Art and Book Recommendation.

I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. I've dabbled with other art mediums but I have always come back to pencil and paper. I'll draw anything that comes to mind. Flowers, people, script, tattoo ideas, and more. I'm sure I have books full of drawings and doodles. Sometimes, I'll even break out the Prismacolor pencils I have and do a full-color piece but I prefer black and white.

My latest piece, however, is special.

One of the teachers I work with is an author. (Insert a jealous sigh here.) She wrote an amazing book titled "The Sea Dragon's Lair." If you have read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If you haven't, it's available on Amazon Kindle and in print form. (The Sea Dragon's Lair is written by Dana Kirk.) I recommend it to literally everyone of any age. It's a wonderful, adventure-filled, emotion-tugging story that's described as this: "This fast-paced young adult novel is full of adventure as the young hero tries to find both a past and a future. Enjoy witty banter and creative insults from a narrator with a "big knife and a bigger attitude.""

One day, while doodling at work, Dana asked me if I thought I could draw one of her characters for her. She gave me details on what she wanted and gave me some artistic freedom. I want to share it with you because I'm really proud of it. It's by no means perfect but I love it.

Meet Michael. The Captain of the Sea Dragon. 

Again, if you haven't heard of it or just haven't read it, I insist that you go straight to Amazon from here and order this book. It's also available on Audible if you would prefer to listen to it in a swanky English accent.

I'm always looking to add to my art portfolio and this was just one opportunity I couldn't pass up. If you happen to be an artist, please feel free to comment below on things I could work on/fix for next time!

Baby Steps.

The last post I wrote, I wrote about the fact that I need to lose weight. Ironically, I was eating ice cream as I wrote it. Since that post, I've been working on my eating habits. I'm having a hard time kicking the sweets but I did kick the daily soda and daily energy drink. I've cut back on that but I started drinking iced tea again. Win some, lose some I suppose. I'm trying to be more active but my energy levels are so low that I'm ready to crash into my bed by 8 pm.

My starting weight was 350 pounds. (I was pretty close with that estimate. I weighed in at 351.4.) I weighed myself this past weekend. The scale told me 343.2. (That's an 8.2-pound difference in just about two weeks!) My next weigh-in will be on the 30th of this month. I have 13 days left. In the next 13 days, I'm going to work on portion control and my tendency to eat when I'm bored.

I'm also going to TRY to add about 20 minutes of some form of a work out each day. Like the title states, baby steps. I'll get to my goal eventually.

May 13th.
343.2 lbs
22/24/3x

My next weigh-in will be May 30th for sure.