<b>(TODAY'S ADDITIONAL BLURB)</b><br><br>So my once-invincible G5 Mac is getting senile; my Photoshop crashed on me in mid progress at 11PM, and then the entire operating system decided to konk out as I was finishing up the intended shirt at 2:45AM. Needless to say I had to re-start, and shame on me for breaking the first rule of working digitally: ALWAYS SAVE YOUR WORK IMMEDIATELY. As it was, I hadn't saved anything which leads us to a very impromptu re-issue of the third most-voted shirt, but a month early. It's okay though, I have my own thoughts as to whether the shirt I was finishing up was something I should have been sharing anyways, so who knows... Regardless, I present to you our 3rd Official Re-Issue: "Telegram For A Distant Country".<br><br>I decided to change up the colorway too, since I'm already breaking my own rules by doing an unretirement a month too early. I really like this shirt (I'm in fact wearing mine right now, wasn't intended at all...), and since it was the simplicity of the scripture that appealed to you, I decided to mix it up and print it on blue because (1) I like blue, (2) we don't have enough navy blue shirts, (3) you who have white ones can have another one since it's a different color. This opens up future Re-Issues with different colorways, which may be a great or a terrible thing, but let's deal with that when that day comes. For now, I hope that the original inspiration for this shirt below can hit just as fresh as it did back then. And if you're new, then soak it all in for the first time! Love you all, please pray for me, I'm getting close to a burn-out wearing my faith on my proverbial sleeve (and literal too! Ba-Boom-Psh!), so please please I appreciate your prayers. I actually will append this post later today with some more sincere stuff that led up to what today's shirt was supposed to be, but seeing that it's 330AM, I will leave it til I'm in a more articulate state... So check back again and again! <br><br><b>(ORIGINAL POST)</b><br><br>Salil said this morning he appreciates that even though I may have a distinct illustrative style, once in a while I'll come up with something that is out from left field that doesn't seem to fit. I'm not sure if that subconsciously governed my methodology for today's design, but I do know that this is a most definite left-field moment, brought on by numerous mental wrestling matches throughout the day. <br><br>There were no cool connect-the-dot moments today, and I felt like there was a lot to live up to in order to be on par with Maverick Double-Five One-Niner. During my quiet time, I got really excited at what I was studying in scripture because of certain freshness that came about (ok, so I guess I lied, there was THAT one connect-the-dot moment), but as I tried to communicate it visually in my sketchbook, it just would not materialize. I spent about 3-4 hours in stillness trying to find inspiration past the blocks, but the combination of trying to better the previous design and trying to manufacture another cool connect-the-dot moment just left me frustrated. My best recourse at that point was to eat an entire Totino's oven-baked pizza folded like a taco, and needless to say it achieved no progress for my work. <br><br>When my frustrations and anxieties reached its critical point, I began childishly pointing my finger at God for not dropping idea bombs on me when I most needed it; however not long after I started that ill-fated process of challenging God, clarity eased in and showed me the source of my anxieties: everytime I experience some level of "success", and by success I mean the reception of tons of positive ego strokes, I tend to misappropriate the praises to my own talents and achievements and begin to indulge in warped self-entitlement, always resulting in very very deep insecurities about my worth. Honestly, the bird was cool cause I was being me that day- today's process was NOT cool cause I was trying too hard to be who I was two days ago. After that aha-moment, I just decided to throw all my try-to-hard visual ideas out the window and step out in faith and just put the scripture on the shirt; it is, after all, what inspires the things that I do.<br><br>So there's my left field moment: playing with just type. It's not my strongest area, but I did finally have fun after an entire day's worth of agonizing over it. The greatest part of this whole process though was the fresh revelation I mentioned earlier: God is always calling His sons and daughters home from the distant countries they've abandoned their inheritance for, and in Jesus we have our steward who makes sure that we get back home safely. Super obvious it may already be, but sometimes all you need is the most simple of things to remind you of what's actually substantial in life. The greatness of what I'm blessed with isn't the art itself, but the scripture that inspires it... so here it is in its beautiful simplicity. 2009-07-09T10:28:27Z 10 23 37 /images/090507TelegramRI-990.jpg /images/090507TelegramRI-640.jpg /images/090507TelegramRI-244.jpg JesusBranded reveals the blueprint of simple scripture on this Christian T-shirt 59 7 59 /images/090507TelegramRI-shirts.jpg 2009-07-09T19:50:03Z telegramRI 2009