My muse... Sam the Olympic Eagle

When someone asks "When did you know you wanted to be an artist?" I know the exact moment...

I was a student at Halldale Elementary school in Torrance, CA...My kindergarten class was tasked to do a painting of "Sam the Olympic Eagle" in honor of the 1984 Los Angeles olympics. As you can see here. I pretty much rocked it.

For those of you that don't remember Sam the Olympic Eagle, here he is. Heck, this is even the image they gave us to copy!! You can see how close I got.

Well, the teacher must have seen a bit of talent in my painting because she submitted it to a contest of some sort, and I was the only kindergartner amongst a bunch of six graders. It was scary, I was a shy kid, but a group of Asian sixth graders took me under their wing for the night, and made me feel like I belonged. (Maybe this is why I have always been comfortable being the only white dude in large groups of Asians?)

It's funny because I don't remember the creation of the painting UNTIL my teacher told me it was good. After that, my memory is crisp, the painting was unfinished, I hadn't painted the eyes; and, I DO remember the fear I had of messing it up after someone told me it was good so far (maybe this is why I don't like showing my work in progress?) So I needed to paint the eyes, and two girls in class said they wanted to help, I was shy and also interested in girls (yes, 5 years old seems young to be interested in girls, but I was interested in having a girlfriend even at that age, ohhh Heather McGinnis how I loved you...), so I just sat there as two girls fought over who could paint eyes better. One of them painted the left eye real nice, she delicately put the white gleam on there... when she was going to put the gleam in the other eye, the second girl said "I can do the eyes good too"; my scalped tingled (My scalp tingles when people are touching my property, it's like my spidey sense) and my stomach lurched and she shoved a finger full of white paint and smeared it around... she had ruined my painting. (Since that time, I don't like people doing any of my work, I will do all the work myself thank you very much, and I know I can do it better than anyone else!)

Star Trek revival

I have come to the realization recently that in retrospect, I was the coolest kid in high school... Let me explain...

In high school I was pretty much a "geek" or a "nerd"; I mean, I loved Angels baseball to a fault (not really a fault, but some may have seen it as such), I loved Star Trek, and I played D&D. Along with wearing jean shorts, these things made me a bit of a nerd. I was never an outcast, no no, I had friends in every social group, but I preferred playing chess at lunch rather than chasing tail (ok, that's a lie, I would have preferred to chase tail, but I was too shy to do that)

No one thought I was cool, heck, my own friends have told me recently that they would even make fun of me behind my back; BUT, now all these old high school acquaintances that I am being re-acquainted to have come out of the woodworks as Angels fans(or other teams like the Red Sux), and they want to talk to me about baseball, and mention how they are HUGE fans, blah blah blah... where were you when I was listening to Angels games on my hand held radio in 6th period Economics class?

Ok, so baseball was not cool, but now it is. Check.

And with the new Star Trek movie, everyone is saying "Oh man, Star Trek is gonna be soooo cool!!!" Ahem... "Gonna" be cool? It never stopped being cool. I was dressed like a chubby Jean-Luc Picard for my last Halloween, 7th grade year. So, Star Trek used to not be cool, and now it is? Double check.

And now all this talk is getting me thinking of old ST:TNG episodes (That's Star Trek: The Next Generation to all you lay people). I always loved the costumes, so I just wanted to do a quick sketch of Picard in that grey uni with the red jacket. I know it's stiff and all, but I really just wanted to draw the costume... and I was tired of seeing those Alpacas...



Also, here is my favorite music from ST:TNG... this piece made me go out and buy a recorder a couple months ago, just to learn to play it. Enjoy.