Temptation: oh lead me to my happy place

Growing up i remember The Temptations, a musical group who rode the wave of good times and good vibrations.

Today's world has more temptations than we know how to process the temptations presented.  I find the things that are tempestuous to me is still art, beautiful art.  I drew this piece from a live setting, a very tempting type of drawing experience for me as there is a time clock on how long the model can stay posed for the artist.

I look forward to the day when I can draw again freely from live models as one can see from this drawing, is art tempting me back to the beauty of live sittings and the results of 20 minute art.

Spark-Jolt

You know when you are hit with a spark of something, a shock goes through your system unlike
anything you have felt prior to this exact moment.  It is a different feeling, one which compels you to pay attention like never before.  Hopefully you do, hopefully you don't let the current action seekers, who hover all around you, draw your attention away from the spark.  Because if they do, they have drawn you away from this very important spark moment, you being changed forever.  Perhaps this spark will get you involved in a new memory instead, because you can't step toward or into the spark, it happens - sparks are not always well timed.  Whether you act on the spark or not, ackowledging the moment of a spark hitting you, well, this feeling should never leave you, sparks are quite unique.

This happens a lot when love is in the air.  As when you walk into a crowded room and have a spark of love hit you in the head when your eyes meet.  Yes, I have learned this spark is about a person of importance, however in my life it was really past loves encountering each other in this lifetime; they never became anything - just saying.

Unlike ignoring the spark-jolt to the emotions, sometimes a spark will ignite another moment, as in lighting a fire, and in this case it is to light the fire place and warm the soul as you gaze at the burning flames. Fire is the result of a spark, so sparks can also be dangerous.  Handle with caution, regardless of the flames, real or metaphorically speaking, a spark is best handled with caution.

So, as I drift into my Sunday to find or make sparks jump to the front cortex of my brain, I leave you with this weeks' sampling of "Spark", Illustration Friday's word of the week.  Let the sparks begin!

Voice: following your Heart for Life

Voice.  Most people associate this word with the hit T.V. Series, the one where wanna be's compete to show the world they truly can sing.

However voice is more than that, it is a nameless, faceless person, on the other end of a phone.

Listening to your voice they are weaving an image of who you are, what you look like, yet are never going to be part of your world, except by phone.  They are the voice that connects you to others.  They help you, comfort you, listen to you. Their role in life is to be a guiding voice to all your wants and desires or needs.  That is, depending on the reason you are listening to their voice.

There are also the voices in your head, not at all like the random caller in the last senario..  These voices are guide posts to your daily actions, a place where personal, non vocalized, conversation wars take place of the "Should I?" or "Shouldn't I?" variety.  Our Judgment voice is the voice balancing the answers we seek.  Sometimes there are many voices, most times it is just our own arguing with itself. When there are many voices, it is suggested to see a doctor.

I have held many a job where a new voice on the other side called about the services I provided over the phone, it was retail on demand.  They were up late, alone, not really wanting to buy something, yet here they were, watching a commercial on late night T.V., calling into my phone bank to discuss their interest and or buy the product from the commercial.

I imagined them, from their voice and background sounds I could hear.  I imagined their room, their life, however I would also have to focus to use my voice because I was being paid to sell them things they might not want, some periodicals perhaps, a vitamin or two, whatever.  All this, that is, before they have me help them with their order. Oops, gotta go, the phone is calling me.

(smile).

Last Frontier: raised on Space

Drawn 4-22-06, soon after the job I had at Playmates ended.  This was a feeling on paper, being jettisoned like "Lost in Space".

With my pets and my car, this was it for a time.  Eight years later life left different trails, so I am  still surfing the Universe!

Wee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!

pre·his·tor·ic

ˌprē(h)iˈstôrik/

adjective

adjective: prehistoric; adjective: pre-historic

1. 1.
   of, relating to, or denoting the period before written records.

Given this definition, my choice for submission to this weeks word challenge is a logo I drew for a product brought to me when working for a toy company.  

The ideas I have in my head are a constant source of inspiration to me.  This is just one of those ideas I executed straight from my head to where it is now in this submission.

This was drawn while sitting on the floor of a new apartment, 2.5 miles from a new job, in a new area of So Cal and presented to the Management for consideration.  The toy product was a non descriptive animated object, which, had the ability to move through a rotational set of functions, providing hours of entertainment and never fully being able to be defined.

The product never got past the development stage.

Sometime this happens in life.

What is Exotic anyway?

I like a good challenge, always have and with the over active imagination I was born with, I continue to challenge my world with the notion, something good will always come of it.  That is why I liked and continue to like the challenge brought by Illustration Friday.

This weeks challenge is finding a visual interpretation for the word, "EXOTIC".

So what is exotic anyway?  In searching through a plethora of archives on my hard drive, looking for and not finding the illustration I originally wanted, I found this drawing instead.

Since people always ask if you could go back in time, what time would I pick, I have always first thought of dinosaurs.  This is a drawing I did back in the days when I worked at a company whose primary product was rubber stamping and yes, they had a line of dinosaur stamps.  When I drew this they were going through some difficult times and I don't believe this was ever made into a stamp, however I did like the feeling the drawing emitted, which is the moment of birth of a baby dinosaur.  

Dinosaurs were exotic creatures, never photographed and so never really understood by the visual eye.  The colors and textures are lost to modern man because there are no records of their true coloration's.  So in my world of wanting to know the most exotic thing I could think of, it would be this, my baby dinosaur drawing.  The drawing is much older than the copyright states because when I was looking for something "exotic", this was the date on the image in my archive - it really was drawn back in the late 1990's. So be it.

Imagination is a wonderful thing, as is drawing.  My challenge to myself this year is to always do more than last year.  Hopefully I will continue to bring the wealth of drawings I have in my archives each week and broaden my base of followers to "The Art of JP" blog site.  I feel I have a lot of good things to share this year and this illustration (as well as the others I have posted before it) will be just a part of a really good visual trip for all who come visit and read my blog.

As always, thank you for stopping by, reading my blog and spending a bit of time in my world of imaginative creativity.

The Art of the Diguise

Halloween has always been a fun holiday for me, so to write about it in January, well, it seems just right to set the year off to a good start.

Around the corner from the new Chinese New Year, being the year of the horse, many people will be in disguises celebrating wildly as the Chinese welcome the new entrance for the astrological year.

Drawing disguises is always fun as the design can go ultimately any direction you want.  If it is a job you are working one, best always to communicate your ideas to the contrator as they will be more on board with your additions as I have always found them to be when I have approached them.

I love Illustration Friday.  The ste is a personal challenge to me to either locate a drawing I have created or create a new one, however this weeks word of the Friday was an easy selection process for me.  The Pirate elephants.I drew this as a concept for a sculpture, it would have been interesting to see the piece completed, alas this was not the case.  But I do love pirates.  Drawing an elephant pirate made it so easy as these are magnificent creatures and worthy of the pirates life.

SO with pencil to paper, I drew this with minimal reference materials and straight off the blank sheet of pare to what you see here.

The original piece the pirate had a patch over his eye with a hook lifting the patch.  The client asked to alter the drawing and to remove the hook - too scary for little kids. (I so wanted to say, have they listened to Grimm fairy tales yet - not that is scary!) so a beer hoist was the best solution, drunkerds are so much better than missing body parts. (LOL).

Enjoy the drawing. You can also now purchase it on line, click the link. More work is located here and I love, repeat LOVE to draw. It is so peaceful to my soul. Hope you like

REFLECT: Illustration Friday's challenge, Answer: "Rita"

In a nutshell, when I saw the word of the week, this image came to mind.  Her faced summed it all up for me.  Drawn from a live sitting, (gosh I miss those days), Rita was a great model.

Been super busy, so I am so sorry to have been away for so long, (last post was back in March), but that would predict my absence should be for good reasons…yeah, it was.

The best to all who visit here, may 2014, be gentle, however I do not think 2014 will go that gently into this good night.  So enjoy my drawing of Rita and thanks for stopping by!
--JP