On This Blog's Title

(me actually disliking spiders...but letting "this" happen)

I've kinda become known as the "Spider Guy" to some of the kids at my school. It's a very strange thing, though. I mean, I've turned (what I figure is) my arachnophobia into some sort of obsession. I find this as strange as they do...

So, I figured it was time that I went into this, and decided that this would be a good place to go a little more in-depth on this subject, since I'm more concerned with writing about process, and so on, in my TARANTULAS blog.

So, where do I start? I suppose this all started when I was taking Animal Anatomy in the Fall 2008 quarter. Our first assignment was to draw a "small animal portrait". (Not to toot my own horn, since I'm known for being pretty damn good with charcoal, but lemme tell you, that, there is nothing "small" about drawing a fully finished piece on 18x24in paper...) I'm not exactly sure what devil got into me that morning, but when I went looking for reference images I decided to look for spiders; I got a surprise.

I returned to class with some of the other reference images that I had acquired, and stopped by to speak to the instructor briefly. I told him, "Y'know...I think I learned something new about myself during this little search. I went looking for images of spiders, and while going through and looking at all sorts of different close ups, I started feeling a little nauseous, and my palms got a little sweaty. I think I'm arachnophobic..." and with a confused smile and a nod of his head he replied, "Really?...That's interesting."

This "realization" set me on a bit of a journey. I went home that day and found a few hideously close-up shots of spiders of all sorts and began using them as desktop backgrounds. I figured I could conduct some exposure therapy on myself. I'm not sure if this helped any, as I simply got to add spider nightmares to my repertoire of dreams, and gained a sort of obsession with featuring spiders in my art. That art part didn't manifest itself until over a year later, in the Winter of 2010, when I modeled a spider to add to a scene. It's kind of went on from there... (This and that, among others)

It wasn't much longer before I was wearing my own t-shirts (bearing, at the least, one spider on them, by way of my brand), and you could probably say that this was the tipping point to me earning the "spider guy/dude" nickname I've been given by some. (I am sometimes called "spider man", at which time they often go, "You know what I mean!", inferring that they don't mean that Spider Man)

I guess I can't say that I dislike it. If I had a problem with being known as the spider guy, I wouldn't have made one my brand, huh? Speaking of my brand, I will be redesigning it soon. I suppose it was that fact that got me thinking about this. Hm...

Well, that's all I have for that one. A 28 hour train ride back home (in which I got very little rest) killed my immune system, and I'm fighting a flu at the moment, so I think I'll return to resting now. Until next time, carry on!

J, out...