I finally got around to drawing Him:

Thank you, Granny. 🙂 Means a lot, coming from you.

Incidentally, do you draw? 😀

M.I.K.E.

There, you see…? (I do!) You’ve got a style you can call your own. Nice work. 🙂 Now two bits of advice before you keep on keepin’-on:

1)Don’t pay TOO CLOSE attention to others’ styles, or you might find your watered down into something no quite your own.

2)Draw! Draw! Draw! Draw anything and everything. Still objects, moving ones. Any angle, all angles. Doing this will, of course, expand your visual vocabulary of subjects you can draw at will. AND, just as importantly, presumably: Your subjects will LIVE on the page or sheet your drawing on. So rather than drawing them from the same angles all the time, you’ll have graduated to drawing various parts of a figure’s moving or still body, for example, so they don’t look like they’re merely posing. Depending on the subject matter you’re attempting to illustrate, the more skills and subject you have at your disposal, the more successful the artwork.

This encapsulates my 17 years drawing (started in 4th Grade, at age 10), but God guided me the whole way, even when I didn’t know Him. Oh, and get this: take breaks when your artwork just isn’t “happening”. I have — for good and bad reasons — and days, weeks, or sometimes months later, my skills, talent, an visual vocabulary — all of the above! — jumped, leaped, and bounded to new heights and distances. Having had no real training — or modest school training at best — and having a rollercoaster of a life through and since childhood, it’s taken me years for the following to dawn on me: It’s all God’s doing. Constant and gradual improvements in my abilities as what I’ve experienced, sudden and gradual MIRACLES… that’s what I’ll call them. There had to be a source. I had a calling: to be the best illustrator I could, taking my gift seriously, allowing my other life’s aspects — my humanity, my manhood, lifestyle, and relationships — to mesh so that with daily struggle I might directly when appropriate, or indirectly, demonstrate the authentic Christian (“Christ-like”) way, pointing the way to God for those around me, in turn radiating love via any who my be moved by the example God has blessed me with for his purposes (not my own, at least not originally).

M.I.K.E.

You guys are too kind; THANK YOU. 🙂 Incidentally, pull up a chair. I’d like to share something since we’re on the subject of creative abilities, if I may…

[sappy sermon]I don’t mean to be preachy, guys, but YES you CAN do more than you give yourself credit for; with God — diligently following Him — all things are possible, supposing what you seek to do with your talents/pursuits is of benefit to others in some way, ways sometimes only God knows. But if you pursue something with God in mind, and seek His participation in your life, He will provide. It might take seconds, hours, years, days or nights, but that’s just God working in our lives, according to His timing.

My abilities have taken agonizing years to manifest themselves; it wasn’t overnight. Plus, I know lots of people that are good or competent at more than one thing, by God’s grace. I suppose I am, too, just as I suppose you guys are; “SUPPOSE”…? Nah, I’m SURE of it! If we’re really convinced we don’t and never will have what it takes to be good or great at something, without God… we would be right! But with Him, since He has given and gives — blesses — us all with what we have, we’re so wrong. 🙂 Friends, spouses, they compliment as humanbeings… but God, He completes us. [/sappy sermon]

[intermission]Blizzi, yeah, bro — let’s see it. HITCHCOCK by Blizzi. I’m at the edge of my seat…!

Oh, and Granny, let’s see your work, too (no pressure!). 🙂 [/intermission]

[sappy sermon II]I can tell you this much: I have a good friend — we used to draw comic books since 4th Grade… the stuff was terrible, and my art was inferior to his… and yet I stuck with it. AND, even though he didn’t, his stuff then and now in many ways — whether he wants to admit it or not — is more pleasing to the eye than mine; his visual sense/style is just original and enchanting to behold, silly as it was. His figures and backgrounds were so 1-D, but the overall effect, priceless.

The moral: One needn’t be a great artist to be a good artist. “GOOD” is being satisfied with one’s own work, after passionately (if not diligently) pursuing the artform. And lots of times it takes others to recognize our talent before we do. But the bottom line is: Where there’s a will there’s a way. God gives us that will if our motivations cultivate holiness in our lives so that others might see Christ directly or indirectly through our examples.[/sappy sermon II]

Godspeed!

M.I.K.E.