Art and "fuck the assignment, this is how I feel."

It's a good thing that I was pursuing an art degree and not something in business/science because I don't think my rebellious attitude would have carried over well if I wrote whatever I wanted on a science term paper.
Actually, this happened in one of my gen-ed classes, where there was some weird grading system going on where instead of the professor having to read and grade all of our papers, we would instead pass them to the right and whoever that person was would read and grade them for a portion of our midterm grade.
I think I'm a pretty decent writer.
The girl I was sitting next to didn't and trashed my essay.
In return, the next paper that I wrote for her to read and score was a 12 page several thousand word long poem, in full meter and verse.
Okay, so maybe I was like the people who try to pay their parking tickets by handing a helpless city employee a bucket full of pennies.
But at the time, I was really feeling the need to assert my own independence and identity.
I guess going from a strict upbringing to the discipline of the military might have pushed me into delayed adolescent rebellion, but a lot of it was trying to come to terms with the overpowering emotions that PTSD and TBI were flooding my head with.

I accidentally stumbled across this picture from this time period and it illustrates my point perfectly.
My sister had flown out from California to visit, and we visited Milwaukee to attend Summerfest .
Before the concert we went to a "painting bar," which is a group painting class - with alcohol.
Recipe for fun right? OK let's look a little closer.

Okay, we DID have fun right after that at the concert, and I don't think my sister minded me taking the "fun" a bit too far since she's an artist too and has always supported my artwork.
Since you can't see in the picture, the little green blob about to get devoured at the center of that painting is a cross-legged meditating figure.
In my studio art classes, I made a habit of stretching the assignment as far as I could while still staying within the general guidelines.
Usually, my professors didn't care because I poured a lot of work into everything that I did and was good at participating in critiques and respecting the classroom space.
However, I ran into a problem in a black and white still-life class when i painted this, and ended up pissing off the professor and half the class.

I was having a bad day. I called this piece war inside war outside
Ironically, it kept coming back to haunt me because the online community I was sharing with at the time liked it better than most of my intensive work because of its raw emotion, even though it took probably 20 minutes to paint.
Having 8-10 hours of nightmares every night has a way of wearing you down.
I included the still life subject matter we were supposed to be painting, but used it to demonstrate how I was feeling: surrounded and penned in by emotions that felt overwhelming. I saw red.
At that time, I wasn't receiving any kind of effective counseling treatment.
As a matter of fact, I had been started off with a method of counseling that the VA was trying out on veterans with PTSD that was making it 10 times worse.
Since then, I have had counselors who have done a lot to help me, so this isn't a judgment of Veteran Affairs.
I actually re-painted the still life later. Behold war inside but you can't tell now boring outside boring boring

I was still doodling through all of my non-studio classes to keep the anxiety at bay, and this is the last of the "demonic" pieces.

There's hope in it right? Michael the archangel can get out of this one?
Yeah, I don't think so.
Here are 3 more doodles from this time period.

Do you have pencil, paper, and a thought in your head? Then you can cartoon!
Be sure to enter my weekly cartooning contest #cartoon-off. Otherwise, try to stop by and support the talented contributing cartoonists!
https://steemit.com/cartoon-off/@corpsvalues/first-weekly-cartoon-contest-cartoon-off