Had occasion to catch the end-of-semester dance show at ODU. I’ve seen a lot of these over the years and they’re almost always a great time. College dance majors are on a different level.
And since we’re in baseball season, we hopped over to the ballpark to see the AAA Norfolk Tides take on the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Railriders. The Tides are apparently loaded, so we didn’t want to miss a game full of future major-leaguers.
For watercolor class I had to go sit in front of some art and spend a few minutes jotting down my thoughts.
We’ve got a great museum here in RVA so I was happy to take an hour at the end of my workday to do the assignment.
Between an iOS update and a WordPress update, image upload’s been broken for me so I’m catching up on some backlog.
Last week’s class was spent “playing” in those ovoid shapes with some different techniques. I wasn’t especially happy with any of them. I’m still too green for going that far out with stuff, IMO.
I had some time at the end of class and made that landscape-ish corner. I used some of the lesson in there, which helped.
3 hours of class after a workday is a lot. I’m usually pretty beat by the time we’re done.
I started a watercolor studio class last night. I have very little general art experience and zero painting experience, so this is all new to me.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, I’m a life-long buyer of art supplies and now I’ve finally screwed up the courage to put media to paper. I’m sure it will be humbling.
I’ve got a little small-bottle set of those iroshizuku inks. I love the tsuki-yo, which is a nice blue-black, so I reloaded the Vanishing Point with it. I use that pen a lot at the office.
The Metropolitan doesn’t get as much use, so I swapped in the kon-peki, which is a nice medium blue. I’ll find a way to get more use out of it. I love the way it looks.
Of the three pens, the Lamy Safari was the one I didn’t write out of ink. The cartridge just dried out. It’s a drag, but I have more pens than I have writing time. I still have a few of these sweet purple Lamy cartridges, so I just swapped one in.
The fountain pen fire I had at the turn of the year has cooled a good bit. I like the pens I’ve got and I use them often. I’m definitely not hot to grab more of them right now.
I’ve never been a big incense guy. I don’t mind the smells, I just constantly leave the room while they’re burning and it’s a fire hazard.
Same thing with candles. I had to stop running them when I’m alone in the house because I keep leaving the room they’re in.
This cute(?) little Japanese, match-sized, incense stick is right up my alley. Even I can sit in a room for 10 minutes, probably.
I am smitten with the poster for the Folk Festival this year.
Cassandra Kim‘s fanciful animals are cute and cool. The Richmond Folk Festival posters have, over the years, showcased different styles. 2022’s is a great entry in the series.
I love that it is a proper oil painting (and you can bid on the original).
This time-lapse is nuts. It looks like magic.
I’m sure I know more of The Alchemist’s work than I can think of right now, but this is a great audio/visual show.
The late, great CW Pencil Enterprise was a boutique pencil shop in NYC. Like so many small shops, they got whacked pretty badly in the pandemic. They tried to make changes to stay afloat, but closed this fall.
One of the last things they sold was their annual pencil advent calendar. This was the first year I was able to get one, as they historically sell out within minutes.
24 envelopes, each with a pencil (or maybe some pencil-related ephemera?). I’m excited.
I caught the last chunk of this movie last night while flipping channels. It’s got lots of standard-issue 70’s NYC cop movie stuff in it, but the standout to me is the music. Holy cow is it good.
Jerry Fielding, a victim of the Red Scare in the 50’s, did the score to this but is more famous for his work for The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs. I’m gonna pull this whole movie down as an audio file so I can dig into some audio clips and beats.