Faces

I absolutely love painting people's faces. It presents an incredibly interesting challenge, one I'm quite infatuated with. "What are they feeling?" I've always been told I'm a fairly empathetic person. I like to think I'm fairly good at reading people and navigating situations based on someone's emotions. There are so many subtleties in a facial expression, a wince, a smile, a wrinkle. So many tiny details that can change the meaning of someone's expression entirely if they are missed, which is why the challenge is so enjoyable.

The Herd

I was crazy about sunsets for a while. Who isn't. This one's a few months old. I'm always trying new things when it comes to creating landscapes, this one didn't have too much going on so I had put it aside. Will I ever be finished? The answer is no.

Smoke Signals

I never posted or shared this piece simply because it was never really finished. Started with a very appealing color palette (To me) and wanted to see what I could come up with. I started off fairly smooth with the composition and idea but got bogged down in some glaring problems. Muddy values, bland presentation etc. I'm not usually hyper critical of my own work, but I have to be honest with myself once in a while and while composition wise I really loved this one, the execution didn't quite thrill me. One I will definitely come back to.

The art blog.

Finally getting off the butt and going to start posting my works, works in progress etc and keep things up to date as best I can. I really want to do this for myself so I can keep a handle on my progress. More of a personal project rather than to gain a following. Let's see what I can dig out of the art folder tonight though.

I've been working my butt off trying to improve my gesture skills. Drawing the human figure was something I was NEVER good at and always avoided as a highschool student I've been trying to get better and better at drawing poses off the top of my head rather than having to look them up or try the pose myself. Improving myself fundamentally is going to be tough but I desperately need it.

Hydrogen Dust

Not bad way to start the new year! A lot of time and effort and I'm very proud of this one!

Keep Close.

Proud, is a word I don't use a whole lot when describing my art.

Too high, too fast, a flood of emotion and pent up energy wound inside me, fear, uncertainty, but then, music. A release, a genuine flood of emotion, feeling and thought spilling effortlessly onto this digital canvas. I was learning to fully appreciate the beautifully arranged music in my head one note at a time. Different from the brazen emotional and psychological purge of LSD; this was sweet, gentle, natural, effortless. This feeling was different, safety, a homely symphony of particles dancing and twirling in my head, an Ionization of emotion. The energy pulled and pushed on me like a cork bobbing on the surface of water, along for the ride. "Keep Close" I whispered to myself in awe at the coordination of mind and body. I smiled with a sense of love, nostalgia and just pure emotion of the moment as I captured it on the canvas. Coming down, gently, but surely, coming down. "Stop" I thought to myself as I began to pick apart mistakes, go over details, fine tune what was already pure. "Stop" The moment was perfectly poured out and captured, nothing else was needed. The more I came down the more I found fault, so I stopped and I smiled, as my left brain vied for control again, to analyze and critique, to judge and re-do, as the right brain laughs and nudges me on the shoulder "We nailed it dude."

My first (and probably only) trip on acid.

I'm sitting here, still lightly trembling (not in a bad way) from my first ever experience with acid.I started to come down at around 3 am and I feel like (6 hours later) I'm in the final throes of "getting my feet to the ground". I've been high before, I've been drunk before, that's about the extent of it. I'm not one to delve into the world of psychedelics nor do I consider myself a "Psychonaut". So needless to say, when I tried acid (what I believed to be a lower than usual dose) I was oblivious as to what was about to happen to me. You get drunk, you feel drunk, you slurr speech, and you trip overyourself, you're unaware of how stupid the things you're saying are but you're still there. You get high, and you feel happy, you feel great, you love everyone and you have a good laugh, things are not as serious as they need to be and that feels good. Now, you drop acid... and... well I don't know quite what that is. You're still you, don't get me wrong, but everything is not changed but, illuminated. Feeling, thought, emotion they all converge into thise ball, this kind of different thought pattern. You think in warped patterns compared to the way you usually do, things have a feeling of "Revealing themselves" and I imagine anyone reading this that hasn't done acid has no idea what I'm talking about, but this is the best way I can describe it. A great quote I can think of is when I asked Mike how he was feeling, I said. "I know to someone not on acid this (painting)may not make sense, they may not get the same thing out of it I do... I don't want to say someone sober, because now that I'm here I feel like that's the wrong word, they're just thinking differently than I am."

Anyway, we put on some music (Kaskade to be specific) and I started painting, (my friend Mike, was trip sitting me, he was not on acid) As the effects began to seep in, I could see the colors bleed and move with my feelings, physical feeling became less and less apparent. I had been sitting in an awkward position to paint but I could not for the life of me feel fatigue, no matter how long I sat there. I was enraptured in my work, and in essense I WAS my painting. The music could be called the catalyst to what i was doing, keeping me going and kind of inpiring me, my emotions soared as the music did, I began to cry as I explained outloud what I was feeling. Everytime a commercial would come on the radio, I would get extremely agitated and feel incredibly interrupted, emotion wise. Just this infinitely rewarding feeling of being honest with myself. Discovery, let's call it, of who I was.

Self Portrait

After what felt like HOURS of self exploration (in reality 15 minutes) I stopped painting and we went for a walk outside. The grass felt unbelievable beneath my feet, I could feel the earth breath and the night seemed to own me. It wasn't until we were on our way back things started to get a little bad. The best way I can describe what was happening in my brain was just, thought pattern after thought pattern being unlocked, and spiraling into itself. I felt like I was never going to see the light of day again, and I would be permanently "tripping" forever and the only way to stop was to die. Although Mike had done acid before and knew what I was going through, I felt like every calming thing he was saying was, some inside joke to himself, like he knew I was going to be stuck like that forever and he was enjoying watching me lose myself, as if "tripping' were the real world and my whole life had been a lie, LSD was the drug to make you realize this, Mike knew that and I didn't. A Virgil for my own personal "trip" through hell. I felt a strong distrust for Mike a few times and began to try to out walk him. I began walking in front of him as I quickened my pace, as if I was fooling him. I kept trying to bring myself out of the negative thought process by either texting my girlfriend (Trying to bring myself back to the "real world" via my phone, assuring myself that life would carry on as normal once the trip was over) But everytime I looked at my phone, and this was bizaree, it looked further and further away from me, even though it was right there in my hand. My phone felt tiny, and my mind felt as if it was swelling, trying exponentially harder each time to swirl inside of itself or leave its physical shell.  The entire time I felt this tension in my back, and when I relaxed my mind, my body relaxed, when I relaxed my emotions, my mind and my body felt at ease. When I got nervous, or anxious, when my mood changed, the tension came back, stiffer. Body, emotion and mind, again, they were one thing for me, becoming relaxed would mean relaxing all three.

Yeah, for a second, that was me.

After this and a few dry heaves we made it back to my house. At this point I was incredibly anxious and wanted the trip to be over. I tried to sleep, but I felt as I closed my eyes this shell enveloped me, my phsical body was asleep, but my mind, was still racing, and panicing. I panicked and got up paced around, and tried to sleep again, the same thing kept happening, I began to be afraid I would never know what it was like to really "feel" my physical body again. Mike tries to calm me down again, as I look for contacts in my phone, someone I can reach out to. I say outloud "I'm gonna text Russ, he'll know what to do." And I tell Mike that Russ once told me, if you're having a bad time on any hallucinogen just tell yourself "I'm on a ride, a crazy roller coaster, and even though I wanna get off, I can't, and I just have to relax and enjoy it, when I get off the ride, I will feel great!" And Mike began harping on that, he said things along the lines of "Yes dude, you've just passed the scariest part of the ride and you're on your way down now, and you're almost off."  I was infinitely relieved by these words and thoughts, as my brain began to catch a hold of itself, grounding myself in reality, telling myself "I'm coming down." I felt better by leaps and bounds.

I began to feel sick, like I was going to throw up, but i saw this as a good thing, since I could FEEL that my stomach was upset. We sat in the bathroom, I sat down in the bath tub, for some reason it was really calming. I asked to see my mom, again, trying to anchor myself in the real world, I knew my mom was downstairs, asleep and if we woke her up tripping on acid she'd freak, but I just really wanted to see her as assurance that I'd continue with my life once the trip was over. Mike obviously didn't let me but reassured me that I was going to come down and be able to see my mom again in a few hours. It was only until Mike told me what time it was 2:30, that I started coming down fast. Time was anchoring me down, and I will explain that in subnotes I guess.

My thought process is becoming more scattered as I type this and I guess that's just mental fatigue, Even as I write I want to reorganize this entire entry and categorize it and try to make more sense of it, but this steady flow is okay too.

As the night wound down, and I realized I wasn't going to be stuck in mental loops for eternity, I simply relaxed, closed my eyes, talked and listened to music. The good vibes came back. Every song that played would play out its own artistic music video in my head, vivid as hell, although not as intense as my peak. I simply interpreted these as dream images and didn't freak out. As they subsided I began to regain comfort with my familliar surroundings. I fell asleep, and I came out of it, more honest with myself, and better, not different, I'm still Kevin, and I still love plants animals, happiness, friends and life. I don't have a tortured new outlook on the world or a twisted Eldrazi-like thought process. But I definitely understand myself better, I can be honest with myself, and that makes me happy. Despite the terrifyingly bad things that were beyond my understanding at the time, I'm 100% ok now, not a changed man, which is what I was afraid of, I didn't want to change me, but now, even if its only just a tiny bit more, I GET me. Beautiful.

As for acid, and other hallucinogens, this is definitely something I can put on the shelf, if not for good, then at least a very long time. I know myself, and I know what I'm comfortable with. From now on, I think I'll stick to something more, natural.