blog. Not to mention, more stuff to put in my copywriting portfolio. A lot of what I was thinking of writing for that blog though is life writing and I might be able to put that together for a competition or something. I also want to see about publishing in some car magazines or in the license plate collectors magazines.

Ah! So much work to do and so little time to do it. I love this feeling! I am so ready to work. I think it's a little funny how I just decided three days ago to get my life together and look at all the stuff that's happening already. If only I had gotten the motivate to do all of this a little sooner.

I'll leave you with a lovely self portrait that I did last year. I think the back of the piece says "I really love my hair." 

KB

Day Two of My "Get Your Life Together Plan"

Bonjour! 

As you can see, I am already trying to learn French (not that "bonjour" is very advanced French but, hey, I'm trying). 

I have been working (I'd like to believe pretty diligently working) on reaching a few of my goals. The first goal I'm trying to tackle is the get a good job with decent pay at a company (because working for myself is great but time consuming and very difficult). To reach this goal I read a few books on how to become a copywriter. I've been writing copy for myself and for others for years now without any formal training and I didn't know what it was called while I was doing it. After reading through a few of these books, I found that I was, for the most part, doing the right things but there were a few places I could improve. So that's what I'm going to do. I've spent a lot of time thinking and combing over the copy on the many websites and social media pages that I admin to make sure that I have really punchy and effective messages out there. 

I haven't finished editing and reworking all of the websites (that's going to take quite a while) and so I thought I could jump over here and post something on my blog because that's another part of my great strategy to become world famous and super rich (because I have totally normal and attainable dreams). I'd like to think that having such wild goals makes me a harder worker. Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, here are some steps I decided will get me closer to accomplishing the goals I listed yesterday:

- Read and learn more about copywriting and graphic design (I have a pretty decent foundation in both of these things and experience doing both of them professionally, I just want to get better at them.)

- Review, edit, rewrite, edit, rework, edit, polish and perfect all of the copy, images, designs, etc on the websites and social media pages I control (because why would I leave something up on the internet that isn't as perfect as I can make it?)

- Make printouts of my web pages as well as the unpublished writing I did as prep work for what I posted or plan to post and create a portfolio of work I can take with me to interviews or meetings with clients (this is an important step because it prepares me for that job I want and it also forces me to super organize my work into a presentable format)

- Rewrite and polish my résumé to reflect the amount of work and knowledge I have in both the copywriting and graphic design fields (because I have decided that is the field that I want the permanent job in. I'd like to work for a company that has things like health care and vacation time because right now, working for myself, those kinds of things don't exist.)  

- Continue to post on this blog and set up a blog for another business to keep interest in the blog, reach a wider public, and to further showcase my copywriting abilities (this blog is really something I need to be more diligent in keeping up with. It currently isn't very impressive or well linked but maybe someday, with a lot of hard work, it will be.)

I'll keep posting about my progress writing copy and my progress writing fiction works! Ah! I totally forgot I had intended to post literary writing (not that blood demons are terribly literary. Update on that story though, not going to have blood demons and time travel anymore. The more I thought about it, the more it really became about the two characters relationship and less about the wild circumstances around their relationship.)

Maybe tomorrow I'll post more on my personal writing. Or about the things I've been reading lately. Maybe I'll post a picture too. I think that a lot of my post are lacking pictures. I should fix that.

I'm Back!

Okay, it took a little work but I think that I'm back to being normal, high strung, stressed out, hyper productive, on task, super goal orientated Kelsey. It took a little soul searching but I think I have finally found a plan that will work for me and this time I'm going through with it. 

To prove how serious I am, I'm going to post my newly revised list of goals. Putting them out there in the world gives them a bit more power and will give me more conviction to see them through. 

1) Either see the curvature of the Earth from as close to space as I can get, if not actually make it into space.

2) Become a published author more than just once (and can't include exclusively self publishing).

3) Travel the world and take my time to really take in the sights and culture and history.

4) Get a job that either requires a lot of travel OR a decent paying job that lets me work long stretches of time at home/any location with Internet access and a cell phone.

5) Buy and manage a fairly large collection of houses and rental properties.

6) Learn French.

7) Become moderately successful in a different field than literature (i.e., comics, fine art, public speaking, film scripts, song writing, stage production, etc).

8) Meet new people and make lots of connections for life.

And 9) Make a difference in the world.

Ta-da!  Those are the things that I'm going to be working on from here on out!  Sounds exciting doesn't it? Hopefully I'll stay on top of this blog too now that I have a reason to keep working on it. 

I really hope to get a job either in copywriting or in graphic design (things that will keep me creative and help me to keep working on art and writing while I'm at home). I'm going to start really researching those fields and really tailor my résumé to fit those types of jobs. 

I'm super excited about all of this and I hope that if others start reading this blog that they will be as excited for me as I am. 

By the way, just putting this out there. Thank you curly headed waiter boy at Cafe Brazil last night/this morning. You kept me watered and fed for seven hours straight while I worked on getting this plan down on paper and you even blew me a kiss when I left. Hopefully we'll have some other nights like that and I will get just as much writing done as I did last night (I wrote in the ball park of 30 pages of solid content. That's like a whole short story or the major introduction to a novel right there. I would love to do that again.) and together we can get me to a great place in life.

Alright. I'm going to keep this post short and sweet.

I'm going to get off my ass and get things accomplished. I've got a few projects to tackle today and I need to get on to them.

KB