Timothy J. Pruitt's Blog, page 134

Art Unboxed – The Ballpoint

The first in our Art Unboxed series

One of the interesting and wonderful opportunities on the internet today, is to learn new tools and techniques. I enjoy, and regularly watch the art unboxing videos where artists receive their subscription box supplies. I love the concept, but as the parent of a toddler I don’t have time in my life right now for it, so this started me to think.

What we love as artists about these videos I believe, is not only the unboxing of something new, but it’s possibilities. This is true of both the product, and the techniques used, it’s not only learning the new product, but how to use it. Often the technique shown on the video is more valuable than the product, because you can apply it to other media.

For those of you who like me aren’t ready to subscribe yet, I’d like to share this series of Art Unboxed posts. This will involve items you most likely already have in some form in your tool chest now. For today’s article, I’d like to feature an old fashioned object, the ballpoint pen.

The first, and probably simplest thing I’d like to say about the ballpoint pen is to approach it with fresh eyes. Too often we limit what some tool can do because of the way we’ve always used it. I have seen amazing artwork with this tool. By approaching with fresh eyes, I mean more than just the mindset you have going in.

In addition to that, there are things that you can do with a ballpoint pen that you may not be aware of. For example, if in the past you’ve been unhappy with jagged lines on the ballpoint pen, I would suggest you use this to your advantage. Broken lines are one of those things that shows artists have skill.

Much like a painting alternates between soft and hard edges, the benchmark for skilled painting, you can do so with the ballpoint pen. This technique can give your art an entirely new perspective, with an old tool. The random lines can enhance your style.

As a child, I did not want to fill in a lot of territory with a ballpoint pen, so shading was a chore. What I know now, that I didn’t then, there are more than one way to shade, or darken an item. The famous Jack Kirby used dots, some use slanted lines in various different forms. The different shading methods you can use with the ballpoint can also add character to your art.

Finally, don’t connect the tool with the same surface, meaning you can use a different paper than the legal pad or ruled paper with your ballpoint pen. The image I drew in the above graphic was done on thicker sketchbook paper. When drawing, the instrument is only part of the story.

The surface you use can make such a difference to the final piece as well. I would encourage you to experiment with some different options for your ballpoint pen. You may find that unboxing the toolkit you already have, yields just as much as something new.

You Will Find A Baby

Luke 2:12 (ESV)
12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

Luke 2:16 (ESV)
16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.

Baby, I admit I’ve read this word in these verses thousands of times, and until today, I don’t think I’ve ever looked up the word until today. It is Brephos in Greek, and it means two primary things, either an unborn child, or a newborn child. That on the surface seems elementary, until you consider this.

In one moment, in one instance, hope went from an unborn dream into a tender reality. It was not only man’s dream, but God’s dream. Man desired salvation, but had no way of bringing it to pass. Before Mary pushed in labor, God pushed ahead to save us.

Man’s sin in the garden left us fallen, hopeless, and filled with the sins of our own selves and our fathers. Yet, God was neither content to leave us, or to leave us in that condition. He dreamed of a day when He could once again walk beside us in the cool of the day. For Him to do that, would require a promise, a people, a prophecy, and a person.

The promise was made first to Eve, the one who the serpent lied to. The enemy had taken her hope, her innocence, and her future through treachery. God would restore her hope through a promise.

The promise would continue to Abel, Seth, Noah, and then to Abraham. From there, the promise would grow, and become a people. The people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so He could be The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

From a people, the promise would take shape, revealing what it had always been, not merely a promise, but a prophecy. A prophecy of hope, of victory, and of a person. This was not a general concept, or ideal as some would surmise, this was a person.

Christ would come, not the idea of a savior, not merely the concept of a better day, but The Way itself, in the form of a baby. Isaiah spoke of His future, For Unto Us A Child Is Born, Unto Us A Son Is Given. Micah said quietly, He shall be born in Bethlehem.

For nine months, after God’s Spirit wrapped itself in a cloak of flesh in the womb of Mary, He waited. God, Who had waited so long, patiently endured the growth process. At the right moment, Hope cried out in the night. A Person named Jesus had come to fulfill a prophecy, to create a redeemed people for Himself, and to fulfill a promise made to a woman named Eve, and His friend Abraham.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was now the Son of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. The One Who Isaiah saw as high and lifted up, walked into our world meek and lowly of heart, so He could be lifted up on a cross, and draw all men higher than we ever dreamed we could go.

Brephos, when I saw the Greek word, it reminded me of the word Breath. The Bible says that Jesus breathed on His Disciples saying Receive ye The Holy Ghost. As He had breathed on Adam and Eve, Jesus breathed on us, to give us new life.

People may wonder why we get so excited about the birth of a baby. It’s because like the word baby itself, it means so much more than an infant. It means so much more than a new life, it means life eternal for all those who find Him!

Christmas Wi-Fi – A Christmas Short Story

Our first Christmas gift of the season for you to unwrap is our whimsical story Christmas Wi-Fi. We hope you enjoy this tale of Santa and his very busy Elves.

Many times, terms have double meanings, such as bowl. It can be a dish, or the act of rolling a ball towards wooden pins. It’s the same way at the North Pole, where the word WiFi means something besides wireless fidelity.

Originally it was called Why and Find Out, but over a couple of hundred years it got shortened to WiFi. It’s the method by which Santa has the Elves to know what toys to make children. You see, Santa just knows when he sees a child what toy to make, but the Elves need a list.

Even they couldn’t ride in the sleigh and make all the toys in one night. They have to prepare a year in advance. Santa makes toys, but there are so many children in the world, he needed help. This is where the Elves, and the List comes in.

One Christmas many years ago, Santa was delivering the toys he had made to an old house. The only way in was a chimney, the lady who lived in the house made sure every window was tightly closed. That’s where he first met the Christmas Elves.

Of course, they were not Christmas Elves then, they were Chimney Elves. A Chimney Sweep can’t do it all, so years ago, families of Elves took up residence in the bricks of chimneys. To help the Chimney Sweeps keep the Chimneys clean. Before that they were Roof Elves, but that’s another story entirely.

You can imagine how disturbing it can be for an entire town of Chimney Elves. To be awakened in the night, by a large man in a red and white suit scaling down the outside of your house. Most people, even Chimney Sweeps had forgotten they were there years ago, but Santa was different.

“Hello Chimney Elves, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I had to find a way to deliver these. The Chimney Elves eyes filled with wonder when they saw the toys. They began to ask questions, so many that Santa spent about 20 minutes holding to the rope.

“I tell you what, why don’t you all make a visit at the North Pole the day after Christmas, and I’ll show you around.” The Elves loved the idea, but asked how they would get there. Santa handed them one of his Santa Keys. “With this, you can unlock a door to the North Pole. Simply place it near something, and the keyhole will appear, even a brick.”

On that December 26, the whole Chimney Elf town, used the key and entered the brick size door. An average Chimney Elf town was over one thousand Elves. Santa showed them all the entire workshop.

From Soot, the oldest and wisest Elf, to Brick the youngest Elf, a baby of 200, were amazed. They asked Santa how he made the toys, and he showed them. Spot tried to copy a toy drum, and produced one almost instantly.

Even Santa was amazed at how quickly he, and all the Elves could make toys. With a hearty Ho Ho Ho, Santa had an idea. “How would you all like to help me make toys for Christmas? The number of children in the world continues to grow, and this would help me make toys for more children.”

They agreed, and the first Christmas Elves began. For several Christmases, they would leave their town each day and work to build toys. As the years increased, they reached out to other Chimney Elf towns. Over time, many Christmas Elves realized they could do more as Christmas Elves, than Chimney Elves.

Chimney Sweeps, and Chimneys continued to improve, and they were no longer needed to maintain Chimneys. That doesn’t mean their Chimney story was over though. That’s where the Why and Find, later WiFi was born.

Santa is a busy man, and he works on several Christmas projects each year. It became easier for the Elves, rather than reading off a list to Santa to see, they would find out for themselves. They would use their old Chimney towns to stay a few days, write things down, and hop back to the North Pole.

Unless of course, they lost the key. One Elf, Brick, lost his and was gone for three months. He was so embarrassed he blushed for a week when he got home. They took to calling him Brick Red after that, and he liked it, having been a Chimney Elf for awhile.

This started the practice of hiding a spare Santa Key in a brick in each Chimney. For those houses without a chimney, this was a problem. How would the Elves get in? Where would they stay? When they were gone, would someone find they had been there?

Chisel, a rather inventive Elf, came up with the solution. It was such a good one, that Santa started using it. He uses it to this day. Chisel invented a wooden box about the size of a spec of dust. Santa would leave one on every roof he visited.

When you open it, it would create an invisible Chimney and fireplace that opened up into the houses. This is how the Elves visit places with no Chimneys of their own. After another embarrassing incident involving Santa and an Attic skylight, Brick Red suggested he start using the spec boxes.

It was a wonderful idea. What started out as Soot saying, “Why this toy should go to this child?”, and, “Find out what else they want.”, became a network that served all of Christmas Town. This included Santa being able to gift gifts, not only to children, but the animals as well.

Now, every mouse hole, bear cave, and badger’s den received a toy for Christmas. There was so much work, they had to not only recruit all other Chimney Elves, they reached out to several attic, zoo, and kitchen Elves. They even hired on a a couple of Gnome tribes from Alaska, but they ended up taking care of the reindeer.

The Elves loved their job, but one thing upset many of them. That was seeing a child’s favorite toy broken a few days before. This led the WiFi Network to expand again, adding the Misfit Toy Repair Crew.

Elves can’t repair every toy, that would keep them too busy. However, many toys were repaired by Elves, without a child ever realizing it was broken. They loved doing anything they could, to keep a child from being sad.

This grew to include an Elf postal service that collected all the letters to Santa every year. Some Elves became mechanics to keep Santa’s sleigh working. Caliber stashed a spare sleigh or two, in different corners of the world as a precaution.

This came in handy more times than you can imagine. Metal sleighs attract lightning, get busted up, and scraping billboards. That led to Paste and his brother Polish traveling with Saint Nicholas every Christmas to repair the loose damage of a reindeer hoof or sleigh rail.

The Elves became so busy that, Santa had to hire a few human helpers for odds and ends. This is why there are Santa’s helpers in every department store. Elves were far too busy helping Santa, to dress up like him.

One year, Santa decided that the Elves were so busy, they needed a vacation, two weeks off. Door asked, “How could the Elves take a vacation, we’re busy morning to midnight.” Santa laughed and said that was exactly why.

“You don’t have to all take a break at the same time Soot. There so many of you, you can rotate, 8,000 of you at a time can take a vacation. You’ll Find out it’s good for you Soot.”

As usual Santa was right. When March finally came, and it was Soot’s turn, he went to Scotland. There Soot saw something wonderful, a thing he had ever seen before. Even after years of being a Christmas Elf, he never remembered seeing it.

Soot was so excited, he had an idea. It’s said that Elves get 15 seconds by themselves. There’s so many of us that we don’t know what loneliness is. Soot saw a child who was lonely and shy by the seashore. He watched as another child walked over, and made friends with him.

What amazed him was, he saw two other children start to go, but they were too shy. Soot realized that sometimes, friendship needs a little help. Who better to help than Christmas Elves?

Soot explained, “How many children do we know who are sad? They need some one in their lives, to give them a little push. This will help them beyond a toy at the end of the year. This can make a huge difference in their lives.”

Santa, and all the Elves, loved it. That’s how the Find A Friend Initiative was started. Soot realized, children need friends, and sometimes they need help making them.

Soot and his crew, in addition to finding out what toys children wanted, would also find out what they liked. Elves would work to connect kids in neighborhoods to make friends. Many a child didn’t know it, but an Elf had helped setup a lifelong friendship for them.

All of this brings me back to Santa, and his list. You’ve heard it say Santa’s making a list, and checking it twice? That’s only half right, the Elves made a list, Santa did check it twice though.

He checked that the toy elves had made the right toys. He checked that a child wasn’t missed. He checked the report from Caliber that all of the spec boxes were in good working order. He checked the reports of everyone from the Postal Elves to the Kite Flying Elves.

Kite Flying Elves are brave. They help try and keep kid’s kites air born for them. Kite Elves retire usually after 150 years, it’s dangerous work. They become Bakery Elves who help feed everyone in Christmas town. Santa checked their report too, including testing the new cookies each year.

This upset the Tailor Elves for a couple of hundred years, as Santa’s suit had to be let out a few inches through the century. That’s when Thimble invented Elastic long before whoever got the credit for making it. Until then Thimble and his brother Cookie didn’t speak much, but it was okay now.

Over time, plastic toys were added, later electronic, and even computerized toys. The Elves were brilliant with anything they tried, and a huge blessing to Santa. There was only one time where the Elves made a pretty bad mistake, and it was a big one.

The one thing that Chimney Elves were never good at, was dealing with fire. Traditionally Chimney Elves didn’t deal with fire. There was soot, ashes, smoke, and bricks. Fire was something Chimney Elves were taught to stay completely and totally away from.

You would also expect that, if anyone would not have a problem with a Chimney, it would be Santa. On top of it being Santa, he lives in a place surrounded by snow. Who would imagine a problem with Santa’s Chimney, but it happened.

The Chimney Elves had long since moved out of Santa’s Chimney, and into houses in Christmas town. This meant no one was around to notice the buildup on the inside of it. After all, Santa didn’t go down his Chimney, he used the door.

A blizzard hit about October one year, and ice fell through the Chimney, knocking a loose brick down into the fire, and out on the floor of the workshop. A young Elf, Hammer was close to it, and he panicked. Hammer picked up a toy shovel to toss it back into the fire.

It caught the plastic shovel on fire, which caused a frightened Hammer to drop it, onto the floor of the workshop. Six months of toys were burned in a matter of minutes. Thankfully the Reindeer Gnomes weren’t afraid of fire, and got it put out in about an hour.

This led to the North Pole Fire Department being formed. Fifteen Gnomes, two polar bears, and a Snowman as dispatcher. Hammer tried to sign up, because he felt bad, but Santa persuaded him to stick to toy building, he was a skilled toy maker.

So much so that, Santa helped turn the cause of the crisis, into one of its heroes. Hammer worked around the clock to replace the toys, with a large crew. In two weeks time, they had actually made double what had been lost.

Hammer did get to help with the fire department eventually. He helped to inspect Santa’s chimney twice a year. Also, the plastic toys were moved away from the fireplace, to the other side of the room.

Christmas Elves, Gnomes, animal, and eventually human helpers all make up Santa’s crew. Whether at the North Pole, a department store in New York, or a Chimney in South Carolina, they worked to make the holidays special.

Work doesn’t mean that it wasn’t fun, just that they didn’t leave it to chance. Christmas is special, because it’s Christmas, yet it has several helpers. Many aren’t Elves, or work for Santa, but they all have the same goal. To make a day we must never forget, unforgettable to every life it touches, with or without a Chimney.

iPainting Retro Christmas

Sketch Snow Cone

One of Nicholas’ favorite things is a Snow Cone, this is a sketch of a Christmas “Snow” Cone lol.

Writing Day 30

Today is the completion day of Nanowrimo, we talked yesterday about the different journeys people may be on in the challenge. This afternoon, I’d like to focus on celebrating where you are in your writing. Whether you are entering the words The End to your rough draft, or have a ways to go, I hope you take a moment and celebrate.

While celebrating is both motivational, and helps with a positive outlook, it also has another purpose. It reminds you that, as a writer, you have built muscle, you’ve stretched yourself to a new capacity. You are also creating a body of work, as well as a library of ideas. The body of work has multiple benefits, and the library of ideas is a wonderful resource to draw from for future writing.

If you have finished your rough draft, I would suggest taking a few days to allow it to sit, and allow your brain to refresh. This way you can approach it with fresh eyes, which will help you with editing. When you do return to it, I would encourage you to read it before launching an edit. It may take some extra time, but it will save you time in the editing process itself.

If you haven’t finished your draft, I would suggest you still take some time to celebrate where you are. If you have written anything, you have more than when you began. At first, you had only a desire, and idea, or a concept. Now you have pages, if not chapters of work that simply needs to be added too, and completed.

You now have a blueprint to use to complete your story, book, or novel, and you would never have had that, had you not started the process. Now you have choices, including when you complete your story. We mentioned yesterday the 50 day and 100 day Writing Calendars as options to plan your writing schedule. There is also the Writing Boxes concept, and of course the core 500 words a day method.

All of this is food for thought, options you didn’t have just a few days prior. Congratulations my friend, you are a writer, for many a lifelong dream, and you’ve accomplished it. While it may not be published yet, you’ve dreamed of writing, and now you’ve written. This should be celebrated, because the celebration will help to carry you through the rest of the project. For today though, you are a writer, congratulations, enjoy your celebration.

iPainting White Christmas Crosby Opening

I love Bing Crosby, the song White Christmas, and the movie. For that matter, I love the composer Irving Berlin. Here is my edition of a scene from the opening of the film with Bing singing to the soldiers.

Sketch Its A Wonderful Life

On this November 30th I wanted to share this sketch of the scene where Jimmy Stewart prays in It’s A Wonderful Life. A believer himself, it’s said that he mentioned how he was truly affected by the scene itself. It’s an amazing thing when we realize that God has plans for each of us which are much bigger than what we see.

iPainting November Sun

Writing Day 29

Tomorrow is the last day of Nanowrimo, how has it went for you? Did you complete the rough draft of your writing project? If so that’s great, if not don’t worry, the end of Nanowrimo doesn’t establish your deadline. It’s meant to encourage you towards your goal, not to be a barrier. If you haven’t gotten as far as you would have liked, the good news is, you have other options.

Looking for a moment at the average baseline goal of 1,667 words a day with Nanowrimo to write a 50,000 word novel. I’ve mentioned before, many famous novels are less than 50,000 words so that’s not a concern. However, if using 50,000 as a writing goal, did you know that you can write 500 words a day for 100 days and get to 50,000 words?

In other words, just because Nanowrimo is over, doesn’t mean you have to stop writing. The truth is, even if you made it to 50,000 words on November 30 you’re not finished, you’ve just finished the rough draft. Next you have probably at least two rewrites ahead and a grammar edit so if you’re not at 50,000 words now it’s still okay.

What I do hope is that you are not stopping before your writing goal is complete. You may need to adjust your daily projections to make your original goal a reality, but you have options. Just to throw this out there, some can write 1,000 words a day and have a 50,000 word novel in 50 days. The writing calendar is your friend, not a foe, in fact it can be a tool to help you complete your book.

For example, continuing with a 50,000 word count for the purposes of gauging, consider this. If you take 100 days to write 50,000 words with a 12 chapter goal for the book, this means that you would average completing a chapter every 8.5 days. So you would basically write 4.33 chapters each month in that 100 days. Keeping this in mind can help you track your progress.

The 100 Day Writing Calendar, or even the 50 Day Writing Calendar can be an option for you if 30 days was not feasible for the season of life you find yourself in. Or perhaps it’s not that 30 days doesn’t work for you, just that November was the wrong 30 days for you this time. If it did work for you then again congratulations.

Now you can take some time and let your mind rest, then begin evaluating what you have, and what needs to be tweaked, changed or overhauled. Whether your writing day 29 or the 29 of November is your writing day one, it can work for you. It can be the day that your writing saw the breakthrough you needed, to get to the last page of your book, just take it a day at a time.