Chore Day, Jan 23, 2021 -- Chores and Cooking a WFPB Cheese-like Sauce

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Taco, on a bench at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, San Francisco, 2011. In this pose Taco is staring at our Staffie, whom he hates.

Today’s chores were the same as last week’s chores. Truly, there must be a loop in time that repeats on a weekly basis: laundry, vacuuming, cooking. It’s not a rut — it’s a groove.

I cooked up a batch of a highly-touted vegan cheese-like sauce. The creator guaranteed that even carnivores and omnivores would mistake the sauce for actual queso. My review: it’s okay, but, as a former cheese-eater, I wasn’t fooled. Listen up, vegan Youtubers: overselling a recipe raises my expectations so high that I may feel that an otherwise decent recipe doesn’t live up to the hype. Skip the sales pitch — you’re preaching to the choir, remember — and let the food speak for itself.

Chore Day, December 26, 2020: Concept Art -- Jimmy Goes Into The Drink

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Jimmy in big trouble as his boat is overwhelmed by a giant wave. Sketched and painted with Rebelle 4

Today I vacuumed the house and did the laundry. Afterwards I whipped up some spaghetti sauce for the week ahead. It was yummy over edamame linguini.

I’ve been battling with Rebelle 4 all week. I feel that really clumsy with it, as if I know nothing at all. When I get frustrated, I’m tempted to throw it aside and go back to Clip Studio Paint for painting. I’m tempted, but I resist temptation and keep plugging along. I used Rebelle 4 for today’s image.

If I decide to create my paintings with Rebelle 4, I’m still going to use Clip Studio Paint EX and InDesign for all of the other tasks that are necessary for creating a picture book, such as creating speech bubbles and page layout.

Chore Day, Dec. 19, 2020 And The Horns Of A Dilemma

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Intuos 4, Clip Studio Paint

Today was chore day. I did the laundry, cooked, and vacuumed. Afterwards I went down to the basement and dug my Intuos 4 out of the closet. Poor Intuos! When I got my Cintiq I turned my back on her. But, now that I’m using my Cintiq 22 solely as a drawing tablet, not a display, I thought it would worth trying my Intuos again. I’m totally comfortable with a tablet now — it took several months to get to the point that I draw as well on the tablet as on the Cintiq. The worst thing about the Cintiq is my poor posture as I hunch over the screen. Using the Intuos I can sit up properly and draw on my 27-inch iMac.

On the animal front, the bears are back. This morning a bear dragged a bag of garbage into the and disemboweled it. Sigh! The bears…there’s not much you can do about 600-lb vandals.

Chore Day, December 12, 2020: Yard work, Laundry, Vacuuming, and Cooking Flatbread

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Doodling with Rebelle 3, while awaiting Rebelle 4

Today was a busy day, The yard work was especially arduous. I raked what seemed like tons of wet leaves. In our little town we have yard waste pickup every two weeks. Fair weather or foul, every second Saturday I hustle to fill the big green yard debris bin with the leaves that our arboreal friends dump in our yard. With the wet weather, the leaves seemed to be channeling heavy gravity. I struggled to drag the bin up the slope to the street.

In less weighty news, I made a fresh batch of purple sweet potato flatbread. I used oat flour instead of the usual buckwheat flour. Oats make for a smooth texture, and the buckwheat is gritty, which I prefer.

On the laundry front, I watched two episodes of Community. It’s a show that correctly depicts the people I met in my community college years, which were a thousand times more educational than my Big Prestigious College years.

When I wasn’t watching Community, I watched another video from Mark Carder. His Draw Mix Paint Youtube channel is a great oil painting resource. I’ll be working through his free oil painting course after I complete Isis Sousa’s course.

Chore Day, December 5, 2020: Laundry, Vacuuming, Baking, and Arting

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Bedside lamp and pillow and Monet print, Corel Painter, Sargent brush

Today was a normal chore day. I welcome normal. I love a day when there’s no snow, no wildfires, everyone is healthy. I ask for nothing more than normal.

For the record, I did all of the laundry, vacuumed the entire house, baked some quinoa flat bread for fun, and tested Rebelle 3. Rebelle is known as the best digital watercolor app, but oil painting is coming in version 4. It looks like it will be awesome. I want it!

Even though my day is normal, I have problems: I like Corel Painter, and I like Rebelle, and I like Photoshop, and I like Clip Studio Paint Ex. That’s a lot of likes. Am I spreading myself too thin? Time will tell where I eventually focus my attention.

My other problem is that I have to create a page for this blog that displays my books. That’s a good problem. The next problem is that I have a Tumblr site that gets updated when I publish a post here…but the images are not exported to Tumblr. I have to get into a groove so that I upload every image to Tumblr. The last problem that I’m aware of is that I need to do better with social media, by which I mean post regularly to Instagram. I should be posting there every time I create a post in this blog.

Chore Day, Nov 28, 2020: Laundry, Yard Work, and Rebelle 3

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The Corel Painter mixer palette

Today’s chores were standard fare: laundry, vacuuming the house, and doing yard work. The yard work was raking up the leaves that the neighbor’s walnut tree drops into our yard every fall.

The rest of the day I spent testing Rebelle 3, a digital painting app that does a great job of mimicking water color paint. I liked it enough to consider buying it, but my computer, going on seven years old, couldn’t hack it — all 8 threads were pegged at 100% CPU usage. To run Rebelle 3 on my system, I would have to do an upgrade of motherboard, CPU, GPU, and ram. Besides, learning another software system is a distraction. At this point, I’m married to Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop, and Corel Painter.

Biden Wins! and Chore Day

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I just watched Biden’s victory speech. I’m elated that we have a president who’s cares about people.

I created the picture above at last week’s Alfresco Art Club meeting during the one-hour challenge. It’s a multi-layer PSD file with line art on one layer and gray scale fill on a second layer. Tomorrow I’ll add shading on a third layer, and if I have enough time, I’ll do the coloring with a gradient map in Procreate. I’d rather be working in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint, but the club meetings are in the kitchen. The iPad is my portable art tool. My only gripe is that that screen lacks tooth. Oh, I do have another gripe — I like to work on a big screen, preferably 27-inches. No iPad can offer that.

Chore Day, Oct 3, 2020: Laundry, WFPB Queso Salsa, and Krita

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This picture need some highlights. I’m struggling with Krita — all of the keyboard shortcuts are neither like Photoshop nor Clip Studio Paint.

This picture need some highlights. I’m struggling with Krita — all of the keyboard shortcuts are neither like Photoshop nor Clip Studio Paint.

My chores today were laundry (check) and cooking (check). There’s not much to say about doing laundry, but I always enjoy doing it. I usually spend my time studying Japanese, surfing the web, watching videos, sketching, or reading. Today I started reading David Chang’s Eat a Peach: A Memoir.

After doing laundry I cooked up a big batch of wfpb (whole food, plant based) queso dip, the recipe for which came from The Jaroudi Family’s Youtube channel. Simple and delicious.

Chore Day, Sep 22, 2020: Laundry and Cover Page Revisited, Yet Again

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I usually don’t work on my books on chore day, but this weekend I’m working on the cover page. My deadline for publication is the 30th and I’m pressed for time. This has been a hard page for me. I’ve spent almost two weeks on the title page image and this front/back cover page. I’m slow because I don’t know what I’m doing — I’m learning as I go, which is okay, but there are weeks when I take a detour to learn a basic skill. This is one of those weeks, and the basic skill is creating a composition that represents the central idea of the book.

Once I complete the cover image I have to write the back cover blurb.