For those of you that don’t know anything about me I will explain. I used to be very sick. I was on Morphine and Morphine class drugs for 5-7 years along with about 20 other pills a day. In the process, I lost some of my memory. Some would call it a selective loss but there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to what I can remember versus what I cannot.
I am well now through God intervening in my life. Some call it a healing. I do not care what it is called except that I feel like the woman in Luke 8:43 that had ‘an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any’.
The only residual to my sickness is my lack of memory, which is not all bad. It can drive my family batty at times while they are in their memory mode and I stare at them blank with a dumb look on my face because I cannot share in the moment.
So… I am relearning the computer, programs, my art and mostly my Christianity. It has been exhilarating and quite frustrating.
I have always been involved in art since I was young. Dabbling in one form or another but never really having the finances to go all out and take up one version. I used to make hand-crafted, fully jointed, miniature teddy bears that sold for around $100. That was fun and tedious. I have always drawn. Some folks that cannot draw for a lick of beans would say I was good. In my own estimation, I am ok.
In my relearning, I have completely gone to the computer arts. I use various programs from PaintShop Pro to Corel’s Painter Essentials to PhotoShop Elements and anything in between. I have used PaintShop Pro for about 10 years and have grown with the product. I feel that when I have mastered these other graphics/arts programs then I will go all out and purchase the more expensive ones at ranging between $300-800.
I have learned a lot and fast considering. I started out last year with photos and had ‘words’ on them as one person put it. That was a bit disheartening since my closest friends were all ‘gawking at my talent’. That is when I decided that friends staring starry-eyed were not what I needed. I needed someone to be honest and tell me what he or she thought. Regardless of whether this person was correct in their assessment was unimportant but it did propel me to move on and upwards.
I have watched my art progress from ‘words on pictures’ to art. I now use various mediums in combinations to accomplish my job. I have been able to incorporate drawing, ink, watercolors, oils, pastels, textures and a whole host of cool brush effects to my work. I used to call my art ‘Thumbody’s Art’ because I actually accomplished it all with a track ball and my thumb. I have since bought a nice Wacom tablet and am learning how to use it instead.
I am hoping through this blog to be able to show some of my art and explain some of the methods and materials I used and the ‘muse’ behind each picture. Obviously, my muse is God in all of them but there were different reasons for creating each picture. While most were created out of my need to find a way to remember scriptures, a few were just to test my talents.
I hope this blog is enjoyable to others and not a burden to read or see! Haha!!
This is what the original picture looked like. I took the picture and tried some different filters on it to give it a bit more of an ominous eerie look. I did not know exactly what scripture I was going to use but figured it would probably come out of Revelations. While the book of Revelations can be a 'bright' reading for those that look forward to its ending, for most others it is a dark, menacing book of judgments.
