As 2018 comes to a rushing halt, and we transition onto the year. It serves to step back and look at our past successes, and the whole definition of success.
This year has been filled with a lot of growth and learning.
I was able to work on my first commercial mural piece. I launched two new passive income projects, the stickers and the shirt designs. We launched a new online store, and we had heck of a blast with Acty2 at his Parking Lot Party, without counting the podcast and the amount of headway we’ve been able to make both in the music industry and the animation industry.
By making cover-arts for great artists and musicians like Fabian Gutierrez Del Arroyo and DonGa, as well as HF Diez and Yusepe Reguero, amonst many others. It’s been a wonderful year, yet however I still feel like there’s still much more for me to learn, and grow.
There are things in my life that I have ignored and have suffered in turn for ignoring them.
Things such as writing, meditating, a healthy lifestyle.
With the year coming to an end, it is the perfect time to reflect on what went wrong and why, as well as what went right and how to do more of that.
Writing
I fell off the wagon, I have to admit it. Change only comes once you realize that something needs changing. Without realizing and admitting it, nothing will truly change. So I admit it, I need to write more. Why exactly did I fall off, who knows, maybe it was life putting too many things in my way, maybe it was my own personal restrictions and constrictions that kept me from expressing myself. Whatever the reason may be, I understand now that I need to write, and often.
Writing allows me to look at what is inside my brain without having to be part of it, the simple action of writing a couple of things down can often bring so much needed propulsion to the jet engine of creativity that fuels me.
Writing also allows me to put my thoughts into a concise piece of content. This piece of content can then be shared across a wide variety of places, where others can interact with said thoughts and content, most will enjoy the experience, which is an activity of enlightenment in it of itself. It heals me, whilst potentially healing others.
So as a way of furthering my journey to successes. I will make it a priority to write more during 2019.
Meditation
I have been running away from my highest purpose for so long that now being faced first with my failures and accomplishments, I can see where I fell off, and meditation was probably the biggest hit my personal life took during the year.
Meditation used to be my safe zone, but when life sped-up and projects kept piling up on me, I found less and less time to make time to meditate.
This reflected in my emotional health (I became moody and irritable), in my education (I became too stress to want to sit down and practice, or even read), it even hurt my art (drawing or painting became a chore, I was no longer enjoying the process, I was simply running along with life, slowly losing more and more motivation and love for what I did as I went.) It even led me to smoke more; having less “headspace” gave me more stress overall in life, which led me to develop negative habits in order to combat this newly acquired stress in life. The more I grew, the more stress I took on.
The complete adverse purpose of growth, right?
With so many adverse and negative effects in my life from losing this 2hr daily meditation habit. It is only natural that I take the time to acknowledge the loss and to affirm that 2019 is the year for meditation.
I may not be able to jump right up to my 2hr daily habit, but if I can meditate 10 minutes every day, that will be a step towards building my mental health again.
Healthy Lifestyle
I am determined, lately all it feels like is that I am losing that which holds me back, and wooowie, am I willing to let all of it go. I am determined, I have been eating better, sleeping more (despite it being 1:49AM, right now) and just been in a cheerier mood lately.
Just a neat little though to keep this year:
“Add some green stuff to your food”
Any plate can get even better with a couple of veggies thrown in, some diced tomatoes and onions really go well on an omelet, pasta, and a plate of nachos, so do more of that, enjoy the process of cooking.
2019 Good food body, here I come.
Sketching
Sketching has been interesting, ever since I got my by Inktober book from the awesome Christine Nishiyama from http://mightcouldstudios.com/ back in December I have been drawing non stop, this year has been going great for drawing, and the fact that I have a sketchbook where I can regularly note down my thoughts and ideas, has truly helped me focus my mind and stop wasting time looking for random loose papers and notes.
I was so inspired by the Sketchbook by Christine that I’m making my own, stay tuned for more news on that, excited for that to come out.
Creativity
I’ve been really creative in general, this blog and the new life I hope to bring to it during the 2019 year will be a testament to that, however I have one little thing to say about this topic and that is this:
YOU NEED TO READ THIS BEFORE YOU DRAW EVERYDAY!!!
O DIVINE POESY
GODDESS-DAUGHTER OF ZEUS
SUSTAIN FOR ME
THIS SONG OF THE VARIOUS-MINDED MAN
WHO AFTER HE HAD PLUNDERED
THE INNERMOST CITADEL OF HALLOWED TROY
WAS MADE TO STRAY GRIEVOUSLY
ABOUT THE COASTS OF MEN
THE SPORT OF THEIR CUSTOMS GOOD OR BAD
WHILE HIS HEART
THROUGH ALL THE SEA-FARING
ACHED IN AN AGONY TO REDEEM HIMSELF
AND BRING HIS COMPANY SAFE HOMEVAIN HOPE—FOR THEM
FOR HIS FELLOWS HE STROVE IN VAIN
THEIR OWN WITLESSNESS CAST THEM AWAY
THE FOOLS
TO DESTROY FOR MEAT
THE OXEN OF THE MOST EXALTED SUN
WHEREFORE THE SUN-GOD BLOTTED OUT
THE DAY OF THEIR RETURNMAKE THE TALE LIVE FOR US
IN ALL ITS MANY BEARINGS
O MUSE
That is the Invocation to the Muse as translated by T.E.Lawrence from The Odyssey of Homer.
It has been the single most liberating piece of writing I’ve ever experienced in my life, just give it a try, print it out and hang it in your studio, read it write before you go to work and feel how the muses guide your divine hand right into the ZONE. (you know what I’m talking about *wink* *wink*)
Murals
God it was so nice to work on my first mural this year. I had done some mural work in my youth but the intention were never truly the right ones. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story on the blog, but here it goes.
When I was young I had a bit of a graffiti/street artist phases, and one of my very first illegal projects was to tag a military base, as life would have it my career in criminality ran very short, since I was caught right on my first try. After much back and forth between going to prison or community service, I was basically sentenced to paint 3 canvas paintings and 2 murals for our high school class.
That was basically all the experience I had on painting murals. Then this year after a ton of work with Acty2 as his on-call graphic artist I met Quintín Rivera Toro and that led me to work on a huge mural for TASK and the Tostado team.
That mural spawned 2 other murals of which I am quite proud of.
The first one is the test magician character I did as a test for the pattern work across the TASK Mural lettering. This character design was later turned into a sticker that is part of an upcoming collection with female led skate magazine and IG influencer @Femst_.
The second mural being the mural commissioned by my mom. “The Family Tree.” It might not be much, but the fact that I was able to make this with Erika in about 2-3 hours is outstanding, and the way it pulls together her family room is wonderful. Truly a wonderful use of my abilities, and I very much know that all the experience we are getting by making these types of murals will serve us when creating our more creative works.
Lately I’ve been thinking I can do a couple more character design murals in my own apartment. This is definitely something to follow during the coming year.
Music
The music project has been so much fun, it’s gotta me into very interesting performance type situations with my contemporaries, and I must say I truly do enjoy rapping and singing, it’s quite a passion. Earlier this year I also met Sro a tremendous musician and mixer, check out his music here:
https://sromuchsound.bandcamp.com/
Podcasting
Chucks!!! Podcasting is opening all sorts of doors from me, from sponsors and passive income to becoming a place where people gather to hear positive messages of growth and enlightenment. Feels really good, check out some episodes here:
https://anchor.fm/mabsartspodcasts
Inktober 2018
Inktober 2018 was crazy! But I got through it all, I won’t be doing anyone the disservice of going over each individual piece, especially when we’re already like 5 months over it, so here’s a .gif of all the pieces I did for Inktober
Affirmation Work
I feel like a lot of the things I’ve been planting in my mind through meditation, visualization and affirmation work has been manifesting at a divine speed. It feels very good, but for some reason I still have a little voice inside me telling me that I need more, or desire more, or that things are wrong, or I’m not safe. Whatever it is finds a way to yell it out at the top of its lung, hoping, just hoping that I will stop, and I will let it get trong again, but that will never happen, depression no longer rules me and I won’t let it get a hold of me again, I know that as long as I am the source of my own light, nothing will stand in my way,, and most importantly, not even myself.
Passive Income
Did I mention that I have all sorts of income now? Uffffff, it feels great to know that your river is never gonna dry up, that feels really good, it gives me a lot of peace of mind. One of the many income streams comes from the merch store, check it out we have all sorts of neat stuff to purchase.
Traveling
I have it in my plans to travel this year, I’m not sure where will be the first place I will get to travel but I know that traveling is definitely in my horizon. My aunt wants me to go visit her during Winder, my little brother wants to go to a Convention in Cali and I wanna take my girlfriend to New York, we’ll see which one happens first. I leave it all int he hands of god.
All in all 2018 has been a good year, and 2019 is gearing up to be the best year of my life, just as 2020 and 2021, and every year before that. The sea of possibilities is limitless and I hope to float along it gleefully.
Have a wonderful year and blessings be onto you.
In light of this all then, what is success if not looking back at your ups and downs with heart shape emojis over your eyes.
~ Antonio
MabsArts 