Dallas Is On

We made it. After all the trouble in the world, we made it. So far, Dallas is a great city. I can't wait to see Cara and Jeff. Naturally, I have to wait. That is what tomorrow is for.

Today's biggest ordeal was the mystery of my lost Phone. In truth, it was lodged in a crack under the passenger seat, stuck on silent, (or "sounds off activated" as Verizon insists) the whole time. Convinced that it had been lost at a rest stop two-hundred miles back, I deactivated the phone. Then, as I was filing an insurance claim to get a new phone, (that would arrive as soon as Tuesday) my always amazing mom found the phone. Of course it was in a place that I had thoroughly checked.

Other events of note:
Avoiding the President George Bush Turnpike for entirely political reasons. (also it was a toll road)

Reading Al Franken's Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) while on the road.

Starting Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss not long after that.

Letting the GPS take us to the middle of nowhere because it's a shorter distance if we don't use the interstate.

That leading us to Pecos, TX on high school football night.

That leading us to seeing a 16 year-old screw up while filling her SUV up and spilling a gallon of gas everywhere. I thought she was going to set everything on fire.

Seeing this guy's picture in our first hotel room back in Arizona.

Odessa

We're settled in for the night in Midland/Odessa, TX. Totally saw the football stadium from Heroes season 1.

On Tires and the Danger They Pose

"Andrew, tire." my mom said calmly. A moment later I drove directly over a tire laying in the road. We had been driving that long highway for hours, and the threat the tire posed would become clearer in the next hour.

It took a while for the back right bumper to fall off and scrape the off ramp's gravel. We duct taped it up as best as we could. A kind man at the Pilot station fixed our lights and pointed us to a garage that might be able to fix our leaking coolant and catch what he missed.

So that's where we sat, in a New Mexican garage, Dallas still a far off dream.

Tonight we'll sleep in Midland, TX. Tomorrow Dallas will be mine.

Willcox

This morning's fiasco kept us from reaching El Paso like I wanted. Willcox, AZ will have to do. Gonna get to Dallas LATE tomorrow night.

Dallas TX

This has been a long time coming; probably since Tom moved out a few months ago. I'm moving to Dallas, TX. A couple really great friends, the best I have, are helping me stay there. My mom, wonderful lady that she is, is flying to into LA tomorrow to help me make the 20+ hour drive to the lone star state. We're leaving Thursday and we'll be in Dallas on Friday night. I'll post some things on Twitter from the road if you follow.

I've been given some big opportunities in Dallas that I have to take advantage of. Please, don't think that I'm giving up on the dream by leaving Hollywood behind. Truth is, I stopped dreaming of Hollywood a long time ago. Maybe what I'm looking for is in Dallas. We'll see.

Give Me Excess of It

After discovering that my backdrop was essentially the same color as the destination's wall, I switched to a more rosy color. The leaves are a temp object. Expect a different stencil in it's places with more detail.

If Love Is

More text corrections coming today. Less capital letters and a comma as prescribed. Some outside sources recommended dropping the painting and moving the text so we have examples of those ready. I also corrected the aspect ratio and added the soprano and alto parts at the bottom of the poster. Might not notice right away but I did a lot of work on the harp adding detail and flourishes. Be sure to click on the images to see higher resolution versions.

Tomorrow I’ll post some close up details at the 300dpi resolution I’m working at. The poster is being prepared at 10” by 15” but can be scaled up as far as 20” by 30” without much loss of detail.

Sing On

So the idea behind posting my updates on this project is so you can look through my technique. But when I spend a whole day working and then update, you can't see how I did what I did. Today was the day for adding textures since most of the pieces are drawn. I also went through another big change with the text. It's a fair bit classier now and the I is easier to read. It's still from the Project Gutenberg book from before.

My computer is crawling trying to edit this thing. I’m going to work on components and add them too it instead of working on the whole thing at once from now on. Expect subtle changes like a cleaned up skull, harp, and smoke soon.

The Food of Love

I used the Book of Ornamental Alphabets on Project Gutenberg linked on The Ragbag to create some super detailed text. What do you think?

The 'I' might be a bit much.

If Music...

Wow, I have been a terrible blogger again. It's bad enough that my regular readers don't really care about Freedom Force, but I'm not even doing that now. I'm hitting a real rough patch in the real world and I hate posting when I've got nothing awesome to show. This is an art blog dammit, if I wanted to post about my emotions I'd have a livejournal!

Ah, but I am working on a side project. I've been commissioned (not that I'm getting paid) to create a poster based on this postcard by C. Ryan. The process is long so I'll be blogging my progress instead of just showing the end results. Here's day one:



I don't have to say that this isn't done, but I want to stress it. The end result will be magnificent. This is barely anything.