The chores were the usual: laundry and vacuuming. In other news, I love my film cameras, the Nikon F3, the Leica IIf, and the Rollei 35. I have digital cameras that I like, but film cameras are the ones I love.
May 30, Memorial Day, 2022
I started the day by making our lunch. I made a savory sauce, roasted sweet potato cubes, smokey collard greens, and barbecued tempeh. All plants. Not a single animal product. Nobody died for my lunch.
In the afternoon my beloved partner and I walked Nacho in the hills above our house. She brought her Polaroid SX-70 camera and took a few pix using 5-year old film. Surprisingly, some of the pictures demonstrate the dreamy Polaroid glow. When you shoot Polaroid, you are sometimes blessed with happy accidents. That’s life with a 50-year old camera.
In one of the pictures, I’m wearing a new pair of glasses that I bought online, from Zenni. I’m using a temporary prescription for the next few months until my cataract surgeries heal up.
I’m going to get back into photography, in a small way this time. I’ll be putting some photos here from time to time.
Brand names I mentioned in this post just because I like the products. Relax — there’s no kickback coming my way.
Same chores: vacuuming and laundry.
I had a brainstorm while talking with my partner. I was talking about my chaotic time in college and she suggested a graphic novel about student life at a big college in the 60’s. It was mind-blowing as we emerged from the repressive Eisenhower 50’s to the student rebellion in the 60’s. I was not part of that rebellion, mired as I was in inner conflicts. As a student, who showed great promise — according to my SAT scores — I was a magnificent underachiever who spent an entire year floating paper airplanes out of the window of my 7th floor dorm window.
I figure my tale would require four volumes: freshman year, sophomore year, etc. It would be a huge undertaking on the order of a masterpiece such as Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, by Derf Backderf. FYI, that’s an affiliate link. Derf has been doing comics for 40 years. It would take me 40 years to learn the skills to describe my four chaotic years at the Great Big University.
Alas! So many books to write, so little time.
Just regular flatting today. Tomorrow I’ll do the shadows.
I can’t say that I used any of Rebelle 5’s new features to make this sketch.
Dear Diary,
Once again I’m just passing by and I thought it would be nice to say hi. I have nothing to show you. All of my accomplishments today left no tangible trace. I did due diligence at my job; I happily fulfilled my family tasks and I walked Nacho for an hour; I worked out in the morning on the elliptical machine, and I finished The Seventh Seal by Ingemar Bergman. I’ve been a fan of this movie since I first saw it in the Guild and Studio theaters in my college days in Berkeley. I lived in an apartment above the theaters and went to the movies two or three times a week. In my four years as a student, my best times were spent watching movies and working in the Bear’s Lair cafe in the student union. I disliked everything else about my formal education at UC
Clip Studio Paint default pencil
Just wrapped up a successful week at the day job. I had a moment to sketch a guy with wonky eyes. No matter how I align the eyes, even using a ruler, the eyes are all over the place. But, I’m happy with this sketch. I can see progress.
No art going on today. All of my time went into my day job. That’s not a bad thing — what I’m doing is cool and I enjoy aspects of it. What I’ve noticed is that challenging technical tasks re-energize my lifelong interest in solving complex problems.
I was one of those kids who got a chemistry set for Christmas and made rocket propellant. I was a builder — hi-fi amplifiers, loudspeakers, computers, and guitars. I’ve never been bored when I’m on my own time. However, when I’m working on someone else’s dream project, my enthusiasm for doing begins to wane. What works for me is to do short-term contracts, and spend my off-contract time working on my own projects in the hope that they will generate enough income that I no longer have to compromise.
In the past I spent years writing novels and short stories. I became a photographer and sold pictures to the local newspaper, but photos lost their fascination and I wanted to be more expressive — that meant drawing and painting. At the moment, I’m madly in love with the idea of marrying my drawings and writing into children’s book and serious comix.
In December I’ll be an unencumbered artist once again and I will revel in that.
Today’s chores were, once again, vacuuming and doing laundry. As a bonus chore, I got to water the long-suffering bushes in the front yard. I use my own custom drip gardening technique. Instead of using piping, I have 15 three-gallon buckets with a pinhole in each. The amount of water dripped over about two hours is the equivalent of about one inch of rain. The downside of my clever solution is that I have to fill the buckets one at a time, which takes about 20 minutes.
I used Procreate to draw today’s self-portraits. Since these were drawn from imagination, they don’t look much like me. Only the bridge of the nose is a realistic representation..
The big event of the day — of the week, really — was a visit to the Pugs in the Park gathering. It was Nacho’s first pug jamboree. When we arrived we found a dozen pugs socializing in a symphony of wheezing and grunting. Nacho was at first overwhelmed and tried to make himself as small and insignificant as possible. When he realized he was among kin, he relaxed and started smelling butts and frapping. I’m proud to say that he was the only pug bold enough (or foolhardy enough) to roll around in the mud by the water trough.
We called it a day when a loose boxer chased him down and backed him into the fence. That was scary.
As for the picture above, it’s another sketch that invokes the “When in doubt, draw a self-portrait” rule. This time I used my Photoshop Self-portrait Time Machine brush, which magically deducts many decades from the image. Out of respect for the principle of realism, I fastidiously drew myself bald.
