INK: My Drawings from 1993-2008

I wanted to be a comic book artist since I was 13. If I hadn’t been so lazy and played so much Nintendo 64, maybe I could have made it. After reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, I had the delusional belief I could become an astrophysicist despite not being able to pass Calculus.

Speaking of Astrophysics and Astronomy, we are in an interesting time. Elon Musk is launching his global highspeed internet network, Skylink. It is very important that the entire world has access to highspeed internet. This could be what we need to bring the facts and freedom to the people of our world, especially those who are living under the foot of Communism, but it’s hurting Astronomy. Many star trail images have been ruined by the few Starlink satellites already launched. When the whole thing is up, astronmers are going to have even more problems. Elon Musk said that future satellites will be painted black, but it still might cause problems. I personally think having global internet access is more important than earth based astronomy, but what do you think?

Since I really went off topic from Art to Astronomy and hopefully the disintegration of the hammer and sickle, the drawing above is a good drawing to start with. Being raised in a conservative family with a long tradition of military service, of course I thought the aliens would choose America when I was 15 years old. Maybe aliens think that dolphins and whales have superior values and languages and choose to speak with them like in that old Star Trek movie. What if the aliens prefer an authoritative top down approach and think it’s logical to communicate with us in Chinese since most people on the planet are fluent in Mandarin?

I debated whether or not to put this up because of its low quality, but since it shows how my skills improved over time I thought it should be here. Looking back, I think it’s interesting that this character I created doesn’t know his father. Being a bastard, it doesn’t take a deep psychological look into why. I think it’s funny now that a time traveler would choose a spear as a weapon.

I tried really hard to remember what I was thinking when I drew this one. The style of the skateboard shows how oldschool this drawing is.

This dragon just look like garbage to me. I’m sure it did then too. Why did I draw four arms? What would be the evolutionary value of the tiny arms? Maybe I was thinking of a T-Rex and thought the arms were too small then so went all Goro.

Drawing a human face with pencil is easy, but it’s much more difficult when you use ink.

I don’t know what happened to Shi. She was a Japanese American assassin. It’s no surprise to me I chose to draw her. I’ve always been attracted to Asian women. The mother of my children is the spitting image of Pocahontas. I call her that all the time. Someone accused me of being racist for calling her that at a casino in California. I told them to look at her and that in Thailand people aren’t super sensitive about things. It’s normal to make fun of people for being fat or dark skinned with out hurting their feelings. I told them that our daughter’s nickname was black pig and they agreed that Pocahontas wasn’t a bad nickname after that. (I didn’t choose black pig as her nickname by the way. And I’ve never called her that.) I would like to do a DNA analysis of Thai people and Native Americans and see how geneticly similar they are.

I should have have just kept this in ink. The coloring ruined this one. I don’t remember what comic book this was from, just that it was iMage comics.

Karate was a very important part of my life. If it weren’t for the UFC, I would still be doing it today. Before the UFC, we didn’t really know which fighting style was best. Those early UFCs were amazing to watch. Centuries of debates of which system were best where demolished in that octogon. When I was 15, I really thought I would be a big buff dude by 2000 when 20. It’s nearly 2020 and I’m no were near the dude on the right. I do have a black belt, but it holds up my pants and is made of leather.

I got really good at drawing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but never of Spawn. He was a tough nut to crack. The cape was a living thing that protected him as well as his chains. Todd McFarlane was a god to us comic book geeks back in the day.

Here’s another ink drawing I ruined with color. You can see how I tried to make the cape alive, but the chains lack inspiration. I did this without any reference, so I’m still proud of it.

I love this drawing. It’s one of my favorites. The turtles started off as a dark comic. Then they got worse over time. The original movie still looks great today. I’ll show it to people and they think it’s the best CGI they’ve ever seen. I tell them it’s not CGI and was filmed in 1989 and released in 1990 and they’re blown away. I feel jealous of the Harry Potter fans. Their characters evolved and matured over time, while what I loved bended to Capitalism and became more childish.

Link is a character that stayed popular over the years. This is one of the last drawings I drew before I joined the military. I often wondered what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t served. I also wonder what it would’ve been like if I had not been hurt and got to serve my full 20 years. Since so many of my brothers are dead, hurt, or suffer from PTSD, maybe it worked out for the best. Maybe this life truly is just a simulation in the mind of God and we get to see all the what ifs when we die.

I penciled this in about 3 minutes to prove to my students I could draw in 2008. I took the time to ink it when they were gone, but they were impressed the next day.

I guess I’m really stubborn. @bryan-imoff suggested that I could use SteemPeak so I could choose which of my pictures shows up as the thumbnail, but I don’t want to use SteemPeak or apps. I prefer using the original Steemit.com interface. Since it’s HTML based, there must be a way to choose which picture comes up as the thumbnail.

Again, I don’t remember what comic book this came from, but it’s a perfect parallelism of my life. I’ve started so many great things but never seem to finish them. I don’t think that anyone ever truly lives up to their full potential, so I don’t feel alone.

Thanks for looking at what ink drawings of mine survived over the years. Steemit has got me inspired to get back into it. I don’t think I’ll be doing art every day, but I’ll have something new soon. Knowing that it will be permanently remembered by this blockchain is a great motivator. Have a great day and may the Force be with you. I have spoken.

先生 เจ
Jeremiah Lee Custis

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