Mirrored W❄️rld

Within three months of urban sketching I've figured out the most lightweight configuration that would keep me happy. With these, I could sketch anywhere without feeling like I'm sacrificing something: a pen with flexible nib that could double as a good writing pen, in blue/sepia/black two brushpens filled with fountain pen inks a white gel/paint pen a pocket sketchbook And that's it! Everything else is secondary. This kit could fit a vest or a jacket, and the only consideration for me to bring…

Sickness and onslaught of overtime don't do well for one person's morale. Having to miss two sketchwalks because my flesh could not endure more abuse was not conducive to my mood. But we carried on. I have finished the black book with 12 paintings for Inktober. It's a miracle I've only missed five, given the amount of ordeal I'd had to go through. We make do, perhaps. The old dog also learned some new blending tricks with acrylic markers, so that's a win overall. With this, I'm officially rid…

Some deaths are abrupt surprises, some deaths you see from miles away. I've been thinking about resigning for a while now, a notion I initially tried to dismiss given how awful the current job landscape is. I told myself the signs I saw were merely projection of my dissatisfaction. By now, there's no denying that we're on a sinking ship. A deteriorating venture is a sight to behold, an odd party to be in. People sending customary goodbyes in Slack channels, at first getting none of your…

When I was younger, my blood coursed blazing hot. I would run my mouth afoul in forums, made my opinions known as loudly or hurtful they could be. I resented the kind of adults who would look at us neutrally, saying, "It would be alright." A proof of cowardice sitting on the fence, neither encouraging or discouraging. A proof of not caring enough, for how could they fail to see how important the matter was to us? You have seen it play out multiple times. You know the plot by heart. I cooled…

I like word and trivia games, and the world has no shortage of it. Ever since Wordle took off, I felt like something new cropped up every week with the same daily structure. That's nice, something to play for everyone! I have said in previous post why I dislike daily logins, but most of these games would have archive of the puzzles available (with or without paid option) so that's fine. No, I'm inclined to stop whenever people around me flock to play one and I start seeing results shared…

Days blurred so much that I completely forgot it was October. I don't care about the Inktober brand other than it being a nice shorthand for "the month where we make things and share with friends", so it suits me just fine if folks want to use any other name. We can always make things all year long anyway, a designated time just makes it easy for people who want to feel a bit of festival cheer. Anyway. I forgot it was October already, but I more-or-less kept up with painting something every…

Another weekend coming and going, suddenly we're entering the fourth quarter of the year. Emboldened by my previous attempts at making custom tokens and having gained more experience with acrylic markers in general, I started making card alters. Granted, I've been only practicing on basic lands so far, painting over the card art and textboxes, adding flourished borders. People using markers tend to extend the art to span the full height of the card, it seems, and for a good reason. It's really…

Great weekend, good food, absolutely slammed. I wish I could press pause in life, breathe a bit, because suddenly it's Monday again. I've been doing patterns and that does take away the stress out of making a full painting. Some days I just want to slap glitter paint all over a page and that's it. Start a doodle. Stop. Continue some more. Vent the anger. I'm afraid of a lot of thing. Fear manifests into anxiety. Anxiety manifests into anger. The heat burns and spread. I interpret innocuous…

I've been pressing tubes into pans for friends. It's something you'll hear time and again from pros. Skip the sets, buy individual tubes, it will be cheaper and you'll learn more about color mixing that way. However, while the project is both easy and enjoyable, I'm not sure I would be here doing this if I didn't start out with a set. It's conveniently the beginning of back to college season, so shops around me all ran out of empty palettes at the same time. I don't have mint tins or the likes…

High stress job situation and painting for workshops left me rather exhausted. I still wanted to paint but not in the mood of my still-ongoing black pad (just a liiiiiiitle bit more left) and maybe kinda bored with paper in general, so I turned to a set of blank acrylic keychains I bought for something else which didn't fit. Well, that was fun? As you might guess, the first time result was pretty janky. My friend seemed to like it though, so I gave it to her as a homecoming gift of sorts. It…

I love my friends and I love my life. In general, I have a lot to be thankful of. That's why, no matter how many times I have experienced it and how long I have been aware of it and how much I brace for the impact, it's never not jarring that following a wonderful weekend packed with cool people and fun activities which I absolutely enjoyed, I would be drained to the bones the moment the last person leave. Not wanting to see a soul for a while is fine. What I don't like is the wave of…

The art internet can often feel like a seedy underbelly of capitalism at work. I suspect similar things happen to many other hobbies if I just bother to look. You'll see the same set of supplies hyped over and over, followed by throes of people decrying them. The supplies in question might have actual merit, or they might not, but it's scarcely relevant because the clicks are what everything is about. I especially dislike the usage of provocative words like "lies" and "pretend", though…

I signed up for the painting workshops and if anything I got to see how people did their crafts. The hosts were gracious, the participants were friendly, but being enmeshed in the community for extended time showed me just how privileged getting to treat a hobby as purely a hobby and a money sink had become. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that if you dabble in visual arts in any capacity you would have an Instagram account. And maybe Youtube. I hadn't gotten such bemused reaction from…

A local cafe slash community gallery held a draw-together event sponsored by lesser-known art supplies companies. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the supplies were in fact quite good. Many participants expressed similar sentiments, and I could see myself buying this for kids or newer people who would want to try painting. We found out why they weren't more well-known though. One of them is a legacy brand owned by a family that has zero interest in doing things differently as they…

It upsets me that we have been through so much bullshit in recent years to the point that when someone sends me a news article nowadays, I can no longer distinguish satires from real reports without mucking around a bit. Are you fucking kidding me? has been a sentiment more common than it ought to be. Worse, every single time I think this thing is just another worthless sensationalist piece, I find that while the headline might be egregious the content itself is correct. What a mad world to be…

In times of great distress, I don't feel like doing art at all. However, experience informs me that this is yet another trick the brain plays on me. If I start, I'll get into the flow and actually feel better. So far, I have only missed sketching one trip to the LGS (changed bag, brought supplies but no paper). I didn't force myself to draw much when I really did not feel like it, but even a loose doodle or a contour drawing would usually help. Showing up doesn't have to be difficult, but also…

Having just finished another page on my sketchbook with acrylic paint markers, I flipped back to the first page I did when the markers were new. It seems that a lot of people like to diss their own past works, especially if they're younger, but putting down yourself is really not the way. I like seeing where I started and how much I've grown. One noticeable thing is how looser I'd gotten. The first time I tried, I was very adamant on doing solid fills and bold outlines, cel-shading style. It…

As with many things I enjoy, I end up sharing the sketchwalk sessions with friends. "Halfway-dragging" might be the term some of them would use, but thankfully they did welcome the notion and we had fun scouting our sketching subjects. Our local chapter is now official, so I snagged my first USk stamp! I've always preferred outdoor sessions as I have enough sketching opportunities indoor, but Show and Tell at the showdown is always nicer indoor if only because you could actually hear what is…

Every morning, I wake up to meet a version of myself I've never seen. A gradual awakening, a shedding marked by one strand of insignificant hair to another, cells in your body dying and forming in every passing second. I've been cleaning the house as I go about building a home art studio, a lofty label for a space no larger than a child's sandbox. One person's living space is an accumulation of detritus, physical or otherwise: remnants of past me's that had slipped quietly in the night. Once…

Surviving an accident is something, coping with the fact that it didn't happen is something else. Last weekend, our trip home from a card game event was met with the closest brush with death I'd had in a while. Luckily, no one was harmed and we got away with light scratches on the front bumper. However, the car swerving our way was noticeably banged up, one wheel lying in the middle of the road. I surmise that it might have bounced off other vehicles before swinging at us, the driver long past…

Attended another sketchwalk session on Saturday. This time I was able to recognize the regulars and strike some conversations, reminding me of the benefits of a physical art community. There's nothing like seeing an artwork up close, tracing the lines with your fingers while you ask question to the artist. Having been a self-learner, it's refreshing to see how other people approach their crafts. Even something simple such as the way they setup their supplies, the way they mix their paints, the…

A random jaunt to derelict early-mid-2010s blogospheres landed me on a discourse about shoujo manga's cluttered appearance, where the blogger hurled profanities at the works he claimed to hate before confessing that he did like some shoujo manga because these didn't look like other shoujo manga. A couple paragraphs of self-hatred because he just couldn't stop reading a title he said was trash in all aspects. Below it, his readers piled onto the bashings and accused him of treachery when he…

Another grab bag of art notes: I finished the mini pad early July. All my current open sketchbooks and notebooks are past the 60% mark so I would like to finish them before moving onto a new batch of books. Having experimented with toned paper for a while now, I would say that off-white and cream-colored are my favorites to work on. Black paper produces lovely effects, but somehow I tire easily with the high contrast. It's a great "special occasion"/"treat" surface, just not something I could…

Again, the world brought me closer to delayed plans, leaving no room for fear. In Saturday, I found out that my local chapter of urban sketchers would meet up the first Sunday every month, which just happened to be today. Very conveniently, the meeting point was within walking distance of my dwelling. One would say the stars have aligned to make this actually happen. Yet, what followed was hesitation. I didn't feel ready. My brain conjured many different excuses. Too early. My body's still…

As someone whose world would readily blur into pixel art rendition without nearest-neighbor scaling the moment the glasses slip from the bridge of their nose, my eternal nemesis is 'modern' online KYC (Know Your Customers) procedures routinely employed in financial apps. Doing anything in my banking apps seemingly involve some kind of selfie recordings with bizarre instructions written in tiny fonts while they insist on REMOVING my glasses. Instructions I could NOT read without squinting, but…

My brushpen ran out of ink during today's excursion. I had no time to check my supplies even though I planned the day out about a month in advance, as I was swamped with work up to the last minute. However, I was able to finish my sketches with another color of ink (which was also running low). Lovely day, got three spreads done as I moved from place to place. Back home, one page left in the mini pad. I can't wait to see them all gone and sit down to prepare another batch of refills. It feels…

There is one more reactionary post sitting unfinished, but after two such posts back to back I feel like the wind has been taken out of my sails and I'd rather spend more time on things I find joyful so today's entry is a grab bag of art ramblings. I spent the weekdays working and the weekends sick (very gracious of the body to break down after and not during) so I couldn't paint as much but the mini pad I decided to start turned out a lifesaver. Only two sheets left and I'm sure as hell will…

A couple weeks ago, the lead maintainer of a well-known game engine admitted to using LLM for development since 2021. While not vibecoded (the lead maintainer insisted that stringent procedure was put into place to heavily filter the output), this sent a ripple of shock across the developer communities, many of which opposed usage of LLM in creative fields and sought to distance themselves from the practice. While argument can be made for jumping off ship to another engine, this incident brings…

The draft of today's post has been sitting derelict for a while and as I took my sweet time pretending to let the matter percolate, by way of digital morphogenetic field the topic seemed to have blown up somewhat. Time as good as any, then. One click on this blog's index would tell you that I'm one of them Bear bloggers who "litters" the Discovery page (and by extension, the new hot hangout space bubbles.town) with cryptic titles. As fond of in-jokes as I am, I have no doubt some of these make…

I was about 10% of the sketchbook I started earlier this month when I decided I needed more exercise using the mini watercolor palette I used for outdoor painting. The most obvious solution was to use the same sketchbook I put in my bag to use alongside this palette, but that book was not suitable for full wet-in-wet. My current home sketchbook is composed of 110 gsm black paper, intended to wean myself off watercolors and a bit more towards pencils and acrylic markers... at this point I…