Less is More

The weekend is approaching and I realize a new lesson every day.  I helped a friend do grocery shopping ai got a week's supply of groceries, and i got a few bucks in my pocket.  So I learn that you help people and they help you.  But if you stay at home philosophizing and scheming and plotting revenge, you are an impotent loser.  My nuclear family taught me wrong ideas and wrong values, and I had no one to compare to, so I thought I was one of them.

Less is more.  When you do the bare minimum, and are content with it, you get everything you need, and then you get free time and money to do whatever the hell you want.  Solomon observed this is in the bible.. Anythign beyond the bare minimum goes to someone else.  I have met a handful of friends who possess this wisdom and humility.  You do not get more stuff for doing more things.  The more you go, the less you know.  Just doing a simple life of a simple man is better than being president or being a CEO or being a rockstar.

I feel content with my life, and how I am living.  But I know if I want more women and guitars and food and more trips to the Halal restaurant, I need more money.  I am reluctant to get a real job, because I am one lazy motherfucker.  But I am starting to see what is real.  Money is power, and if I want power, I need the money.

Judo is power on a more physical level.  Work is power on a more societal level.  I have several skills i can use, including sport culture, art, music, and nutrition.  These are all aspects of shamanic culture.  In Mexcio, the healer is the leader too.  And the ideal leader is man-womanish.  White dudes laugh at the idea of an effiminate man woman.  But Latinos understand the concept of the androgyn male.  Androgyny makes you more sexy and more complete.  I notice all the rockstars from past to present were androygnous.  Beginnig Elvis, Chuck Berry, Paul McCartney, Jim Morisson, Freddie Mercury, down to all the modern guys.  Balance between masuclinity and feminity does not make you a freak, it makes you powerful because harmony is power.  Light contains 7 colors that add up to white.  When you add colors on paper, it adds up to black.  So I work with digital cartoons not solid medium.  

So I am content but willing to do more to get more.  I met many wounded warriors, many good losers, many humble champions, and many talented failures.  There are also arrogant conceited winners and rich men who think they are rick because they are better.  But there are many factors in who wins and who loses.

So if I want to live and die in peace, I must get on my bike and ride.

Action Reaction

Every day, I learn new things.  Life is not static.  It is not about one thing and one thing only.  I observe and reflect and grow.  I do not stop learning.  I helped a friend do grocery shopping and he helped me back by hooking me up with some food.  So I learned that Kano's axioms are right.

Mutual Welfare and Benefit is the premise of society.  I help you and you help me back.  And if I hurt you, you have a right to hurt me.  But if I do nothing for nobody, nobody helps me.  This is called equity.  The universe was founded on equity.  

I have plans for the future.  I want more jobs in the graphic design field, I want to publish more books on nutrition, and I plan on writing a comic book or illustrated book for children.  But these things do not happen easy.  You must dream up an idea, plan it, do prelimary sketches, and accomplish the goal by a series of acts.  I have the tools to do it.  But I must get active.  And the more I do, the more I get.

So I must put behind me the past of music and combat sports and all the girls I wish I had dated in high school and all that jazz.  Porno and MMA is bad entertainment.  I stayed childlike for too long.  One brother helped me learn judo.  The other is helping me learn to grind a dayjob.  Judo is survival on a more primitive level, work is survival on a more sophisticated level.

So Maslow was right.  You go from low to high.  Music is based on the bass.  Health is based on nutrition.  All religious knowledge is rooted in the bible.  You start at the base and you work up to the noble.  But I took a long time to learn.

So my future is in graphic design and nutrition books and I plan on learning cartooning and storyboarding and ultimately creating digital comics for young people.  Kids between the age of 15 and 30 are punks exploring themselves.  You must get them when they are young.  By age 30 or 35, you are spent like an arrow.  And then life is only slowly dying.  A Hindu plans his life according to the ideal lifespan.  In Hindu philosophy a man should live 100 years.  But this is just an ideal.  Some live 80, some live 60, some die in youth.  Some die in their teenage years, which is a tragedy.  I do not need longevity.  I simply want to live and die in peace.

So I will do what I must do before I am done.

Requiem for a Cruiserweight

When I was young, I had high hopes.  I thought I would be a boxer and pornstar and a rock n roll musician.  But now that I am past 40 years of age, I realize show business is a big cosmic joke.

The media is lying you.  I was taught at SUNY Stonybrook that when you watch something in the media, ask yourself, why are they saying this?  What's their motivation?  What's in it for them?

The media is fake.  Hollywood, MMA, boxing, porno, and the music industry is extremely corrupt.  I still like some blues music, some porno, and some boxing.  But when I see it, I know it is fake, so it cannot affect me inwardly.  Hollywood and MMA is a joke and it insults my intelligence.  The actors these days are more handsome but cannot iterate a word.  They speak like a an autistic boy who ran low on his prescription of Ritalin.

MMA is for ass clowns.  If I jumped into the cage, I might kill a man with those four ounce little shits on.  There is a reason why they wear small gloves.  They possess less punching power.  The best backgrounds for MMA include freestyle wresling and no gi grappling.  But these skills are almost useless in a weapons situation or a surprise attack.  Stealth and Weapons is combat.  Self Defense is for children.  Grow up, man.

Hollywood is a joke.  If you take one bullet in the arm, you fall down crying even if you don't die.  You take one bullet to the chest or head, you are dead in a flash.  So I do not want to see Bruce Willis in an army outfit with fake M-16 in his hand cutting down a thousand enemy soldiers while his black sidekick gets killed in the first scene.  This is obviously fake shit and it insults me.

This post is about the disillusionment of youth.  You must realize that by 18 you are no longer a child and must fend for yourself.  Your parents can literally kick you out at age 18.  When I was 18, I was having a ball, and then when I turned 19, I lost my true love and became a heartbroken fool.  So I have spent over half my life in vain.

But when I discovered art, my whole life turned around.  I read a book about Haitan artists and one of them recanted his story.  He said, that at age 35, he considered his life a failure.  And then he discovered art.  And this turned his life around.

I was in my late 30s early 40s when I discovered art.  I spent the whole second half of 2018 doing line art.  Art is a type of mental health therapy and with it, I reduced my med regimen by over half.  I went from five meds to two meds and reduced the doses.  Most artists are crazy.  Most musicians are sex fiends.  Most poets cannot hold a day job.  Creative people have a lot of sexual energy. 

So I see art as my salvation.  I finished TCM school in 2001 and got one patient in my entire career.  I graduated graphic design school in 2015 and the past five years have been great.  Things really took off in 2017 when I got a mentor who encouraged me to put my stuff out there and see what it gets me.  I put my music and books and designs out there and it worked.  I started small and now i am growing.

I want to de-emphasize music and copywriting and focus on more graphic design jobs and more books on nutrition.  You cannot succeed if you are not socially valued.  Show business is about popularity.  It has nothing to do with merit.  The best musicians are not in rock n roll.  The best guys are not in Hollywood.  The best fighers are not in MMA.  Get over fiction and learn to love reality.  Reality means the objective truth.  Ultimately, man does not live in objective reality.  He only perceives the world through his senses and recreates the world in his brain.  So none of us can say this is the real truth.  God is in objective reality, and we are by nature subjective and flawed.  When you know you don't know, then you know.  And when you attack, you create an opening for counter attack.

My training in judo and kickboxing and aikido taught me many moral parables.  In judo, there is only attack and counter attack.  If you stand still, they Osoto you down immediately.  You either attack or counterattack, and counterattack almost always wins.  The best judoka are strong and stable on their fate and have the reflexes of a jungle cat. Judo is a martial art but can be used as physical educaiton because it is healthy, makes you strong, and teaches you principles of success.

So the best experiences in my life were training sambo and San Da, learning art, playing music in public, and moving out of my mother's house.  What I am trying to say is, you develop after birth and death is not the end.  Your spirit existed before your birth and will live on after your death.  The afterlife does not matter and it doesn't matter if Hinduism or Buddhism or Jainism has the more accurate view of the afterlife.

The meaning of life is victory.  Winning is everything.  You must win a date, you must win a friend, you must win a job, you must win a ham sandwhich, you must win an immortal soul, you must win salvation.  Good will win in the end.  So I have no fear.

There is a quote from Taoist philosophy.  'Birth and Death are decreed.  Wealth and Honor rest with God.'  This means, when you are born and when you die is a matter of fate.  Whether you are successful, and honored and rich and married and have kids is up to you.  Your life is up to you, but when you are born and when you die, is not up to you.  So do not lament your birth or fear your death.  That is cowardly.  Do not worry about birth and death, worry about living an honorable life and leaving something to posterity.

I internalized a lot of bullshit in my life, and now I am more wiser.  With this wisdom, I can use it to help others  Before I am dead in the grave, I will do many artworks, write many books, teach many sutdents, and have some fun while I am at it.

So I do not lament my misspent youth.  Everything happens for a reason, and ulitmately everything happens for the good.

Think and Grow Rich

I have plans for a career.  I see that copywriting and design are lucrative fields in this cultural milieu.  The internet changed the way people do business.  Most businesses and jobs involve the computer.  If you do not know English and Computers, you will fall behind.  I knew English and computers from a young age.  I grew up on long island, new york, and I was educated.  So I am not helpless.

I know I can survive the current economy.  I know I am a survivor.  I am like Sun Tzu on steroids. 

It went from Hindu philosophy to boxing to judo to graphic design to right here and now.  My life is not over.  I am still conscious, so I am not dead.

It turns out boxing is better than judo, and nutrition is better than TCM.  Judo is kids stuff. TCM is useless if you don't change your diet.  Both the western and eastern doctor is a kind of businessman.  I am by nature not trying to rob you.  I want mutual welfare and benefit.  I will not rob you.

I see my career in graphic design as a service to humanity.  When I show up to work, it is like showing up to a battle.  But nobody will get shanked.  It is simply a battle to do the right thing, not to kill all my enemies and watch them die.

So I will think and grow rich.  Even if I have to only work part time and live on a lean budget, I can do it.  Because I know how to survive.  I am neither the smartest nor the most beautiful nor the biggest, but I have the most capacity to distinguish between right and wrong.  So I choose what is beneficial and discard the useless.

Besides office jobs, I want to write illustrated books.  Something between comic books and real books.  Books with illustrations.  This was popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century.  There was an explosion of creativity before the coming of the modern era.  By the mid 1950s, boxing and music became more popular.  Maybe the modern era was a mistake?

I am trying to bring it back to the old school.  Music is a hobby.  Grappling is for kids. Sparring and Nutrition is something you learn in youth and you move on.  Since I am not esteemed as a high man, I cannot function as a doctor or healer. 

But through the agency of the computer, I can use text and graphics to teach children how to be healthy and strong.  My aim is to educate the youth.  But you don't have to do it in a classroom.  Even a fitness teacher or a bodybuilder is a kind of teacher.  Through illustrated books, I can educate the youth on how to be strong and healthy and survive a rigged economy.

So my next book will be titled, 'Health, Strength, and Self Defense.'  It will be similar to the two previous books I wrote which are available on Amazon.  I plan on writing a book on diet, self defense, conditioning, saving money, living lean, and enjoying your time on earth.  It is in the same vein as Sport and Physical Culture and Taoist Nutrition.  The first book was a general primer on TCM.  Taoist Nutrition was a general cookbook on how to make Chinese food.  This third book will be my opus.  It will be a real service to humanity. 

I see Americans as being pathetic losers.  Every year goes by, I get more fit and healthy, and they get more fat and disabled and sick and rounded shoulders.  Sitting infront of a computer, using a smartphone all day, not interacting face to face, not walking, eating too much pizza and lattes, etc.. is not a recipe for a healthy life.  It is the opposite.  I'll teach your ass.

When you buck the trend, you are in the right.  When you go with the herd, you are sheep.  Nietzsche was the original philosophical rebel.  He was trying to say nobody does Christianity right, so go back to Hellenic lifestyle and live a full life.  Greeks invented culture but Hebrews invented morality.  These were two great innovations in world culture.

So I will think and grow rich.  I am talented in copywriting and design.  Both are aspects of the advertising business.  One is the English aspect the other is the art aspect.  If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense.  I want the payday, so I can get the love. 

So I have plans moving forward.  I hope my book is ready by the end of the year.  By the end of the summer would be even better.  I will write the whole manuscript and do the illustrations and prepare for publishing.  I see Americans as being boys compared to men.  Instead of defeating you, I will ift you up.  Each one Teach one.  I know things you don't know, and you have stuff you can teach me.  This is the premise of civilization.  Every man helping the other, so we all survive.

I see myself as the best man in America, and Donald Trump as the worst.  But most people think he is a hero and I am born loser.  But I take the opposite stance.  But you don't have to believe me.  So I will do my thing and see who is vindicated in the end. 

Above all, I just want to have fun and hurt no one.  Even if I go down dying, I am happy as a loon.  And that is all that matters.

A New Thing

This is an artwork I recolored today and added some text.  It was originally an interpretation of a Roy Lichtenstein artwork I saw in a book about his career.  I like the way he elevated comic book art to high art through clever use of humor and aesthetics.

Here it is below:

Sunrise with Text

This is a reworking of an old art design with a brief poem or title on it.  Within the frame says, "Another Day Approaches as the Sun Rises'.  It also has the title of the artwork in the bottom right corner of the work. 

My life is getting more quiet as I age.  I concentrate on music, aikido, cooking, swimming, and dating women in a low socioeconomic bracket.  But I find time for art and like to recolor old artworks as a kind of mental and emotional therapy towards myself.  It's good for me.  

The secret to success is to do a little bit every day, and never give up on yourself.  Where there is effort, there is always results.

The Birth of Tragedy

In my life, I can do both music and art and not concentrate on money or fame or women.  I don't need results, I need happiness, contentment, productivity, and a sense of accomplishment. 

I know I have been doing music for 25 years and art for 4 years or so.  I graduated Art school in mid 2015 and started using Photoshop in 2017 to digitally color my drawings.

I don't need to choose between art and music.  I can do both.  Ultimately, I enjoy music more.  Rhythm and blues is the music of the slaves, and is in touch with the tragedy of life.  Art is more like a hobby to me that supplements what I do as a musician.  But art is a vital hobby, and neglecting it is a big mistake.

I also did shootfighting and judo most of my adult life, and judo leads to the Gendai Budo, which leads to Aikido.  The word 'Aikido' literally means 'the way to harmonize the spirit'.  It is not just wrestling with weapons or pinning people face down.  It is a system of training your mind, body, and spirit in the mastery of the self.  The good Aikido man can win without a fight, and if forced into a physical confrontation, wins without harming anyone.  Fighting against multiple opponents is a myth.  Aikido is weapons grappling the way Judo is the original sport grappling.  In Japan, there is a form of Aikido that uses randori or free-fighting.  It is called Tomiki Aikido.

Tomiki was a Japanese man who trained with Jigoro Kano and had a black belt in judo.  He incorporated some of Kano's training methods into his Aikido teaching and formed a unique variant of Aikido.  Sparring and competition is not real fighting, it is a training method for building timing and reflexes in a martial artist.  Jigoro Kano was a huge innovator when he invented Judo.  It is an eastern combat sport with a live method of winning and losing.  In that way, it is more similar to boxing and wrestling and less similar to kung fu or tai chi.

Aikido is not just self defense, it is a method of training the spirit.  A real human being wants to avoid violence at all costs, and if forced to defend himself, do as little damage to both parties as possible.

So Music, Aikido, and Art are important activities to me.  And I use the word activity because hobby is a word that implies it is just for fun. 

Nietzsche wrote a book called, 'The Birth of Tragedy' in which he compares Art and Music.  He equated art with Apollo and music with Dionysus.  Art is about beauty, light, splendor, youth, and innocence, Music is dark, moody, intangible, erotic, emotional, and has to be experienced.  So it is fair to equate art with Apollo the God of Light and music with Dionysus, the dying God of Ritual Madness and Ecstasy. 

I like all manners of creative expression, and now that I am older, physical performance is declining.  So I am getting more creative.  I like playing guitar, singing, watching music videos, using Spotify, and even looking at photos of famous musicians.  There is a visual element to music, because human beings are primarily visual.  The musician has to be attractive, photography is a big part of music, albums need cover art, and even music can be learned visually by memorizing chords and scales and then later developing your ear. 

So I prefer music over art.  But most of all, I like the lifestyle of a Zen yogi.  You start in health and you end in spirituality.  Nutrition should be the first thing you teach a child, attaining kensho and being free from rebirth is the ultimate goal of life.  Between health and spirituality, you should master something.  A skill is a vocation, and if you take 20 years to master a skill, you can be very successful and famous.  I've done music for over 25 years and grappling for over 22 years.  So my education did not help me, but my hobbies did. 

But what really helped me most was what I did first.  I attained kensho, and I attained freedom from rebirth and immortality of the spirit.  You don't have to believe me when you read this, you don't even need to understand this.  Just don't assume I am wrong or crazy. 

When I die, I will attain bliss.  That is something better than going to heaven.  But regardless of whether I am alive or dead, I am happy, and this is the most important thing.  In a world of suffering people, I am happy, and this is a huge accomplishment.  So I don't need more money or more women.

Nietzsche was a brilliant mind, and from his work, Psychology was born.  I also draw inspiration from Nietzsche, but look at him as someone who was extremely gifted but also extremely flawed.  He didn't believe in God, angels, morality, reincarnation, enlightenment, or a purpose to life.  That is what Psychology, Medicine, Science, and the West is lacking.  This is a big flaw, so Psychology has a big flaw.  You can't acquire faith.  It can't be bought either.  You are either empowered with faith or you are not.

So say what thou will, Nietzsche had a lot of insight and both art and music is part of a healthy, sane, and fulfilled life.

Back in the Saddle with Art Again

I am both an artist and musician.  I've also mastered some other things in my life.  But between art and music, I think my art has more potential.  In music, you have to be able to play fast, uptempo songs, perform infront of large audiences, spend time in bars and nightclubs, and generally do a lot of drugs.

Maybe the life of an artist is more up my alley.  I can always play acoustic guitar as a hobby. 

Today is Sunday and as I write this, it is still early morning.  I did an artwork today, quickly from pencil drawing to line art to scan to digitally colored design.  It is a simple nature scene of a mountain by a stream. 

The reason it came out well is because I used a thick Sharpie marker to ink it, the way I did between July 2018 and December 2018 when my best and original artworks were done. This was a time of rapid mental health recovery and spiritual awakening.  Art can be a mental health therapy and a form of spiritual discovery.  I especially like Voodoo in art, and exploration of the Black Israelite faith.

So here is today's design.  I will show it below:

Mountain by Water

This is a simple nature scene with a mountain by a body of water.  The mountain shouldn't really be there, by itself infront of some bushes and trees with rolling dunes behind it.  But this is art, and in art you can create things that don't really exist.

It has a certain style to it, and the thicker lines adds rustic nicety to it.  I hope to get back into art with a passion and leave behind music recordings and controversial writings behind for a while.  I have five albums and two books online right now and none of them are selling.  If I develop my art, it may lead to something real.

Square One

This is the beginning of a new month, a new year, and a new decade.  It's been 50 years since the 1960s came to an end, and the Beatles have been gone for half a century.  These are daunting facts.

Moving on, I will continue making music on my guitar.  And I write songs and lyrics and chords all of my own.

I also draw constantly, and on my artist site, www.lioravnidesginwriter.com I have designs available for purchase, an About page describing my life briefly, and a very interesting blog I post in several times daily.  My mind is always active and I am always posting my thoughts to the internet.  I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.

Besides the music and the art, I want to exercise again.  I feel Judo is too intense an exercise for my age and condition, and Yoga is too light, not competitive enough, and not interesting enough.  And swimming is extremely boring.  I want to study Aikido at an authentic dojo, and even though I already am an expert at takedowns, pin-rides, armlocks, trapping, and flowing, I want to the experience of sharing my training with others.  As long as you stay home and keep it to yourself, you get nowhere.  It is by sharing your hobbies and interests with others that you get some result.

People who stay home all the time are miserable.  I want to share my music and Aikido with others, and save cooking and art for the home.  There is a time and a place for everything.

So it is a new year and I am at square One.  We have the winter, then the spring, then the summer, then the fall, and then another winter will return.  So make the most of the year.  Don't waste another year having mindless fun.  It is only by applying effort into something you care about that you get results. 

So in 2020, I will be writing, training, playing guitar, cooking, and enjoying life.  I don't need that much money.  More money wouldn't necessarily make my life better.  It's just money.

A Brand New Boogie

It is day one of 2020.  I resolve to only improve my position this year.  Part of that is waking up early every day.  Don't cling to comfort.  As soon as your eyes open, jump out of bed.  You can take a leisurely approach to mornings and not actually get on with your day until 7am or 8am, but you should wake up before 6am.  The early bird gets the worm.

My main interests are music, cooking, writing, swimming, and dating.  But to get a woman, you need a certain level of looks and money.  And you must leave the house and get involved in the community.  Also, you must initiate with women or you will get nowhere.  The man gives and the woman receives. 

I don't need to be an Acupuncturist, and I don't need Judo anymore.  Those were things of my youth.  Now that I am no longer an acupuncturist, all I objectively have is a green belt in judo.  But my matwork is Olympic level and I mastered Aikido.  It turns out Aikido is better than judo, and being the master is more important than being the champion.  A good Aikido black belt knows all the classical strikes of Karate, plus how to trap, blend, pin, and submit people.  Judo is the original sport grappling, an exercise with a philosophy of non-aggression and being a good member of society.

So out with the old and in with the new.  Music and food continue to be important to me.  Writing is my job skill.  I must exercise somehow or my body will deteriorate.  One of my new year's resolutions is to exercise more and make it a daily habit.  Hatha Yoga and swimming is good and age appropriate. 

I should do more art as a hobby that can someday be monetized.  I remember the 10,000 hour rule.  I have not yet mastered art.  Below is one of my more recent creations.

Pyramids Recolored

I took an old line art drawing I used on Instagram and recolored it, and cropped it to be square.  It is based on a scene from Mexico, of the pyramids and the surrounding gardens and trees.  It is evocative of Aztec culture and what the Indians were like before the coming of Cortez.

So I have some talent in art and music.  I don't know which will pay off first.  But I know I have a reason to sing the blues, so that is what I do.  This new year, 2020, will not be wasted.   I will play guitar and exercise and do art and interact with people.  It's time to expect less out of life and be more fulfilled.

The best things in life are free.

Revisiting the Past

It's all been done before.  There's nothing new under the sun.  When something is new, we attack it with enthusiasm and do it til it's no longer fun.  Soon, the joy wears off and the productivity tapers off.  But real success comes from consistency, and the whole western world is based on the factory line production method.  The daily grind is the secret.  Do a little bit every day.  Day in and day out, do a little bit, and the results will accumulate, and your work will become part of your lifestyle.

I don't create new designs as often as I used to.  Instead, I go back to old line art and recolor it with new color palettes.  Or I take line art I rendered in my grayscale period and apply color to it to see it as something new. 

That is why i'm revisiting the past.  I will attach one design I recolored below.

Red Barn In Color

This was originally a grayscale design based on a replica of a work by Roy Lichtenstein from 1969.  I saw it in a book on his work, and did a drawing which I applied shades of gray to.  This time around, out of boredom, I recolored the work in RGB, and came up with this creation.  It is almost Cubist in it's use of solid blocks of color, heavy black lines, and geometric shapes.  But it makes sense both in grayscale and now in color.

So even if I am not dreaming up new designs for new artworks, I can visit the past and recolor old artworks.  I save every artwork in three forms, as line art, as a PSD file, and as a colored JPG.  With the line art and Photoshop, you can recreate a work with a totally different palette or filter and create something new from the same drawing.  This has become my specialty, coloring line art.  I want to expand in art, but this is my fundamental skill.  The Japanese have been using Photoshop to color hand drawn illustrations for a long time.  That is where Manga comes from.

So I can stay productive even when I am not productive.  The daily grind.  Do a little bit every day, and stay occupied.  That is the secret to a fulfilled life.

Check out my FASO Artist Site.

Over the course of the past five or ten years, I've blogged away a lot of knowledge and information and history.  My Taoist Nutrition blog, nativefitness, lasted three years on Wordpress and with it, I established I have the education of a Phd scholar in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Nutrition.  I gave away a lot of information on that site and got very little in return.

I've also blogged on other subjects, and now I have a FASO artist site at www.lioravnidesignwriter.com which features a portfolio of artworks for sale, a blog within the site where I share my ideas about art and life, and a system of analytics for keeping track of who sees what I am creating.

In addition, I use this site to reach a bigger audience, with no cost to myself.  As well, I am using www.liorandhisblues.com on Wordpress to blog about my music career, my fondness for the delta blues, and to chronicle the history of American pop music, which owes a lot to poor southern blacks who never got rich off their own folk music.

Selling art and blogging can be lucrative in this day and age when the internet has changed the way people do business.  In 2019, half the world population will buy something online with a credit card.  That is 3.5 billion people.  The internet changed everything, and made it possible for creative professionals to make a living, when in older times, most would live and die starving artists.  Very few creative people become rich and famous, and leave behind a household name.

I am not great with business, finance, and law, but I have a growing talent, and I know I can create an extra income with art, blogging, and even album sales.  I am constantly refining and updating my art to be more up to date.  Continuing education is part of being an artist. 

So as the months go by, my art and writing skills grow, and i continue to produce better and better works.  The point of my endeavors is not to create a million dollar sale and die rich and vindicated, that is only the result I want.  The point is to live a harmonious lifestyle where I enjoy what I am doing on a daily basis, and constantly grow and mature as I reach old age.  Dying rich and well known and leaving a legacy is just the icing on the cake.

Battlefield Earth

This is going to be a far reaching, all inclusive post and feature my three most recent art designs. 

Life is a battle.  Everything in life is a fight, even getting out of bed in the morning.  But you don't have to be angry, violent, or aggressive.  Life is hard enough.  Be gentle.

When I was young, before I started guitar or judo or chinese medicine, I liked fairy tales, mythology, kinghts with swords and armor, and fantasy movies.  I thought fighting was cool.  It was later I found out fighting involves loss, and loss hurts.  So I stopped liking battlefield warfare and started liking non lethal combat sports like boxing and judo.  At least you don't die if you lose.  There's always next time.

A lot of my imagination was shaped by young adult mythology books at the local library, which I still visit from time to time.  It's free entertainment and knowledge. 

I especially like Celtic, Scandinavian, and Hindu Mythology.  As well, I am fascinated by the shamans of Mexico. 

Below are three recent artworks, done in 6 by 6 inch fashion, regarding battlefield skills and tactics. 

Jousting

The King Departing

Sambo

The first is called Jousting and portrays two knights doing a tournament for the entertainment of the king and queen of the nation.  The second is called The King Departing, implying the king is going on an expedition or journey and the friars are praying for his success and return.  And the third design is called Sambo, and portrays a sambo wrestler shooting a single leg pick against a rugged opponent.  Sambo is a battlefield skill, and the Russians value military service and judo.

So this is the direction my art has gone in the past couple of days.  I've been fantasizing about mythology, warfare, sambo, and my past, when I was young and didn't know much about reality.  

An Asian Motif

A lot of my work is influenced by Asian culture.  I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine when I was young, I have an acupuncture license, and I have a master's degree in acupuncture.  I know a lot about karate, judo, taoist philosophy, nutrition, longevity, and massage.

Even the way I do art is influenced by japanese comics, also known as manga.  I sketch first in pencil and paper, then I ink the drawing by hand with a black pen, I then scan the image into the computer, and color it with Photoshop.  This is traditional for manga.  Photoshop has been around a long time.

Lately, I've been exploring themes in my art.  Themes like zen, kung fu, work, women, and other things that deal with real life, not fantasy.  Reality trumps fantasy any day, even though it doesn't look as good. 

Here are a few recent works. 

Building Blocks

Man and Donkey

NYC Subway

Sparring at the Shaolin Temple

These are artworks done in a comic book/children's book/cartoon way, but deal with adult subjects and adult themes.  This is what I'm striving for.  To tell a story visually.  I like east Asian culture, but I am not obsessed with it.  It is merely an advanced culture, and because of my acupuncture education early on in life, it has left a lasting imprint on my mind.

Back in the Saddle, Again.

So far, May and June 2019 have been productive months for my art career and body of work.  My technique keeps improving, and a style is developing.  Part of my progress is because of practice.  But part of it is because of continuing education.  I use courses on udemy, I experiment with different techniques and keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop, and I read books about all types of art, using some pics as references.

Now that I am really an illustrator and cartoonist, I can draw from imagination.  So lately I've been using references less.  This is a good thing.  References are like training wheels on a bike, you only need them in the beginning.  And I'm not a beginner in any aspect of life at this point. 

I want to include here some of my best recent works, which might be uploaded to different parts of the web by now. 

Beach Scene 1

David vs Goliath

Sleeping

All three of these works are on my instagram account.  Beach Scene is an ideal bikini girl walking by the seashore on the hot sand.  David vs Goliath is a biblical scene, done in my minimalistic cartoonish style.  And sleeping is a monochrome composition that depicts a man in his apartment peacefully slumbering.  

This art is deceptively simple.  At first glance it is a cartoon, but when you look deeper you see details and depth that is what makes it special and unique.  I hope I can revive traffic to this blog and create a name for myself as an artist and designer.  

TCM Theory

Meridian Man

I went to TCM school and got a Master's Degree and a Professional License.  I understand Oriental Physiology, Taoist Philosophy, Nutrition, Tai Chi, and Microbiology.  Traditional Chinese Medicine and Wholistic Medicine has a wealth of knowledge to offer both the Doctor and the common man alike.  But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Not getting sick in the first place is better than eastern or western intervention.

TCM used to be called Taoist Medicine because it is based on the polarity, or yin yang theory, of the Ancient Mongolian and Chinese shamans.  It is more complicated than that, but that is the essence.  It is allopathic.  We give to those who have too little and take from those who have too much.  That is similar to the theoretical standpoint of Western Medicine.  But in practice they differ.

Western medicine is rooted in the Renaissance studies of human anatomy, the rebirth of Ancient Greek Science, cadaver studies, and the birth of modern science.  Eastern medicine is based on empirical observation, the stored wisdom of thousands of Chinese people and hundreds of their generations, and the revelations of Taoist Shamans, direct from Heaven.  Empirical Science and Reductionist Science are both sciences, but they are not the only ones.  There is science, there is religion, and then there is reality.  And reality is better than science or religion.

Reductionist science is similar to Platonic metaphysics, the idea or notion precedes the real world evidence.  Empirical science is similar to Aristotle.  He observes the world fairly and impartially, and concludes what he thinks based on his actual observation and experience.  Aristotle is based on real life experience.

So many generations of Chinese people have come and gone, they've seen it all, and fair-minded people like doctors and wizards have observed what actually works well and what doesn't.  So TCM is based on reality and Western Medicine is based on theories and scientific experiments.

I would trust the real world experiences of many generations of Chinese people and not a scientific theory or experiment that doesn't really help in real life scenarios.

In this design, a perfect meridian man shows the conception vessel running down his front line.  The center line is the main theory of Chinese Medicine and martial arts.  The spine is the main part of the human being and what makes us able to walk upright on two feet not four like an ape or dog.  If you control the center line, you control the man.  In Muay Thai, the standing neck clinch allows for the use of knee and elbow strikes.

In the design, the man is on the backdrop of the yin/yang symbol, and one arrow goes up to heaven, the other down to earth.  Yin rises up and Yang descends to the low.  But one creates the other.  There is no better or worse, one depends on the other for existence and one will transform into the other eventually.  The only real duality is male and female, and males have a preponderance of yang, and females have a preponderance of yin.  God is balanced in masculine and feminine qualities.  

So if you want to be healthy and normal, balance masucline and feminine forces within you.

The Prophet by the Stream

The Prophet by the Stream

I've returned to color designs with a vengeance.  This design is simple, but showcases some of my most unique drawing characteristics.  The figure or character design is simple and elegant.  The colors are bright and solid.  Perspective is implied.  And there is efficiency in denoting detail with as few lines as possible.

This scene depicts a biblical prophet with a staff by a stream issuing forth from a mountain pass.  There's not much to say about it.  Enjoy.

A New Theme to My Art

Adam and Eve

Celtic Cemetery

Overlooking the World

Buddhist Portrait

I've been doing more line art lately, from imagination, and addressing judeochristian, mythological, and Buddhist themes in my art.  I've been using a ballpoint black pen to ink my drawings, not a black marker, so the lines are finer and less bulky.

Adam and Eve depicts the original hamitic negro couple in the Garden of Eden, after they took from the forbidden fruit and realized they were naked.  They are depicted wearing coverings made of fig leaves.

The Celtic Cemetery is made from a reference photo in a book on Celtic art I got at the library.  It depicts a large grave with a Celtic cross on it.  The Irish preserved a lot of pagan and European myth and culture during the time of the dark ages when Christianity threatened to wipe out all of Europe's rich culture.

Overlooking the World is my vision of God overlooking his creation, the one planet where there is life and reproduction through sex, through the meeting of male and female, which is unique to this world.  The original meaning of life was that Adam and Eve would live in paradise, giving rise ot perfect immortal offspring that had no need for money, would never grow old, sick, and die, and could live carefree in an idyllic paradise eating fruit and seed.  But we lost that.

The last artowrk, which I call Buddhist Portrait, depicts a buddhist holy man or saddhu sitting in yogic pose, surrounded by a fiery halo and the heads of a leopard and elephant.  It is more symbolic, and it portrays the qualities of a buddhist sage, monk, or holy man and his spirit animals.

As I practice more art this summer, my art will improve, and I will constantly invest more time and effort into drawing, designing, and Photoshop.  I plan on making tremendous progress with the Summer of 2019.

One Last Lichtenstein Before I Move On

I have the basic art book on Roy Lichtenstein, an avant garde jewish-american artist well known in the 1960s for his tongue in cheek interpretations of comic art.  I've decided to start making original works instead of copying classic works of others. 

However, one landscape that stoned my imagination in the book I had to copy.  And the name of this landscape is simply, 'Cloud and Sea', and it is indeed simple art.  Here is my version below.

Cloud and Sea 

My version is in grayscale and is just as minimalistic and zenlike as the original in the book.  My emerging style features wobbly but coordinated black lines, grayscale toning, large solid blocks of color, and assertive visual storytelling.  I'm not tooting my own horn.  People see value in my art, and I have a formal education in graphic design.

Moving on, I plan to take more photos with my smartphone, and use these pics as references to future drawings and designs.  I also plan on making videos for YouTube featuring slideshows of my art and music and how it constantly improves.

Life is good for me, and gets better as I unravel the mysteries of the self.  

Man is heaven and earth in miniature.

Learn to do things yourself, for yourself.

Elephant Alone

This is a line art from november that I only colored last night.  It is of an elephant all by himself, and from the looks of it, he is quite skinny.  He is Elephant alone.

Everyone in life needs to learn to be alone.  You can be very lonely, weak, and dependent in a family, group, or meeting.  Learn to be a rugged individualist.  Learn to do things yourself, for yourself.

I know we live in a society of specialists, but ancient man had to be a jack of all trades to survive, we are complex beings with many factors, and it's hard to outdo the primitive past.  Cavemen were better.  They weren't hypocrites, there was no room for morality, theology, or civil law.

So take a lesson from this skinny, solitary elephant.  Do things on your own, and you will attract strong, independent people.

Home

'Home in Argentina'

This is my ideal home.  A little villa in Argentina, or Spain, or Italy.  This cartoonish drawing represents peace, security, independence, and a place of my own.  And yet, I may never attain it.  Because I can't afford a home of my own.

The English word, 'mortgage' comes from two French words, mort and gague, which combines means, 'death pledge'.  That is what you need to have a home of your own in America.  A death pledge.

So keep working away at your job, paying your 'mortgage', and teach your children well.  American society is a bunch of savages indoctrinated into evil and materialism from a young age.  

Be well.