Today I had a nap. And when I opened my eyes afterward, the first thing I thought was, OMG I feel so well rested and refreshed! That is exactly the thing I needed! I am so glad that I decided to make time for that.

Things in life don’t need to be huge to be good.

Today's art post is a definite departure, and has a curious history.

There's this woman named Heidi whom I see on my social media through mutual acquaintances. We like each other's posts but don't directly talk all that much. But yesterday, I suddenly got a message from her on Instagram:


I blinked for a while before replying:


Then, this back from her:


Fair enough.

And so I gave the matter some thought. I could take it as a sort of commission, I guess. Plus, Heidi is a striking woman, and the chances of getting some good art out of this were not insubstantial. So I browsed thru her Instagram and came across this pic, which convinced me to go for it:



I chose this one cuz it shows off her strong, sharp facial features which give her real character, as well as her stunning indigo mane. However, I chickened out on trying to capture that indigo, and decided to work in grayscale -- where I have decades more experience to provide me with better control. (When attempting a likeness, control matters a lot.) Looking over the pic and figuring out how best to render its various aspects, I hit upon a mixed media approach which I have never tried before: a combo of ink [both Pigma Micron markers and India ink with a brush], pencil to keep the skin tones and details delicate, and watercolor for gray washes to capture the energy of the print blouse.

And, much to my surprise, I ended up very happy with the final result. Whatever its shortcomings as a perfect likeness might be, I think it's a decent little drawing, all told.

My twenty-ninth acrylic painting is another in my UK series. This is a view you can see if you walk up to the Cutty Sark Museum, then turn and look back into town. Our flat in Greenwich [when we stayed there a week in 2017] was close by, and we could see the top few sections of the spire from our bedroom window. We were there in July that year, and I can remember being able to read the time on the clock in daylight before 5am [Greenwich Time, of course].

I painted this as a gift for Sharon's birthday (which is today). Luckily, she likes it.

My 28th painting is another in my UK Series, and yet another old church in York. It took me a long time to work up the nerve to finish this one, for some reason. Like Minster Gates, this one was intended to be a gift for Sharon, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't like this new one as much. [And, as it eventually turned out, I was right in that -- she didn't.]

In the reference photo I took, the setting sun made the building look much pinker than it actually is. But I liked that aspect, and decided to push it here. So I knew going in that I would be taking a more expressionistic approach than something like Minster Gates, which seems to me very much an impressionist work. [Again, Sharon's feedback confirms me in my evaluation. She said that Minster Gates “up close looks like odd blobs and smears, but stand back and it looks like a photo” -- a pretty fair description of impressionism, I'd say.]

I didn't want to get so caught up in the details in this one, didn't want to evoke that photo experience, but rather focus on the colours and basic shapes. So I painted this one without wearing my glasses, so as to keep everything soft and vague. What I ended up with here reminded me of some of Gabriele Münter's work. Since she is my hero, I am gonna call that a win.

reaching a goal

Last January 1, I told myself I wanted to try and draw something, good or bad, but something, every single day for the entire year. And it was a leap year, so that meant at least 366 drawings.

Yesterday I drew for my 366th consecutive day and passed the finish line. This, as far as I can recall, is the first year in my life that I managed to draw every day without fail. So yeah, I am kinda pleased. Also looking forward to a break from the relentless deadlines.  :P

my grandmother's eyes

They were a beautiful, deep, warm, luminous brown that always brought to my mind the word lambent. They remained vivid and vibrant her entire life, and I can still remember them as clearly as I can remember anything.
 

I have been feeling flu-ish since last Tuesday. On Friday my doctor sent me to get tested for covid. Just got my results back today -- NEGATIVE!! Woot!!

I recently read that Kurt Vonnegut claimed writers have a defining moment that more or less informs their oeuvre. He said that his was the realization that his parents weren't happy, but could have been, and why weren't they. I leave it to you to decide if that concept is lying within his works. But it got me thinking about a moment that I have long felt is definitive for me.

I remember that I was eleven, and it was summer, and I was alone, lying face down in the front yard, closely examining the grass. (I thought of it as scientific curiosity.) And I suddenly found myself thinking about world hunger. Looking back now, that strikes me as an odd topic for a kid to be dwelling on out of nowhere. But I also remember that there were a lot of TV commercials for charities in the sixties, and we were frequently presented with the sight of starving dark children -- they were always dark, I couldn't help but notice, even though we didn't have a colour TV yet. The point being, the concept of world hunger was never far from our awareness for long. So I was thinking about it on this summer afternoon.

And it occurred to me that either we couldn't solve the problem of hunger, or we could but didn't. Meaning that we were either helpless in the face of a cruel universe, or that we were cruel ourselves.

And then I got thinking about God. Which also wasn't odd, since I was raised in a devout Fundamentalist Baptist household, and considered myself a believing Christian. I was taught that God was all-powerful, all-loving, and all-good. But, again, either God couldn't solve the problem of hunger, or He could but didn't. Which meant that either He was not all-powerful, or not all-good. I didn't carry the thought to the point of "this doesn't make any sense", but I went as far as "this is a lot more complicated than anyone lets on. There are problems here that the people in church don't want to deal with."

There is a Bible verse where Jesus says, "If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." In church, I was taught that "asking something in Jesus's name" meant "praying in accordance with God's will". As in The Lord's Prayer: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Another Bible verse says, "The Lord is not willing that any should perish". I was taught that "perish" here did not refer to physical death, but meant being consigned to hell. So, possibly, the physical deaths of starving people "wasn't as important". But here it seemed to me that all we needed to do was pray, "Lord, in Jesus's name, I pray that no one gets sent to hell". If both those verses are true, then that should take care of it -- all of humanity is now saved. But any church person will assure you that it doesn't work that way. No one had explained to my satisfaction why it didn't. [No one has yet. Again, more complicated than anyone wanted to let on.] I also had some trouble with the concept of praying that God's will be done: I didn't see how that differed from saying, "Dear Lord, please do whatever You want", or even "Dear Lord, please do whatever You were going to do anyway if I didn't bother praying". I mean, does He not do what He wants if we don't ask Him to do something?

Anyway, I ended up facing the prospect that, in a world created and ruled by a loving omnipotent God, people would continue to die of hunger, and that the ensuing helplessness and/or cruelty were inevitable. It was the first time I could remember feeling depressed.

And when I finally went back inside, my mom could see that something was getting me down, and she asked me what was wrong. And I told her "nothing". Because I was sure she wouldn't understand or accept. It was also the first time I could remember feeling so alienated from my parents.

These issues have returned to haunt me again and again for over fifty years. I still haven't sorted it out to my satisfaction. And I feel like anyone who figures they have got it sorted out, hasn't really thought about it enough.

rocking NaNoWriMo for my third consecutive attempt -- just past four days in and I am closing in on 30K of the 50K word goal. I got this!

[but yeah my hands and arms are sore and tired...]

I know I haven't gratituded in a long time. I know I keep telling myself I will do it every day. I know it's more effective the more ya do it. I know, I know, I know.

But I saw something today that reminded me about it, and here I am back on the horse. No good comes of berating myself for being remiss, so, rather, allons-y.

Today I am grateful that my notes on my next novel are coming together well, and I feel very prepared to tackle NaNoWriMo next week. Back in February I was so deeply stuck on this story that I gave it up. After writing four novels last year, I found myself unable to muster one. So I diverted myself into painting, and then my new comic strip. But things started shifting in late summer, and the story started pestering me again, and falling into place better. And now I am back in Writer Mode. [Not sure if a Real Writer like ginsu would consider me one, but IMHO I'm close enough for horseshoes.]

The way things look and feel now, I expect to be able to hit my 50,000 words next month, and go beyond, and finish this book. And after my production last year, no, I am not a failure for only writing one novel in a year, so there.