the most recent beginning

   

  This, being my first blog, should start with an introduction. My name is Mike Collins and I am cursed. Well, not cursed. Blessed, I suppose is a better word. I am inspired by everything, both positive and negative, to show everyone how important expression is.
   My goal for this blog is simple ; to show the world what I can do.
  As kids, we all draw and paint, with limited instruction and if it's something you enjoyed doing, to some extent, it stays with you. Drawing and artwork came to me pretty easily. My mother was an exceptional oil painter in my earliest memories, so, I must have picked up on the whole 'taking a blank thing and making a cool thing out of it'. She was an excellent musician, also. I picked up on that, as well, but, more on that later. It seemed to me that she was always in the middle of something artistic or otherwise 'Leftside-of-the-brainish'. Truly, an inspiration.
  My father, also in a perpetual state of 'in the middle of something', was a great catagorizer, cataloger, teacher, worked for the police department and was a great photographer (in my opinion). Above that, he was want to teach whatever he could to whomever he could and in the early 70's, that was me and my older brother.
   I have to start by saying every talent I ever had or will have was given to me by my parents. I could go on and on about what they left behind in me, creatively, but, that would be 10 other blogs.
   Fast forward to 1986. Once I really tried to grow up, the hobbies and inspiration were put on hold.In 1989, when my son was 1 year old, i decided to make some cartoon posters for his bedroom wall. Just something for him to look at. As I said, drawing had always come easily to me, so, I bought some watercolor markers and poster board. A cereal box in our pantry had all of the Warner Brothers characters on it, so, I freehanded about 6 or 7 of them onto full sized sheets of poster board. I thought they turned out pretty cool. The greatest reward, for me, was having friends over and hearing them ask my (then) wife where she bought them. I kept up with all of my sons interests, you know, ninja turtles, the terminator, and such.
   One of my friends found a glass top to an antique dresser right about the time metallica (black) album came out. He asked if i could chop up the glass and paint the album sleeve faces on it to hang up in my brother's basement. (party central). I freehanded a test face on the glass and it looked o.k. After a lot of effort, i realized we weren't going to be able to chop up the glass. And now that I had looked at it, the paint ran down the glass before i pulled the masking off and i thought it was going to look like hell. I was going to scrape it off, but, someone convinced me to finish the 4 faces and if it looked bad, then i should start over. So here's the finished product. 

 

Of course, everyone liked this one and I didn't scrape it off. From here, there were numerous pictures of Batman, The Beatles, Trent Reznor... you get it. Mostly Christmas presents.

 

Once I got the computer involved, the work became a little quicker, but, I was able to increase my output. At this point, I could pick any picture, increase the contrast in photoshop, and break it up into printable sizes. Then, after masking the glass, the pattern is transferred and cut out with a razor blade. The actual painting is easy, but, mixing more than 2 colors involves a little thinking. All of these pictures are painted in reverse on the back of the glass. Most of the frames were built by me. Otherwise, I could go to the flea market and buy a close size picture frame and throw out the picture.

At this point, I have to say, I was artistically satisfied, so, usually that means I need a break from it.

 

 

In the next few entries, I plan to show you, the reader, all of my different outlets for creating stuff, whether practical or not, I just can't stop.

 

Next time I'll tell you all about my woodworking.