Personal Growth and Self Improvement

If I was any kind of organized fella I would have posted this first. But since I'm not well...bear with me. Its the perfunctory mission statement. Self serving? Yes. But necessary, since I need to personally understand why I'm doing this.

So what is Trouble Matador?

Well its a depository of random drawings and doodles by yours truly. Its a way for me to chronicle my own personal growth as an artist. A way to view all my foibles and flaws and display them openly. And in doing so the intent is that it will galvanize me to a state of self improvement.

For a person who has consistently been afraid to step out of my own comfort zone, I'm hoping that through this format I'll be able to see a change for the better in the way I draw. In the way I compose ideas and edit them so that the core idea comes across succinctly.

As of this moment, I am still using pen on paper. Afraid to touch a computer to draw or color. (I'm afraid it'll steal my soul.) I am fixated on overly detailing things, to cover up flaws in my fundamental drawing knowledge. Hopefully as time goes on I can change some of these deficiencies.

I'd very much like to expand my horizons. Work in different styles and in the end have fun with it all. Life's too short to be taken seriously. (I have no idea what the last bit means, it just sounded profound.)

On a side note regarding the blog's name:

For a Christmas present many moons ago, for a very close friend, I created a fake album sleeve for an imaginary band. Filled with cheesy song lyrics for 12 track listings.

My friend had a thing for Antonio Banderas and her mandate was that it be as if Antonio Banderas could sing and made an album of love songs. ( Antonio can technically sing, as witnessed in those mind numbing Shrek movie credit sequences; but for all intents and purposes this fake album was conceived under the pretense that he actually sang WELL.)

Nevertheless our senses of humor being similarly aligned, she thought my fake album was hilarious. The imaginary band I conceived of was named Trouble Matador.

I mistakenly believed that taking the first five letters of Trouble and the last three letters of Matador yielded the word Troubadour, which was a medieval poet who sang and composed music.

But instead it created the word Troubador which I believe means a person that thinks he's being smart, witty and funny but truthfully is just a pretentious moron.

Lesson to be learned? I'm a troubador. Welcome to my blog.

Space creeps, Open jowls and Ships

Feed me. Space bum looking for a space handout. Bunch of loose drawings. With no discernible head or tail.

Like the head. Hand? Not so much.

Random ship designs. Some pretty old drawings I guess. Looking at them now I question a lot of the shape choices.

I'm pretty underwhelmed with these drawings. I have a tendency to keep adding things until it well...breaks. Functionality should be a consideration for sure.

I like the arrow I drew in corner.

More harpoons!

Its ornate for the sake of being ornate. So this was shown to a person who could actually draw and it was the first time I realized I really don't have functionality in mind. How does this thing even move? Joints and mechanics need to be taken into consideration.

I do like the creepy small hands and the attempt at a humanoid face.

More Space---You get the idea

This thing is called Aesop. It was intended to be a space ship that looked like a robot? Don't ask.

Anyway the earlier posting was a shrunk down version of this drawing so I could fit in the feet. Was trying to fit as much detail as possible so I guess it gave it visual interest. But I tried to stay on task and give it an interesting shape at least.

Aesop's head detail. This was an earlier design for Aesop's head.

Unfortunately there is an obnoxious pen doodle in the middle of the drawing because well I was distracted and drew on it a second time. God knows why. I guess while I was eating or watching In Living Color reruns or something. I don't even remember anymore.

Anyway, the idea was that Aesop was this huge robot shaped ship that housed one human captain and the crew were entirely made up of robot workers. It had a biosphere, living quarters and bunch of other crap so it was completely self sufficient. This thing was an insular environment. Point was that it was supposed to be huge.

So I tried to take that into account while drawing the head here. I was trying to instill a sense of massive scale.

I did this drawing when I was 22 and really my coloring hasn't really improved since then. Looking at this now I don't really see too much of difference in the way I draw today. Which kind of scares me.

But I remember liking the drawing because of the horse head on this guy and the purple and green were appealing to me at that age.

This guy was influenced by a tiki mask. Not sure if it comes through.

Those stray guns on the bottom bother me. I think this was supposed to look like a viking ship but I don't really remember.

More Space Junk

Robots!

Meet Bill. Bill is ugly.

I have a nasty habit of drawing on a slant cause I turn the darn paper. This drawings pretty flat and with nothing of interest happening.

Wish the head piece was well....better

Space Junk

First post! Yay! Compiled drawings from my sketchbook. Well...here goes! Stream of conciousness mechanical head drawing. Had no idea what I was doodling and kept adding details wishing something interesting would happen. Nothing ever did. (How does he turn his head, with a neck like that? )

Neville doodle.

Check out the tiny hands.