December 14, 2025

Christmas break is coming up. I get two weeks off. I just found out I don't get paid for them--of course. (Shrugs). What's a few more worries about money? It's not like it's not my entire life at this point. (wry face).

But still. I am literally being forced to spend two weeks in my studio. That's....awful. Just awful, I tell you.

Also, I am turning 40 in in a week. People older then me say I'm still young. My kids think I'm a hundred. Which one I actually feel depends on the day.

I've been preparing for my next challenge, building my imagination skills, by building my own prompt game. I still managed to get a little bit of drawing in.

Why do I want to be an illustrator?

I was a shy, strange child, and we lived in a tiny hamlet with a hundred people and nothing around but farms and fields. There wasn't anything to do but read or get into trouble. I left the getting into trouble part for my brothers. I started reading before I went to school and then lived in the written word, devouring everything in my path.

I read everything from Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew to Arabian Nights and Mandy; Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls Wilders and the tales of King Arthur. My favourite book was Swiss Family Robinson. I loved Redwall and ghost stories and the Golden Stallion. I cried over Brighty of Grand Canyon and Old Yeller. When I was really bored, I went to my parent's bookshelves where I found Louis L'amour and Zane Grey and Reader's Digest and story compendiums. When I got older, I fell in love with Cole Jasper and cowboys still haunt my dreams.

When I wasn't reading, I was learning to draw from Lee J Ames. I was always hiding in corners, reading or drawing.

I have lived a million different lives in a thousand different worlds and every one of them changed me to a degree, leaving bits of its DNA inside me to become part of my own.