My Art Skills Have Improved

During Christmas of 2006, my parents decided to nurture my artistic abilities by buying me a giant canvas measuring 30 x 40 inches.  After thinking about it for quite some time, I decided to paint a copy of a Caravaggio piece called "The Inspiration of Saint Matthew."

I loved the style, the power, and the emotion behind Caravaggio's work, as well as the honesty of it.  I spent much of the summer after my high school graduation painting the canvas.  And by the end of the summer, I had this to show for it:

At the time, I was pretty darn proud of this piece.  I had never attempted anything on this scale before and mixing colors in acrylic paints was pretty new to me.  That summer I learned something about stretching yourself.

Then, in a year, I was on my mission in Arkansas.  I never had time to draw, let alone paint anything.  I had the occasional assignment from my mission president or an assistant to create a poster, a t-shirt design, or a logo; but never anything large.  I occasionally worried that my skills would become rusty without practice.

One day while serving I read an article in the New Era about a boy who was really good at playing the piano.  He stressed and stressed and stressed about serving a mission because he wouldn't have the chance to play for several hours a day.  The young man fretted about this to the point that he almost didn't serve.  Then he was promised by an ecclesiastical leader (I can't remember if it was a bishop or stake president or what) that if he served faithfully, he wouldn't have to worry about losing his talents.  This young man did just that, and when he came back, he claimed that his skills actually improved during the time he was gone. I didn't worry about losing my talents from that day forward.

Flash forward to this summer.  A couple of months ago I was visiting my parents house, where my copy of "The Inspiration of Saint Matthew" still hung on  the wall.  I had just finished the drawing and 2D design classes at BYU with pretty good grades.  I looked at the painting and saw colors that had been mixed wrong, lines that weren't clear, and faces that were. . . off.  I decided that I could do better, so I took the canvas home and repainted over the whole thing.

I'm sure that the year between graduation and serving a mission, as well as the two art classes helped sharpen my skills, but I'm still very happy about how little  my abilities rusted while I was away.

This is what the canvas looks like after I repainted it:

And some comparissons:

Do I owe this improvement in the face of a two-year break to a divine miracle?  I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

P.S.  I looked for that New Era article online, but I cannot find it.  Please let me know if you are familiar with the article I'm talking about.  It came from an older New Era.

Awww. . . . Thanks, Google Autocompleter!

So I Woke Up This Morning. . . [For the First-time Visitor]

. . .got out of bed, grabbed some pop-tarts, and checked my laptop for updates.  Imagine my surprise when I checked Blogger and found that 1,400 people have visited this blog in the last twelve hours!  Normally, that's the amount of traffic I get in a month.  And a good month, at that.

So all the traffic came from StumbleUpon.  Someone liked my Advanced Emoticons post and put it on there.  Yay for sharing! Please keep doing it, since this party could use some more people!

Now, I guess this means there's a lot of first time readers out there, so here's a quick explanation about my blog.  I blog about whatever I feel like blogging about, but there are some definite themes that pop up again and again:

1. I believe in telling stories with pictures, and since I don't always carry around a camera, that means you're going to find a lot of stories told with MS paint.  My little netbook computer doesn't do the whole fancy Photoshop thing. 
2. I'm a Mormon attending Brigham Young University studying marketing.  I teach a Gospel Doctrine class at my local congregation and I served a mission for the LDS church from September 2008 to Septemer 2010.  So it's fair to say that religion plays a large role in my life, and it plays a role in this blog semi-regularly.  I try not to get preachy, but I do share the occasional spiritual thought.
3. I'm pursuing a minor in visual arts, and I've got a couple of pretty cool projects coming up, so I'll probably be marketing some of my artistic abilities on here in the coming months.

If you're looking for a good read, might I recommend the following stories:

• The Skouch: The first real MS paint comic I did.  This is the absolutely true story about the Family Home Evening that nearly killed me.
• A Talk I Recently Gave on Baptism: I gave this talk in my BYU student ward in November.  For reasons I don't understand, this is my most viewed post of all time.  So I guess I did something right.
• The Great Nacho Fail: Who doesn't love a story that has sharp objects, violence, blood, and nachos?
• Harry Potter Yo' Mamma Jokes: A list of Harry Potter Yo' Mamma's so [blank] jokes I compiled.

Finally, if you like what you read, then please follow me! And leave your feedback in the comments!  I love followers and comments.

Drinking Milk--The Xtreme Way

 One night at ten o' clock, I was walking past the girls building at my apartment complex.  As I walked by, I saw two of my friends--a guy and a girl--chatting with each other on the fourth floor.

"J-Low!" they yelled down at me (as that is what I am known as around here).

"Hello!" I yelled up.

The guy shouted, "would you like some milk?"And the girl giggled a little bit.

I said "sure!"

The guy then pulled out a giant, five-gallon plastic bag filled with milk.  It had a little faucet on the end for easy pouring. Apparently, his workplace just gave it to him.

"Try to catch it in your mouth!"  he yelled down.

Normally, I do not do well with catching food in my mouth.  Actually, scratch that--I never do well with catching food in my mouth.  There was this one time when the chef at a Japanese Hibachi grill was throwing shrimp in everyone's mouths with his spatula.  He tried to toss one in my mouth four times before he gave up and moved on to the onion volcano.  I can't remember if I've ever even caught so much as Skittle in my mouth.  But that night I decided to completely disregard history and go through this thought process:

 

One thing my friend neglected to mention was that the reason his work gave him the giant five gallon bag was because it had hit its expiration date.  Three days ago.  

It tasted kind of funny.

Oh hey, I got at least two cool points!

Hair Story

I found a long, blonde hair in my apartment the other day.  As I stared at it, I wondered where it came from.