Am glad I never read too much of I am thinking of ending things. Didactically morose. I would not have liked it. Am reading Animal Farm, though. maybe it ends well? 

:P

Birthday notes

I am sooo behind with everything I want to say. We're off to a vacation, so a thousand things need to be done and I won't even manage to get half of them through, let alone a proper journal entry.

As always, my birthday was awesome and calm. There was no real party, just a chill family picnic (one balloon, store-bought cake, charcoal-done BBQ...) on a flawless day, and bits of fore-and-after-shocks in the form of all the shit I bought myself, things G made me, our cafeteria meal (I like the shopping mall cafeteria and I love going there on special occasions), a big book mum and dad bought, Instax film coupon from sis, a huge tip from one of my clients, and last but not least:

the crazy gals I've been hanging out with threw me a mini surprise party!! This happened on Tuesday as I was off to get some more archaeology sketch lessons and after a few hours (had to catch the 5:20 train to get there in the bright morning), the bell rings and in comes the third of our trio, with a lap full of mini cakes from the best chocolate shop ever! And then, after I almost cried, they gave me each a prezzie: a miniature knit fox cub for my sleeping fox in a box, and felted baby Hermes!!! I will make some pickies to demonstrate the wonders these things are, because ... really? Foxes and Hermes? I should be a world traveller with all these charms, although perhaps instead now my paints travel, while I order online and the world comes to me... :))

The cutest moment, if the most violent one, was in the middle of the night on Monday, as I climbed up to bed where G was sleeping. Some background/reminders: our bed is elevated and we have two mattresses, so there is a bit of a ditch between the base and wall, where I sleep, because I cool myself against the wall. G goes to sleep a lot earlier and he sleeps on the other side - it's still far too hot for regular sex, waaaaay too hot for any kind of touching. So I climb up, see him turned away on his end, I dig myself into my ditch - it's about 2 in the morning - and start to yawn, my eyes still not accustomed to the darkness, when something huge and black reaches over me ... and I smack it in the head, letting out a scream ... 

An insulted little voice mumbles: Happy birthday, my love ... as the General turns away and retreats back to his end miserably, like a kicked puppy.

I was so sorry I almost peed myself laughing. If the poor sod came for some romance or a pretty pretty kiss, and got beaten up instead ... Oh, my poor G. My poor G, how you probably shouldn't soundlessly climb over someone who hasn't slept since forever :)))))

Leading ladies (and their hairstyles) of the 80s on iMDb

I'm looking at this photo gallery of famous actresses in some of their most famous roles of the 80, thinking, I cannot relate to a single one of these women. At all. They all seem either so impossibly fake or so impossibly dumb or so impossibly damaged, there is nothing realistic about them. Their roles are either fo super victims or super sexy or super supposedly romantically humorous. In real lives, too. Like the image they were told to portray in their public persona 'act' is either Fake, Forced or Dumb. Nothing even remotely 3-dimensional in any of their roles. Not saying these aren't all very tall, flawlessly engineered women, all wildly acceptable to the general public and many sporting a lot of hair, but ... Not a single one of them seems ... me. Just doesn't.

Forced to look Fake:

Forced to look Forced:

Forced to appear Dumb:

Perhaps because the polaroid, even though it's cute as a button, has been making such crappy pictures, I really miss the insurmountable quality of my Marki... I think I may take Marki along to the field this trip after all. You just can't take proper nature pics with an Instax or a phone ... 

Sounds exactly like me, to buy and Instax so she wouldn't have to drag all her gear on a hike and then drags BOTH gears. 

I get a feeling sometimes that - if our phones ARE spying on us and someone is taping us through their little cameras - I would be more embarrassed by being filmed weeping like a moron watching romantic dramas than making a moronic face watching porn. I am not embarrassed by my healthy sex drive, my taste in movies, however ... leaves a little bit to be desired. I mean, I love good shit, of course I do. But I also have very pathetic guilty pleasures. I may or may not have seen the ending to Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society 50 times. Not sure I've seen the whole movie. Did like the book. 

Ah, Jackson's, Jackson's...

 Shut up and take my money.

 Rode a morning train today to the adjacent valley, to undergo lessons in archaeological sketching. I've forgotten how cute that ride is, with the tiny feisty rivers and the gorge between them, and then at the end a large thermal power-plant, surrounded by heaps of brown coal from the local mine. The lessons took place in the fifth story of a residential building, offering me a view of the towns, the storm behind them and the castles on the hills. On the way back I saw a really neat formation of a tiny homestead, which I should probably sketch. As for the lessons - precision and consistency will certainly need to be reinvented on my part, I need some tools and above all, I should probably stop thinking that all that is a lot easier done using illustrator and photoshop. 

Wrote a tiny poem. Bought some books and stuff. Tomorrow should really be spent sending off shipments. I have to post new stuff on IG and in the shop, and then make use of the 9000 watercolours I own and four tons of paper, because I saw cute pastel chalk and thought, hm, haven't used pastels in a while and the General almost killed me. 

Fujifilm Instax Mini 90 Neo Classic

 Here is my eternal conflict with photo cameras. There are two kinds: toys and workhorses. I have a fantastic workhorse, it has been with me for a long long time but I never had a toy, because I never truly needed one. However, lately, I am very careful and protective of my workhorse, as getting another is not exactly cheap and I kind of really need it for my promos. Not that I didn't really need it before, it just ... I dunno. It's a pickle. 

     As for toys, I always wanted a street camera. Something maybe in a range of a grand, something small, capable, fun, light, pocket-size. Like, say Fujifilm X100V, even though I would have opted for something with a fiercer macro mode. But something like that. Retro, adorbz, hipster, quirky. 

Of course every time I started looking at photo gear with a thousand bucks in my pocket, the thought of buying a street lense for the money always seemed like a much better idea and taking photos as good as I know I am capable of with proper gear (workhorse). Buying a spare workhorse just to have it sit in your drawer seems kind of counterintuitive. Kind of rude, really. But the toy still needs to be kind of proper. The good ones are costly and if you are going to spend so much money, it may as well be a workhorse. But then you need extra gear and all my gear is for Canon. Damn it. 

     So, you can see my timeless predicament. I've had this issue for as long as I'm a photie. And I've taken photos with my phone, I've considered purchasing a tiny printer which will make me adorable fake polaroid print-outs, I've almost even printed some of the photos I've taken in the past fifteen years, though maybe only a couple. 

We're going on vacation at the end of the month and I am again torn between what I desire/feel like I should do. To drag around my workhorse gear on every hike, just to make five Instagram landscape shots ... yeah, sure, I can do that. I've always done that. It does feel rather nice not to sweat into your 15-pound backpack, though. NOT drag it all and take maybe some shots with my crappy Samsung4? NOT take pics at ALL??

     I have decided to put a bandaid on a bullet wound and test a little bit of the hipster retro quirky waters, by purchasing a hundred bucks worth Instax. It *ZIIING*ed instantly as I saw it, but the conflict now burns ever stronger - now my already barren blog and very lagging Instagrams will truly be left behind while I focus on the bullet journals... But again, I've been meaning to focus on my journal since Prague, since one has been gifted to me, and, to come full circle, you can actually take some really nice pics OF a bullet journal. Am just saying. 

Brushes and papers and samples, oh my ...

 So yesterday, just as I was breaking furniture and trying to kill the cats for having made a doodoo in the hallway, the delivery man called to inform me my samples parcel from Jackson's has arrived - several days ahead of schedule, no less - and I had to switch from felicidal rampage to overwhelming sense of excitement - not as easy as it sounds in this heat..

Treating myself for my BD, I bought myself three brushes - sizes not necessarily those I am accustomed to using, but all in all I think, even intuitively, I chose them very well - four sheets of paper, a sketchpad, and several samples. Also some paints, but let's not go there. I am almost at the end of my curiosity list. Even though the Turner tube turned out... (okay, weird sentence) to be a pink shimmer, and I would not buy a pink shimmer had I known that's what it will be, it is a very curious pink shimmer, leaving a very pronounced magenta rim once it dries - really quite fascinating and lovely.

It took me a little while to determine which paper is which - they are not marked at all (And also I wouldn't terribly mind if they arrived a little bit cleaner.) - so comparing sizes, gramature and the receipt took some concentration, as I can now safely say anything above 300 lb is too much for me. Not saying some Arles shit or the Two Rivers of 640 lb or so isn't shockingly superlative, but I can do without. For now.  My formats do not warrant it.

Before I left for the capital, I just tested the lot. I decided this time I won't pack anything at all, not even my pencil wad. Nothing. It is a three-day retreat and I need to switch off a little. Now ask me how intensely, organically, fundamentally, molecularly I yearn for it. For ONE paint if must be, one brush, one pen, just three or four little postcard-size pieces of paper ...

Some woman on Facebook contacted me with a small commission, the description of which was lovely and a project I wouldn't mind taking on, but once we started talking formats and detail and technique and, of course, prices, her budget was slightly limited. I say slightly, because while I understand something sentimental doesn't necessarily require a budget, but I am alas far beyond charging peanuts for my work. I need neither the money nor a reputation, (Looking back on my photography stuff, oh, how badly one can tell my heart was not in it. Yikes.), so whatever I take on is pure interest. But explaining her expectations would require a lot more than two hours, and my tone was probably far less enthusiastic than some people are accustomed to, I never heard back from her. It was a cute idea, though. I am sure she will find some student to execute it wonderfully for the price.

And thus, as I write this, waiting for the coffee to kick in, like physically missing a lover, my fingers ache for the feel of that impossibly rough texture, my nose misses the smell of wet cotton with the intense watercolour smell on it, my wrist misses the oddly heavy feel of a Silver's mark 12 mop brush, or the funny novelty of a rigger, or the (slightly too small, as I couldn't afford a bigger one) humbleness when handling the Maestro. What I really need, though, is either a palette where I can park the paints I have in tubes and drag it around with me, or I should just squirt those little buggers (5ml tubes, ah. Talk about miniatures) in pans and be done with it. I think almost 400 pans arrived as soon as I left. Just as well. I am two paints away from launching the nine-piece purple scale. All that and more, in the few days that I have before we go on vacation. 

Which will also be only 4 days long. What can one do in 4 days? Well, a lot, but it has to be only one thing. I can paint for four days and get fat on hotel food. I can hike the highland plains and forests. I can write. I can start another little picturebook. I do some lessons in paint or sketch portraiture. Using napping G as a model? Gods know I need to brush up on my studies. I can try to design the Oracle cards. I can start working on a new web page? I can read some of the two dozen books I've bought lately. One can do a lot on vacation. 

Forest at night

What odd people G and I are ... He would go hunting in the middle of the night and, in the middle of the night he would drive me to a forest of my choosing on the way, drop me off, in the middle of the fog, kiss me and say: Go do your thing. (Fog is problematic in the woods, as it completely cuts off any relying on hearing. And 'seeing' at night in the woods in fog is, well, not happening. So basically all I do is just 'be'. That's all you can do. BE in the forest, in the fog, in the middle of the night. 

I am wearing bright orange just in case some similar idiot shoots me. 

Am using a rattle to announce my presence, so some equally inept beast doesn't get startled and incidentally runs into me. I would probably shit myself and I don't want that; I just bought these pants.

    Only downside is, my feet are almost instantly soaked. Everything is wet, the forest ground in grassy mossy patches is bog. Thorough lack of edible mushrooms, though. Pity. Tons of puffballs.