Change your ideas or The irony of belief

I used to think 'Give me a man with 1,000 ideas and no beliefs and I'll show you a genius.'
The reason I thought that was the line of thought that you can change an idea but a belief is something that you carry with you forever. You learn your beliefs at a young age and for the most part they stick with you.
Belief: Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction.
Idea: A concept or mental impression.

The first is "firmly held" meaning we're not likely to want to or have the motivation to change them. The second is "a concept" and seems to me at least a lot more fluid and able to change. Ideas are easy to change. I've got an idea how this post is going to go, but if I find that I want to change it and go in a different direction then that's pretty easy to do.

One of the things I've come up against in the past few weeks and months is, how many of these beliefs do I really have? What do I really believe about myself and how much of that is so far from the truth about who I really am? How much of what I see in the world around me do I really believe is real? Me and my beliefs are like a lady walking through a market with half a ton of bananas on her head and asking where she can find bananas and wondering why shes so tired.

Can I change a belief? Sure. Beliefs can change. You just have to take their power away from them and shift them to ideas first. An idea, to me, presumes that you don't know the whole story and are willing to accept other pieces of the puzzle before calling the picture what it is.
What I'm coming to is: Fuck your beliefs! I've gone so long in life with so many negative beliefs that I'm ready to vomit (almost literally) them all over the floor. I'm fucking done with it. Fuck passiveness, fuck ideas of failure, fuck defensiveness, double fuck some dishonesty, and to hell with AstroTurf as a legitimate surface to play sports on! Okay, I never held the belief that AstroTurf was a good idea... just wanted to get that out just in case.

If you've been on here lately you've seen some of my paintings. I've been painting over old ideas with new pictures. They weren't bad ideas, they weren't (that) poorly executed either. Those ideas just didn't serve my purpose anymore. So, I changed them. My external is reflecting what's going on inside and that's not a bad thing right now. With that in mind, here's one more for you with some explanation as well:

So this was a painting that I did because it was all symbolic and shit of my struggle from the dark to the light and reaching up for help. Meh. It was okay. But at the time it was how I was feeling. Grasping for answers and a way out of a funk that I was in. At no time did I picture myself as the golden hand from the top reaching down to help. I was always the hand reaching from the darkness.
Now, overall I didn't like the execution of this and the hands looked a bit funny to me. It was also outside of my kitchen so I passed it about 100 times a day and it was a subtle little reminder that I'm constantly reaching for help and it's always just out of reach. Time to change my mind...

 I like that fire to sky look. And I wanted something that when I passed it would remind me to question me. Who am I and what am I doing today?
Well... I'm a fucking Aries! That's what I am! Raaaaaaar! Even my name means: Strong; Manly, and Virile!
"Andrew originates in Greek language and means "virile, manly". In the New Testament, Andrew was an apostle and the first disciple of Jesus."

Ok, so this is what it came out like. Ta-Da!
Sorry for the glare... no wait. Fuck your problem with the glare! Aries coming through assholes! Hahaha. Just kidding.
I added the Ram's head from a stencil I made (red of course) and some stars at the top. I did all the stars in white except the Aries constellation which is in gold. (Top right if you're looking for it).


So this is just some of me changing some ideas and I have no problem with that. What I do still have issues with is finding more of these beliefs and getting them the hell out of the way and changed over as well. It's okay to have beliefs. Truly believe in yourself dear reader. Believe in Love, Forgiveness, Your fellow man as your brother, God... Believe away! Just make sure your beliefs are serving you as much as you may be serving them.
"Question but keep Faith"... I should put that on a bumper sticker.

Another paint over

So this was Cookie Monster. He was in my bathroom for the past year and always made me smile. However, he just wasn't colorful enough for me anymore, so I decided to get some paints out and give him a total makeover...

With the blending techniques that I learned from the last one, I just covered him up (you can still see a bit of his outline at the bottom here) and started with my sky and horizon.

Then, I added some stacked rocks, some shading on them, and some "shadows" down in the water. 

Made some more water and then added the outline of my vines. 

I didn't like some of the rock's shading, so I cleaned them up and tried adding a "fallen vine" on one of the rocks. Here you can see the start of the thousands of dots I needed to do for the flowers on the vines too. 

Final product after adding more yellow, pink, and white dots. And painting over the vine on the rocks because I just didn't like the way it was going. 

And... I'm done. Hope y'all like it and I'll be back in a few days to post an update on me I'm sure.