Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Am Proud Of Myself :P

This week was a pretty good one, creatively! I'm setting up and prepping a bunch of future fanart sketches involving some Pokemon Original Trainers (really looking forward to introducing the McHannon Cousins and Zed with their pokepals!), wrote a bunch of notes on what to include (and contemplating fanfic - sorry Z!), and picking color palettes. I am also trying to figure out if I'll do this 100% digital, 100% traditional, or a combination of the two... I'm leaning towards "combination".

But alongside that hubbub, I was also looking for references on Twitter and YouTube.

One of my favorite folks to follow on Twitter is @Weird_Animals. They posted this hilarious photo of a Double-Crested Cormorant and I... I could not resist. At all.

Behold, my first attempt at a non-spherical bird:

"FEESH NOW"; watercolor pencil on watercolor paper; 2021

I cannot stop laughing when I look at this piece. Seriously, it's just so goofy, and I can't wait to take it out of the notebook and scan it onto Redbubble.

For now, though, it's getting a little late, and I'm enjoying an author talk with my partner (it's Richard Lange discussing Rovers, and it involves vampires).

If you guys have any questions about my fanfiction ideas, feel free to tell me! I have never actually posted a fanfic on the internet before, so I'm a wee bit nervous, tbh.

I hope y'all are having a decent week. Mine's been pretty alright, to be honest. I have been having a headache around 5pm every day, which is weird, but it's probably dehydration. It always is.

Anywho, that'll do it for me!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Swear I'm Working Hard
And Not Just Hardly Working

It's been a Summer. Quite a Summer. Some days I feel like I'm endlessly floating in a humid pool of nonsense and others I feel like I'm hurtling towards some uncomfortable future at lightspeed.

Who knew...

Cereal makes me philosophical.

Today has been another hot and humid day (80℉/26.7℃ with 51% humidity). I woke up to cicadas outside, which I only hear when it's disgusting out. We don't get the constant summer scream where I live, and I truly feel bad for anyone with sensory issues who lives with an abundance of cicadas. Yikes. Sorry bros.

I think I mentioned yesterday that I tore up the backs of my ankles walking around town in the rain (worth it - that bookstore is loaded with sweet sweet literary goodness), and as of today they're still stiff and painful. Which means my plans for a walk were once more thwarted. I can't even use the treadmill. Wah.

I can, however, do crunches and situps (though not pushups, sadly), so I did those today. I also ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats for lunch, which was awesome and gave me some nice clarity and focus that lasted 3 whole hours! For reference, the focus hit I get off of coffee lasts maybe 15 minutes tops. I'm 99% sure it's psychosomatic, but that's fine because I also haven't snacked since the cereal. Win?

I'm also 99% sure that the latest birdur (murder-of-bird-by-bird) in my yard was perpetrated by a redtail hawk! I heard what sounded like a FURIOUS catbird on testosterone and went to the window and an enormous reddish brown raptor was sitting on top of a flattened pigeon under the bird feeder (RIP pigeon, sorry you got smooshed). When he saw me, we locked eyes and he SKRAAAAA'd at me one last time before taking off. For whatever reason, my phone blows at taking photos through my window (USA = window screens = focus issues galore but also less cat escapes and bug intake) so I do not have any photos worth sharing, but what an encounter!!!

Besides the big bad birdle borg not much has happened since Sunday's bookstravaganza and blisterpalooza. I almost went back to the bookstore today but needed my shower and so did not end up going. Maybe next Sunday if it's not pouring?

I'm hoping to do some sketching later today, maybe prep for another watercolor piece and test out my new erasers and pencil sharpener. Hopefully I also get to cook this week - I would like to try making bao! I'll let y'all know how it goes if I succeed. If you hear nothing, I did not succeed :P

I'm also hoping to get to work on some old crochet projects and maybe also start a gag gift for someone... we'll see if I can get that to work. I don't know if it will.

Anywho, that'll about do it for me! I'm riding that cereal high and about to go supplement it with coffee, despite the heat lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday(ish)

 

In Which I Am Always Late, It Seems...

I was supposed to start working on this blog over 12 hours ago, but I just can't seem to get going right now. How annoying. I will say this, though, my dreams last night were bizarre. I woke up right after having the equivalent of a political style cartoon imprinted on my dreamscape with a guy holding a large mason jar filled with orange tornadoes and bragging that he'd "collected the world's most valuable tornadoes".

What the heck, brain?

So it's been that kind of day - off-kilter and weird.

Also painful because my dumb butt walked 3.2mi (5.15km) in the pouring rain because I love books and there's a new bookstore in town...

It's a really nice bookstore.

I'll be going there a lot.

Unfortunately for me, about 3/4 of the way there, the backs of my ankles got blistered and now we're in the stiff-and-painful stage, so I couldn't take the 3 mile (4.8km) walk to the boardwalk I wanted to take. Today would've been a pretty good day for it - no rain.

Unlike the rest of the week.

But this is not the whining about things blog, that's tomorrow. Er... technically today.

This entry is specifically for my crochet work!

And I FINISHED SOMETING!

A cropped tanktop!

This garment has been in the works for quite a while, and... I'm not 100% pleased with it, but it's a great early effort, if I do say so myself. Which I do. Say so. Myself. uh... moving on.

Closeup on the construction

I feel terrible because I cannot for the life of me find the pattern I used for the yoke on this piece to recommend it to you. I want to say it may have been in another language because I couldn't understand the rest of the pattern and just freestyled the rest after the twisted-stitch yoke... which may have been less of a good idea than I'd hoped...

If you recommend this yoke pattern, please let me know lol

I used a simple V-stitch for most of the garment, though I did interrupt it every 14 rows with another round of the twisted stitch for cohesion. I wish I'd been more diligent about fit-testing as I went, though, because... boy is this revealing.

Like, I understand that croptops are short and meant to be a bit revealing but...

I made it too wide and the armholes WAY too deep.

I cannot wear this in public is what I'm saying.

Makes a wonderful sleep shirt, though, and now that I understand (partly) how I went wrong, I can probably make more tops in a similar vein!

So there you have it: my very belated Fiber Monday :P

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Friday Followup

 

Didja Miss Me?

Hey, so I know it's been a while, and I know I've been spectacularly bad at keeping up on my blog commitments, but... I have been a busy lil bee!

Last week I was waiting impatiently for my Arteza Watercolor Pencils to arrive from Amazon and while Amazon could shoot their founder into the upper atmosphere in an embarrassingly phallic rocket with no issues, they could not send my pencils in a timely fashion. It felt like it took forever. It didn't, and I've already whined about this ad nauseum, but there you go. While I waited, I plopped my paints into new containers from a discount store and stressed.

After they showed up, I started getting ready for a really cool trip to Boston with some friends, and that was a total blast! We ate a lot of food.

I took the pencils with me and... never really used them because we were busy as heck lol.

And yesterday, I couldn't post my art because I was dogsitting.

But here we are! And here are all of the pics & stories I wanted to tell you since last freaking week :P

THE REPOTTING SAGA

While testing my paints a while back I noticed that a lot of the paints were gummy or solid in the tube. They're watercolors, though, so I figured I could still use them if I found some way to reconstitute them inside the tube (I couldn't) or took them out of the tube and put them somewhere I could find them!

Enter: Cheap Dollar Store Containers

I bought three packs of cheap little containers for about a buck a pack, and each pack had 8 containers, so I had plenty to repot my tubes into tubs! Some were very liquid (one of the greens actually filled the bottom!) but especially the brown tones like Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber were totally solidified and unsqueezable.

My dad's utility knife with epoxy-gummed blade plus the gutted tubes of paint

Fortunately, once I had everything all untubed there wasn't too much of a mess - just a bunch of sharp metal tubes, some wrappers off of the sleeves of containers, the box the paints came in, and a few napkins!

And some paint splotches on my fingertips

Mostly of the runnier blues

Two days after the repotting experience, though, part 2 of the saga commenced:

THE WATERCOLOR PENCILS

Yay Pencils! In a box that made sense and was the right size!

My poor mail carrier must've thought I was going (more) crazy when he pulled up with the box - I actually did the "fist-pump for joy" thing you see in 80s movies. I was so excited I'd have hugged the poor guy if he hadn't high-tailed it back to his truck and rumbled down the street at top speed lol.

What a weird day that was! One mail truck pulled up across the street and delivered to my neighbor before leaving and then 40 minutes later, our mail showed up!

The Pretty Pretty Tin

I don't know why I was under the impression that the pencils would be coming in a cardboard sleeve when it says "comes in a tin" in like four places on the order, but I was very pleasantly surprised! The tin is heavy and sturdy and has a pleasant matte finish everywhere except the outline of the red box, the words "WATERCOLOR PENCILS" and the box around the word "EXPERT", which are shiny metal.

The tin itself is very difficult to open one-handed, which is very good, since it means it won't just randomly open if you're bringing it with you to sketch on the go, and the inside of the lid has swatches, numbers, names, and lightfastness rating of all 72 colors!

I'm planning to swatch each color by lightfastness rating, which ranges from + (Extremely Lightfast) to +++++ (Less Lightfast), though it does not say anywhere what those distinctions mean. By the Wikipedia page on Lightfastness, I'd guess they're using an ASTM rating system so + level pencils will hold color for over 100 years and +++++ pencils will hold theirs for only up to 2 years. Wild!

So. Many. Colors!!!

I haven't finished with my swatches yet, so my apologies for not including the whole gamut.

I packed the pencils for my trip to Boston, and here are some of the things I ate and where to find them (when I can remember where lol).

Go Go Curry! Medium Pork Katsu curry with a boiled egg and sausages
H-Mart food court

An amazing roast pork bun from a food court in an arts college
which was... an adventure!

12 Dollar Bento lunch at Karma in Westford, Mass
My lunch was:
A9 (Sweet & Sour Chicken), Miso Soup (not pictured), Chicken Fingers, Spicy Tuna Maki, White Rice
10/10 would recommend!

I was in the Boston Area from Sunday til Tuesday and I only drew a couple times while I was there because the adventure was non-stop! But now that I'm home here is:

THE ART:

"A Cool Pylon Seen on the Way to Boston, July 2021";
Watercolor Pencil & ink on watercolor paper; 2021

"Highest Colorfast Pencils 1"; watercolor pencil on watercolor paper; 2021

"Highest Colorfast Pencils 2"; Watercolor pencil on watercolor paper; 2021

"Undersea 1"; watercolor pencil on watercolor paper; 2021

And there you have it - a lot of the things I have been up to since I went radio silent!

All watercolor pencil pages were then gone-over with the water brushes, and I'm really looking forward to playing around even more with them! I still really want to go back over my old Pokemon teams and try to draw the trainers, so maybe that's what I'll do next?

I also really loved drawing that underwater scene! I used some references from WikiSpecies by hitting "Random Page" over and over until images of sea life appeared lol.

But that'll about do it for me tonight. If I find out were I got those awesome roast pork buns from I'll add it to a future post.

I hope you're all doing alright out there, and...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Continue to be Inconsistent lol

I was literally just joking with my partner yesterday that I'd be late as usual putting up a blog and here we are - yet another Talk About Tuesday being posted on a Wednesday because I cannot for the life of me get my crap together lol!

To be fair, though, I promised myself I wouldn't post this without a finished Fiber Monday Project and this one has been a real strange one! Unfortunately, like most things I promise myself, this one fell through :| Got to finish the project tomorrow instead.

This week has been... weird. It hasn't been bad or anything, just odd. Everyone around me is getting ready for one thing or another, everyone seems to have something happening, big or small, and my ability to focus on any one subject, topic, or action has dwindled to nearly nothing.

You know the ADHD joke with the squirrels? Yeah. Like that.

But super disruptive and annoying.

Sometimes I can tunnel-vision through a project, head down and off I go, but this week I've been so spastic I haven't been able to do that. I have let half a dozen cups of coffee go cold, haven't touched my tea (bad Casual, drink your tea!), barely managed to pick up snacks for last Sunday, and the biggest goal I had - get a haircut - literally took two days to arrange.

I haven't had a great track record this week for getting things done.

So far I have:

• Called for a haircut appointment 8 times in two days, finally reaching them on Monday to set up an appointment for Friday
• Ordered the watercolor pencils I desperately wanted only to have them wait to ship until today (I ordered them last Thursday!!!) so we'll see if I get any art out...
• Took all the bottles back to the redemption center for pocket change
• Took all the trash into the basement so it wasn't in my bedroom
• Did two loads of laundry and forgot about them for long periods of time in both the washer and dryer

So yeah. Seven days and that's what I've done. I haven't sketched since Thursday. I haven't done much of anything except flap around like a beheaded cockerel and busy my hands with crochet :|

I've been forced by sleepiness to set aside the crochet for the night, which is frustrating because I think I only had 1.5 rounds left before just doing edging :(

Still, it was the right call because I have literally misspelled every word I've typed in the last ten minutes.

Take it from me, folks, sometimes, as they said on The Road to El Dorado: "The stars are wrong for this sacrifice. That's right. Stars. Can't do it."

In this case, though, the stars are my time management skills which have never been good, if you could even call them existent... most of my teachers would say they're nonexistent.

I do hope that I'm less scattered and dopey in the next week or two, though. I have plans and I need to be conscious and sensible (more or less) for them!!!

Try not to be too hard on yourselves when your brain just won't do what you want it to do, yeah? If you're anything like me, you get very frustrated and angry when you cannot think today and have the dumb. If the usual coping strategies aren't working, if nothing you try to control your output with works, if you're at the point of throwing up your hands and calling yourself names, remember:

You're a bunch of electricity pulsing through soggy bacon in a bone-dome piloting a faulty meat mech while hallucinating so hard you experience the world and everything in it.

Sometimes there'll be technical difficulties. 

Sometimes they'll be annoying and hard to cope with.

Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it (though you should still test all the possible solutions to see if they'll work!).

Sometimes the work doesn't get done in time and you post your Tuesday blog at 2AM on a Wednesday.

C'est la vie or whatever.

I hope any of that made sense lol!

That'll do it for me tonight!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Have Pictures For You!

That's right - in spite of the fact that I accidentally chucked my pallet (oops - I'll have to get to work on that) and couldn't find any watercolor pencils to do undersketching in time, I have two new pictures for you!

"Fantasy Landscape"; Watercolor on paper; 2021

So first up, we have a "Fantasy Landscape" which I'm pretty happy with as random watercolor warmups go! This was made by randomly laying down colors until the whole page was finished, and then I let it dry. I'd like to try other, more abstract, works with water color so until my new pencils show up from the internet (because I still can't get a straight answer on whether or not the local art shop closed due to the pandemic...) that might be what I'm up to!

"Geostriping"; Bic Intensity Fineliner on watercolor paper; 2021

This is another idea I'm pretty happy with. Next time I try it, I'll use a bigger piece of paper, more colors, and a ruler, but as a first attempt, it's pretty solid! I love geometric designs and I adore these colors, so this was a lot of fun!

Now you're probably wondering why I'm suddenly all aflutter about watercolor pencils, and it's really quite simple:

I want to be able to draw things and then watercolor them in.

It's that simple. I just want to be able to take some water pens on the road and draw.

I'd love to be able to grab my bike and ride down to the waterfront, my art supplies in the little basket at the front with my water bottle and a sandwich... so that's my plan!

I also want to bring my little sketchbook and pencils for regular sketches - sometimes graphite it the way to go, after all!

Anyway, I just wanted to share some updates with y'all regarding the art struggles :)

Go Enjoy Something!!!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Ate A LOT of Cheese this Week and it's only Tuesday...

American Independence Day has come and gone, and it was a weird one this year. I went to a concert in the rain so I could celebrate my dad getting a tile at the veterans' monument in my town (he's not dead - the monument is for literally anyone who served or is serving in any branch of the Armed Forces...), got soaked, and then was able to meet up with my partner as a bit of a surprise.

We celebrated this surprise visit with a block of brie and some summer sausage while watching a bunch of Irish Lads talk about the Hobbit movie. And we also ordered a pizza and bread bites. Which we annihilated and washed down with Coke & Mt Dew...

Yes, I'm that gluttonous. No, I don't regret it.

Yes, I'll absolutely do it again some day.

That being said, I really should be kinder to my poor body - it puts up with rather a lot from me.

So of course Monday saw me jamming it full of too much coffee and hot chocolate.

Today, though, I made a little plate (and I mean little - they're 6" plates [approx 15.24cm]) of Cathedral City Vintage Cheddar (10/10 do recommend), some dry salami, four crackers and a cup of tropical fruit.

I have eaten that and two Strawberry Pop Tarts today. Plus 2 cups of mocha and a half liter of water. I already feel better lol!

This might sound weird, but I don't really have any major plans for this week - I've got ideas but I haven't got a clue how to get started on them, so I don't want to blather on about things right now. I have the most tentative of tentative plans for this week:

• Go shopping for snax & random stuff on Wednesday
• Maybe see if I can repot my watercolor paints
• Check prices on watercolor pencils
• Look for my set of watercolor pencils even though I know half of them are shattered inside
• Gather a bunch of reference images
• Test-Sketch some ideas out
• Try to walk a couple miles by Sunday
• Drink more water
• Eat more cheese because it's delicious
• Try to paint some more

We'll see how many of these I get done this week lol!

As for today, it's hot in my room, warm downstairs, and hot in the sun. The ambient temp is about 78℉ (25.6℃) with about 68% humidity. It's partly sunny out there, and the squirrels have been play-fighting all day. My cat has become obsessed with my tote filled with torn pants I want to make things out of. I am wearing yoga pants and a Peanut Butter Gamer t-shirt because I had no plans to leave the house today and have succeeded in those plans lol.

Is anyone else feeling the inertia this week? Is it just me? Are things you love coming harder? Or am I just overtired and under-exercised...

It's probably that last one :|

Anywho, I'm going to go try to figure out how to draw various goofy animals as Japanese warriors.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

Guess Who Forgot To Post Until Midnight Again?!

I have no excuse. Today wasn't even that hot - it never got above 75℉ (23.9℃) outside, was barely sunny, and never got above 80℉ (26.7℃) in the house. I just... never got around to posting. I didn't even get around to sketching today. It was a very hard-to-focus kind of day.

I lost track of time, conversations, random crap around the house, and I spent three minutes looking for my razor in the shower when I was holding it in my other hand. It's just... it's been that kind of day.

So sorry it took me so long to post!

But I do have at least one image for this week:

"Misty Afternoon 1"; watercolor on watercolor paper; 2021

For having limited lighting, no plan, and having completely forgotten my techniques, I'm pretty okay with how this little waterdoodle came out! I'll be doing other landscapes and hopefully a cityscape some time (hmmm... violet does make a very nice sky, especially when it fades to rose...) - and I have some killer sketch ideas thanks to some friends of mine!

Now, just so I don't keep harping on how much I suck I want to immortalize the few things I did manage to do today, focus be damned.

• I managed my first attempt at darning (which I'll show off next Monday I think...)
• I unraveled two failed crochet projects and started another new one
• I learned about the Colosseum in Rome!
• I dug up my favorite summer top!
• I put away two more skeins of yarn
• I obtained a new skein of very pretty cotton yarn
• I finally detangled one of my Big Spools of cotton thread
• Came up with an idea to draw each of my OC Trainers & their starters... Haven't thought about Flare (Crystal) and Sabore (Red) in literal years. Mick (GO!) I see regularly, and I don't even remember what I named my poor Y trainer. I think my Moon trainer is named Haku... Anywho, I'll try to remember everything and throw them onto a page. May have to include a new OC I've been thinking of, too. I'll have to figure out how to draw tattoos though... And Porygon.
• Also dug up some capris I'll probably need tomorrow (if I don't need pants - I heard it might be something ridiculous like 58℉ (14.4℃) somehow!)

That looks... like rather a lot, to be honest.

No wonder I'm tired.

That and it's technically Friday...

Oops!

Well, that'll do it from me for now...

So Go Enjoy Something!

FC