the holidays

christmas really came out of nowhere this year! plus i just made last minute plans with a friend from up north (thief river falls MN) to go up tomorrow and stay till monday only to get up and go over to wisconsin to see my mother with my girlfriend emily on tuesday. its going to be a busy week and i have lots to do before i go.

i made some cookies to bring to Ben Rettke over at identity tattoo www.identitytattoo.com he likes baked goods apparently and i'm trying to stay on his good side. they are pretty good by the way. the ones pictured here are basically gone as i write this.

then its one more day of work and im golden.

till then

beast of venery

pastel, sharpie and acrylic on pastel paper. i need a break from watercolors for a bit. this one is just about done i think. im pretty ok with it overall. incidentally, it looks sort of festive which is a complete accident. fitting i suppose.
i have been thinking a lot about deer the last week or so. fantasizing about the hunt, self sufficiency and the great outdoors (or any out doors for that matter... i haven't left my apartment much all week but to work and now it's snowing again). now i haven't exactly done much hunting in my life but as of the last couple years it has just sounded like what i want to be doing. it all plays in to my dreams of becoming Mr woodsman and living off the land.

the deer symbolises that fantasy for me. it epitomizes the struggle to survive. now days we aren't forced to find our own food. we have the luxury of mass food production. we don't have to kill to live anymore. in stead of spending our days searching for food and trying to not die we busy ourselves with the meaningless struggles of every day life. work, bills, money... the pursuits of the intellect. we find ourselves out of balance trying to find meaning in our lives and at the same time spend all or our income avoiding the struggles that life is all about. every other animal must survive but us and i guess that's a good thing in one sense, but i would wager that we are the only animal that worries about the meaning of life.

keeping busy in bad weather

this is very shitty picture of the piece i have been working on the last few days. i did all the color today. im not sure if i will put some background color in or not...

i have two styles of roses that i have developed throughout the past year while working on my portfolio and the one i used here is the less used one. but i also have two styles of coloring the roses one of which i had never used on this style rose till here. and i like it. i'll probably be using it more now.

i haven't done a watercolor this big in a while so it feels like the first actual complete piece in the last few week or so. so im gonna let it hang for the night and see what i think tomorrow and then maybe i'll let it loose and frame it up or something.

MN weather

snow...

lucky for me it's my weekend. emily not so lucky. for some reason my job is still open though i have heard that a lot of places have closed for the day.

i was going to take a walk this morning to check out the damage to my neighborhood but it's colder out than i thought it would be and harder to walk. by the looks of the shoveled part of the sidewalk we got around 2 feet. im not sure where this ranks on the list of biggest blizzards in MPLS history but it must be up there, i haven't seen a blizzard like this since i was a kid.

also, the metrodome callapsed!


the bright side i have plenty of time indoors to work on my painting and possibly start another before i have to go back to work on tuesday.

well i was hoping to post a pic of the piece i am working on now but it is proving to be a lot more complex and exhausting to paint than i had anticipated. i have spent about 2 hours just inking the piece and am about 2/3 done with that step. and unfortunately i have to work early and cant stay up much later to work on it. luckily this is the most time consuming and complicated part of my process. so its all downhill from here.

anyway i have a new pic up of my last piece above. its pretty much done here but i added a couple very minor details after i took this. it didnt turn out how i wanted but i hadn't done a painting in a while so thats what i get i guess.

also, me and emily got a new, bigger bed today. emily's parent got a new bed for themselves so we got their old one!! it's bigger!!

so on that note... good night.

a days work

today was a nice easy going yet productive day. i started this blog, read some batman, watched some arrested development, and painted. and soon diner... or is it dinner? i can never remember. maybe i should stick with supper.

elk sausage with scallion and garlic mashed taters and kraut.

City Living

my building is full of very nice quiet caring people. today in an attempt to do something other than sit on the internet all day trying to figure out how to get people to want to hear what i have to say about basically nothing, i threw a load of laundry in. now, my building has one set o washer and dryers. so i usually time my loads so that i don't leave my shit sitting there for others to deal with but today i was a little lazy i guess... it slipped my mind. anyway to my surprise/delight when i went to put my wet just washed clothes into the dryer i found that someone had started them in the dryer for me! how sweet! so off i went to sit on my computer. hour or so later i go to fetch my dry towels and low and behold... folded and waiting for me. im a nice guy and i would never do this. so, neighbor, wherever you may be... thank you.

"man beats wife beats kid beats dog bites man" -Batman

about me

I'm an aspiring tattoo artist out of Minneapolis MN. I sometimes sign my work as Total Depravity(hence the name of the blog). It helps me to sort of create another persona i guess... I can draw violence and satanic/occult imagery and not have to have that be me all the time... if that makes sense.

Total Depravity is a christian idea about original sin. the idea is that man can not truly do god's will or do good for god or serve god in his(man's) action. every church built, war fought, praise given in gods name is really for the gratification of the person building, fighting or praising. so people are actually just selfishly satisfying their own egos and making themselves feel better about their own existence. while im not a religious person i really like this notion because it can be applied to life in so many ways. politics comes to mind.

i like using iconic religious types of compositions and symbols. or at least i like to inspire that same type of mood. i like occult symbolism as well.

so i guess that's just an introduction to my philosophy and what my art is mostly about.

thank you for reading this and i hope that you want to read more in the future. i will be posting plenty of my old work and new stuff as it comes.

good bye for now.

listening to: Baroness