It’s mine. It’s twisted. It’s art for its own sake. I draw things as I see it on paper and I draw things as they are in my minds eye. It’s sorta of a Magical Realism piece. There’s no need to straighten anything out just entangle my intertwine.
I’ll let you interpret the rest and allow you to see whatever you see. I’ve told you too much already, but a penny for YOUR thoughts.
“Where there is no imagination there is no horror” ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I remember growing up thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if one day there was a zombie outbreak and life changed dramatically. I still don’t feel this way, but I remember wishing something would happen. It didn’t have to be zombies. It could have been vampires or werewolves. Just something crazy so life wouldn’t feel so mundane. Now I create art to keep things interesting.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the zombie movie genre, but I am a fan of horror. I remember when I was little and walking into a bookstore and being mesmerized by the book covers that had the scariest monsters on them. I would look at the book having no clue what it was about, but I would beg my mom to buy them for me. It was the same way at the video store.
I even remember enjoying my nightmares. The earliest art I could remember making was always horror. My mom would look at my work and say why don’t you draw something pretty like rainbows or butterflies and I would just laugh. Since then I have expanded my horizons, but I guess you could say horror was my gateway drug into creating art.
I was thinking about posting some clip from some zombie movies, but I am unsure which ones are really best. The only zombie movies I remember liking were Thriller, 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead. I know there are a few others I liked, but nothing else immediately comes to mind. I guess just a couple of faceless movies that were on in the wee hours of the night sparking my imagination.
What I am a big fan of is the Robert Kirkman comic: The Walking Dead. Now there is some good reading. The stories being told in that book just blow me away. Stories like that remind me why I’m glad we live in a world without zombies (or do we?).
So many of us live our lives on a routine. It’s like we’re sleepwalking through life. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. Consequently, our brains all too often vacantly skip from moment to moment and our lives just fly by us.
I hope today’s zombie sketch messes with your head a little, but I hope you take the next step to evaluate why you find this interesting, disturbing, or whatever. For me, the answer is simple. It’s reminder that’s it’s high time time for all of us to start changing our patterns and explore the possibilities life has to offer us lest we become the mindless monster of passive destruction rather than a thinking affirmation of the creative force. I cannot express how important it is for all of us to find that spark in our lives which will stop that unconscious drift so our brains can turn on again.
Right now I want you to remember what it was like to be a kid and the joys of discovery clear eyes could make. Maybe if we could all look at the world again with new eyes, it wouldn’t appear so mundane and we wouldn’t be too afraid of stepping out of our little boxes. Maybe we would find ourselves excited to make this world a better place, start using our imaginations and no longer be content with the status quo.
The sad truth is that there are obviously worse futures than a zombie outbreak and we are seeing hints of it everyday. Maybe I’m just babbling, but I know we have no future if we continue to be zombies. I also know I’m just as guilty as anyone else so I’m going to try and follow my own advice and start living.
With every piece of art I guess you could say I am trying to create a new vision of the world: a world inside the world. By coming to my little corner of the internet, you participate and interact with my creative force. You empower my ideas with your thoughts and perspective, but I also hope I am empowering you to see things a little differently. You may not always manifest your own vision as I would, but I would like to think you carry that audacity to create into the world and that you make real what only you can see in your own life with your own imagination. I aspire to be a part of that.
I want you to know that all of you are capable of being artists as long as you make that affirmative decision to bring your imagination into the world in whatever form inspires you. If you can accomplish that, you are the farthest thing from a zombie imaginable.
Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s post. You never know what you going to get here at Jay Zuck’s Sketch of the Day so stay tuned. There are few projects in the works I’m really excited about showing you guys. I guess that’s all for now, so I’ll leave you with some awesome music from one of my favorite DJ’s: D-Styles. It’s a little song called Murder Factory from the amazing album Phantazmagorea.
Fun fact of the day: A Masonic tale tells of three Knights Templar in search of the site at which their last Grand Master Jacques de Molay was burned and crucified. They found only his skull and femurs. It is said that the fugitive Knights who escaped their master’s fate became the first pirates and flew the skull and crossbones flag so that they would never forget.
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