my artistic side of the trip :)

I've been challenging myself to see the art in everything recently. More often than not, I set out with my camera with a specific mission in mind. And I usually stick to it really well. Unfortunately, often times my mindset is not on deviating outside the box. This may sound surprising, but honestly I'm the kind of person who likes to have a plan and then stick very closely to it. So if my plan is to BE creative, then I most certainly will be... however, I want to change that, and let my plans carry me to whatever beauty is around me AT ALL TIMES.

So these are some practice in that area. Most of these were taken during times when you wouldn't expect to find something beautiful... just me walking along taking it all in. I wonder to myself, "how can i capture what I see right now in a 4x6 size rectangle and still make it interesting?" Well here you have my attempts to do that from Mexico...


This is one of the first pictures I snapped after arriving. Our hotel was so beautiful in every way. I mean seriously, it was a Holiday Inn Express... I wasn't expecting too much... especially since it WAS Mexico after all... well i was pleasantly surprised. The feel of the sign our room number was on was the feel of the whole hotel. Very tropical and bright... LOVED IT!

This was a supporting beam in a traditional Mexican restaurant we ate at... The architecture was very cool and I just loved the gourds hanging from it.

Truly, it would be a crime for me not to have a few pictures of flowers... and unfortunately, that's all i have... a few! I was surprised to find that there was more fauna than flora. In fact, the most beautiful flowers I saw were at the prison we visited... where I was not allowed to have my camera. We weren't allowed ANYTHING when we went in there. I literally only had my clothes on, nothing in the hair, no jewelry whatsoever... it was crazy. but yah, that's where the flowers were the most beautiful, DRAT!

I took this one through a fence and wasn't sure how it was going to work out, but I was quite pleased :)


This is my very favorite angle for tree pictures... i kind of wish though that I had used a smaller aperature though so that I could have gotten some more detail in the leaves. They were really cool.

On Monday we went to Patzcuaro to go shopping. There were all kinds of markets in the streets. Fruit and vegetable markets, handmade stuff, pirated dvds... and fish.

My nose has not failed me. No it has not. We rounded the corner and my nostrils were invaded with the smell of dead fish... for some reason I like this smell.


Opposite the dead fish market was this bundled wood... i thought it was cool :)


Then for the best part... the fruit! Oh the fruit down there... what a shame that we didn't eat any of it. Actually not really a shame. The true shame would have been when I brought home a pet parasite living inside of me that I ingested at the same time as one of these lovely fruits.


However, if i had indeed brought a parasite home with me... I would have given it a name. I don't believe that I have a parasite... but that's an unconfirmed report. I have yet to recover fully from the onset of some severe intestinal problems that reared its head on the morning of our arrival back in the states... but it's getting better. I'm sure you wanted to know that *wink*

thoughts

Tonight, on my way home from a great night out with alicia, merrie and melissa i had sudden inspiration for an outfit to wear tomorrow...

... when i was little i remember lying in bed one night drawing a picture of a raccoon in my mind. I would close my eyes and watch as my pencil moved over the paper and formed every detail perfectly. i was *very* excited about this and thought to myself that if i could draw so well in my mind that for sure i could draw that well in real life. So the next morning i went off to my second grade classroom, got out my pencil and paper and began to draw that little raccoon. It didn't work out quite the way i had hoped. I began to realize then how active my imagination can be at times. I feel things in an almost unnatural way sometimes... and by that i mean that beauty in all its different forms isn't something that i just see, i actually feel it.

i said all that to say that when i got home, i went to my closet to try and compose this outfit, but it didn't quite work out the way my mind had imagined it. i'm back to the trusty rusty standby.

this post may seem a little *out of the ordinary* and getting a very small peek into how my mind thinks may leave you feeling like you know me even less than you thought you did. And you may think, "what in the world do clothes and raccoons have anything to do with how my mind works?" I guess for the most part, I am talking about how the things that are beautiful, the things that God has made alive in my imagination is an art form that i am constantly trying to express.


Art in it's truest form always looks better when it's a reflection of someone's imagination. I love seeing what comes from other people minds and imaginations because it can truly be so spiritual. God connects people with an unnatural ability to connect emotionally through what is seen and felt. when someone creates something that they feel inside of them, it's a lot easier for the viewer to connect with what they are looking at. and it just amazes me how awesome God is when i see this happen.

stress induced artwork

The beginning of this week and all of last week are going down in my personal history chronicles as one of the most stressful weeks of my life. i really didn't think that i was all that stressed out. I don't usually get cranky so much, I just exhibit physical symptoms of stress... therefore i don't realize how bad it is until something really traumatic happens to me!

For example, this summer as a result of many stressful situations I started losing my hair... thus the reason i now have short hair. But this time I have contracted the weirdest cold/virus i have ever had. I don't feel sick in my body like all day, then all of a sudden it hits me like a load of bricks and my throat swells up to the size of a pencil and i am so tired i start getting vertigo. and then i take a little snoozer and am good for another few hours. and it's not that i'm not getting any sleep, because i definitely am.

But at any rate, I am coming out the other side of this stress and I am starting to feel really great... not physically, but emotionally. I have been in this great drawing class all semester and I wanted to post my two points of pride and joy for everyone to see. These two pieces almost make this stress bearable :)



the leaf one was done all with soft pastels and then the black and white one is with india ink... they make me happy