Chore Day, October 2, 2021 and Painting Cat Fur

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Today’s chores: laundry and vacuuming. Nacho the Pug assisted me with the laundry by going into all of the forbidden nooks and crannies of our laundry area. He also helped by trying to sneak his unicorn plushy up the stairs, which he is forbidden to do. The stairs are steeper than is safe for a pug, but he’s unaware that anything in the world is would ever do him harm, and I want to keep it that way.

I had about 30 minutes to work on painting stripes on my tabby cat. I found a brush that simulates hair and gave it a try. Perhaps the brush is overkill. Simple stripes painted with a watercolor brush might work better.

September 25, 2021 -- Chore Day and Working on My Book for a Change

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page50_line_work3.jpg, flames background, CLip Studio Paint ex

Today’s chores were doing laundry (we’re a clean family), vacuuming the house, and pruning some overgrowth in the yard. We have five huge Diadora Cedars on the edge of our property. They’re over 100-feet tall and drop a shit ton of needles every Fall. Besides that charming trait, their very long and spindly lower branches droop to the ground and make walking under them to pick up dog poop a real pain. So, I pruned enough branches to make our lives a little easier.

My other pruning chore was to clean up the solitary grape vine that covers our little shed every year. We’ve lived here for eight years, and this is the first year that the vine has produced grapes — Concord grapes, to be precise. They’re small and delicious. but I prefer seedless grapes.

I was able to do some work on page 48. I tried to create a flame background, but I can see that it needs more work.

Sep 11, 2021 -- Chore Day with Wild Turkeys

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Today I vacuumed the house and did the laundry. Before that I went on a 6:30 am walk with the dogs. At the top of the ridge, a flock of wild turkeys didn’t like our looks and fled down the hillside. While that drama was taking place, a tall black-tailed buck with a many-pointed rack grazed by the side road, disdainful of our petty concerns. In our town, the deer do not respect small, yappy dogs. To prevent an incident, I tucked my vociferous Pomeranian under my shirt before he could catch sight of the noble buck.

After lunch we sat in the back yard for the first time in two weeks. The air was actually breathable and we didn’t need our M-95 masks. It was a luxury to lounge in our plastic Adirondack chairs and drink our tea. In the distant East, we could see the smoke from the Bootleg fire peering over the tops of the Siskiyou mountains.

Chore Day, August 28, 2021

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choreday.aug282021.png

Chore Day arrived again. As usual, I vacuumed the house and did the laundry. I thought of making some vegan cheese sauce, but that seemed like more than I could handle. I’ll do it tomorrow. At 3 pm I tried sketching but fell asleep. I also thought of spending 30 minutes studying Swedish, but didn’t have the will or energy of open the book.

On the other hand, I went for a one hour family walk this morning. We took our usual route and walked up to Ridge Road. There are sensational views of the mountains and canyons. With the smoke we experiencing, there are magnificent examples atmospheric perspective as the Siskiyou Moutains fade into the smoke.

Swedish is a fun language with many words shared with English. The spelling and pronunciation are tricky but learnable with lots of study. After 30 minutes of study, my brain feels like it’s been through a heavy weight session at the gym. Learning is hard work.

August 21, 2021 -- Chore Day and the Impossibilty of Art

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Today’s chores, vacuuming and laundry, went smoothly. Every week I do the same chores and consistently get a sense of accomplishment from them that I rarely get from my art. When the house is vacuumed, it’s vacuumed. When the laundry is done, done. Art — my art a least — is never finished. Even though I pronounce it to be “finished”. I can always find something unfinished or mal-finished about it. My obstreperous art and its frustrations help me to be grateful for completing simple, manual tasks. Art is an unrelenting task master. The way things are going, I don’t expect to ever be able so say, “That is a perfect drawing.” Then again, one of the things I love about Art is that it will always be challenging, a mountain of unlimited height, always there, always alluring, always tempting, always elusive. That’s just the thing I’ve been looking for.

Aug 14, 2021: Chore Day with Procreate Overtones

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Today’s chores were, once again, vacuuming and doing laundry. As a bonus chore, I got to water the long-suffering bushes in the front yard. I use my own custom drip gardening technique. Instead of using piping, I have 15 three-gallon buckets with a pinhole in each. The amount of water dripped over about two hours is the equivalent of about one inch of rain. The downside of my clever solution is that I have to fill the buckets one at a time, which takes about 20 minutes.

I used Procreate to draw today’s self-portraits. Since these were drawn from imagination, they don’t look much like me. Only the bridge of the nose is a realistic representation..

July 31, 2021 -- No Evacuation, But There Were Chores

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practicing getting eyes right, and mouths

practicing getting eyes right, and mouths

Today’s chores were laundry and blowing the needles off our deck and sidewalks. We have 5 Didora Cedars that jetison a shit ton of needles every summer. They get tracked into the house f I don’t blow them away at least once a week.

I’ve been practicing using Photoshop. I have a hell of a time getting eyes to look non-alien, and mouths aren’t any easier. Drawing humans is really hard.

As for Photoshop, I like its snappiness — everything is fast and it feels natural. In other drawing applications I get the feeling that I’m physically dragging a reluctant brush across the screen.

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Today was a modified chore day. Of course I did the laundry and cooked up a batch of tasty soy curls for out sloppy joe sandwiches, but instead of vacuuming, I went for an hour-long walk with the family. We hiked to the highest point of the hills surrounding your neighborhood, then took the gravel road to the bottom, then climbed back up and then headed down to home. Today we encountered several of the local juvenile deer along our route. They are spectacular athletes as the run up the 75-degree slopes to avoid us. Last week I noticed that a bobcat was checking us out from a great distance — it was no doubt attracted by our yelping Pomeranian. His bark is high pitched and frantic and the wild ones seem to be drawn to his wild yapping.

I had time to sketch Tuca and Betty in their gas masks. My first attempt used full coverage mask that covered the entire head. They’re really creepy. To see why I say “creepy”, do an image search for “gas maks” and you’ll understand why I use that word. The vintage Russian masks are especially nightmarish. I’m going to change Tuca and Betty’s masks to something more friendly, like the fireman’s face shield mask at the top left of the picture.

Chore Day, July 17, 2021 -- Blockhead

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Pencil with ink outline

Pencil with ink outline

The usual chores today: vacuuming the house and doing laundry. Afterwards I spent time with my puppy. Nacho is playful and loves other dogs. They love him until he starts to paw them and climb on their backs. The poor guy just wants to play.

I overslept this morning. Normally I wake up at 6 am, but today I neglected to set my alarm and slept until 6:30 am. It was good to sleep in.

I’ve been doing serious back stretches. Over the past few years I’ve developed serious tech neck and rounded shoulders. I attribute my poor posture to years of leaning over my iPad while drawing and to sloppy posture while I’m at my workstation coding endless hours. My back has reached the point that the curvature can no longer be corrected by simply standing tall. I’m using a device call the BackPod to do deep massage on tight ligaments in my spine and ribs. It feels like an 800-lb masseuse has pinned me down with their knee.