I am Justin Tadlock.

I am also a writer. A front-end developer. A gardener. A small-town Alabama kid just trying to figure out whatever it is that that folks are supposed to figure out on this journey. Welcome to my little home on the web.

Buying My Freedom

A lot of folks in the U.S. got some really great news this week, myself included. President Biden announced $10,000 worth of student loan forgiveness and $20,000 for those who received a Pell Grant (a program for low-income students) in college. Unless there is some fine print I’m missing, I … Continue reading →

Warrior

Sometimes art just takes you wherever you’re supposed to go, kicking and screaming if it has to. This painting turned out nothing like I had planned, but I am happy with the result. This was my first attempt at a portrait painting. I began by laying down a sketch with … Continue reading →

Abstract Stripes

I had a lot of fun with this painting. The goal was to experiment with new techniques and to see how specific colors worked together. I primarily painted this with cardboard containers that my cats’ canned food comes in, using a technique of pulling four colors down the canvas at … Continue reading →

Thirty-Eight

As I was walking back from the mailbox at the end of the drive last week, I stopped to take in the view (shown in the image above). The sky was breathtaking. My photo really doesn’t do it justice. For a moment, all was right with the world. I was … Continue reading →

Version Something Dot Oh

I finally pulled the trigger and updated this site to the latest version of the Blush framework. I also brought along a new design, something I’ve been furiously throwing together over the last week or so. I am really digging my drawing and painting pages with the design upgrade. The … Continue reading →

First Beta Release of Blush

When I released Blush 1.0-alpha two weeks ago, I don’t think I entirely grasped what I was getting myself into. For the first time, I was announcing the release of my very own flat-file CMS to the world. Sure, I had been running some mangled version of it here on … Continue reading →

Blush: Version 1.0 Alpha or Something Like It

Officially, this is the first blog post I have ever written in Blush. Well, technically, I have been writing in it for over three years now. But, I only recently came up with a real name for the project. Blush is a PHP-based, flat-file CMS that I have been developing … Continue reading →

Daisy

I continue to enjoy soft pastels and their ease of laying down color. It is sort of like being a kid again with the messiness of the medium but an adult-like version that allows the creation of something akin to decent art. I followed through with another tutorial, this time … Continue reading →

Colors of Kindness

After trying oil pastels, a medium I had not attempted since my formative years, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to dive into something that I really had not used in ages: color crayons. Yes, those wax crayons that we all learn to use in our youth. I had an old … Continue reading →