It's Surreal That I'm Starting to Love Surrealism

Pinterest is awesome. I have found some really cool artists on there. Yesterday, there were a couple of amazing photographers I found. Their style is really cool. One of them is Martin Stranka, and the other is Lissy Elle. They both do surreal photography. I am really NOT into surreal paintings, but for some reason I really like these photos. I guess I like it for the same reason I like Tim Burton. It's different.

Martin Stranka

Lissy Elle

Live for Today

This post is officially my 100th post. Most people write something exciting or post awesome pictures to "celebrate" their 100th post. In light of what happened last night, I decided to write something a little different.

Last night I went to see the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. My sister had an extra ticket so I went with her. Little did I know that about 500 miles away in Aurora, Colorado an entire theater, much like the one I was in, was in the middle of a massacre. When all those people arrived at the theater they were probably excited. They were going to see Batman. Some people brought their kids. Their significant other. Their friends. Family. Maybe they thought they were lucky to get to be some of the first people to see the movie. They had no way of knowing a cold, evil, psychopath was going to do the unimaginable. He just walked into the theater, calmly stood there, and then unleashed a wave of tear gas and bullets. 70 people injured. 12 people killed. And for what? This mindless act has ruined the lives of so many people, and for no reason at all. Just because a satanic man wanted to feel powerful and cause pain. I will never be able to understand what leads a person to do something like that. Especially how someone can be completely calm while harming so many innocent people. 

When things like this happen it really makes me think about how fragile we all are. God can have us taken at any time. There were two soldiers in that audience. They survived being soldiers, only to be shot in a movie theater in Colorado. It just goes to show that life is short, and you might not get tomorrow. All you can do is live your life to the best of your ability and try to make the best of everything. We are alive. That means we are extremely lucky and we shouldn't waste a second of our lives hanging on to anger, jealousy, hate, or any kind of negativity because every second is precious. We should live our lives feeling grateful and happy just to have today. 

The people who are the best at being happy and enjoying life, even during the bad times, are children. They are pure and innocent. I saw this video today and it made me laugh. These kids are very happy and their happiness is contagious. At least to me. 

Bad things happen all the time. A lot of the time they are senseless. We just have to do our best to try and make the world a better place and try to make the most of the time we have. It's all we can do. 

Sorry Cows, But You Look Good in Jacket Form

It's no secret that I love jackets. In my top five favorite jackets is my cheapo $30 faux leather jacket. I have been on a search for the PERFECT leather jacket to invest in, and I think I may have found it. 

The only problem is it's on a weird website from a company in Pakistan......and I can't find another jacket even close to it that I like. Also not a huge fan of the buckles on the sides but other than that I really like it. Guess I'll have to keep looking around or decide if I want to take a risk on the weird Pakistani company.....

If Only I Were a Child Prodigy

Today, the crazy old lady I work with showed me a video of a child prodigy artist named Akiane. She is AMAZING. She started painting when she was only six, and she is completely self taught. Her paintings are all spiritual, which is interesting since her mother was an atheist. She started painting pictures of heaven and Jesus and told her mom that they were from visions and that Jesus IS real. She had never been taught anything about religion or heaven since her mother was an atheist, so it's interesting that these images would come to her. She has full, hour long time-lapsed videos of her creating her paintings from start to finish. It's amazing. She really is an inspiration. Plus, she sells her original paintings for $5,000-$3,000,000 so that helps. I would HIGHLY recommend going to her website  by clicking HERE and looking through her gallery. It shows her paintings by the age she was when she made them and it is incredible. Here are some of my favorites:

This is a painting of Jesus entitled Prince of Peace. It takes my breath away. A little boy who came back from a coma looked through many pictures of Jesus and said none of them looked like him. When he saw this painting, he immediately recognized him as Jesus and said this is what he looks like. I heard that from the crazy lady so who knows if it's true or not, but it's a good story. 

This poem, entitled Prince of Peace, was written to go along with this painting of Jesus. 

Perhaps I wanted to catch it
perhaps not

But one morning
an eagle dropped a diamond

And right then
with my faulty brush
full of my own hair
I wanted to paint

I wanted to paint the wings-
Too late - they flew away
I wanted to paint a flower
Too late - it withered

That night the rain
was running after me
Each drop of rain
showed God's face
His face was everywhere
On homes and on me

I wrung out the love
to make the red

I wrung out the stumps
to make the brown

I wrung out the trust
to make the pink

I wrung out my own eyes
to make the blue

I wrung out the seaweed
to make the green

I wrung out the nightly pain
to make the black

I wrung out my grandmother's hair
to make the gray

I wrung out my visions
to make the violet

I wrung out the truth
to make the white

Today I want to paint God's face
IT'S NOT TOO LATE !

This photo doesn't do the painting justice but it's the best one I could find. This is called Forbidden Fruit. The description Akiane gives for this painting was beautiful. Read it below. 

...One morning I woke up earlier than usual, and right away I decided to paint, but I could not find any canvas in my studio. My family was still asleep, so quietly, still in my pajamas, I searched my art closets and found one small canvas that I'd worked on a few years ago, but later gessoed it in black.

After my prayer I began painting a young woman's portrait. next to a branch of fruit. Suddenly I felt God say, blend all the races, because this is Eve, the mother of all mankind.

Right then and there, I understood the meaning:
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is full of forbidden fruit: red for the knowledge of evil, the green for the knowledge of good. It was created to be tempting, fragrant and easy to be picked. Although the fruit resembles the grapes, it was not.

At first, Eve thinks that she will gain wisdom by biting into the fruit of knowledge, but unexpectedly she finds the deception as the red blood of suffering drips from the green fruit. The knowledge of good and evil is simply too much to understand and experience for a human, and now Eve is looking up to God for forgiveness and help...

This is her self-portrait called Co-Creation

This is a portrait of Mary and baby Jesus.

I painted Mary in a silky blue robe surrounded by a background palette of cerulean, cobalt and Persian blue. This is how I interpreted the vision of baby Jesus and his beautiful young mother. The robe connects both of them as if there were one.

Mary is the symbol of love, warmth, affection, tenderness and devotion. Her story is the story of love and faith.

Mary with her tender love embraced Jesus at birth, embraced him on the Cross and embraced him on his resurrection. That is why the lower hand in a shadow is her witnessing the crucifixion, and the upper hand in light is her witnessing both the birth and the resurrection.

The quality of pictures on her website are a lot better than the ones I downloaded off Google Images so I would recommend going to her website to look at them. She has more portraits, landscapes, poems, etc. and they aren't all obviously religious. GO CHECK IT OUT. You won't regret it. 

Happy Belated Birthday America

Once upon a time, after a super long struggle, a really great country was born. The birth certificate was signed by many great men, and America was official. People now had freedoms, rights, and endless opportunities. So what do we do to celebrate this birth? We shoot off fireworks and play with other forms of fire. We eat delicious meat and juicy watermelon and just enjoy being free. The 4th of July is my absolute favorite holiday. Witness the celebration:

Turns out it's a lot easier to write your name with a sparkler than with the moon.

I Love You

Shooting star

Recreation of the duel in Harry Potter

America is great. I am proud to be an American, and I'm proud of all the men and women who fight to keep us free. 

Drawing With the Moon

Have you ever read the book "Happy Birthday, Moon"? 

If you haven't, you're missing out. That book is one of my all time favorite children's books. I loved it when I was little and I still love it. There is something about being outside on a summer night, perfect temperature with a slight breeze, looking up at the stars and staring at the moon. 

It is the most relaxing thing in the entire world for me. Hearing the wind in the trees and staring out at the huge, open sky. Priceless. Tonight, I thought I would try and get some pictures of some fireworks over the valley and I ended up drawing with the moon and the city lights. 

I tried signing my name using the moon but it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. This is the closest I got:

That last picture reminds me of another children's book called "Sam and the Firefly". Another classic. 

I could've stayed there all night taking pictures but some sketchy guys were coming down the mountain so I decided to leave so my body didn't end up in a ditch. That's one thing that sucks about being a girl.....you can't be out in the wilderness by yourself late at night. Sounds weird but I like being out in the wilderness by myself at night lol. Stupid sketchy men. Anyway, hopefully more awesome pictures to come soon :) 

This Henna Smells Weird

Once upon a time, I turned 21. That day was cursed and a super huge let down. Nothing went right. I had planned to go on a hot air balloon ride early in the morning, and the company called and cancelled due to crappy weather. I was going to go see the Spiral Jetty FINALLY....but then realized it was clear out in Brigham City and I didn't have time or motivation to go that far. Blah blah blah, you get the gist. It wasn't at all what I had planned. 


THEN


My sister Brittany came to the rescue. Today was the super adventure that should have been my 21st birthday. I guess it was still in the same week, so it counts :) 


FIRST: We went to the farmer's market in Salt Lake. Super toasty hot. Lots of girls in dresses and bootie shorts who decided to boycott shaving their legs. And also lots of really cool booths. Props to all the little hippies, farmers, and entrepreneurs out there with their homemade stuff. It was weird too cause my illustration teacher from BYU, Greg Newbold, made all the posters for the farmer's market and would talk about it all the time and I saw them everywhere. 

SECOND: We went to City Creek mall and ate at Bocata, which I love. Their bread is de-freakin-licious. We people watched and it was super entertaining. Also, we walked through Tiffany's and felt like people were going to throw us out at any moment because we couldn't afford to even look at all the  diamonds. Next time we will just wear big floppy hats and eat breakfast outside of it. 

THIRD: We went to Randy's Records and bought some vinyls. Other than the nasty trashy guys who apparently have never heard of deodorant, it was a pretty cool place. I got a Lynyrd Skynyrd record and the Footloose Soundtrack record lol. Britt gave me her old vinyl player so now I can finally start my collection :)

FOURTH: We went to Now and Again, which is a really cute antique store owned by a cute gay (<----I think) man in a cowboy hat. I bought miniature statues of Myron's Discobolos and the Venus de Milo. They had some really cute dressers that I wanted too but I decided to pass for now. 

FIFTH: We went to Night Flight comic book store by the Salt Lake Library. I bought a bunch of comics and am planning on framing them and hanging them on my wall. They should look pretty legit so I'm excited. 

SIXTH: We went to Ikea and Britt bought some stuff. I don't have a home to decorate so I didn't buy anything. However, I wore my new converse that I got for my birthday, which are high tops, and didn't have tall enough socks for them. Let me just say that all that walking around while those shoes rubbed my ankles started to hurt after a while. SO...Britt pushed me on an Ikea cart and everyone stared, and I didn't care one bit. They were all secretly thinking that they wanted to be pushed on Ikea cart. Who wouldn't want to do that? It's the bomb shiz. 

SEVENTH: We went to Walmart and I bought tall socks. And a Superman shirt. 


EIGHTH: I got home and did henna tattoos with Leann. I got this Henna set from Barnes and Noble cause it was on clearance....yeah.....it was on clearance for a reason. All the other times I have gotten henna it was from Good Earth. Lesson learned. Always get your henna at good earth. I left the henna paste on my arm for 4 hours, took it off and it is SUPER light. It's supposed to darken in a day or two so I hope it does. Also it smells really weird. 

(I've been trying to get the picture of my henna off my phone but it's not working so I'll try to add it later.)

NINTH: Psycho was free on demand so I finally watched it for the first time after hearing it referenced all the time and seeing a billion parodies of it. It was actually a pretty good movie and I liked the cinematography. It was done pretty artsy so yay Hitchcock :)

So that was my super adventure for today. Hopefully there are many more to come.