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troynay
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Name: Troy
Country: United States
State: Texas
Metro: Carrollton
Gender: Male
Interests: Learning the truths of my belief. My church community. Hangin' with my homies. Reading comicbooks. Everything Apple. xbox360 games.
Expertise: Everything Adobe. Computer art, illustration, photo retouch and graphic design... if it can be done... I can do it.
Then making music with my iMac to a slightly lessor extent.
Occupation: Artist
Industry: Art
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  troynay@mac.com
Member Since:
1/5/2006
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| A little ice cream is good for the soul- Unknown Author.
Enjoy.
Last week, I took my children to a restaurant.
My six-year-old son asked if he could say grace.
As we bowed our heads he said, "God is good, God is great. Thank you for the food, and I would even thank you more if Mom gets us ice cream for dessert. And Liberty and justice for all! Amen!"
Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, I heard a woman Remark, "That's what's wrong with this country. Kids today don't even know how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why, I never!"
Hearing this, my son burst into tears and asked me, "Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?"
As I held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job, and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table.
He winked at my son and said, "I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer."
"Really?" my son asked.
"Cross my heart," the man replied.
Then, in a theatrical whisper, he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started this whole thing), "Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes."
Naturally, I bought my kids ice cream at the end of the meal. My son stared at his for a moment, and then did something I will remember the rest of my life.
He picked up his sundae and, without a word, walked over and placed it in front of the woman. With a big smile he told her, "Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes; and my soul is good already."
The End
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| Crying in front of peopleWhy is it embarrassing? Why have we made it weak for us to cry in front of others? Is it? Not sure if it matters one way or the other. We all have different opinions on the matter. But I do know that sometimes it hits you all of a sudden. Sometimes there is a reason and sometimes well, most of the time there's a reason. Like the one that got to me just minutes ago... And come to find out it may or may not be true. But like a part of the article says. If it's not, it ought to be.
Read this article first...
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/girl.asp
John Michael Montgomery, The Little Girl Lyrics
Her parents never took the young girl to church
Never spoke of His name
Never read her His word
Two non-believers walking lost in this world
Took their baby with them
What a sad little girl
Her daddy drank all day and mommy did drugs
Never wanted to play
Or give kisses and hugs
She'd watch the TV and sit there on the couch
While her mom fell asleep
And her daddy went out
And the drinking and the fighting
just got worse every night
Behind their couch she'd be hiding
Oh what a sad little life
And like it always does, the bad just got worse
With every slap and every curse
Until her daddy in a drunk rage one night
Used a gun on her mom and then took his life
And some people from the city took the girl far away
To a new mom and a new dad
kisses and hugs everyday
Her first day of Sunday school the teacher walked in
And a small little girl
Stared at a picture of Him
She said I know that man up there on that cross
I don't know His name
But I know He got off
Cause He was there in my old house
and held me close to His side
As I hid there behind our couch
The night that my parents died.
If it's not ok to cry, then it ought to be.
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| Life Lesson One: IronyI was going to display a few comic book colorist submissions I had been working on for the last month or so. Basically to show off. But instead I give you a story. Is everyone ready for a story? (If you go back and read this in an outrageous English accent like Eric does it'll all go much more fun. If you want to read the rest of it that way too.) Please forgive the grammar and/or spelling. I'm not much of a reader let alone a writer. So I had an inspiration of sorts...
Art has always been a big part of my life. It is what I do. I have been doing art professionally (sometimes loosely defined as art however) for the last 18 plus years. I was told from a very early age that I had artistic talent. I was almost always drawing something. And it was true, I also remember as far back as I can, that I drew stuff all the time. And at a lot of the wrong times. Like during class or church and it was a lot of the time a problem because I would loose myself in the sketching. Drawing became a big part of my daydreaming. And having a touch of adolescent attention deficit didn't help. But, I had never considered myself an artist... I don't know if it was my overwhelming humbleness or if I just wasn't aware that what I was doing was a talent. I just thought it was something that everyone did and it took me a long time to realize that not everyone did or believed they could.
The day that art became a challenge was when I tried adding color. This doesn't count coloring books or drawing with Crayons or Marks-A-Lots. I always wondered, why is it that while I live in color, actually conveying art in color was hard? And again it took me a long time to realize that everyone has a hard time with color in art... Since we all live in color, we have a preexisting "way things are supposed to look" syndrome. And it is the same stumbling block that most people have with drawing... "This is the way it looks in life – this doesn't, 'look like it supposed to' ". After literally years of my young life was spent thinking that all I could do well was in black & white and various shades of gray. I had to try to remove myself from this by experimenting with color. Most of the time resulting in what I felt was a horrible failure. There's some proof of this still hanging at my parents house. Really rough oil paintings done by a 3rd and 4th grade me.
"Dude you should become an artist". Are the words that haunted my early life... Usually followed up with "You should take art". I always thought why would anyone who can already draw take art. I mean all through kindergarten through grade school and even in high school we are made to draw, color or make some sort of art project. And in sixth grade we all had "art" as a class. This class was taught by the second male teacher I had had to this point in my life. Mr. Bryant was his name. This was the teacher that made me decide to never take art again. He was mean, loud and probably frustrated that he was stuck teaching 6th graders art. Art was something that he once loved, I'm sure.
Still, all the way up to and through high school, I was told "dude, you should be an artist". Well, I was a musician now, since 7th grade even, and had become a pretty decent trombone player. Art was now just a thing I did when I daydreamed and not what I was going to "do". I believe that I resisted, "Dude you should be an artist" only because I figured that if I wasn't already one, I won't ever be... And started answering no when people asked me if I was or wanted to be an artist. So I started using my talent as an enhancement to my homework projects and brushed off any thought of being an artist. But my junior I did decide to do art as an elective because I had to have an extra. And guess who was the teacher... Mr. Bryant, oh yeah, he remembered me... but not for reasons that I had anticipated... He asked me to stop at his desk after class. I really wished he didn't ask that in front of everyone. Nervously I approached his desk at the end of class. He said I was one of the few students that had a more advance art skill back in 6th grade and that he expected a lot out of me. He never complained. I think he was happier being in high school now.
I had now accomplished being a part of marching band, jazz band, and made #1 band my last year finally. Senior year came and went and when I graduated, I decided to become a music major. Made since, it is what I do. Wow, what a mistake that was. I got conned into thinking I could do this by the "guidance" councilor, who should really be considered rip-off artists. I wasn't told that it'd been a good idea if I already knew more than one instrument (preferably 3 more other than t-bone) in the brass category since I was a trombonist... Plus, that I would need to be fairly proficient in piano, because I wanted to be a music teacher. So I needed some serious remedial piano because the only worse thing I did at this point with my hands was typing.
Ok, so this is where I found out the old saying "those who can't... teach" was completely false, or at any case did not apply here. But I did try my hand at this for 2 semesters and then decided I was an intense failure at school. I couldn't pass anything (that is a small exaggeration). I found that some of this stuff can be just learned like music theory and the physics of sound. That stuff I found really cool and was passing these with minimal effort... but the councilor put too much on my plate so I started to drop some things... And by the end of the semester I was down to only a very small hand full of classes left, out of which, two I passed. So, I had to pump myself up for the next semester. Thinking I just had a rough start and was told that the shock of starting college can cause this. I decided I would retake the things I failed and and go ahead and add a couple to fill in the gaps... Oh what a dumb dumb Chicken Little.
A couple of weeks went by... And during this time I was trying to figure out why I have become such a dismal failure at the one thing I thought I was good at. I was daydreaming to myself, "I knew this was going to be a challenge, because I mean, this is college... but should it be this much of a struggle?" And of course, during this particularly long daydreaming/drawing episode, one of the single most life changing things occurred. A guy walked up and noticed my drawing and said, "Dude, you are an artist". I almost combusted. And as I said the words, "everyones been telling me that since I was..." I had a feeling that I was about to faint. "say it again..." and the guy looked at me as if I was a possessed demon. "Um... you are! Dude, that's really good, I have friends in the art department here wasting their life away..." I started packing up my stuff and calmly thanking this plain old person, like many before him, that was pointing me in the direction I should have been going all along. "I'm here wasting my life away too..." and he said, "aren't we all..."
The next day I dropped everything and started art classes...
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| What can I say...
Ya try to keep your house clean and then someone brings home a stray...
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