Creative Life According to Bill Waterson

Mozart inspires me

AMADEUS (1984)

I like this movie a lot.   To think that people ever criticized Mozart shows that all artists suffer their whole lives, no matter how good they are.  Nobody will ever understand a genius.

Artist Dorkyness Since 1986

This is a picture of me painting, taken in 1986. I was two years old at the time.  I now look older than my Dad was here.

How to make your own tear-off notepads

An economical way to make recycled paper notepads:

Take about 10-20 sheets of used printer paper, cut the sheets in half with a paper chopper (if your office has one) 

Alternately, if you routinely trim paper on the cutting board, save any off cuts that are about 4 inches wide and use these, rather than throwing them away.

Crease the stack of paper (about the size of half a letter-size sheet) and fold it in half. This will double the number of pages.

Staple 2-3 staples across the top and you have your notepad! Tear across the staples and it will tear off a page neatly

A Lesson in Overbranding

Video promotion for Song Airlines, early 2000s. A new airline tried to revolutionize the air travel industry by re-branding themselves as "Song". They spent millions and billions of dollars developing this identity, enlisting the help of artists, musicians, poets, psychologists and holistic healers and who knows what else to create an airline like no one had ever dreamed of...  

The fledgling airline went bankrupt less than a year later.

I think the downfall of it all was they got so excited about marketing a brand, and making inspiring commercials that no one even knew what the heck they were selling.

And 9/11 sort of killed all the fun in air travel.

The first (and possibly last) TV commercial for Song Airlines.

Office Hero!

Having worked at my current job for almost a year and analyzing the way my store runs it's business, I find myself working behind the scenes to make little things more efficient. For example, this recycled pen holder I made out of waste materials. 

February --The Photo Sabbatical, Part 2

"Frozen Tundra"
Some of our high areas are prone to very hard winds that are freezing cold, creating a climate like the tundra of the Arctic.  Here I took some neat patches of windcarved snow where it made this sand dune effect.  Snow dunes?

Okay so where was I...

The reason I was going out every day was, I was actually looking for animals. Like birds and foxes.  I trudged for miles and miles and saw nothing.  And it turns out every bird within a 10 mile radius was at Mom's birdfeeders when I woke up about 3 days ago.  So I got plenty of practice.  Here I was experimenting with "sports mode" on the camera which has a shutter speed of up to 1/2000 of a second.  I actually stopped time!

Practicing bird pics with my Dad's 400mm wildlife lens.

This is my favorite. A female cardinal and a nuthatch went on a little lunch date.

Some cardinals having a powwow.

I don't know what it is but our yard has been attracting a crapload of cardinals lately. The most I ever saw at once was 7.  It's no secret that my Mom puts out an all-you-can-eat buffet for these things.  It's been said we have the fattest squirrels and birds in Wilmington.

Some Canada Geese fly off into the sunset.

Another awesome sundown at the Hawk Watch. 

I have been going to the same spot every day after work for about a month to watch the sun go down. I love doing it, it's so relaxing and it helps me clear my brain after a long and tedious day. If you live near a good scenic overlook I recommend you also do this as often as you can.

Last day: Friday, February 28

I'm starting to get quite good at this! I found a trick with these old lenses.  The lack of aperture to adjust means you need lots and lots of light, fiuxed lenses don't seem to do very well in low light conditions. And the trick with the DSLR is turn the shutter speed up really high and use the sensor to compensate for the aperture accordingly. It also helps to have a tripod and a shutter remote.

Nailed it.

I'd tell you how many cardinals there are in this photo but I almost can't count that high.  My neighbor calls these things "Redbirds"

I take the coolest shots in the most unlikely places.  This one looks like a beach, but it's actually a frozen fountain pool at Brandywine Town Center in front of the Red Robin and Target.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Takin' a shower.





This concludes my winter photo odyssey. I hope you'll join me again for spring and summer, when the world comes back to life and all the furry critters crawl out of their holes. It will be awesome!

Until next time...I'd like to end with a quote, and share with you the soundscape my mind explored while I was exploring many of these secret and less obvious places. Close your eyes and think about where this takes you. Into your past? Your subconscious? Your future? Or another plane of reality altogether?

"...To be confronted by solitude and beauty without decadence, or a single material thing to prostitute, it elevates you to a spiritual plane where you feel the presence of God...now there's the God they taught me about in school, and then there is the God that's...hidden...by what surrounds us in this civilization. And that's the God I met." -Fernando "Nando" Parrado, survivor of the 1972 Andes plane crash

February - The Photo Sabbatical

Hey people...I will try not to make this post 10 pages long but we'll see how it goes.

From February to March is always my least favorite time of the year. The weather is awful, bleak and cold... nobody's outside unless we have a freak heat wave and it goes up to 60... it rains and snows a lot...but not enough to really do anything fun and wintery.

And to top all that off...no reenacting for another 2 months. Ugh. I might just die.

I think they named March for a reason. To me it always felt like a long, grueling death march through the mud. After a shortened month like February, March seems to go on forever until I just can't take it anymore.

Well... if you know anything about me, I don't like just sitting on my butt indoors. There are some people who work forty hours a week, come home at the end of a 9 hour shift, smoke a pack of cigs and fall asleep in front of the TV, and that's their entire life for 40 or 50 years until they die or retire, whichever comes first. I couldn't live like that.

I am constantly in motion. I feel like a sinner being inside on a warm sunny day. There is a freaking ginormous world out there, and most of us have seen close to zero percent of it.

In fact, there is so much history, neat-o Victorian architecture and lovely parks packed into this tiny state of Delaware that I wouldn't ever want to live anywhere else.

Those out-of-staters who are all like "Yawn...Delaware is boring" or "What's in Delaware?" are like people who say they hate something without ever experiencing it. Like people who hate Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Have you ever seen the movies or read the books? No? Not even the trailers? ...I thought so. Anyway...

The surest sign you have never visited my state is if you think it's a boring state. Here's the proof.

All these amazing pictures I am about to post are taken in New Castle County. Every so often, I get overwhelmed by my surroundings at home and I need to get away, go on a "holiday" like Bilbo Baggins. I wander off into the woods alone, try to stay out as long as possible and leave my cell phone in the car or turned off in my pocket. This month was chiefly a "plugs out" month. So, sorry if I have been incommunicado.

I have a tremendous backlog of art projects to create inside my head (going back at least 4 or 5 years--no joke) and the hardest thing for me to do is slow down, and try to push them out one at a time. My ADHD brain seems to want to work on all of them at once. I am crazy at multitasking. Like right now, I am watching a movie, reading snatches of a book, trying to write a short story and listen to music, all while writing this blog post. I need to keep busy all the time, or I feel like I'm dying. I know, it's terrible.

So...without further ado...here are the highlights from my February adventure.

Outing #1: Brandywine City Park

The beginning part of February was very damp, rainy and foggy. I spent an entire day outside taking pictures of how creepy looking everything was. Some of these scenes look they are straight out of Silent Hill. This is Brandywine Park, a nice place to go in the city of Wilmington. It dates from around the 1880s-1890s, and the place is literally so huge and interesting, you can go there fifty times a year and wander around for 3 or 4 hours and not see everything. Even the tiniest details are really awesome, and there are all sorts of hidden nooks and secret areas to explore off the beaten path.

This old fountain looks super creepy sometimes when you get up close to it. It was once made of marble, and it's been so weathered by pollution and the elements that the people have no faces. Still, it has a sort of decayed and crumbling elegance to it...an ugly beauty. This part of the park makes me feel like I am in Paris around the turn of the last century.

A carved inscription all around the base of this fountain says the following anonymous quote that I really like:

"Art builds on sand, the works of pride and human passion change and fall but that which lives the life of God with Him surviveth all"

  This park has so many different things in it.  It's got an old mill race from a grist mill that was here all the way back in 1640 and long since vanished. There are railroad tracks in this park that start nowhere and lead nowhere. There's a fountain and a willow tree promenade. There are spots with markers that show what the site looked like 120 years ago.  There are trees so huge they look like they're from the Colonial times, covered with carved names and initials that go back to before the Civil War.  There's an abandoned cabin deep in the woods. There is even a zoo in the park with llamas. Yes, you heard me...llamas.

The ghost railroad.  I think this was originally linked to the Wilmington & Western,
or the Frenchtown railroad in New Castle. Now it starts and ends nowhere.

The Bridge to Terabithia.

Interstate 95 goes over part of this park. You can walk underneath it. The flyover is so wide that it's like a desert beneath; it never rains or snows and there's no life under there.  You can walk really far back off the path and take this view under it.

I think every photographer in Delaware has taken this picture at least once.

Here is a French style rose garden. It's all cut down and dead now, but in the summer it makes a nice romantic
spot to go for a stroll or have a picnic with somebody special.  It was planted in tribute to Delaware's Dutch (real Dutch from Holland, not hillbilly Germans) and Swedish and English Quakers who settled here.

It was at this park that I took amazing photos of a Great Blue Heron in 2011.  The Blue Heron is a very large, crane like bird with really long legs, a long neck and a needle sharp beak that frequents the marshy areas of northern Delaware. He still fishes in the river, I do catch a glimpse of him occasionally. He's tricky to photograph, he sees you from like 150 yards away and won't let you get close. As long as there is water still moving and the Brandywine isn't iced over, you'll see him gliding up and down it like he owns the place. I have never seen a female heron before, he seems to be a loner... like me.

Okay, so leaving Brandywine Park after a rainstorm and it's time to head home. On the way when I was near the Blue Ball Barn (now a State Parks headquarters) I took this amazing sunset.



Outing #2: Lums Pond State Park (Bear DE)

The next time I went out, I drove 25 miles downstate to Lums Pond, outside a town halfway between Wilmington and Dover called Bear.  There are no bears in Delaware.

Lums Pond is a very large wildlife preserve area and state park where you can do lots of things in the tourism season.  You can ride your bike, go hiking, rent a canoe, rowboat or paddleboat for like 6 dollars or run the Life Course (a fitness trail with different stops where you can climb on monkey bars or do pull-ups or sit-ups, etc.)

Tranquility.

And...you can apparently go zip lining now. They built stuff in the trees and you can slide down a long cable across the river. It looks like loads of fun but it's closed until spring. Sigh...

Haha. Yeah right.

You mean no ice fishing.

I didn't see a soul out there. I had the whole damn place to myself that day, but there wasn't much to do. But I did get some other neat little things I bet anyone else would just walk by and not even look at.  I am also fascinated by the world of the very small, like this tiny bird's nest that would barely hold a chickadee.

Oh hello there. 

Lums Pond was mostly dead.  So from there I drove a little ways further into Elkton, Maryland, and then to Fair Hill NRMA (national resource management area).  This is another very big place and it reminds me a lot of Ridley Creek where Stephanie lives.  I couldn't remember where the entrance to this place was, I drove around aimlessly until I found it, and my GPS was no help. It kept telling me to go off road. Sorry I don't have a Jeep.

Fair Hill Trails, Elkton MD

A covered bridge near the parking area.

A swiftly flowing creek. The water was ice cold.

A raccoon out fishing in broad daylight. How strange. I didn't get very close to him, this is through my Dad's old 400mm.

White Clay Creek. Newark DE:

It was here I got a text from some old friends in Newark asking if I wanted to hang out and go see the Lego movie. The movie was at 8pm and it was around 4pm when I got the message. So with 4 hours to kill, I drove back up near Newark and checked out another place I always meant to go see called White Clay Creek.  This park is a big, wide open valley with a tiny creek running through it. Might be a nice place to have a picnic or fly my stunt kite. Yes, I own a stunt kite. Bought it at the beach one year and still haven't really taught myself how to fly it.

Someone left this mysterious collection of stones in the parking lot. It looks like a scorpion. Some mysteries will never be solved.

I hung around until sunset and took this really neat shot reflected off the roof of my car. doesn't it look like a lake in the mist?





I know spring will be here soon, but not soon enough. Every day feels like a month. I really wish I could fast forward through March, and then I can join my reenacting buddies again. I miss the warmth, the sunburns, the heat stroke and sweating my skin off. Enough of this Polar Vortex crap.  Enough! 

The purpose of this whole journey was to clear my head, get away from Facebook and Youtube and practice photo-taking.  But I think the REAL purpose of this oddyssey was to scout out potential locations for future photo shoots and nice places to go with a date.  I cannot wait to come back and visit all these spots again in the spring. It will be awesome.

I got a somewhat decent paying job now, I don't feel quite so crazy and desperate and hopeless.  I have a very special person in my life who is my romantic partner as well as my best friend ever.  I have regular use of my car again, and I'm almost completely done collecting gear for both Civil War and World War 2 reenacting.  And, me and my S.O. have even started to draw up a business plan to make money doing the things I love and went to school for. 

Jeff...this is your time. 2014 is going to be the first year of the rest of my life, and possibly the best one or at least better than the last 6 or 7 years past.  I am so relieved that for once, I won't have to make it alone. 

Thanks for reading and I'll see ya next time!

I think here would be a good place to stop.  I will continue this adventure in the next post.

Week of Feb 14-21

Friday February 21:  One of the most colorful sunsets I've taken. Just half an hour ago.

...And a long overdue poster, created in Adobe Illustrator, in tribute to the end of an era.




Also, from a photo taken on the 4th of July 2 years ago.  This is the reason why I love Delaware...people like the character shown below.

I actually have this enormous back catalog of stuff inside my head; unmade projects that were never completed, some of them never started. They tend to go back a few years. So right now, I'm currently making stuff I dreamed up three years ago but never got down on paper.

Blog Party Post #2: A Productive Snow Day. Who Knew.

I guess I am weird because I usually hate snow days. I can't go anywhere due to unsafe roads, sometimes we lose power, and everything everywhere is closed, and I get cheated out of another fifty bucks from my paycheck.  With all the snow days we've had so far and winter only half over, I think this is gonna be a skinny year salary-wise. I hope I'll have enough to even pay my taxes. :(

Anyway, I decided not to let this day go to waste, after almost a solid two months of procrastination. I went nuts today creating stuff, just trying to get ideas out of my head and finish up old projects.

Wednesday February 12:

This is a Minipacker machine. It automatically inflates a special kind of bubble wrap which is reusable. We got this at work to replace the old bubble wrap and the annoying foam peanuts. Welcome to the future of packing.

Like my shark face I drew on my car's salty grime with my finger? I also drew flames on the hood. Don't ask, just accept my awesome.

February 13: 

Whoa what a day.  I woke up at 3:00 AM to the sound of the house being blasted by what sounded like pebble-sized hail. When I go downstairs for breakfast at 8:00 after passing out from exhaustion and hunger...I find we have almost 2 feet of snow on the ground with plow drifts as high as 3-4 feet.  Dad eventually convinces me to go out and shovel a few cubic tons of snow.


Then I decided to help my Mom bake some cookies, because I'm still awesome like that.  We used an old Land O'Lakes cookbook from 1981 that my Mom used to make lots of tasty stuff from when I was a kid.  I did all this myself, she only helped me find the ingredients and supervised me.  I made coconut almond spice cookies and some orange glazed honey cookies (not pictured) Altogether it's loaded with sugar and really indulgent, as all cookies should be.  Then I heated up a pot of chicken soup to heat myself up before going out to shovel.

Hours later, I came back in and suddenly my creative brain went nuts.  herte's all the stuff I completed or worked on today:

1. Stenciled an army barracks bag to use for a change of clothes or carrying a neatly folded dress uniform at events like Fort Miles. I decided to adopt my grandpa's name and serial number as a sort of WWII 'persona'. The guys at events call me "Mel" instead of Jeff, it really helps me get into the time period and into his character.  Maybe someday I will try a first person impression at an event.

 
2.  Then, I busted out all my acrylic paints and worked some more on this leather pilot jacket, decorating it to look like one of the Flying Tigers. (P-40 pilots who were sent overseas with the Chinese air force to combat the Japanese air force, before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and before our direct involvement in the war.  Legend has it that ancient Japanese pearl divers were mortally afraid of sharks, and when the Japs saw these snarling faces painted on our airplanes, they likely reconsidered their career choice.

All the details and lettering on this flight jacket is hand painted from visual references. I tried to come up with my own design rather than exactly reproduce one from the actual squadron. The Flying Tigers are one of my favorite stories of the Second World War, and they are second only to the Tuskegee Airmen in popularity.

3. And...still not satisfied...I finally gave myself a kick in the butt and started sketching concept art for the Lost Innocence Saga.  My first character sketch: the continental soldier from my creepy Valley Forge story I wrote in winter 2012.

Meet Jacob Ambrose, my fictional Revolutionary War soldier.

I'm actually excited now. I can't wait to come up with more visuals for the amazing characters of my epic story, of heroes spanning the history of warfare.

4. Oh yeah...one last thing. I updated two of my blogs. Check these out and feel free to subscribe if you have interest.  I have already put in 4 years of painstaking work and research about my family's military heritage, which become more exciting and more colorful the deeper I delve into it.

Grandpa's Navy

Dispatches From Company Q

It's late and my head is still exploding with ideas. But I guess I can safely say --for once-- that my day wasn't wasted. It really is possible to churn out this much art in one day, I proved to myself I can do it.

And it looks like tomorrow might be another snow day. I can't wait to see what I'll create with all this free time now that my artistic brain has finally reawakened. :)

Time to go meditate, watch a movie, ruminate or just vegetate. I think I've earned it.