HBNY

Heheh, I've been performing beneath, far beneath all prior expectations*. I haven't been updating this blog for a while. Let me try to bring y'all up to speed in as little words as possible.

*While typing that sentence, while pondering the opposite to the word 'beyond', I realized that the word stems from 'yond', which is what the word 'yonder' is built on. I love 'yonder'.

I've completed two paintings since last post, and am working on another. I present them here:

By the way, I bought a huge sketchbook (hence photos rather than scans) and some "watercolor pencils" which are just like color pencils, except if you wet the marks with a brush they dissolve into paint, just like watercolor. I use them in the rather weak painting you see above.

I like this painting a lot better (above). I didn't use any watercolor pencils, just a single brush and some tubes of paint. I kind of like the tree texture and the shadows on the terrain of the rock's surface. Simple, crisp tone borders like on the tree and rock are like music to my eyes (if they could hear). Maybe this is how I should work. I've tried painting infinitely subtle gradations in color change, but I only end up muddling up everything, mixing more paint than I ought to, and generally ruining things. I don't like mixing lots of colors, but I like to apply them to the painting (if the color is right). Maybe if I could more intelligently go about the painting so I need less colors and can think more about applying them, I could be better. I don't like painting my characters though. My next painting will focus less on them and more on their surroundings, because I liked my first painting where they were only silhouettes and the forest was the main character. It will also feature an actual non-white background.

Acrylic painting is fun and frantic. The paint dries very quickly, and when I paint, I paint like a madman. I don't have time to make many decisions about color mixing. Although if you saw me, You'd think I was working at snail's pace, in my mind it feels like playing a complex sonata on the guitar in front of a friend who is waiting for a finger to slip. It's hectic, and I like it.

Here is a painfully amateurish comic I drew for grandmother on Christmas:

I hope you get it. Like bad comedian, I will now explain it: I envision some sort of top secret government US air control type facility, which detects Santa entering US airspace without a permit. Summarily, he is blasted 'ta smithereens.

By the way, hooking up my camera to post some of the pictures above (for the first time since I got it 2 years ago) I found lots of pictures I took. Here are some:

There was this really interesting seaside cave. There were stairs leading inside, and this is what you saw. That's my mother and my brother below.

Above: a really interesting shrine built into the side of some seacliffs.

Above: another, except smaller.

Above: A slightly interesting sink.

I climbed into a very interesting place to take this picture above.

Here: a picture of some surprisingly fancy johns.

A wooden structure serving some ominous, unknowable purpose.

Starting above are pictures I took on a boat ride into a cave.

Some boy and his mother leaned over this railing and waved at us: we waved back.

This was an interesting man aboard the boat. I took his picture from my hip, pretending not to be staring at him, but it kind of looks like I wasn't fooling him.

Finally, this is an iron frog I bought for my dad at a tourist shop. There were a bunch like these, all custom made, one of a kind pieces of art, most probably by some individual local artist. There were no names or signatures, but I appreciate whoever that person was. I see this happen a lot. Just a while ago, at a garden deco depo, I found a custom made, one of a kind painting on a plate of metal with a hook to be hanged on. It was acrylic painting, too, and it was a good painting, but no name, again. I'll show you a picture some time (I bought, it was too god not to be bought).

Thank you for reading this ridiculously long post, and Happy Belated New Years!