Believe it or not, I don't recall any details about the first few years of my life, and my earliest few memories I am unable to place in chronological order. One of my earliest memories was sitting next to twin girls in preschool. We were all coloring a picture of an elephant. I was pleased with my efforts until one of the twins snidely remarked, "Whoever heard of a red elephant?" This was the first sign of color blindness. Although, it wasn't until second grade that it was diagnosed. I also learned that girls can be mean. It was several years later until I realized that most are actually nice. I have one recollection of a drawing I did in kindergarten of a guy playing basketball. Everyone around me was praising the fact that the guy was not a stick figure. I don't know if I ever went through the stick figure phase, which is probably true of most artists that began at a very young age.
Play time was often not with the typical action figures, although I owned a few. I preferred playing with pencils and pens. Not drawing, but pretending the pens and pencils were action figures. On one occasion one of my aunts approached me with a bundle of pens. She whispered in a thoughtful manner, "Do you still play with pens?" I shook my head and said no, embarrassed she knew about it. What was I thinking? I missed out on free pens to play with, and draw with. If anyone wants to give me free pens and pencils I will resume playing with them as I did in my childhood.
During fifth grade was the first time I met another kid my age that had similar artistic abilities. My competitive nature kicked in and I increased my focus on drawing. I enjoyed receiving attention for my artistic ability. High school introduced classes that were actually effective in teaching me basic art principles. Computer art introduced me to Photoshop. It was not unheard of for me to spend hours on end working on various projects. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but why not? I possessed the most advanced artistic talent in a graduating class of about 700 students. Of course, I am more aware now than ever before that artistic talent in the world is in no short supply. The number of people in my generation with superior artistic talent to mine boggles my mind.
At twenty years of age I began to dabble in drawing comics. Cartoons were not a new endeavor, but using them to express ideas, whether humorous or cleaver, was, to a certain degree. At twenty-one I began school at Brigham Young University in Provo. Every Sunday evening I had the opportunity to send "warm fuzzies" to other college students that attended the same church service that morning. The warm fuzzies were little pieces of paper to write notes on. The notes were collected in a box and delivered to the appropriate apartment number. I began drawing simple comics and sending them to random apartments. I shortly developed a fan-base, in a manner of speaking, and created new warm fuzzies each week. Eventually, I began to keep tract of my ideas so that I might compile them at a later date.
Well... Here it is. The Warm Fuzzy Compilation
