Gifts from a Family Who Know Me...

I'm delighted that this past holiday was one of the better ones in recent memory getting to see all of my family happy and moving toward better times.  The Christmas / New Years rush is one of the craziest times of the year and we're all still recovering from it this week even with the fevered atmosphere about us leading these American lives.  I'm blessed to have your audience and blessed to have my friends and family.  Most importantly, I'm thankful for people who know and understand the teetering insanity driving the pulsating urge to create- the lighting in the bottle in my brain.  My family followed through in style in feeding the beast.  First, my Sister and Bro-in-Lawz got me a gift card to Snobby Lobby which will come in handy very soon I'm certain.

My wife Aurora got me this awesome mini MUNNY!  I get to paint him sometime this year when things calm down a bit.  Each one of these dudes from kidrobot comes with a MUNNY shaped sticker to color and a MYSTERY Item- mine is an AXE!  I'll post some process pictures later on when I get to him.

My wife also got me art in another form with a few graphic novels I wanted included an awesome Elseworlds Superman... the Elseworlds DC series are a weakness of mine!  In these books, alternate realities and time periods are created to show what these superheros would be like in another time and space.

Every year I take a portion of my Christmas Bonus from my top secret day job as a Marketing Manager and I spend it re-upping my marker supply.  Here's what I got in the mail today from Cheap Joe's... they don't call him Cheap for nuttin'- you can't beat $1.99 Prismacolors with a stick... or a MUNNY Axe for that matter.  I even snagged a few NEW colors I've never had before!

Another neato parting holiday fact: The Incredible Hulk painting I posted from New Year's Day is on a canvas my father got me for Christmas this year!  Click HERE to see the painting! 

Have a prosperous 2012 dear viewer- I hope you find the encouragement you need to see your own dreams through.  I wouldn't be creating without the belief of those around me.

2011: The Year in Review at DREGstudios!

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When January rolled around 12 months ago, I hadn't thought much about what I wanted to do with my artwork this year.  I had been blogging seriously for just a few months and had fallen in love with the open forum which it provided me to fuse both my voice and my art.  The past few years I had focused on exhibiting  anywhere and everywhere in the world I was accepted, placing my art in over 100 shows across the country and world.  For 2011, I wanted to focus on building an audience here in the digital world.  At the turn of the year, I made the decision to dump my static website which housed galleries for my art and focus solely on turning my blog INTO my site.  I found quickly that it was a learning process and looking back I can see the wonderful evolution of the DREGstudios! site over the past 12 months, which has grown from several hundred viewers a month to 15-20K viewers per month since June!  Falling in love with blogging was the best creative decision I've ever made.

2011 was the most inspiring year of my life so far for my work and passion.  I'm still on the upswing and haven't managed to find a way to make a living doing what I love quite yet but you can go back through my archive of blog posts and see the fruits of my labor.  Here's a look back at just a few of the major highlights of this incredible year...

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