Friday, October 02, 2009

A Dip in the Shallow End

Yesterday I came back from the hot springs - yes. the. hot. springs.
Montana, seriously, I love you.
When I got back, invigorated by the natural healing water that's pumped in from Yellowstone, and overcome with euphoria -- I opened a suspicious file in my backup drive. A swim in steaming purified spring water followed closely with the blinding bliss caused by a Snuggie, Tracy Champman and a toasted Idaho Spud can do that to you - make you crazy enough to open a folder labeled: 'Scans_Fall 2001' Apparently I used to draw in my teens too. Looking at the vast majority of these old bits of me, several themes are evident. Still going through velvet-poster-collection detox - unicorns were big. Real big.
I came across a plethora of weird cartoony-pain/torture-drawings - these are two of the 'real keepers'. I guess I was nineteen and into boys who cut themselves, so um... yeah....

This one actually got a chuckle from me. This is a portrait of my ex-boyfriend, Adam. He's usually referred to by my friends as "That tag artist that was obsessed with 'The Real World?'" Embarrassingly enough, It's an accurate description. This effect was accomplished with sharpie on napkin after a particularly loving moment in which Adam brought me a flower. It actually captures him pretty well. Luckily, my tastes have changed post apocalyptic straight-edge punk.
I try to ignore the fact that sketches I used to think were phenomenal then are cringe worthy now. Shallow. So Shallow.
listening to right this second: "Just Can't Get Enough" -- The Saturdays

2 comments:

Beth L said...

Oh. My. God.
Thank you for sharing this stuff.
I can't wait to someday overhear pretentious hipsters say they prefer your early work, and I will just roll my eyes and call them shallow under my breath.
It could happen.
Anyway, awesome. Thanks. And you've come a long way baby...

Amber Alvarez said...

Thanks Beth, posting this junk was terrifying but lately I've gotten into this "integrity of the blog" dilemma. I'm documenting my life and my art and the merging of the two so this kind of stuff needs to happen, since it did;)

Your comments always get me laughing. Thanks for making it all better. I can just imagine the hipsters and their retro Amber Alvarez messenger bag patches.

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