TWKM Blog

About a year ago I read about To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) in the Prodigal Son Magazine. I checked out their site and the story really moved me. I think we all have known, know or have been someone who has gone through serious depression. When I read the story, I thought of my sister and how important it was to me that she knows how much I love her.

Ever since then it has been something in the back of my mind that I would love to support. I plan on supporting their work by buying some of their merch. They have stylish shirts and hoodies that stand out and make a statement.

You can support them too. Join me and nearly half a million other people for the 2nd annual TWLOHA Day today by writing “Love” on your arms. This is not an official TWLOHA event, but you can never go wrong by spreading the message of love.

Check out the Flickr Group, Facebook event and the official To Write Love on Her Arms website. Here’s some art that I did for the event:

In about a month I will be moving out into the unknown, into my first condo. There are a whole lot of things that will change at this time, but the scariest of all of them is that I will have to cook for myself — and survive what I cook for myself.

Luckily, Dave Navarro (@davenavarro) of Rock Your Day just posted a tweet about Sushi Day, a blog that posts sushi recipes.

This week’s featured recipe over at Sushi Day is the Crazy California Roll. Looks like fun to make, and I love sushi! Let’s just hope I have better luck than Allison (@sushiday) when I set to make myself some Crazy California rolls. :D

Does anyone know of some good blogs/sites where there are easy, classy recipes for a young bachelor such as myself to take a stab at? (The pun is absolutely intended!)

With the wide-spread adoption of the Internet artistic creation is at an amazing high. New art-forms and pieces emerge every day fueled by the accessibility and mass exposure the Internet allows. Is true art being diluted by the garbage being presented as art on the Internet? (more…)

I want to start this post by clarifying something.

This is not about Creation vs. Evolution.

It actually has nothing to do with the beginning of any species. This is a post about creativity. Now that we have established this, let’s move on…

I just finished watching Iron Man and I can’t express how badly I want one of those suits, probably the silver one. I walked away from the movie thinking, “That movie was amazing!”…

More importantly though, and more on-topic, I was thinking about how far these comic book movies have come. When my brother and I were younger we were marginally intrigued by comic books — I think he was, and continues to be, more interested than me. We read comics, we drew comics, we set up a small studio in the basement replete with two desks and work lamps so we could draw until our mom told us it was time for bed.

You Don’t Need to Invent It

I always made my brother mad. I have always been a writer, but fairly proficient at drawing as well. He had the best ideas, he would scribble down a simple character and the stories and history behind his character were always so much cooler than mine. My characters had big muscles and fancy shading, but his characters had real depth and personality.

So I started refining his characters on paper. He felt I was trying to one-up him, but I wasn’t. I just loved what he had started with and wanted to see where I could go with it. His creation inspired me to create my own, similar — but as I always told him — very different creation.

Stop Thinking It Needs to Be Original

Creativity is not always original. I think it is a mistake to call anything “original” because everything is based on something else. We take from the recesses of our memories and experiences and create something based on what we know. It would be impossible for us to create anything truly original, because in order for anything to come from us, it at some point had to come to us. (more…)

There I sat that snowy late winter night as I always did, sitting in a beat up simple pine chair at a great oak desk. It was an unusual combination of furniture; the rich-stained oak desk with it’s glossy thick finish was never meant to be paired with the dimpled and dented softwood chair. The chair was comfortable enough, having a moderately soft cushion on the seat and a firm backrest. Besides, I never had to look at the chair as I wrote at night, I saw only the beautiful desk that had been passed down through eight generations of my family.

This night I wasn’t writing, I was leaning back in my chair and gazing blankly into the flames that danced in the stone fireplace on the other side of my desk. The books in the shelves to either side of the fireplace, stacked all the way to the ceiling, could not provide to me in their millions of words anything close to answer the question I was asking. (more…)