wee update

 Against my better judgement, I have made a second mug of coffee and I wonder why I did it.

Afternoon on a Tuesday, uneventful as it would seem I want to go ahead with today and finish my drawing and later in the day making preparations for tomorrow's food picture clicking session for the blog.

I have to step out for a minute to buy some cooking cream for a dinner speciality that has been requested, but apart from that today looks pretty empty.

Onwards to the drawing and whatnot.

some updates

Is it evening already?
yes.
Time is not my friend seeing how it flew by.
It's already time to start thinking about dinner and of course, I don't think about it now a few moments before making it because I had thought of it last night just as I will think about all of tomorrow's meals today.

--
My cats have been asleep for hours now which means my night will be rather colourful.

-

I started with a new drawing today and the challenge is real.
Almost propped the easel on a pillow to get better leverage and angle but the damn thing kept slipping.
Need to come up with a more ergonomic way of dealing with it.

Okay then.
To the kitchen

\m/

As a lover of all things post-rock and post-metal, I somehow can't love the long echoing dialogues from a lone voice talking philosophical stuff in some songs. This is quite prevalent in Mogwai and I have not the patience for it.

However today I needed something heavy, hard and mad which is why I turned to slipknot and listened to their new album 'Unsainted' and Corey Taylor, as usual, is pretty good with his mellow vocals transitioning into screeches but what on earth happened to the band apart from me growing up that is.
Suddenly it sounds tired, bored and I'm not going to begin comparing their new stuff with the old but it's not the same frenzy as one I heard and felt before.

Saddened I clicked the Ghost song recommendation and felt better, much better and followed 'dance Macabre' with 'rats' and 'square hammer' before finally landing on 'Gojira' and they never disappoint .now I'm ready for everything.

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There's a drawing pending which I started with smearing some paint on paper and I think I'm going to complete that while listening to 'Black Knife Caine'.
This Wednesday looks to be pretty hardcore.

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Tell stuff, darling.

hrmphh

Started on another drawing. Finished the previous audiobook. Started another audiobook called 'The blade of Tyshall' and now I'm nearing the end of my drawing.
In the words of San Dan Glokta 'why do I do this to myself?'

drawing daze

I could click a picture of the drawing in all its basic glory but who'd understand it? Not because it's avant-garde but because it's done on a black sheet of paper, blacker than night sky, blacker than your heart, my darling, and the faint silver of the pencil graphite is barely visible if not squinted upon while the light shines through opposite direction. Nothing that a camera could capture..so, soon.

beginning with the white rendering, here's hoping and wishing.

till now and oops

Almost midday and the day goes slow.
With a decision to dedicate the first few hours before commencing on drawing to watching a few series, I began with 'the expanse' and with a sudden pang of amnesia realized that I've forgotten almost everything that was happening, except the blue life form that is actualy a life force sucking fungus?
____


right: So I left this post unwritten because I was stuck in a volley of phone calls and then got to finishing my exoskeleton of a drawing and just remembered that I was writing something.

Almost evening and the day goes fine.
I'm almost done with the basics of what this new drawing will be, and the rendering starts tomorrow.
Still a bit spooked about drawing on this black sheet and hope it all turns out alright, at least as alright as it nearly could be.

Dresden files goes well and I'm nearly nearing the end of book 5. Wow! perhaps I'll end up starting the new book before this drawing is done with.
Let's see.

gasp

Ok, so the 4th audiobook of 'Dresden Files is complete and my drawing stil isn't.
:(

Skeletal stage

A drawing long pending. A request most endearing.
Finished with the penciling. Tomorrow begins the penning in earnest.

drawing woes

Under an inverted lamp's white shadow, in the corner of a yellow lit room—its ivory opaque darkness, with the pretensions of a full moon.
Incoherent spot of ashen light, playing softly on the curves of little things dotted about on a table; the table, a dark, murky wooden piece of banal furniture, of only the most practical purpose.
It houses miniatures and post its, paintbrushes and blank sheets.

A big canvas of thick cotton paper lays impatient, inert on its wooden surface.  A pair of irritated arms hovering over it, stroking air; drawing invisible slashes into the slightly fluid wind from a distant fan.
Trying to imagine into the transparent blank of nothingness, images that could be transferred onto the white blank of the white sheet; of colours bright that would bleed into a watery subtlety on that thirsty cotton canvas, that aches to be painted upon.
Etching a theoretical sketch into the air with fingers bold, that turn into timid caresses on practical paper.
Sometimes images only house in your mind, and refuse to replicate themselves through brush tips.
They live their colourful lives in the invisible wind, never letting you imitate them on a piece of sheet.

Fling that pen in to the abyss and bring down those irritated arms with a violent thud on the face of this wooden table. Finger shadows looming large under the ghost pale light of a white lamp, in the corer of a yellow lit room.

Nighttime tittle

It's happening real slow. 

Where am I taking this? I know not. 

 I hate looking at the clock these days. So much to do, so little time..and what am I ever going to gain out of doing anything at all? I sometimes wonder..not the most original thing to think about, but we all have our days. 

I exist for myself in the few hours after early morning to sometime in the evening, and in these few hours, I truncate all that I love to bite sized abbreviations. 

Getting swallowed in personal reverie, until it's time to be regurgitated back to banal blahs of life. 

I've a book that smells of hundred paradise to keep me company for now.

Dino dilemma

New Dino's. 

There are two this time..a triceratops and a plesiosaurs. One from land and one from water. 

Something's up with my triceratops though. 

Probably take a few days before this gets done. 

Fin!

Today's been a day positively racked with a bajillion 'phew's'. 

In fact if I were to stack these 'phew's' one atop another, I could easily build myself a stairway to heaven or at least limbo. 

So, phew I'm done with this. 

Here's a close up. You look too carefully and you can make out the flaws/ unsteady pen marks, microscopic inconsistencies. 

But all in all this mandala is done, and though my shaking fingers might suggest  and advanced case of Parkinson's, I assure you these digits are only experiencing after tremors of incessant detailing.

Something new next week. 

Drawing downdates

close up and a bit of update on the drawing. 

Looks like I'm out of my depth on this one. Not that it's technically difficult, it's just physically draining. I'm trying to fill the nooks of all the crannies and that's given my fingers quite a pain. 

I had to stop, because my thumb bade me to. 

It started aching because different pen strokes require different amounts of pressure, and soon I realized that the pad of my thumbs had gone bizzarrely hard, not to mention sore and numb. 

There's still some more work, perhaps a couple hours and I'll be done (hopefully). But all in good time..tomorrow, that is. 

Into the endless

Like never ending greed, this drawing has no end. For a while back there I thought it's done..phew, and yet five seconds later in a trance like state, I'd fished out a compass and was drawing arcs all around the page. 

Being content isn't one of my strong points. I don't even know if this drawing needed more details; over committing to a project is in fact one of my strong points. 

Stop me before I go mad with more minutiae. My eyes can't take peering into a magnifying glass anymore, as I draw thinner than thread lines. 

Sometimes it's fun to be a little mad, no matter where you reflect your madness. 

Drawing discourse, deliberation dissertation. (Only sort of)

Speaking of drawing: 

It's been so long since I drew something. The last one being, well, last month. 

Nothing kept me back or away from it, just that I didn't get the kind of time you need for commiting yourself to a piece of drawing. 

I guess I needed to fall sick to start drawing. Something like a pictorial version of word vomit..'delineation barf'? 

Wow Dave McKean..I mean wow. Well McKean is McKean and I'm me. His illustrations have an insanely edgy fantastically surreal flow, whereas mine do not look nearly as effortless. But wow! (Honestly, I've never much thought what my drawings actually look like. How they seem or how they're perceived. And now I'm wondering) 

I love drawing lines, patterns, animals, leaves..and end up tormenting myself over details, dots and other small things that are mostly invisible. 

Started on a new drawing. It's nothing out of the box, just a regular Mandala. More like a need to incessantly scratch fine liners on good paper. 

To maintain the proportional integrity of a mandala you need to remember all those geometrical rules you'd kind of forgotten after school. 

You know, radius, diameters, angles, intersections..the works. 

It can be as intricately complicated or as loose as one'd like. 

Might've gone a bit overboard with nooks and crannies here, but it'll keep me occupied to the end of the audiobook. 

Mandala or drawings like these are easy because they've patterns repeated over and over. Something about mindless repetitive activity that's so calming. 

But it's not something for the impatients at heart or those who have trouble staying glued to their seats. 

This mandala will take at least 8-10 hours to complete. Depending on the amount of details added.  

This one will be pretty detailed. 

It serves as a good practice to steady your hand while drawing with pens..and I've been doing watercolours so long, this feels like a much needed exercise. 

The only downfalls and one that I'm already feeling is the resurfacing aches in my neck.

Drawings that are enqued: 

Will be doing another dinosaur in my moleskine.  A Watercolour drawing after that and so on and so forth. 

Man did I have a lot to talk about drawing.

New drawing and wtf tumblr

I don't know why I can't post stuff on tumblr.

Unsuccessfully trying to post my new drawing there and there's no reaction from tumblr's end. 

Gah!! 

Just wanted to put up these close ups is all. 

Feel like doing a really full on drawing, something so convoluted and intricate that it hurts you eyes just to watch. Maybe a Mandala that's got too much going on. A full page of crazy lines and stuff. 

Will get on to it. 

Pillaging pixels under cotton sheets

High grade fever and all the anger I've never felt before. Like a massive ball of heat is congealed inside and I've no clue what to do about it. 

One of the easier solutions is to coerce it deeper inside until it's compressed into a white dwarf of sorts and wait for it to turn into a blackhole, so it can start eating everything from within. Fun!! 

Something about unexpected fever that makes you feel like you've been lying on train tracks getting run over by trains all night. Every molecule feels fractured..like my blood cells are leading some kind of a rebellion against my bones. 

No reason for this fever either! No flu, cold or anything. 'Rest and take it easy' as I've been told, exactly the kind of things I hate being told. 

I'll chill and take it easy when I want to take it easy. Bugger off until then. 

What is it about high fever induced state of delirium that makes you want to rip out patronizing throats that ask you to calm or chill or relax or rest or anything. -like I said it's an unreasonably hysteric state. 

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wanted to draw a lot today..and nothing in life comes easy..and that's exactly what happened. 

I laughed myself into a state of restrained demented frustration when I realized that in order to start listening to 2nd installment of the 'first law series' audiobook (before they're hanged), I gotta finish the last couple chapters of the 'blade itself'. (they were annoyingly absent in the audiobook, as you're aware) So what do I do? I download the book and spend the next hour or so finishing the last chapters and only then I start on with my drawing and the new audiobook.

Now that's some cuckoo commitment. 

So phew..that happened. 

What I thought of drawing and what I ended up drawing are two completely different things. Like when you hop on a ferry but end up steering a parachute instead. 

Fevered frenzy I guess..that or my brains have begun to ferment. 

--thank god for those lovely things that get me through..while I tilt my head and touch the screen and let out a delighted little scream. 

Pondering on plumes

This plumage didn't turn out exactly how I wanted. the colours and shading look right, but the feathers look out of tune.  I don't like its perspective, and I don't like these feathers, it somehow lacks a soul. 

  The watercolours pencils however were bloody good. I used Staedtler Luna, and brushes size 8 and size 2.  Watercolour pencils needs a bit of practice to figure out shading, strokes, and pressure application for colour intensity. 

Having said this however they lack the depth of proper water colour cakes. 

But I wish to rectify on this feather folly, and make something nicer, better. More harmonious. This drawing lacks harmony. It's disjointed and doesn't rhyme, and we can't have that..can we?