RULES (obey these or fail at life);
Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle.

Using the following questions, press play.

Use the song titles that come up to answer them.

Don't cheat.

1. How does the world see me?
"Creola", Jimmy Buffett (Hmm...hanging on on the bayou with the family, partying, eating good food...not bad.)

2. Will I have a happy life?
"Gold Digger", Kanye West (Sure I will, as long as he has money.)

3. What do people really think of me?
"She Loves You", The Beatles (Everyone thinks I am incapable of letting a guy how I really feel about him.)

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
"Clover", Sugarbomb (He just wants to make me sweat and perspire.)

5. How can I make myself happy?
"Calabria", Enur ft. Natasha (I can't understand what she's saying!!!)

6. What should I do with my life?
"Go To The Mardi Gras", Professor Longhair (It's a sign!)

7. Will I ever have children?
"Can't Fight The Moonlight", Leanne Rimes (I'll have to do some seducing first.)

8. What is some good advice for me?
"I Wanna Be Free", The Monkees (Nope, can't let anyone tie me down.)

9. What do I think my current theme song is?
"Hungry", Kosheen (Yes, YES!!!! I want more!!!!)

10. What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
"What Am I Doin' Hangin' Round?", The Monkees (This question does indeed apply to many areas of my life.)

11. What song will play at my funeral?
"Heaven", DJ Sammy (Seriously...)

12. What is my day going to be like?
"I Believe In A Thing Called Love", The Darkness (OMG!)

13. Why am I here?
"Conched", A1A Jake (God put me soley on this earth so that I can drink myself to excess.)

14. What will people remember me for?
"Blue (Da Ba Dee)", Eiffel 65 (For being a blue alien?)

15. What song will I get stuck in my head tomorrow?
"Dare", Gorillaz (It's happened before.)

16. Are there people waiting outside waiting to take me away?
"Unwritten", Natasha Bedingfield (Gee...I guess I released my inhibitions a bit too much.)

17. What will this year be all about?
"Ordinary World", Duran Duran (How depressing...)

18. If you reached the top of Mount Everest, you would scream:
"For Pete's Sake", The Monkees (Love is understanding, but I don't think I would need to climb a mountain to figure that out.)

19. The next time you stand up in front of a group of people, you'll
say:
"Here For The Party", Gretchen Wilson (Now, where's the beer?)

20. Your message to the world.
"Listen To The Music", The Doobie Brothers (It's all I'm asking.)

21. Your deepest secret.
"You Gotta Be", Des'ree (I have no secrets...I am ashamed of nothing!)

22. Your innermost desire.
"(Theme From) The Monkees", The Monkees (Hahahaha...)

23. Your oldest memory makes you think...
"Big Chief", Professor Longhair (Mardi Gras always makes for good memories.)

24. Somewhere in your wedding vows you'll include:
"This Is Your Night", Amber (Oh, baby...)

25. When you wake up in the morning you mutter?
"Fins", Jimmy Buffett (Gotta go take care of all the little sharks...)

26. Right now, your feelings are:
"Yellow Submarine", The Beatles (Man, I'm so tripped out, I have no feelings...I think I'll just babble on about how I live with a bunch a people under the ocean.)

27. The day you fall in love will be the day that:
"Cheeseburger In Paradise", Jimmy Buffett (Well, they say the fastest way to a man's heart is though his stomach, right?)

28. You scream during sex:
"Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)", Looking Glass (Huh...)

29. Your farewell message to the readers:
"Hey Jude", The Beatles (I can't think of a better band to end this with.)

I tag whoever reads this.

~*~*~*~*~*~

These are the clubs that I'm in:

Ah, the holidays...such a magical time of year...a time for peace, joy, and good will to all.

BAH HUMBUG!!!!

I guess maybe it's because I'm getting older, but for whatever reason, I'm just not as into the holidays as I used to be. The gift giving, the houses decorated in lights, the Christmas music, the holiday TV specials...it all just doesn't do anything for me anymore. Don't misunderstand, I still look forward to all of the above, just not as much. I suppose that, in the process of growing up, the childhood anticipation that usually came along with the season was lost somehow. Maybe it's also the recent events in my life that have eaten away at my holiday spirit. Who knows?

To end my rant on a happy note, this year is not quite as bad as years past. My guy friend that I have written about a few times before, the one who tends to be a jerk, has been surprisingly non-jerklike in the last few days, which always puts me in a brighter mood. My goal is to get him to do something Christmas-y with me, like come over for a holiday party or take me to go see Christmas in the Oaks over at City Park. Unfortunately, he has no car at the moment. The lack of transportation puts a damper on things, but hey, there's still 19 days until Christmas as I'm writing this, so the Universe still has time to make some adjustments. At least he's calling me a little more often than usual.

On to art matters...speaking of my guy friend, he may have an art project for me. His sister is redecorating her bedroom, and she may be interested in a mural. Their family is from the Bay Islands of Honduras, so she may request something tropical, which is right up my alley.

I get to do something I like and get paid for it??? *GASP!*

Other requests are coming in too. My mother's friend has asked me to do an oil painting, a seascape with a lighthouse similar to the one I've posted in my dA gallery. My grandmother's friend also wants me to do another oil painting of her son's house.

More stuff that I'm getting paid for? *GASP AGAIN!*

As for my own projects, I can't seem to sketch out anything that I'm happy with for my Jimmy Buffett book illustrations, so I'm going to walk away from it for a while. I've decided to take a different route and draw some interpretations of his song lyrics. The same goes for the Monkees fanart that I mentioned...I can't seem to draw a portrait or even a caricature that do any of them justice.

In case you haven't guessed, I've toyed with the idea of starting a club in which members are challenged to visually interpret song lyrics. Does something like that already exist on dA? It's a thought...

Finally, I have a question: Does anyone know how to make and post a tutorial? I've been promising to make a Prismacolor tutorial, but I just don't know how. Please help me!

Well, that's it and I'm done. Until next time...

~*~*~*~*~

Since my list of watchers was getting large, I'll be keeping those in a separate journal, which I will update accordingly. In the meantime...

These are the clubs that I'm in:

As promised, I submitted some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan art: [link] Ray Fillet finally has some representation on dA (although, to be honest, I've never bothered doing a search to see if he was already in some fan art on here.)

The illustrations from the Jimmy Buffett book "Tales From Margaritaville" will be coming soon as well. I need to go back and re-read parts of it to refresh my memory, but I love the book so much, so it's about time for me to read it again anyway.

Since the last journal, there are some other projects that I'd like to work on. For one, a brand new mersona was drawn for me by ~lunajurai as part of ~Mermafied's Personality Exchange: [link] It's mostly because I recently got my hair cut short, and I wanted to draw my new mako shark self with my new do.

Second of all, I've been hung up on "The Monkees" lately. For those who don't know, it was a TV show from the 60s that was inspired by The Beatles movies "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help". It's about the members of a struggling rock band--Mike, Micky, Peter, Davy--who find themselves in all sorts of unusual situations in the quest to land a gig and get a record contract. I wasn't around when the show originally aired, but I used to watch it when it came on Nickelodeon in the mid-80s. I've been a fan ever since. Since I've been on a fan-art kick lately, I been wanting to do something that's Monkees-themed. Of course, I've seen them drawn as anthro monkeys on here, but I want to do something different. I've thought about doing mermafied versions of them, which I'm sure no one has done yet. Any suggestions from fellow Monkees fans on what species of sea creature I should use for each of the guys?

Well, that's it and I'm done. Until next time...

~*~*~*~*~

I'd like to indroduce y'all to my friends. They're watching me...

These are the people that I know outside of DA:


A few of the crazy cool kids from ~Mermafied




My buddies from *BioMarina:


A fellow Parrothead from the ~parrotheads club:


More really cool peeps that I've met here on DA:


These are the clubs that I'm in:

Recent personal matters (the details of which I would prefer not to discuss) have taken my attention away from making more art, as of lately, and unfortunately there were a few projects that were time sensitive. For one, I had promised three of my non-dA friends that I was going to do drawings for them. I don't always post that kind of stuff on here, but still, I had made these promises months ago. I also have an exchange for ~Mermafied which I'm sure is over-due, so my apologies go out to ~ScytheDragon. I plan on locking myself in my room with my paper, my pencils, and my research to get everything done over the weekend.

Once I get all of my commissions done, I'm going to get back to pursuing my own interests. Lately, I've been wanting to do some fan art...as if this site doesn't have enough of that already. The difference is that I want to do characters that are more obscure, lesser known. No Harry Potter, no Transformers, no Naruto...like I said, dA has enough of such things.

That being said, I have a confession to make...I was a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in the day. Yes, I know, they were meant for the boys, but I didn't care. I had the t-shirts, I went and saw the movies, and I even had the action figures. As bizarre as it sounds, I played with Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo right along with my Barbie dolls. Go figure. Anyways, I had a few of the sidekicks and villains to go along with them, and my favorite was a character named Ray Fillet. The story goes that he was a marine biologist who somehow got himself turned into a crime-fighting mutant manta ray. How could I not like this guy? With 80s cartoon characters becoming cool again, and the most recent version of the TMNT movie that came out last spring, I've been thinking that old Ray needs some representation. My toy is long lost, but I've tracked down some pics on Google to use as reference.

Also, I want to try illustrating scenes and designing characters from books that I've read. I particularly want to draw from a book by Jimmy Buffett, "Tales from Margaritaville." You don't have to be a fan of his music to like this book. Anyone with a sense of adventure and a thirst for travel will enjoy it. One character that always amuses me from this book is Romeo Flemming, the head football coach for Heat Wave, AL's local high school who has a thing for Hawaiian shirts and pet iguanas. My kind of guy. There is another scene in the book that describes a mural that is painted on the wall of Clark Gable's cattle barn which suggests his closesness to the sea. If you are completely confused by anything that's written in this paragraph, all I can say is to read the book.

Well, that's it and I'm done. Until next time...

~*~*~*~*~

I'd like to indroduce y'all to my friends. They're watching me...

These are the people that I know outside of DA:


A few of the crazy cool kids from ~Mermafied


My buddies from *BioMarina:


A fellow Parrothead from the ~parrotheads club:


More really cool peeps that I've met here on DA:


These are the clubs that I'm in:

Everytime I find a new artist whose work I enjoy, whether it's here on DA or elsewhere, I always wonder what inspired his or her style and who influenced him or her to stick with a particular subject matter. I figured I'd let you guys in on which artists inspire me the most.

Wyland
I've always admired the way in which he portrays the underwater world. His work has an ethereal quality that suits its subject matter perfectly. I had the opportunity to see his work in person at one of his galleries in Destin, FL, which was a real treat.
Wyland's official website: [link]

Josh Agle (aka Shag)
His work always makes me smile. It's so fun and retro. If you're into the tiki scene, you will most likely enjoy this artist.
Shag's official website: [link]

Guy Harvey
He's as much a marine biologist as he is an artist. His renderings of marine life, particularly saltwater game, show them as the natural athletes that they truly are.
Guy Harvey's official website: [link]

Lisa Remeny
This South Florida artist is known for her paintings of tropical scenery and flora.
Lisa Remeny's official website: [link]

Dorian Cleavenger
He's probably one of the most amazing fantasy artists that I've come across in a long time. His work is certainly not for the conservative, but if you're okay with nudity, among other things, then you'll enjoy his work.
Dorian Cleavenger's official website: [link]

Pamelina H.
She's another great fantasy artist that I've discovered recently. Her series of mermaids based on birthstone gems are a lot of fun.
Pamelina H.'s official website: [link]

Goin' Coastal (formerly Caribbean Soul)
I still have yet to find out who the artist(s) is behind these illustrations. Most of them are inspired by the songs of Jimmy Buffett, who is my all-time favorite singer. Yeah, that's right...I'm a parrothead!
Goin' Coastal's official website: [link]

Lynn Fecteau
She's another South Florida artist that I've recently discovered. Her tropical seascapes are different in that they are painted as if the viewer is gazing at the ocean through windows and doorways, adding a sense of depth.
Lynn Fecteau's official website: [link]

Patrick Chevailler
All of his marine paintings, both under the surface and above it, are great. What caught my attention was his fish portraits. The details are amazing; it looks as if he painted each fish scale for scale.
Patrick Chevailler's official website: [link]

Jason Mathias
He's the next generation of marine artists. The work is very similar to that of Guy Harvey.
Jason Mathias' official website: [link]

Well, I hope that gives you guys a little insight into what inspires me. Until next time...

~*~*~*~*~

I'd like to indroduce y'all to my friends. They're watching me...

These are the people that I know outside of DA:


A few of the crazy cool kids from ~Mermafied


My buddies from *BioMarina:


A fellow Parrothead from the ~parrotheads club:


More really cool peeps that I've met here on DA:


These are the clubs that I'm in: