Mirrored W❄️rld

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…

Since writing my last post, I've managed to get the kit into action twice. The first time I tried, the mini brush felt awkward in my hand and I couldn't blend on paper the way I usually do because the paper for this sketchbook could only take light washes. To be clear, it's strong enough for everything else and is not downright terrible with watercolors, just not something that would stand a spray mister and wet-to-wet. I was able to layer careful application of fountain pen inks without…

I had planned my first kit for urban sketching, though with no small amount of trepidation. Until a couple days ago, everything was still vaguely "nice to do", but now it's becoming real. This morning I got a blackout announcement from the building management. Apparently they're fixing something near the power supply. My LGS kindly agreed to let me borrow their space and internet connection even though today is officially their day's off. The thoughts of having the place alone for myself for…

Perhaps you are familiar with this scenario: a drawer of shame, filled to the brim with things you tucked away once upon a time but never had the strength to properly deal with. For me, it came in the form of notebooks. Specifically, my college notebooks. I had the bad habit of using a notebook exclusively for every course I took, so many of them sat half-empty. A couple nearing the end of my college career were only 2-3 pages filled. During what I would later dub as The Blank Period or The…

When I offhandedly told my friend that playing Persona 3 was all the more relatable in 2025 than in 2007, it was not a challenge for the world to make it even truer. Yet, the monkey's paw did curl and curled hard. Said friend described the atmosphere of this past year (and especially this past couple months) as being "despair-inducing", a designation I find hard to dispel. In the manner akin of old times Hanna-Barbera's cartoon dominoes come tumbling down but way less amusing, everyone seems to…

Wrapped the sketchpad today! I have to clean my place so I'll wait till everything's sorted out before cracking a new one. Truly enjoyed the paper, although in several pages things felt weird. I'm not advanced enough to triage whether it was a paper problem, sizing problem, or technique problem. I think this is the first sketchbook I'd ever had where I could honestly say I like every sheet (or at least they turned out halfway decent), so pretty pleased about that. I think I'd gotten better at…

I woke up with rattling headache and a profound sense of annoyance because this is wont to happen in my days off, though the dishonor of constantly getting this experience is probably exemplified by my tendency to ride the boom-bust cycle of overwork and exhaustion. Because I'm also the paragon of mental stability, the next minute I was awash with melancholy. Suddenly, I could feel the rush of blood in my veins, millions of cells born and died and doing inexplicable things under my skin, my…

Sometimes it feels like one day you breathe for a moment and the next second everything is on fire. The exchange rate is laughable. Our country's currency is so weak and everything is soaring and the sky is collapsing but we all have to live another day. I have some funds in my Paypal account, but withdrawing right now (below minimum threshold) would cause me to lose a lot in fees. Sure, why not, do a fire sale? Sounds apt. The downside of releasing everything I make for free is there is…

I'm at the point in my (visual) art journey where I could say paper really makes a difference. And I'm not saying this in the sense of expensive paper = good, but the kind of surface you're working on affects the final result just as much, if not more, as the medium. Different paper works for different mediums and working styles, so knowing what you can get out of it is important. Newsprints work great in collages, sandpapers make great textures, and watercolor papers... make it so much easier…

I found my first blog, which led to the second. The layout was hand-drawn on middle school math exam scratch paper and made using a cracked copy of Photoshop 8. They're hosted on...imagebucket or something similar? All gone now, but the texts and posts are still there almost two decades later. With all the links to the bloggers in my year, all of them looking wildly different. To know how to style your pages was cool. I remember learning HTML by checking the page sources of all the cool…

Now that I'm comfortable enough doing painting and sketching at home, I'm preparing to move my practice outside. My plan is to settle a few months doing my thing in the LGS/cafe I frequent, then finally hit the road. That's a long road, you may think. Why not just go out cold turkey? Well, that works, I guess. I just want to give myself a little more grace. I already bring pens and notebooks everywhere so sketching on the go is not a big stretch, but painting on the go is something very new for…

I drew a close on today's painting, and it was the fourth page of this sketchpad. This pad has 16 sheets in total, so I have somehow gotten past 25%. That's making me giddy with both joy and fear. At this rate, I'll have to budget a sketchbook a month? Ha. I used to be very skeptical reading people's art blogs, the way they seem to race through one book after another. However, just like writing and game jamming, filling a sketchbook gets easier after the first one. The more I practice, the…