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MeliHitchcock

Embrace your Cuttlefish Overlord
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New Year n All That


Well that new year certainly crept up faster than I anticipated! I hope everyone's Christmas was jolly and they made a bunch of New Years resolutions to break in three months. :D My holiday was spent kicking my feet up and enjoying the last week of December at home, relaxing and purging a lot of my house hold items. I've just got to a point that I want to de-clutter even though I still have a TON of items. It's so amazing how much you accumulate over the years! My goal is to downsize on quite a bit of furniture and replace some others this year. Since I repainted my living room, I want to get a whole new look, but bills kept attacking the wallet so it really prevented a lot of getting what I wanted. In two months, that will be alllll over with and I can start saving again. wooHOO! Such a happy feeling to be debt free. Part of an ongoing resolution has been to be more diligent with my budget. It's so easy to get away with over spending and lately I've just come to the conclusion that all this stuff is just that... stuff. Honestly, when the Waldo Canyon fire was going on I did a little video detailing all the items I had. I was left thinking that, aside my cats, computer, and WETA LOTR sculptures, I really didn't care about anything else. It all could have burned to ash and replacing them would have been a cinch. I think I've just hit a point where materialism has lost all real appeal to me. I allowed myself to get wrapped up in it and in the end it doesn't really mean anything to me. I'd rather be spending that cash going and seeing somewhere new and exciting.

New Lil Baby


So around last November after tossing a great deal of junk from my office, I decided to investigate reptiles. I've really wanted one bad for the last three years now, always worrying whether or not I'd have the money or time for it, and have been researching quite heavily into what would be compatible with my schedule. I've always been a fan of geckos but as I did more homework on them I wasn't sure if I'd be able to meet their humidity needs. So I ended up looking at bearded dragons instead. As long as I was able to find an adult, they seemed perfect! Imagine my surprise when I discovered a coworkers son was interested in selling his. So just a week ago last Saturday, I went and brought him home. Meet Hermies! :D


Resized JPEG graphic


He's such a little PEACH! This little guy hasn't even undergone much relocation stress and has let me handle him, bath him, and feed him on a regular basis just about every day since I brought him home. He did get a little agitated the first day, he black bearded and puffed himself all up when he saw his reflection in the glass. I ended up having to cover part of the vivarium so he'd stop. But other than that day, he's wanted to be held and generally lets me know when he wants out. Right now he's shedding and kind of rubbing himself all over everything. I think some of his old skin wasn't shed properly on his nose but I think the baths will help with that! More images below and at my imgur page:



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Colorado Fires

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We're burning! :(




I'm sure many of you have heard the news that Colorado is like this blazing inferno of one wildfire after another. The current raging one is in the Waldo Canyon area that has spread at an alarming rate over the last few days, claiming about 5100 acres of land and forcing well over 3000 residents to evacuate. As of now, the Air Force Academy has issued mandatory evacuation as well as the areas near Garden of the Gods.  We've currently got around 600 firefighters, both local and those flown in, working to contain the fire, but it's only 5% contained (as of this morning). The forecast doesn't look that great with Thursday only having a small chance of rain.

As of today, my brother had to evacuate from his home as he is just outside the evacuation zone. The smoke was getting so bad and the heat unbearable, so he had to stay with our parents up in Monument. I only live about 15 minutes from his house, so this is a bit scary right now. It's not necessarily that I'm worried about myself. I've got all the necessary items for emergency packs and have all of my valuable items easily in reach to pack. It's my two cats I worry about most. :( I really don't know if they will transport well and this is going to really stress them out if I have to relocate temporarily.

UPDATE: It appears as though the Flying W Ranch has burnt down. News reports say the fire swept through rather swiftly. Sad. I only was there once, but it was fun for a dude ranch. :(

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Musings

Been trying to get back into drawing more than once a week. Since I joined up on Reddit, I learned they have a great sketch daily section that I've been participating on at least twice per week. At the very least I make sure to hit the free Friday drawing. Anyway, I've had, on rotation, about five illustrations that SERIOUSLY need to be finished. For some reason I just hit a dry spell while actually rendering the things and seem to get distracted really easily.

If you're curious, go to my sketch blog in the upper link. I've got a lot more recent stuff to see that won't really see DA since it isn't finished or just are sketches. Virtually all of last Saturday was spent updating my website in order to polish it up and fix a lot of the problems that it had from the initial release. It's in a state I'm generally happy with.

Anyway, check it out if you have a chance. :) Hope people are faring well!

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Oh goodness... my poor neglected DA page. :XD:

WELL, seeing as how my last entry was well over a year ago, I guess I should update this with what I've been doing.  I had an unfortunate slump with art that dragged on a little longer than I initially anticipated. Partly it was due to me getting my butt out of the house and becoming more social with friends rather than want to sit at the computer almost 24/7. However this proved to be something fortuitous as I ended up doing a DVD for The Richard Dawkins Foundation which they really liked, and subsequently have hired me on for repeat jobs. This is a nice as I've been able to start paying down debts and all that.  If you're curious, go check it out the following: Poetry of Science / Dialog of Reason Pat Condell Link Sam Harris Link

That's just a small sample of what I've done. There are about three more DVD's that aren't listed on the website (for one reason or another). You can, if you're interested, go and and view all of these online for free. I believe RDFRS has a YouTube channel.

Anyway, enough of sounding like an advertiser. So what else is new? Been involved with a guy, done lots of outdoor excursions, went to a hella lot of concerts (KMFDM, the B-52s, Devo, VnV Nation), traveling, getting some old habits looked at by therapy in order to drop them... yeah I've been productive. In a sense a lot of my passion for art has waned a bit, but has been replace with my passion for promoting positive skepticism and atheism. I'm just using the skills I have now to help with the movement. I don't know why, but for years I never really felt a part of the art community and the people involved heavily in it. This attitude of unless you eat, drink, and breath art or you're not a REAL artist drove me bat shit crazy. I've found a group that's less gung-ho and I fit in much better with them and, as a result, have made new friends.

All in all, it was a good year and I look forward to this year as well. :)

Merchandise


Dragon Stickers
:thumb92986294:

These colorful stickers you can put on virtually every surface! Measuring 2" x 2" the details read just as clear as the artwork above, and the sticker quality is very durable! If you want 1 or even all 3, please note me or email me with your order. I take primarily Paypal, but we can work out another payment if Paypal isn't available to you.

1 sticker = $1.85
3 stickers = $5.00

Cherry Blossom Dragon T-Shirt



They are 50% cotton 50% polyester blend. I would allow for some shrinkage but the shirts themselves fit a bit larger than your typical size.

Sizes: S, M, L, XL


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Yo peeps!

I apologize for the sparse updating that has been going on as of late. There has been a lot for me to do over the past few weeks and that has severely cut down on my ability to do much on the web.  In between attempting to finish up artwork, kind of pushing myself through something of a slight painters burn out, trying to figure out what to do for the next few portfolio pieces, and going on a mini vacation over the Labor Day weekend I've been swamped.  The mini vacation was incredibly epic and has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for some new pieces. That break came almost at a perfect time.

Just a brief synopsis of my trip, I ended up visiting Portland Oregon for three days on something of a mini mecca. I arrived Thursday afternoon but before I was able to head to my hotel I was intercepted by Lee Moyer, a highly incredible, sweet man and stunning illustrator, and was invited to camp out over at his place rather than stay in a hotel by myself. I didn't realize it at the time but it became quickly apparent how incredibly wise it was to make that decision.

For the most part I had pretty much carved my own path in terms of what I wanted to see in Oregon. I ended driving downtown on Thursday and sightseeing for a little while just to get a feel of the inner-city. The second day I went to the nearby Forest Park and ended up walking and hiking around for hours on end before heading on and sightseeing other areas of the park including the Japanese garden. Pretty much I was on my feet all day long and didn't get back home until around nine o'clock. The second day fell on a Saturday and so I was able to witness the amazing marketplace down by the Burnside Bridge as well as the food market that was just a little bit further away. Lee was kind enough to show me the market and then he and I met up with three other illustrators (Adam Gillespie, Traci Cook, and Craig Spearing) at a local coffee shop and chit chatted for about an hour and I got to pick their brains about a couple things regarding when they began to freelance full-time. We all had a great time!

After that get together, I drove out to Tillamook, stopped at the cheese factory, then headed north along the coast and got to witness the splendor that is the Northern Pacific Rocky Beaches. My second to the last stop was on Cannon Beach where I was able to walk around and absorbed the sights. I've only seen the tropic ocean beaches so witnessing the far more wild and rugged beaches was a very different experience. I had always been told that the waters were very cold but I didn't realize just how cold they really were.  It was akin to filling a bathtub full of ice and then pouring cold water over it then plunging your feet right in the middle. Yeah it was that cold. After sufficiently drenching the bottoms of my jeans, and my shoes, I headed back home. The third day Lee took me out on a giant sightseeing trip. We ended up going up the old highway however along the Columbia River, stopping at quite a few beautiful locations where they were gorgeous waterfalls, and visiting some very unique places like the Bonneville dam and the fish hatchery there, as well as traveling up into the Mt Hood National Forest, up to Timberline Lodge, then back down and out Portland. Needless to say it was a long trip but it was very awe-inspiring.

While I must say that the sights were wonderful to view and I really enjoyed the incredible diversity of landscape that Oregon had to offer, I think the biggest impact for me was being able to sit down with Lee and talk about art in a serious manner. Often until the wee hours of the morning until we both were dead tired.  There were a lot of things we discussed: My influences, vices, current portfolio, website, my future as an illustrator, and, most importantly, laying out direction that I just didn't have. He was incredibly blunt about a lot of things that plagued both my artwork and process method, repeatedly driving home three crucial points I lack that are currently holding me back as an artist. The whole experience, while coating on another layer of shock to my already overwhelmed system, left me doing a lot of reevaluating in such a short period of time.

There is a lot more that I could speak of however I promised myself to keep this as brief as possible and already it's pretty lengthy. Suffice to say, taking this trip was the best decision I ever made. A giant portion of me was left behind in that beautiful and surreal state. Someday I'll go back and reclaim it, only then it will be a permanent stay.

Merchandise


Dragon Stickers
:thumb92986294:

These colorful stickers you can put on virtually every surface! Measuring 2" x 2" the details read just as clear as the artwork above, and the sticker quality is very durable! If you want 1 or even all 3, please note me or email me with your order. I take primarily Paypal, but we can work out another payment if Paypal isn't available to you.

1 sticker = $1.85
3 stickers = $5.00

Cherry Blossom Dragon T-Shirt



They are 50% cotton 50% polyester blend. I would allow for some shrinkage but the shirts themselves fit a bit larger than your typical size.

Sizes: S, M, L, XL


Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Featured

Steam Rolling into the New Year by MeliHitchcock, journal

Colorado Fires by MeliHitchcock, journal

Changing this up a little by MeliHitchcock, journal

Dusting off the journal by MeliHitchcock, journal

September Update by MeliHitchcock, journal