The older I get, the more I feel that there are so many talented artists around me. Back in elementary school, most people were only capable of badly colored drawings, often consisting of:

- Stick figures
- Houses that are just a triangle on top of a square
- Skies that are blue at the top but otherwise blank

By middle school it had improved quite a bit for some people, and by high school a few were drawing like pros. I find it funny, though, how almost every teacher I've met is terrible at drawing. The only exception is, yep, you guessed it, art teachers. The last art teacher I had, I think he used to be an illustrator. So of course if he wasn't a good artist he would've starved. (Well, maybe not starved, there are probably ways to get food...Like the lady I saw sneakily picking an orange from someone's tree because the orange was hanging out on the other side of the fence...)

Well, at this age, I guess people are starting to figure out what they're really passionate about and are deciding what they want to pursue, what they think is worth spending their time and effort doing. I know a lot of people who are pretty good at drawing, but there are a few who have really put in a lot of work and I especially want to point them out now.

One of them is my mom's friend's son. My mother just told me that he won the Fotodyne art contest. Apparently he spends a lot of time on a regular basis to improve his art and even goes to another city to practice sketching models (nude, I think, but it is important for artists to be able to draw the human body. After all, my art teacher said about naked people, "Eventually they become just another thing to draw"). If you want to see the full size version of his contest entry, click here. Actually, the style does remind me a bit of an artist on Pixiv. (Not that that's a bad thing. I greatly admire many of the Pixiv artists, wish I was more fluent in Japanese so I could understand more of what's there...Google Chrome's instant translate can be really confusing...)

As for the other person whose art has caught my attention, it is this artist. She has some very nice portraits in her gallery. Actually, a group in my Writing for Publication class last year made a documentary showing what three different people do on Saturday night. One of the people featured was her, and showed some of her drawings, as well as her practicing the guitar.

I must say that I really admire those who practice so much in order to better themselves. I've only ever had that kind of energy in brief fits, and I wish I could keep going at it long enough to make a significant change in my habits and my artistic abilities. I've been thinking maybe I should do something like the 365 days project, either with photography or drawing (or both!) so I'll be forced to practice at it every day. ...I just worry if I can come up with 365 good ideas... -_-;;

Labels: 365, art, change, contest, documentary, drawing, hard work, improvement, motivation, photography, pixiv, practice, project, winner, writing for publication

CORRECTION: Whoops, this is actually the 299th post. My bad.
This post marks 300 posts in this blog. It's amazing how much I've been able to write over time, and I'm glad that I got this far. I hope you've enjoyed the ride too.

I thought I had better back up some of my posts on my computer, in case Blogger ever blinks out of Internet existence or my blog accidentally gets deleted or something like that. I was looking through my posts and I realized I had used the title "Walking on the Moon" twice. Oopsy. I try not to ever repeat post names, but I unintentionally do so... I guess this is what happens when your quantity gets too big. As for the quality, I hope it has not gone down over time. When I look back at some of my posts, I think, "Oh, that was a fun time, but it feels like so long ago." There are some times when I don't have much to write about, like the post "Ansel Adams", when I was lacking for inspiration, and it was a drag to write the post. (I felt like I should write something, to prevent me getting rusty from less practice writing) And there are also times when I have so many things to write about, I'm churning out posts everyday and I feel like I'm on top of the world. I wonder if I can grasp that feeling again.

There's something I'm always wondering about, and that is my appetite. It seems that even if I eat too much at one time and get full, later on I'll feel hungry again. (I might not really be hungry, only as soon as I see something yummy, I feel the urge to eat it.) I guess I have to ration what I eat since it seems I will always get hungry at certain times regardless of how much I ate earlier. This is rather dangerous and makes me feel like a fish or something. I bet my fish would keep eating beyond their capacities if I gave them a ton of food. (That's why I tend to "starve" them by only giving them the bare minimum at feeding time. I don't even feed them daily.)

While I was walking home today, I overheard a girl talking about how her dog had vomited. (Sorry to give you that mental picture if you were eating) I kind of thought about how people really still behave a lot like animals. I've heard dogs can sneeze and cough too (not sure about cats), like us. Both animals and humans scratch themselves when they're itchy. And we certainly do vomit as well. In the end, no matter how humans try to control and dominate and become "civilized", they're still animals.

I remembered something today that I hadn't thought about in a long time. When I was in elementary school, I used to go the YMCA daycare on the campus after school, where I stayed until my parents came back from work and could pick me up. There were sometimes questions we could answer, for instance, since I mentioned itches earlier, there was once a question, "Do you scratch an itch or itch a scratch?" We would write our answer on a slip of paper, as well as our name, and put it in a plastic box. Then, one day, one of the people working at the YMCA (we called them "leaders"), would randomly pick out a piece of paper where the question was answered correctly (I believe it was sorted for correct answers first), and then the person or people chosen would get a prize of some sort. It feels like a long time ago now.

Even sixth grade seems far away. I still have plenty of memories, but they gradually become fuzzier over time, more surreal, more distant. After a while I end up thinking, "Those were great times. And I'll probably never have them again." I still enjoy things in my daily life. But it's rather clouded by all the knowledge of the world you get, because when you're young everything's fresh and simple, everything is clearly defined. The lines get blurred when you're older, unless you can still keep that innocence, and I long for those days when things were not complicated. I don't know if I can have that kind of life again. I think that you don't realize how nice it is to be young until you get older.

I feel worn out of having to deal with stresses and concerns, and that's why I want to retire. I'd thought that if I didn't have to work any longer, and be able to focus my attentions on the little things, things that I want to do but don't get around to doing, things would be easier. Maybe they would be, and maybe they wouldn't. I'd still like to see for myself. And I don't want to wait more than fifty years for it.

Labels: 300, appetite, blog, complicated, fish, food, innocence, inspiration, life, memories, old, retirement, scratch an itch, simplicity, stress, time, walking on the moon, winner, YMCA, youth

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