Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Art After the Army
This week has been very uneventful. The beginning of the week started with a small bit of excitement because the Traders village was to open May 2. I very much wanted to go and try and start again. I debated with myself over and over, trying to decide if this was the right course of action for me and my family right now. Then Friday afternoon the decision was made for me. The city of San Antonio decided that it would not be in the public’s best interest to allow Traders Village to open this weekend. There was a lot of disagreements over the reopening of the popular flea market.
The Traders Village in San Antonio is not the only Traders Village in Texas. There is one near Houston and another in Dallas. Those Flea-markets were allowed by their respective city’s to operate. So why did the City of San Antonio stop this flea market from opening? I don’t know or understand. maybe because its hard to limit a 25 % occupancy in a open air environment? Still, I cant understand if the Movie theaters are open, and stores are open why not an Open air area? I feel that if confined environments such as a movie theater can allow occupants. why not an open air environment? It could be said that a confined environment like the theater could make you more susceptible to a air born virus than a open air area.
What do I know I’m just a caricature artist. I was also considering about how i would draw people with masks on. Especially if the flea-market made masks mandatory. That’s besides the fact of being exposed to the virus at the flea-market. I haven’t drawn anyone for a while now. It is getting depressing. I think I have let it overwhelm me a bit. I just keep waiting as patiently as I can, and hopefully this whole thing is over with soon.
Last week gave a a jump start on some inspiration. Then it just fizzled out. Don’t know why…Just did. I going to clean my garage this week in hopes of finding some moyivation in all of this.
Art After the Army
This week has had its ups and downs. I’m trying to stay focused and at the same time I am trying to be patient. I did a drawing one night for the first time since the beginning of this quarantine. Me and my wife are both fans of a rock group from the 90’s early 2000’s called Local H. The band was never a huge band just 2 guys, one on vocals and guitar and the other on drums. They performed a free online concert on Friday night for all their fans and it was incredible and very generous of them to do something like this for all of us in this weird time. Their live concert on you-tube was defiantly inspiring.
I grabbed my iPad and proceeded to draw the event as it unfolded throughout the evening. It took me a few hours to finish and as i drew it I posted the development of the drawing during the concert. Over 2000 people were watching. My drawings were met by complements and comments of how the drawing should be their next album cover. This really gave me hope in my art that i needed to begin something new.
Over the past couple of weeks Ive noticed other caricature artists on social media offering their services for a set price via social media. Some even do live drawings to show their customers the development of the sketch. I want to try and do this also but I don’t want to just copy what they are doing, so I’m currently brain storming some ideas for a new way of getting me to my customers. I’m already kinda established with almost 900 followers on Instagram and 33.5 thousand on TikTok.
I just tried to register for the summer courses, but of course nothing was really available. I’m still inspired to move forward with my education and hopefully i can learn more as i go.
Art after the Army
Ive been spending my time for the past month and a half on doing things in the house. Ive been focusing on stuff for the yard, and projects in the garage. Talking to all my family including my daughter who lives in the middle of ground zero in New York city. She has been calling, and her birthday just passed. So I know she is okay, but I still worry. I worry about my other family, and my mom all the time. I have not drawn or painted at all. I don’t know why I have not tried to draw, paint or do anything creative. I think I mentioned once that the environment I’m in currently might be blocking that part of me. This environment is nothing like the way I felt when going to Traders Village to draw.
The Saturday mornings setting up everything to start my day at the Traders Village was a real treat for me. Drawing the first people of the day and watching their expressions as I ripped the page from my easel to show them for the first time was exhilarating. I never didn’t appreciate this feeling. After spending 10 years active duty in the Army, I used to dream of the day throughout those years, of just settling down and focusing on my art work. I was never really sure how I would come back home and do it, so finding a platform at Traders Village was a real opportunity for me.
From day to day I still look at my social media and watch my videos of me drawing my clients. Its hard to watch sometimes because of the uncertainty of this current situation that everyone is going through. Its hard to believe that it was only a month ago that I was drawing people and now we are all on a lock down for our lives. Conspiracy theories are going crazy. It seems like the foundation of our lives is beginning to crumble under this huge weight. People are becoming desperate for food and attention. I hope this all blows over soon before people start to do something that they cannot come back from.
Doom and gloom ….. maybe I have found my inspiration. Ive been itching to draw and paint just recently. Just writing this blog for school has helped me focus on what I’ve been doing and how I have handle this situation thus far. Me and my wife just received our stimulus check this week. We payed our bills and bought groceries. Then I put some money aside for some art equipment. I was watching a documentary of a guy in Los Angeles named Cartoon. When I was growing up in Bakersfield California in the late 80’s he was a huge influence on my art. He was young like me at the time but was already well known. I found a good bit of inspiration watching this. In watching, I found that he enveloped himself in his environment and created something from that. His inspiration was his environment that he couldn’t escape, so he made it part of his artwork and became famous from it. I’m not looking for fame but I do like the idea of using this time to influence my art.
Art after the Army
Things have been slow. Very slow. I have received a couple of leads from people, but no one has committed to commissioning me to do any work. Honestly i have been spending a majority of my time checking in on my mom who is in her 70s and lives alone. I haven’t done anything at all when in regards to my artwork. talking with her over the phone and making sure she gets food is number 1 on my priorities. My mother has needed some small repairs and basic help around the house. She is not feeble, but there are things that she absolutely cannot do by herself. Government funding for her meals have been cut. My concern also goes out to the people that don’t have family and are alone and hungry and scared.
Ive had small instances of feeling inspired, but I have not acted on them. I don’t know or understand why. I’m thinking its my environment and how stressed I am over the health and safety of my family. This is not the idea situation for the inspiration. I try and reach out to other artists and watch to gain the inspiration to move forward but find myself in a dark stagnant place of being stuck.
I’m looking forward to this all ending but I remember after 9/11 nothing was the same for my business. It hurt me so bad that I had to layoff 5 of the 15 people I had working as artists. I never recovered from that day in history. It took a terrible toll on many small businesses that spread to the larger companies in 2008. It seems that many small businesses fell out during that time. It took almost 20 years before things began to look better.
My business today is not as complicated as it was in the late 90s and early 2000s. All I have is myself, My tents, easels, markers, chairs, and truck. Its been fun. When I had businesses doing the same thing. Dealing with employees and payroll and large sums of taxes, Rents, insurance, credit card machine leases and a multiple of customers that were not always satisfied.
https://www.directionus.com/tx/san-antonio/river-city-caricatures.html
Art After The Army
To tell you honestly its really hard to write about anything inspiring right now. This week was filled with news reports and panic attacks. I feel like i should be more resilient to all of this after all my 17 years in the military and my training and all the things I experienced. Its just that nothing like this has ever happened before in any of our generations. I know in 1918 there was a Spanish Flu after the world war. I thought in retrospect that our generation would or could be prepared for such a thing and that in this day and age we could have a cure for it right away.
President Trump is now asking all former retired military to come forth and serve. I would love to do that! The thing that scares me is the safety of my family and loved ones. Ive been spending my days reaching out through social media and texts to all my family. To me it doesn’t bother me if they don’t respond. Most of them do respond, and it feels good to chat and talk about child hood and the things our kids are going through. I pray we all come out of this with some new incite about how we should treat each other. Its been way to long that I have had a true friend. I lost him in 2006. Its nice to blog about this. but honestly I don’t have anything inspiring to blog about right now.
Art After The Army
This week was a strange week to say the least. It started well and i felt great and hopeful that the weekend was going to be awesome with no rain and mildly temperate temperatures. For the most part it was. I had a wonderful time drawing folks and seeing families enjoy the beginning of their spring vacation. I drew a few people but not as many as i thought i would for what was considered a very busy time of the year. Everyone i saw and spoke to seemed happy and joyful.
I could feel a growing uneasiness in some of my friends and neighbors. A real sense of uncertainty began to rise in my mind. I found myself eating healthy and buying small containers of hand sanitizer. I know this blog is supposed to be about my experience coming out of the military into a new life and a new beginning. Its just hard trying to find the positive and a good outlook in a time like this. The joy in my clients faces after drawing them inspires me though. Hopefully one day soon I can begin again to enjoy those faces. Hopefully it doesn’t go on very long.
Art After the Army
This weekend was a hoot! My Son Alex decided to join me to do caricatures at the flea market this past weekend. It is a extreme joy for me to know that my child loves what I love and finds joy in his talent. This kid is super talented! He plays music, animation crafts plush animals from scratch and paints. He is a amazing artist and human being.
He has talked to me about joining the military after high school. I have told him the benefits and pit falls of the military life. He was raised most of his young life in the military but never gave much interest to what i was doing. I can only hope he follows his dreams and is happy with his decisions.
Hope this next weekend is just as busy. I also hope my son comes with me again. He did great! and his pride in his talent has expanded and he is getting better and better.
Art after the Army
This is a late blog. the past two weeks have been a roller coaster of drawing and custom commissions work and school. I actually did a complete blog for this date not to long ago and it was deleted by mistake somehow. I’m still learning this websites directory. It has been crazy busy. Just when i think I am done, and i can catch up on some school work. Two or three things pop up. I cant say no to the money. It help sustains me and my family.
I often think of the time in the military and wonder where i would be if i wasn’t medically discharged. It was time for me to go. my last physical fitness test was a joke. I was slowly falling apart. Losing my abilities to run like i used to and do as many push ups as my younger Soldiers was a dose of reality that was hard to swallow.
Searching for my new career has been daunting but I hope it is a combination of what I am doing now and a solid foundation of work that I can rely on. school has been difficult but I think I am doing okay. Other than I need to get my schedules straight and make more time.
Art after the Army
Looking back at the past 32 years of doing my art, I have realized that throughout that time i have not givin myself any direction. Its hard to say that I’m a failure because i have had a ton of success and learned some valuable lessons along the way. This weekend I did sketches that I was pleased with for the most part, but on the other hand i see the imperfections in what i do and think to myself ” Am I an Artist or a fraud?” That sounds really bad also. I have always been the biggest critic of my work.
Looking at the customers faces as I rip the paper from the easel and ask “Are you ready?” makes me the happiest. Sometimes after they see the drawing and express their delight, I don’t know If i get more happiness then they do or not. Either way I know it just makes me happy to give people a bit of joy and laughter. Its like nothing else I have ever done in my lifetime.
About some time in August my son came to me and asked me if i knew what Tik Tok was. Of course i said no. He showed me this new social media app and told me that he thought it would be a good idea for me to start a page with all my artwork on it. I thought to myself that it sounded too time consuming. After a couple of months of posting random videos of my work, one day I received over 17 thousand views on one drawing of a couple. The funny thing about the drawing is that the old guy was missing a tooth. I think that was the ingredient.
Fast forward to now and I have over 33 thousand followers and a daily drawing schedule of commissions. Its almost unreal.
Caricatures after the ARMY cont..
So, everything I have done and learned over the time has brought me to this point in my life where it is not terribly hard to start over again, because this is not my first rodeo. I’ve been down this road in one way or another. Its just annoying to have to do this with little support. I get just enough support from the people that appreciate my art. I just don’t get it from the people that are close to me. Its not to much of a problem, because I am used to it. but sometimes it would be nice to get a bit of that support that I think would carry me to the next level in my work. I think I would make me even better if someone else besides me would get genuinely excited about my achievements.
So far school has taught me a lot! It has taught me that kids today are so lucky to learn in a environment that supports their goals with the technology, and the open minded teachers and professors that teach using all these modern tools. Even the classes are more open to discussion on modern issues. I’m really enjoying my introduction to digital media class. There are so many creative people there and it really inspires me. There is a certain way of thinking that students today have that makes learning fun to me. Its exciting seeing what new possibilities are out there for everyone. I wish I could fully explain the feeling. The only pitfall I’m having right now is that I’m 50 years old trying to get an education. Sometimes it feels like 17 years were wasted in the military as far as my education goes. I did have opportunities to go to school while active duty, and some soldiers even received their masters. I spent my time trying to be the best Soldier i could be. On the other hand it was some of the best years i have ever had. The friends I made and the Comradery that went with that was something I missed.
I’ve Now been doing caricatures on the weekend and weekdays with online orders for 7 months. It’s had its ups and downs but it continues to fuel my imagination of what could be possible. For now I just really enjoy making people smile, and meeting new faces from different parts of Texas, and the U.S.
Caricatures By A Veteran 