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I was always told that you couldn’t make a living doing art. For most of my life, I believed the naysayers. My chances at becoming a great or even passible artist were not that great. I suffer from a visuals processing disorder and visualizing things hasn’t come easily to me. As a way of coping with my crippling anxiety caused by a string of absolute failures, I started copying cartoon characters, very badly. There was a point that even as I was getting better and people were paying me compliments on my art that I destroyed most of it. But at the same time, I kept drawing and one day decided I wanted to try to put one of my designs onto a t-shirt or notebook or something. I started my journey by teaching myself to colorize old photos, a very rewarding experience. Then I went in completely the opposite direction, featureless black silhouettes. I have made literally thousands of those, sadly due to hard-drive and backup failure, most of my unique silhouettes went on to the digital graveyard. But, I pressed on and created more. I’m still in the process of trying to recreate my silhouette library, bigger and better than ever. From that point to the actual realization of that goal was the better part of four years. For which time I have been a starving artist. I’m hoping that one of these days I can cancel the starving and just be a regular artist. I still have doubts if I can make it. But, design saved my life so I’m sticking with it so long as it continues to help me cope with my untreated anxiety condition. If it has done nothing else for me it has brought me into a world of knights and dragons. Of Silhouettes and childhood cartoons reimagined. Places that my inability to remember my dreams have denied me. And my legally blind mind’s eye won’t let me invite into my mind. Ironically, I have suffered in the past from uninvited visual manifestations. I’m talking hallucinations, some of them cripplingly frightening. We’ll see where I go from here. I’m not in the best place financially right now. Which of course causes me great anxiety. Any encouragement to continue on that you good people could give me just might make all the difference in the next phase of my life and career.

More info: swankshop.threadless.com

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