Some faces

Oedipus, Fate, and Second Chances

I don't usually post about my dating life, nor to I usually talk about Greek literature; I think today's a good day to break both of those precedences.

Last month, while at church, I saw a cute new girl who looked awfully familiar. After talking to her for five minutes, I figured out that we were both art majors at BYU at the same time. I figured that I had probably worked as a figure drawing model in one of her classes, but later that week, it dawned on me where I knew her from...

Three years ago, I was introduced to one of my favorite things ever: Incredibly Strange Movie Night. A guy in my character design class invited me out to it, and I thought that it sounded like a decent date idea, so I asked out a girl from one of my other classes. It was a great time, laughing at bad movies, but then there was the most awkward private performance ever:



This guy. In a room of nine people. And my date. You might think he's a hilarious parody of rappers, but that's not an act; it's as good as he gets. Shortly after this date, the girl tells me that we should just be friends. I blame Bee Money.

Fast forward to present day, I have a date with this same girl, and she has absolutely no recollection of the fact that we went on that date three years ago. All she knows is that I look vaguely familiar. Fate has given me something truly unique - A Second Chance; not like the second chance that you ex begrudgingly gives you when you want to make up, but a legitimate clean slate.

I start thinking of all the things I have going for me right now that I didn't have before: salient similarities, money, a car, and more confidence. When the date rolled around, I learned from my previous mistakes. I make some lasagna and decide against watching an episode of MST3K with her, as that would be in the same category of incredibly strange. Conversation goes really well, but at the end of the night, it happens again. She tells me that we should just be friends.

At first I'm mad at myself for screwing up twice in a row, but then I wonder, "if I could groundhog's day that date over and over, is there any possibility that it would end with 'let's just be friends'?" And I'm reminded of Oedipus.

You see, one day Ed's mom and dad went to the Oracle to ask what their son would do with his life. Oracle's answer: kill the dad and marry his mom. Being good parents who don't want to kill their kid just because he might commit murder and incest, they decide to be humane and ship the kid really far away, so he won't be able to do that. The result: he kills his dad and marries his mom. And why did he do it? because these ugly wenches decided that he would.

So basically, the moral of Oedipus's story is that if the fates decide something's going to happen, you're kind of screwed. I've never been a fan of this line of thought, but my second chance date made me realize that some things in life can't be changed. The fates decided that this girl was going to tell me that we should just be friends, no matter how or when I asked her out.

Stuff I don't think you've seen yet

From Sam Nielson's digital painting class. I thought I would practice some basics

 House Gnomes; a project I started way back when back when, but decided to finish way later.

Baxter the Fly, of TMNT fame, as done in the style of Marko Djurdjevic

 I decided that I need some practice painting landscapes. My solution: start painting from photographs

Stephen Silver gave me permission to paint one of his drawings. 

I may never stop drawing in church

Usagi Yojimbo

Just like every other boy in Ms. Shine's 1989 kindergarten class, I was a huge fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I collected the action figures, and would collect all the action figures, play with them, and then leave them strewn across my bedroom floor, to which my mom would remark about how it looked like a tornado/hurricane/earthquake had hit my room. My room was apparently a bigger magnet for natural disasters than a Florida trailer park on the San Andreas fault.

Although I had a pretty sizable collection of TMNT action figures, there was one I always wanted, but never got

I'm not sure whether I liked him because he was a bunny, a samurai, or if it was because he had the name "Jimbo" embedded into his surname, but something about this character struck a chord with me. I was obsessed with him, despite the fact that I had never even seen him in the cartoon series.

At one point, my cat had a litter of kittens, and I named one of them Usagi Yojimbo. I remember that a couple of college girls came to adopt a kitten, and when they picked Usagi Yojimbo, I got upset and started crying, and in an effort of pacification, they told me that they would keep his name. I'm pretty sure that it didn't make me feel better at the time, but to this day, I get a perverse sense of pride thinking about how these girls were stuck with a really stupid name for their cat.

Experimenting around with a new style. Check out Javas.deviantart.com to see stuff from the guy I was trying to emulate.

Tea Rex

This is what I daydream about.

...except that in my daydreaming, my cloud comes equipped with a soda fountain that has apple beer and really strong ginger ale.

Old Men

This Sunday was General Conference, one of two times a year where every good Mormon is expected to sit and watch TV for 8-10 hours in a weekend, and since it's not the most entertaining television ever, it makes a great opportunity to do some painting.

go to onehundredone.dk to see the photo reference.

Digital Paintery

Comic book work

Whelp, I just got done doing some work for a comic book called Brawn, and it was a pretty cool experience actually working with someone else's idea. Here's a gif showing steps in the process.


My favorite step here was when my client told me that the bunny was too fluffy. It took a bit of creativity to figure out how to make a furry animal more mangy, so in searching for photoreference, I was immediately reminded of Sam, World's Ugliest Dog.

For those of you not in the know, Sam was a purebreed Chinese Crested, a breed of dog that has the distinction of having the only ugly puppies known to mankind.

Anyway, I copypasted the skin texture of the chinese crested seen below underneath the bunny's fur layer, resulting a decidedly less fluffy bunny.

Love is in the Air

I've had this idea floating around in my head for a while.

Remember, kids: any one of your zits could turn into one of these things.

Originally, the head monster was going to be some sort of smiley thing, but then when I was hunting for photoreference (by which I mean googling the word "horrified"), I came across this horrified-looking pug.

Perhaps the phrase "horrified-looking pug" is redundant.

It was at that moment I realized I couldn't just make it a parasite, it had to be a Pugasite.

Valentine's - right around the corner

And you know me, nothing says romance quite like like a cannibalistic entomology joke.




The last time I did Valentine's illustrations was in 2010, and I fondly recall that being one of my best Valentine's days ever. I've recently decided that Valentine's day works best when you make it not about yourself; also, it helps if your significant other at the time adopts the same mindset.
The idea now is that I'm going to print up about 100 of these things, cut and paste them into tiny 2 inch cards, and give them out to everyone that I know, regardless of their gender, attractiveness, or personal hygiene.
I'm recycle a couple illustrations from last time, including a favorite that managed to make the dating.failblog homepage. I also decided the Lonely Dinosaur would be a fitting addition to this year's lineup.