Thursday Art Walk

 

Oh yeah I have a blog...

So yes, I completely flaked this week on blogging. I'm fine - not sick or even all that exhausted. I was just playing too much Tears of the Kingdom to get anything done, like a dweeb. Before anyone asks, I am absolutely not going to hurt the Koroks on purpose. I get why people are annoyed with the lil dudes, but I'm not gonna magic up a rotisserie machine to torment them. They just wanna find their awkwardly located friends.

I do totally Ultrahand them and walk them over to their bros when possible. I find it hilarious to walk past NPCs who cannot see the Koroks because they're probably wondering why Link, the Hero of Hyrule, the Princess's Appointed Night, He Who Wields The Sword of Evil's Bane and who crushed the Calamity, is wandering Hyrule with his right hand in the air, eyes trained on an invisible point. Is he seeking Zelda? Has he gone mad? Is he secretly a Yiga spy? What is going on there?!

Anywho, yeah, I haven't got much work done.

But my most consistent Requester sent me a Request via Ko-Fi asking me to draw some Food (a new category), so I did succeed (after a loooooot of trial and error, believe me) in painting something fun in Krita!

"Taco Time"; Digital art; 2023
[FOOD]

I'm really proud of how this taco came out. I'm still figuring out how to use copy/paste, how to use layers, how to combine brushes and colors, etc, and this, I think, shows how far I've come!

Yes, it's a taco with lettuce & tomato. I just wanted to experiment with multiple ways to paint tomato slices, and yes, the beef is absolutely coated with cheese, but I think it looks tasty, don't you?

Now, this almost didn't happen because that fresh battery we popped in my 2-in-1? It was throwing errors. Dell's horrible obsession with OEM-only part compatibility really bit me in the butt. We had to pop the battery out and close it back up empty.

And my regular laptop was also out of commission, because it was very very sick, so I couldn't even throw on Krita on my main laptop with my XP Pen! My main laptop started randomly freezing and refusing to work. When we finally got around to troubleshooting the first thing my dad & I noticed was that my battery was starting to bloat - major bad news. That wasn't the cause of the freezing, though, because it was still freezing without the battery in it at all. In the end, my dad had me switch my hard drive into his old E7450. It's the exact same laptop as mine, but it doesn't have a crack on the side, the mouse buttons aren't jiggly, it's not full of my hair (yet), and the touchpad's matte finish has worn off in spots.

Also it hasn't frozen since the Swap.

We're waiting on a new battery for the 2-in-1 I use for art, but it still works when it's plugged in, so that's how I spent last night and this afternoon - painting a taco in Krita!

That's enough from me, I think.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Filmic Friday 240: Scarface

Scarface; 1983

If you're a film fanatic, you've probably seen Scarface before, so nothing I tell you will surprise you. If, however, you're a novice to modern film and you don't know anything about this movie, the buckle up, because it's way more than just the originator of a thousand pop-culture references.

This is a really, really good example of how the movie plays, too!

So Scarface is the story of Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who comes to America to make a living. That sounds great, right? Except Tony Montana is a killer before we ever meet him. He's a hit man. He's a con artist. He's a very bad man. But you can't help but want to see him succeed, despite the fact that he is, by the standards of most moralities, quite evil.

Yes, he only somewhat values human life. Yes, he sees nothing wrong with selling or even using drugs. Yes, he has no respect for the law.

But he loves children. He really wants to be the father he never had. He wants to have a wife and babies and to love and be loved.

He's just utter garbage at that part, though.

See, Tony Montana loves kids, but he loves money just as much, and money is much easier to come by in 1980s Miami.

I'll spare you the total overview of the movie and skim past his uneasy relationship with his mother. I'll skip past the strange relationship with and overprotective streak he has for his sister. I'll even skip over his doomed friendships and partnerships over the years. I'll just say this: If Tony wants, Tony takes.

Including his first boss's cokehead wife.

Tony's story is one of violence - every facet of his life is bound up in violence from the moment he steps off the boat to the moment he steps off the mortal coil.

There's one particular scene where that stands out - his first drug buy gone horribly wrong.

And while we never see quite what happened, we do know that it's about as horrific as it can be.

So what makes Scarface a good movie? Everything. It's a beautifully written story that is so tight and twisted you'd believe it was 100% true if you didn't know better. It's a fantastically directed film where the camera is always where it should be when it should be there with lighting and sound design to match. The score is exquisite and compliments everything perfectly.

It's a masterwork.

And then there's the acting, which is intense. Pacino is both comically over-the-top and deadly serious as Tony Montana, and he drags every single other person with him to their best possible performances. It's amazing to see.

So if you were on the fence about seeing Scarface, I can assure you, it's a spectacular film. I can also promise you that, despite being an intensely violent film, it's not anywhere near the level of a modern crime film. There are buckets of blood, but nothing feels like it's... icky. When there is blood, it serves its purpose, no more, no less.

You should absolutely see this film.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC