Los Tunnel Banditos

A few days ago my cousin called and asked if I wanted to explore a big tunnel in a park near his apartment. I did not hesitate to say yes.

For the first few feet we saw the usual well articulated and masterfully rendered graffiti one would expect to find in a tunnel. If I never see Metallica spray painted again I will be okay with the world.

At what felt like the half way point we reached a fork. We either had to climb up into one of the smaller tunnels or turn back around. We opted to continue.

Proceeding through the smaller tunnel took its toll on our backs.

Eventually we reached a point where the tunnel narrowed further and we would have to crawl in the water to explore further. So it was with an Alice in Wonderland shrinking hallway feeling and a pain in our back that we decided to make our way back.

If I learned anything from this adventure, it’s that there is no Nazi gold to be found in this particular West Allis tunnel.

The end of 09

2009 was… a very memorable year.

I think that the biggest and most important lesson I learned this year was how to fail. Looking back, at some point in my artistic development I stopped taking as many risks. Mainly out of a fear of failure. This fear has been the biggest obstacle in my progression as an artist (and a person). This last year I took on many projects that had a high probability of failure. Some of them resulted in unforeseen success. The rest were just successful failures.

It’s taken me a while but I finally feel like I am at a point where I ‘m ready to fail.

Here is an example. Over the spring I purchased a mole skin sketch book. These sketch books have been used and praised by several artists that I admire (sort of the Mac of sketch books, all the cool kids use it). The problem is I hate it. The paper has no tooth and it feels like drawing on a glossy envelope that can’t take getting wet or hold ink. Instead going back to the sketch books that I’m comfortable I challenged myself to use it. I went even further out of my comfort range by drawing everything in pen. That way I couldn’t erase. I would have to live with every line, every mistake.

Below are the first few pages of my mistakes. After that are some random pictures from 2009.

I can’t wait to see what 2010 has in store for me.