Graphic Design - My 2009 Hobby

I've always loved art. I remember painting landscapes for my friends one year for Christmas. I remember listening to Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid and furiously drawing
characters from Final Fantasy or Metroid, or whatever Nintendo Power was highlighting at the time. I remember sitting for hours in my room carefully studying each page of my Michael Whelan or Alan Lee books, wondering how in the world did he get so much detail on that spaceship wall, or how did his stroke void of any detail at all still capture exactly the form of the dragon. I remember sitting in the basement at the computer for days on end, scrupulously writing and rewriting POV-Ray code and patiently watching as the the rays were traced one by one and my screen became a three-dimensional parallel universe. I loved it, but over the years other priorities have taken - well - priority, and I've lost a lot of the experience I built up as a child and a younger-than-I-am-now person.

I've lost so much ground in my technical drawing skills so I get easily frustrated when I'm trying to draw or paint freehand anymore. Luckily, over the last several months and because of my deepening passion for web development and design, I've been re-introduced into the world of art. Art infused with information and seamlessly presented on a canvas of HTML and CSS. Moll's clean vintage look with just enough texture to make you feel like you're reading a book; Spooner's mixture of bold vectors and calm browns; Inman's striking minimal mathematical approach; Nick La's explosion of motion and flow and contrast - it's all amazing and delightful to me, from the markup to the stylesheets to the javascript to the polished, shiny finished product it's all beautiful to me. So, I'm re-applying myself to art, this time in the form of graphic design which allows me to be creative without getting stuck on the fact that I still can't draw an anatomically-correct tree (so I borrow someone else's).

Want to see my new favorite site? This changes by the day, but at least for yesterday and today I'm submitting Viget Inspire as the most visually appealing blog in the whole world wide web (or "WWWW" for short). Isn't it nice? Well, it was this blog and a tutorial based on that blog that pushed me over the edge last night. After an hour of homework and a handful of Dove Blackberry Carmel Dark Chocolates, I plugged in my wacom and downloaded some watercolors and trees and GIMPed up a painting (the one at the top). It turned out ok, but more importantly, it's my start. From today until 11:59pm December 31^st 2009, I am officially... ummm... doing more art stuff. I'll post it to my flickr so stop by occasionally and take a gander.

Thanks to mom and dad and Morgy and Jennie and Harmony for being my inspiration.