Chore Day, April 24, 2021: Puppy Day

Nacho the Pug…that’s what today was about. In the few spare moments I was given, I managed to squeeze in doing the laundry and vacuuming, but every remaining moment was focused on Nacho.

I also managed to snap a photo of my webtoon notebook. This is only sketch I’ve done so far. All I know is that there’s a community college involved and all of the students and teachers are animals. There’s a time, too. It’s going to be awesome fun…when I get the time to work on it.

Chore Day, April 17, 2021: Yard work galore

More dolphin sketches…

Today’s chores were vacuuming, laundry, yard work galore, and cooking up a huge pot of spaghetti sauce that I’ll be able to live on for a week.

The yard work was the big deal of the day — sawing tree trunks into small chunks and putting the summer drip irrigation buckets in order. Hard work, but satisfying when I look back on it.

As a reward for doing so much manual labor, tonight I’m going to was Bill and Ted Face the Music.

Chore Day, April 10, 2021 -- Upgrading my computer

Besides doing the chores I do every Saturday (laundry and vacuuming), today I upgraded my seven-year old pc. My previous build was in 2014 and it worked out well. I used a high-end cpu that held out for seven years, until it had to deal with some modern applications that need more than 4 cores, in particular, Rebelle 4.

I started by replacing my old motherboard with a shiny new gaming motherboard from Asus, a Ryzen 5600x cpu, and 32GB of ram. Every went smoothly, yet it was a stressful day. I always expect the worst because I’ve had many failed builds in the past. But today I lucked out. Now I can chill out and watch a movie.

Chore Day, April 3: Doing Laundry And Making A Screencast

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Doodle from 11 months ago. Photoshop

Besides doing my usual chores today (laundry and vacuuming), I spent several hours working on the project I’m in charge of at my part-time job. I made a screencast to explain a few details that always cause new customers to stress out. When I make videos, I just go for it and never edit.

I don’t normally do “job” things on the weekend, but I wanted to clear out the left side of my brain before work starts officially on Monday.

Chore & Al Fresco Art Club Day, Mar 27 -- Chopping Down Trees and Redoing Old Paintings

I couldn’t complete this assignment in one hour…I’ll continue next week.

Today was Chore Day and Alfresco Art Club Day. For chores, I did the laundry and vacuuming, and I pruned our giant shrub growing out of control into the neighbor’s yard. What a pain in the ass, literally. The bush is on a slope and the footing was loose decorative rocks. As I was pruning a tough limb, I lost my footing and fell on my ass. Fortunately, no damage was done.

For art club, the task was to simplify an old painting. The idea was to find a way to convey the same meaning as the original, but with a simpler, more efficient technique. In other words, remove all unnecessary details such as excessive rendering and goodies that do not convey meaning.

(edited Mar 28)

Chore Day, March 20 -- Laundry, Vacuuming, and Doodling with Photoshop

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The chores…nothing unusual going on. I watched some videos while tending the wash. Usually I watch some episodes of Community, but I’ve completed all 6 seasons, for the second time. I have many fond memories of my many years spent going to our local community college. The sames as Jeff Winger, I ended up teaching there for a while.

I’ve noticed that Photoshop brushes are blazingly fast compared to Clip Studo Paint’s. My question to myself is, what am I going to do with that discovery? I’m so invested now with Clip Studio Paint that the idea of digging into Photoshop might merely be a case wishful thinking, of wanting to frolic in the green grass on the other side of the fence. I ask myself, would I really work faster and paint better with Photoshop than I do with Clip Studio Paint/Corel Painter/Procreate/Krita? Then I think, wherever you go, there you are.

Chore Day, Feb 27 -- Busy, Busy, Busy

Today was a normal chore day with no Al Fresco Art Club challenge. Beside vacuuming the house and doing the laundry, I installed our new water filter and tested it. It’s a reverse osmosis filter that worked great out of the box, but on the fourth cycle, it generated only 75% of the volume it should have. It’s a hassle when things don’t work the way they should.

No time for doing any kind of art today. It feels weird

Al Fresco Art Club and Chores, Feb 13, 2020: Artrage Fun

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This week’s meeting was on Chore Day, and it was indoors again. When I think back to the last actual al fresco meeting, I realize it was in the summer of 2019. 2020 was the year of wildfires, and so far this year has been the frozen and drowned year. Fortunately, we still have a warm and cozy kitchen to meet in.

This week’s challenge was on Saturday instead of on Sunday. I painted my water bottle using Artrage on my iPad.

I haven’t mentioned that I’m learning Finnish. I’m using the comprehensive input method taught by Finnished, an awesome Youtube channel dedicated to teaching … Finnish. I’m about two months into my studies. Finnish is a difficult language, on the level of Japanese and Chinese. I enjoy learning languages. I’ve studied Spanish, German, French, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Japanese. Despite all of the time I’ve spent learning languages, I’m fluent in only one language: English.

Chore day, Feb 6, and the Final Version of Page One of My Third Book in the Jimmy Jay Series

Marooned!

After doing my chores (laundry and vacuuming), I cooked up a batch of white sauce with artichokes and kale, and enjoyed a satisfying pasta lunch. Afterwards I got to work on another version of page one. This time I kept it simple. I used a large round opacity brush and blocked out the waves, the sand, the hills, volcano, and sky. I changed to a wet oil brush for the sand dunes, clouds, and the figure.

I decided to show Jimmy as marooned rather than as washed up on the beach. I was thinking of Howard Pyle’s pirate picture called Marooned!. It’s a beauty indeed, especially if you like pirates.

And now, on to page 2.

Chore Day, Jan 30, 2021, and More Rocks

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Today’s chores were the same as last week: laundry and vacuuming. Next week I’m going to be pruning some trees. When we bought the house it didn’t occur to us that tress were for more than scenery. It turns out that trees require upkeep that creates more chores for my day off. Trees are also good for the spirit, so it all evens out.

Rocks are driving me crazy. I watched a few Youtube tutorials about painting rocks but they were incredibly uninformative, or boring, or long-winded, or all of those put together. I may have to just figure out my own system for painting rocks.