Sunday, May 4, 2008

Current events are a bummer

I'm bummed about Eight Belles. My mom and I were watching the Kentucky Derby together and I was all, "A filly? Holy cow! I'm rooting for the girl!" I got so excited when she came in second. It seemed like such a cruel joke that she should be injured and euthanized just seconds after the race ended.
On a different but no less somber subject, I wonder when the curfews and watches will let up in Central Falls and Pawtucket? Gang violence strikes me as especially sad because in most cases perpetrators and victims alike are just kids. Helder Tomar was just 19, and the other kid that died was 16.
I'm not at all a part of that world, and never have been. My high school, however, was full of kids that were, so we'd get the lectures about why not to join a gang- One of the reasons cited as to why kids do join gangs is fear. Gangs offer protection from, well, rival gangs, I guess. I think it actually has less to do with fear of "the other"- being in this case other gangs, other kids, the boogeyman, whatever- and more to do with the fear of a larger, intangible enemy. For many of these kids, especially kids from CF, the world is so pathetically and oppressively small, and the future simply doesn't exist. I feel like kids join gangs as a desperate attempt to inject meaning into their lives and feel as if they belong to something bigger than themselves. They fight for a cause, for their block, their school, their friends, for respect- against kids just like themselves.
You could say, "Work hard in school, get a scholarship, go to college," but it's easy to say when your school isn't a fucking wasteland of budget cuts, anger, and stillborn idealism. There is no easy solution. I can't say that my theory is right, even. I'm just ranting because it blows and I'm angry.
Oh, yeah, and I made a card. : )

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Shippy Strippy

So my captain chose these two as a front/back design. I really hope they'll print them as big I meant them to be, because it'll look totally badass. Also I think it's up to the screen printer to convert this to an Illustrator file, so I'm worried I didn't make it clean enough. Will things get lost in translation? Who knows? I did my best.

This next set was from last night's ProvSketchy figure drawing session, which is double-breasted fun for every artist of every skill level or age. Well. Maybe the 11-year-olds should stay home. My compatriots and I were all kind of rusty. I hadn't done figure drawing in almost a year. I'm a bad person! Good thing I disciplined myself by drawing cute girls with big boobs. I have to say, though, if you looked at my sketchbook it'd be kind of hard to pick out the life drawings from the idle sketches because the subject matter is EXACTLY THE SAME. Could it be I'm just a prurient creep after all?