Gone are the days where I could get a crude oil massage at the spa, and sip on sparkling gasoline at cocktail parties. The Iraq War has gone on for too long, taking valuable media time away from legitimate world issues like Britney Spear’s baby daddy. We can’t expect to find Osama Bin Laden if we can’t locate Britney’s boy toys.

Sure money is being wasted, and people are dying, but what about those who have no voices…like our SUVs. We need to find a quick fix before my Gasoline Java Chip Frappacino with a shot of espresso, topped with whipped cream, gets cold.

We need something better.
We need something bigger.

We need Big Bird.

It makes total sense. Big Bird has his own sponsors, usually some alphabet letter and a random number, so there is no monetary risk. He is even good friends with Snuffleupagus, a big hairy elephant, who will snuff anybody at the drop of a dime. That’s not all, Big Bird has…

Size. Big Bird is…well…pretty damn big. Big Bird would tower over even the tallest insurgent standing on their tippy toes, making him a clear favorite to win any dunk contests that may arise during battle. You may think being a huge mound of feathers would make easy target practice for evil doers that are shooting at our Sesame Street superstar, but his size is deceptively useful. As the great military strategist, Sun Tzu once said,

“All warfare is based on deception”

During Operation Desert Storm, Big Bird was equipped with a blow horn, and tooted his way through the unforgiving Iraqi terrain disguised as a yellow school bus.

In 1980, diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Iran were tested when pro-revolution Iranian students took 52 U.S. diplomats hostage. The U.S. attempted to rescue the hostages, but Operation Eagle Claw was a complete failure. Eagles are cool, but they lacked the focus needed to get the job done. They were too busy filming a music video with Nelly for the song “Get Your Eagle On.” The day before Ronald Reagan was inaugurated into the oval office, Big Bird snuck into Iran as a giant yellow crayon, and retrieved the hostages by drawing an escape door on the wall using crayola colors fuzzy wuzzy brown and neon carrot. True story.

Motor skills. Most 8 foot, 200 lb, birds are slow and clumsy. Not Big Bird. His feet are super quick, with his left leg clocking an impressive 110 hokey pokeys per second. Big Bird also set the standard for disco dancing, choreographing John Travolta’s footwork in Saturday Night Fever. The movie was such a box office hit that the U.S. military adopted his dance routine for possible military applications. Disco dancing is now considered the most efficient way to avoid land mines in enemy territory.

Uncanny dexterity gives Big Bird the rare ability to touch his nose and rub his tummy at the same time, helping him become a two-time belly dancing world champion. His belly dancing prowess was crucial to the success of finding Suddam Hussein in that underground Hookah bar in Baghdad.

Bio blues. Since Big Bird has a person completely enclosed within his feathery frame, scientists believe the excessive contact between human and puppet bird is what caused the avian influenza virus, “Big Bird Flu,” to adapt to humans as viable hosts.

The monkey from Outbreak was a guest on Sesame Street weeks before the documentary was released in theaters nation wide. Big bird carries a picture of Dustin Hoffman in his wallet for handling that situation for him. The Center for Disease Control also confirmed that Big Bird caused the West Nile virus, and the word ‘guestimate’ to become widely used

Celebrity. Big Bird is internationally known, so we have to milk his celebrity till the udders of American imperialism run dry. Immortalized on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, Big Bird has VIP access to posh dance clubs and exotic resorts that are off limits to military personnel and ordinary civilians. He can infiltrate elite social circles to recruit decorated heroes like Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis. With that kind of star power, we could pound Iraq into submission by dropping 2 ton award-show gift bags from the comfort of a private jet.

I was wandering around, looking at photos on Flickr until this one caught my attention. It is a picture of a wall just outside a convenience store in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I have never heard of Zihuatanejo, but I love it already! You have some hairy cowboy with a mustache as wide as his shoulders, squatting on a tree stump in the middle of a field, drinking tequila with a rat. Pure marketing genius. Makes me just want to lick the tequila right off his salty legs.

Look at his wide open legs. This inviting pose is a subliminal message telling potential drunkards to come inside for a drink. People buy things on emotional urges and then justify their purchases with logic afterwards. If his legs were closed I would not have been able to pry open his hairy appendages to make an emotional connection with him.

Not sure where what kind of shorts those are, but they are expensive. And those uneven designer socks — to die for. This cowboy definitely has a great taste for fashion so he must have a great taste for tequila. I trust him.

Throughout history, mustaches been considered to be a facial ornament of wisdom and knowledge. Just by looking at the length of the whiskers on this tequila promotion model, he must be the foremost authority on tequila. Positioning himself as a tequila expert gives him credibility to drunks and skunks.

Note: Part of his mustache looks like it might actually be a shadow of his sombrero, therefore calling his tequila wisdom into question. However, a thorough digital forensic investigation confirms my original statement. There is no shadow. His mustache is actually as wide as his shoulders.

Today I woke up hungry for some sugary goodness. So I go to the kitchen only to find out that there is no more cereal. I look in all the cabinets to make sure. All gone.

This is a problem.

How does society expect me to function and contribute meaningfully to the world without my daily dose of Peanut Butter Crunch? How am I supposed to unite the world under the gooey umbrella of peanut butter?

With my life, liberty, and happiness in jeopardy, I quickly get dressed and go to the supermarket for a box or two of peanut butter crunch. I check the whole aisle. There is none. I try another store. None. One store without Peanut Butter Crunch is possible. Two stores without it is a pattern. But three stores without it is an evil Canadian plan.

Sensing that the peanut butter crunch equilibrium of the universe has somehow been disturbed, I run home to put on the cartoon network, a respected news organization. They are broadcasting a town hall meeting where I live, explaining the cereal shortage. View clip below for actual footage.

That’s right. Blame Canada.

The U.S. dollar has been weakening against the Canadian dollar, because we are printing money at a furious rate to fund a war against Middle Eastern evil doers. This allows sneaky Canadians to step in and buy U.S products like Peanut Butter Crunch at a cheaper rate. While we Americans are struggling to pay 4 bucks for a gallon of Peanut Butter Crunch to get to work, the streets of Montreal and Toronto are paved with Peanut Butter Crunch.

“This not just about the falling value of our currency and volatile credit markets” says Wall street analyst Fred Mcgee from Ho Phat Capital. “This is about Canadians crunching on our cereal. That’s why Wall Street calls this the credit crunch.”

All this time the media has fed us propaganda saying Mexico is the enemy. Immigration this. Guest worker that. Forget Mexico. The real enemy is up north. Canada and cereal both start with the letter C, a coincidence to obvious to ignore.

Need more proof? Watch this clip. In 1995, Canada assumed a threatening military posture along the border, waiting for the perfect moment to invade. Thanks to an anonymous tip call to the pentagon, we were able to send double secret agent John Candy to stop the Canadian threat in time. Operation Canadian Bacon was a huge success, defeating the entire Canadian army during the summer with three snow balls and a super soaker gun.

The Canadian threat is resurfacing again, and this time we can’t count on the late John Candy. We must unite. We must have resolve.

We must have our Peanut Butter Crunch!

Eat mushrooms. You can’t be successful while hungry. Only eat red and white mushrooms that pop out of floating boxes with question marks on them. That way, if you get hit by an enemy or are too slow dodging a fireball you won’t die. Opening these these surprise boxes can be a little tricky at first though. You have to hit the box from the bottom with your head. Trying to open them with your hands will not work. Eating the Mario way effectively doubles your life, height, and chance of saving the princess!

Check out these sites for yummy mushroom recipes.

http://mushroomrecipes.com/

http://www.mushroomrecipes.us/

http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes.php?q=mushroom

Photo by Joe Mad

Use your head. It’s important to exercise your brain with books, logic puzzles, and the like, but in order to really be successful you must expand on how you use your head. Sometimes you will be faced with an obstacle, usually random floating bricks, that can’t be overcome no matter how clever your thinking is. In situations like these you must use your head to physically break these bricks. Remember, your head must be used to open question mark boxes.

Photo by Pixteca

Collect coins. Sometimes you find pennies, nickels, or even dollar bills on the street. Pick them up and save them till the end of the board or life for a high score. If you find 100 coins you will even get an extra life. Be sure to pick up the special coins that float in the air or inside question mark boxes too. You will hear a special sound that will make you want even more coins.

Photo by Scrags

Wear overalls. The last thing you need when you are giving a boardroom presentation, fighting crime, or rescuing a princess is for your pants to fall down. Wearing overalls insures that your pants will not succumb to gravity’s evil grasp when running after a dragon. The big pockets will allow you to carry large items with ease. Basically, wearing overalls means you dress for function, not fashion.

Photo by Baltimike

Use warps. Sometimes getting from point A to point B can be tedious and time consuming. It’s very hard to climb every step, defeat every enemy, destroy every dungeon and still have time for Starbucks. Life is too short for that. When a warp presents itself, use it to skip some levels. Go to school and get a degree, particularly in plumbing since warps are green sewer piping protruding from the ground.

Photo by Oscar Mota

Be curious. When you pass by a box with a question mark on it, open it. That is the only way you will find enough mushrooms, fire flowers, and other power items to succeed. You only have limited number of lives so its pays to be curious.

Photo by Weeta

It happens to all of us. We sit down, take out a blank piece of paper, and then we stare.

And then we stare some more.

You have an essay to write. The odds are stacked against you. It’s you vs. the paper and pen. You fight desperately to finish your first sentence, but the pen immediately puts you in a headlock while the paper gives you an atomic wedgie. You get tossed out the ring, and have to spend the next few hours recovering from the ill effects of atomic wedgie radiation.

But what if you had Hulk Hogan as your tag-team partner? With Hulk nation on your side, you could choke that pen into submission while Hulk body slams the paper. Here are some ways to tag Hulk into the writing ring with you.

Get Hulk Hogan to write for you. For about 50,000 dollars and up, you can get Hulk Hogan to come and personally write your essay, do your homework, or just stare down your teacher until you get an A+. Try to get Hulk to stare down the teacher so that you can just hand in Hulkamania bandanas for future assignments. If you are writing a blog, get Hulk’s signature and copy it to the bottom of all your posts. Hulk Hogan’s signature will lift your writing over his bald head, and throw it into awesomeness.

Photo by Cirofono

Buy a Hulk Hogan action figure. It’s rare, but sometimes I come up just 20 bucks short of the 50,000 needed to book Hogan. My 30 page research paper on the history of peanut butter is no where near done and Hulk is no where in sight. The next best thing is to have my Hulk Hogan action figure pin my paper down for a 3 count, or until it begs for mercy, whichever comes first. After my Hulk action figure pounds those annoying wide margins down to size, I can step in and finish the job. Keep the action figure where it is visible to the paper and pencil at all times so you don’t waste the stare down power of Hulk’s mustache.

Photo by cyancey

Always use a No. 2 pencil or banana. Using any other writing device implies ambiguity as to who is No. 1. If you are truly going to conquer your fear of writing, you must be large and in charge. Writing with a No. 2 pencil means you understand the basic laws of physics, and abide by the hierarchical nature of the universe.

Hulk Hogan and tag-team partner (you). = Numero uno.

All writing tasks = Numero dos.

Break a pencil in half. Pencils and other writing utensils are not protected by the Geneva Convention so you are free to maim, torture, and kill as you please. If a pencil is uncooperative, get Hulk Hogan to break it in half or do it yourself. Leave the broken graphite remains nearby. The other pens and pencils in the vicinity will know their destiny if they resist making beautiful sentences.

Photo by zhurnaly

Wear wrestling tights. Don’t expect to get in the writing ring with Hulk with just your pajamas and expect to win. Dress like you came to wrestle and write. That means no Spider-Man underwear or CareBear socks. And don’t think writing in a suit and tie will make you feel like a professional writer. I have never heard more bologni in my life. All that does is make it easier for someone to take you by that leash around your neck and toss you into a garbage can. Instead wear bright neon tights, so you are harder to grab by your opponent.

Photo by Courtney Nash

Listen to your theme song. I’ve read propaganda on other blogs and websites that say you should listen to music to boost your creative rocket ship into space. This is not true. You need a theme song that will give your writing topics the heebie jeebies. You need an anthem that will make consonants and vowels assemble themselves into words out of fear. Be careful what you pick. Listening to the Knight Rider theme song would be acceptable, but playing any of David Hasselhoff’s attempts at music will banish you to wackville.

Make a wrestling ring. Some people say that you should organize a work space if want to be more productive. That may be true if you want to churn out meaningless excel spreadsheets all day for your supervisor. But if you want to conquer your fear of writing, then you have to make a battlefield, not a cubicle. You can’t expect Hulk Hogan to help you much in an office or cubicle anyway. You need a wrestling ring. Where do you think the Declaration of Independence was written? In a wrestling ring.

Photo by emme-dk

Get to the point. More is not always better. There is no need to fill up page after page of fluff. Hulk Hogan hates fluff. Why be scared to write 10 pages of crap when you can just write a Hulk Hogan quote at the top of the page. Think about it from the reader’s perspective. Would you rather sift through paragraph after paragraph until to find a sentence worth reading, or would you rather have Hulk Hogan bring the heat with just a stomp or two. Write like you are hitting someone over the head with a chair when the referee not looking. Don’t write like you are trying to tickle Tickle Me Elmo to death.

Real Name: Frederick McFeely Rogers
Aliases: Mister Rogers.
Identity: Known by children and neighbors throughout the universe.
Citizenship: Has dual citizenship on planet Earth and the Neighborhood of Make Believe.
Occupation: Television host, song writer, presbyterian minister, puppeteer.
Group Affiliation: PBS
Education: Studied at Dartmouth College and then transferred to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. He received a BA in music composition in 1951, and has 40 honorary degrees.
First Appearance: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood began airing in 1968

History: A distinguished member of some Make Believe civilization, Frederick McFeely Rogers was born on Asteroid 26858 Misterrogers. His galaxy was in danger of imploding, because the gravitational pull of the highly dense cardigan sweater matter was reaching critical mass. Frederick Rogers was sent on a mission by his home planet with King Friday XIII to spread cardigan sweaters across the universe, bringing gravitational equilibrium back to his home galaxy.

On March 20, 1928, Rogers was showing Kind Friday XIII how to blow bubbles wtih Liquid Detergent. In an erroneous water to soap ration calculation, soap spilled all over the spaceship’s navigation control causing a crash landing on the nearest planet able to sustain cardigan based life. That planet, was planet Earth. On this planet Frederick Rogers would only be known as Mister Rogers. Some scientists believe that his first and middle name were burned in Earth’s atmosphere when his spaceship, Skuttlebutt, crash landed. The day of this crash landing would later be considered Mister Rogers’ Earthday birthday.

The cosmic force of Mister Rogers’ sweater forced a Pennslyvania family, with the same last name, to adopt him immediately. His new family taught him the fundamentals of puppetry and music, as well as play the piano and sing. After college, Mister Rogers later became a member of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Station, where he began his most famous television show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. This was after his first attempt at entertaining children with his hour long show Lets Stare at Sweaters, which was canceled 20 mintues into the airing of the first episode.

Soon Fred Rogers would find a special trolley train that, when coupled with his singing ability, had enough power to warp Mister Rogers between Earth and his home galaxy, the Make Believe Neighborhood astroid belt. This connection between the two worlds allowed Mister Rogers to store enough cardigan sweaters in his closet on Earth to restore cardigan balance, stopping his galaxy from imploding under its own cosmic cardigan energy.

Strength Level: At full power, Mister Rogers demonstrates class 10 stength and incredible stamina when wearing mom-made cardigan sweaters. He can pick up an inifinite amount of sweaters, and efficiently disperse them to those that need them. Hosting the longest running PBS show that includes 998 episodes is a testament to this.

Special Abilities: Has the ability to instantly make you his neighbor when he sings the song “Won’t you be my Neighbor.” It doesn’t matter if there is a house directly in between you and Mister Rogers. The electromegnetic force of the song will warp time and space such way that you will be his neighbor.

Mister Rogers can assume the identity of any neighbor in the Neighborhood of Make Believe world through special puppet metaphysics. He has been known to change his voice to perfectly mimic King Friday XIII and Queen Sara Saturday (named after his wife), rulers of the neighborhood, as well as X the Owl, Henrietta Pussycat, Daniel the Striped Tiger, Lady Elaine Fairchild (named for Fred’s sister, Elaine) and Donkey Hodie.

With zero dancing experience, Mister Rogers can simply touch your shoulder, and can download any break dancing abilities from your mind at furious speeds as shown is this episode. Within seconds, he can serve neighborhood villains crushing defeats with pop and lock action. You just got served.

Mister Rogers has the uncanny ability to remember to feed the goldfish at the end of every episode. With a simple flick of the wrist, he puts in the exact amount of food as to not cause a single particle of waste. The preciseness of his efficient fish feeding ability is constantly researched by car companies in hopes of one day producing a more efficient fish feeding vehicle.

The superior knitting ability of Mister Rogers’ Earth mother gives him fantastic rejuvenation powers that would make Wolverine jealous. Nobody knits faster than Mister Rogers’ mom. Nobody.

Mister Rogers’ shoes are made of a special make believe alloy that allows him to walk without making the slightest sound. He has been known to stop Rice Krispies from snap, crackle, and popping, while wearing these shoes.

Mister Rogers can scan the thoughts of any congressman or senator, and synthesize goosebumps on their skin using cardigan energy. His telepathic powers were used to save public television and the VCR from extinction while testifying in congress during his lunch break.

Achieving the glow is no easy task. Up till now, only two people have attained this state of consciousness, Bruce Lee and Bruce Leeroy. But don’t worry; we will break down exactly what it takes to get the glow.

Photo by Tom@HK

Change your first name to Bruce. As I said before, only two people have reached the final level of hotness, and they were both named Bruce. If you want to maximize your chances of getting the glow, you should keep with tradition and stick with the name Bruce. If that name really bothers you, then you will have to make up some hot Kung Fu sounding name that is worthy enough of having the glow. Any derivative of Bruce Lee will work. If not, use your own name and choose a random animal for your last name that starts with the same letter.

Like…Peter Panda
Larry Llama
Tommy Tiger

Remember. You aren’t reinventing yourself. You are just letting the world know that you have vast reserves of hotness stored inside you, waiting to be tapped.

Have random arrows shot at you while training. It is not enough just to train furiously for years until you exhaust all your master’s tips and tricks. Random arrows must be shot at you while you practice your field of study. Whether you are painting, figure skating, or building a bridge, you must skillfully weave out of the way of random deadly arrows and karate chop them in half as they whizz by you. Why? Because it looks hot.

Photo by LondonBrad

Watch movie clips of Bruce Lee to achieve greatness. It has been scientifically documented that watching Bruce Lee movies will transfer photons of hotness to you through osmosis. Bruce Lee movies have an unlimited amount of awesomeness packed into each frame. So, in order to keep the universe in equilibrium, high concentrations of awesomeness must diffuse to areas of lower concentrations of awesomeness (i.e. anything that is not Bruce Lee). Make it your duty to find these clips, and soak in the hotness that radiates from these classics like Bruce Leeroy did.

Let’s follow Bruce Leeroy’s timeline.

In 1964, Bruce Leeroy was born.

In 1968, Bruce Leeroy saw his idol, Bruce Lee. “My Interest in martial arts began at the age of four while watching Kato [Bruce Lee] on television in ‘The Green Hornet’” - Taimak aka Bruce Leeroy

In 1985, Bruce Leeroy achieves the coveted ‘glow’ while defeating Sho’nuff.

So basically,

Born on whatever date —–> Watch Bruce Lee ——> Acquire glow.

Photo by Anahita

Find an arch enemy. Tell me that little kid isn’t looking for his first arch enemy! TELL ME!!!

After years of training for your goal learning a new language, writing a book, or hosting your own TV show, you need someone to jump kick in the end. No journey is complete until you pulverize someone’s chest with your foot. Don’t pretend like there is a shortage of villains in your town. You can find your nemesis at the local DMV, because all evil villains have to drive. You can also check in the frozen food section of the supermarket, where all the cold-hearted dirtbags hang out.

However, you can’t just defeat any old enemy that walks out your grandma’s bingo game. That wouldn’t be hot. You need you give your enemy a title that will instill terror through nursing homes across the world like….

Sho’nuff, the Shogun of Harlem.
Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds.
Pierre, the French Tickler.
Gargamel, the Smurf Slayer.

Find an Asian master that speaks only in proverbs. Yes. He or she must be Asian, because that’s the unfailing Hollywood formula. Your master must constantly drop nuggets of knowledge on you, and speak in cryptic, fortune cookie, sentences that must be deciphered by you while performing a meaningless task. Communicating to you in haiku would also be acceptable.

For example, Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid was a great master.

Van Damme had Xian Chow in Kickboxer.

Mr. Miyagi is another great one. Yes, I said Mr. Miyagi twice because anyone who can teach Ralph Macchio to fight deserves a double mention.

Also, if you are Asian, you can’t have an Asian master train you. In case Hollywood makes a movie, you must overcome some kind of racial tension on the way to glowing nirvana. The best example of this is the movie Cool Runnings where a Jamaican bobsled team was trained by champion Caucasian, John Candy.

When you see Benjamin Franklin holding a New York Giants football jersey, you know something special happened.

The Giants won Superbowl XLII.

No one believed they could pull off the win. The whole world wrote them off like a big tax deduction. Before the game, the New York Giants were thought of nothing more than Giant speed bumps for their undefeated opponent, the New England Patriots.

What actually happened on Sunday shocked the world. I remember watching the game, and watching the Giants slowly march up the field on offense for a field goal. You could see the Giants actually believed they were going to win. The running backs were carrying defenders on their backs. The receivers were making plays that eluded them in the beginning of the season. And the Giant defense played like savages, savage superheroes. They all came to play.

I remember the score at halftime being 7 to 3, Patriots lead. Even though the Giants were behind in score, the Giants were dominating. I’ve never seen them play like that. I could only think,

“These guys might actually pull this off.”

Watching the game was surreal. I was jumping around the TV yelling and screaming. With the window open, you could hear the rest of New York watching the game, banging on walls, and yelling not so great things about the Patriots. You have to love New Yorker’s choice of words. Just use your imagination.

I didn’t remember all this fuss when the Giants were in the Superbowl seven years earlier. Everybody was watching this game, even people who never watch football at all. I think everyone was able to relate to the Giants. At some point in your life the world said

you are a Giant underdog
you are supposed to fail
you are supposed to back down
you are a Giant loser

The Giants showed us that it doesn’t have to go down like that. Their last drive for the winning touchdown was not supposed to happen, but the Giants showed us that words like

impossible
unbeatable
unstoppable

are just words. The impossible is possible.

The Giants showed the world what is possible, not only for their football season, but for our lives as well.

Now I see more than ever that it is possible to change and improve myself. It is possible to get what you want in life.

You just need

A Giant heart. You can’t measure heart. You can’t touch it. You can’t buy it either. But you know when someone has heart. I know the Giants have it. They had the determination to fulfill their destiny. You can be phenomenal athlete, or a gifted writer, but physical prowess and intellect only take you so far. Passion and determination is what puts you over the top.

A Giant dream. The Giants knew exactly what they had to do to accomplish their dream. If you expect to accomplish yours, you have to know what you want. Determination without direction is a recipe for disaster. However, it is not enough to just know your mission. Be your mission. Be your dream. Everyday.

A Giant team. Every single player on the Giants had the same dream of winning the Superbowl, but each player could not have accomplished that by themselves. It took a Giant team to win. You may think you don’t need a team to accomplish an individual goal like writing a book or learning a new language, but nothing could be further from the truth. You need to surround yourself with people that have similar goals in order to accomplish yours. Everyone starts out as a rookie in life. It is up to you to find life’s veterans and absorb their wisdom.

Materials I used.

1 white t-shirt
1 black t-shirt
Acrylic craft paint, mainly just green and purple
Green, black, and purple magic markers
1 sharpened No. 2 pencil
1 wooden board
Some Hulk comic books for Inspiration
Strong tape
And 1 grandmother that knows how to cut and sow fabric

The first part is simple enough. I put the white t-shirt on a flat board as if the board was wearing the shirt. It doesn’t matter if you want to paint on the front of the shirt or the back. Make sure you iron out any wrinkles, and remove any lint from the side you paint on. Then I taped arms of the shirt, and other loose areas to the other side of the board, so the shirt won’t move around when I paint.

I started to sketch out in pencil the figure of the Hulk unto the shirt. I used a picture from an old comic to copy from. An old comic book image is good, because the drawing style in those days was simple. I don’t like the digital rendering of comics these days. The images get so complex, it’s like you aren’t reading a comic book anymore. Anyways, I tried not to make really dark lines or shadows, because I didn’t want the pencil to show through the paint. That may not matter depending on how thick your paint is. I watered down my paint to the consistency of watercolor so it was really thin. Experiment, and find what works best for you.

Here I started to fill in the sketch with paint. Remember that acrylic paint is water based. You have to be mindful of what materials you work with, because as you can see, the paint bleeds a little. That meant I had to paint a little inside the lines of the sketch, and give the paint room to spread. If the paint spreads too much, don’t worry about it. You can always paint over it, or hide it with shadows or highlights later on.

Even though the Hulk is just green, you can use other colors to make different effects. For example, you don’t always have to use black to make shadows. I was mixing green with other hues of green and even blue, to make a darker color. Brown can be a good substitute for black too. I used pink to highlight the purple pants.

Sure there is a lot of technique to be learned in painting, but it is important not to confine yourself to rules from an art textbook. Use whatever materials you have in your home to make the effect you want. I decided to use permanent markers to accentuate the shadows around the waist area of the pants. After the marker dried, I would paint over the marker to make it look like the pants were in front of the shadows at the waist.

Since I was already painting on a white shirt, I choose to use the whiteness of the shirt as highlights on the arm and face. That is something you have to decide before you paint anything for obvious reasons. That is totally up to you though. I could have used white paint, or even office white out to give Hulk some nice, cavity free, teeth.

At the end, I painted thin blue horizontal lines for the background. I guess I could have done something more appealing to the eye. Maybe next time.

When I finished, I could have cut the Hulk out and framed the fabric I painted on. Instead, I decided to have my grandmother cut the painting out and sow it unto a black shirt. She sowed the outer edges of the rectangle as well as around the Hulk silhouette, keeping the Hulk flat against the black shirt. I didn’t see her do it, but she did a great job! Thanks Grandma! If your grandmother doesn’t sow, you can always get your local tailor to do it.

I’ve been painting a picture of the Incredible Hulk on a t-shirt for a while now. I’m almost done, but I feel like the painting is always looking back at me saying something like,

“Fix this, fix that.”
“That color looks off.”
“The proportions aren’t right.”
“Add more shadows.”

I know it’s not really the painting that’s too picky and unsatisfied; It’s me. All my artwork goes through the same hyper-scrutiny. No drawing is ever good enough, and so, a lot of my work goes unfinished. Before this painting, I can’t remember the last time I drew anything, let alone produce a finished work. Even though the Hulk isn’t coming out the way I want him to, I’m determined to get him finished.

We forget how easily we all produced works of art for our parents in kindergarten. We drew a house and a happy sun in the sky in 2 minutes flat, and showed the drawing off like it was being displayed in a museum. Sometimes those days seem too long ago. Over time, we learn to beat ourselves down, and count ourselves out. We learn to pick ourselves apart and let everything eat up our creativity.

No more of that crappy thinking. While bringing the Hulk to life, I learned a few things.

1. Remember what you have done! A lot of confidence can be gained from remembering past work that you are proud of. If you are fortunate enough to have an old work of art, hang it up. If you have an old research paper, reread it. Maybe last month you wrote a funny email. Dig it up. If you can’t think of anything, ask your friends. Sometimes we are blind to our greatest accomplishments. You might be surprised what other people appreciate about you.

2. Don’t try to impress others! Sometimes it is easy to get caught up on what others may think of your work. If you try to conform to everyone else then you will lose your own unique voice. Being unique is what makes your work appeal to others in the first place. There will always be people who don’t like your work. There’s nothing you can do about that. Just be you.

3. Relax! You aren’t performing heart surgery. Take a chill pill. Have some fun with what you are doing. You don’t have to separate focus and determination from having a little fun.

4. Take breaks! If you are getting bored with your project, take a short break and come back to it with a refreshed mindset. Your project won’t get up and walk away on its own. Pinky promise.

5. Don’t work when you are hungry! This is especially true when painting the Hulk, because he always looks hungry. Don’t starve yourself for the sake of getting something done faster. Your brain is supposed to feed you ideas, not your stomach.

Ok, time for dinner. Want to see the Hulk shirt I made? Stay tuned.

Image by Tedsblog