Learn To Live Like You Are Dying

Another Christmas has come and gone. I spent a long time with my wife on Christmas Eve wrapping gifts for our kids. This year has been very hectic with moving into a new house and the associated home repairs that have been going along with said move. We had a pretty nice Christmas though, all things considered. The kids all seemed happy with their gifts, and it was fun to spend time with family members.

Last night my wife and I had a nice talk about my goal of becoming a full time illustrator. It is always nice to have support from those around you, and my wife Mimi is always there for me, so she was very enthusiatic and supportive of this new idea. It helped me to fuel the fire of enthusiasm to talk to her, so I spent the rest of the night with a lot of ideas spinning around in my head about how I can make this happen.

I also decided it was very important to stay vigilant to keeping this blog up to date on a daily basis whenever possible, and how important it is to make a detailed plan on how to acheive my dream.

I ended up staying up too late last night- Mimi turned on a movie to watch once we had gone to bed, so I got interested in the movie and stayed up later than I should have. Something I am guilty of far too often! On the positive side, the movie was "Tuesdays With Morrie", which is a very inspiring show. For those of you that have never seen it, it is the story of an elderly retired college professor that is dying from ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. One of Morrie's students gets word that his old professor friend is dying, and decides to go visit him. Morrie ends up teaching his final lesson to his former student, which is a lesson on life, or more specifically how to learn to live like you are dying. The idea is to live every day of your life as if it were to be your last. Take full advantage of every minute you are given.

Not always an easy thing to do, but being inspired by this message, here is another piece of artwork for your enjoyment. This is a t-shirt I painted for a friend of mine by the name of Pam Isringhausen. Pam is a big fan of KISS (so am I actually), and I have painted several KISS related things for her in the past years. This shirt is probably my favorite of the ones I have done for her, probably because I spent a lot of time designing the layout and the look. I like the way the darks, highlights and midtones all work together to give this shirt life.