Drawing Faces

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After a friend’s child saw me doing a digital drawing on my iPad we started drawing faces. Since they showed interest in drawing, I purchased them a copy of Ed Emberley’s “Drawing Book of Faces”. So we could both draw all the faces in the book over time.

I had purchased “Drawing Book of Faces” book and a few others of Mr. Emberley’s after Austin Kleon mentioned using them. He suggested they were great to get children or adults drawing. I thought it would be a great way to do something creative. Along with learning how to draw faces better, even if most of them were more cartoonish.

Sent Book to Friends Child

I sent the book to my friend’s child. We started by drawing only one face a day, which worked well since there are six to a row on each page. That way, if we missed a day, we could still get them done in a week.

We checked in the first week and shared a few of our drawings.

Drawing on Phone with My Finger

I found drawing faces on my phone with my finger was challenging to do. They were having issues too. So I suggested we move to paper instead. They agreed that would be better.

I kept at it on my phone and still have even after finishing the 295+ faces in the book. In some of my pages, I put more than one related face. So there are probably, closer to 325 or more paces in the book.

At some point, my friend’s child got tired of drawing and stopped. Recently, I heard they got an iPad and have been using another digital drawing application to draw instead of their phone. Here’s hoping using the iPad will keep them drawing and improving in the process.

Moved on to Next Drawing Book

Once done with the faces book, I moved on to Mr. Emberley’s “Drawing book Make a World.” This book has planes, trains, cars, buildings, ships, animals, etc., to draw.

More Creativity in My Day

I find it’s a subtle way to do some creative drawing in about 10 or 15 minutes. It can be done while watching or listening to something on my computer in the evening to unwind. You don’t need a lot of skill as I have proven to be able to do these drawings,

So here’s to more drawing/creativity in my day and yours.

Enjoying the Extra Writing

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Since I started blogging again this year, I have noticed I’m enjoying the writing part. Keeping a daily schedule has been good and bad.

My Process

I have spent time first coming up with blog post ideas and then outlining them. Once I have done an outline or two, I start putting in a bit of the content as the first draft. Then on my walk’s I tend to work through ideas and figure out what I want to say. It’s been helpful getting the thoughts down in my head before typing them in blog posts.

Keeping the posts between a couple of hundred words and maybe 500 or 600 words has been helpful. My old style was to write long posts of a thousand to fifteen hundred words with code examples, etc. Doing these took many hours, a few days, or even weeks.

I still need to finish a few of the longer blog posts I started a year or more ago and get them out at some point. But right now, I’m working on writing every day and putting something new out.

Posting Every Day so Far this Year

It’s been interesting attempting to make sure to post everyday. The issue is more what else do I have or need to say at a given time.

Posting every day so far in January, it’s been nice to talk about what was happening on a given day. Or to recap what happened on a given day. Like the weekend lazy Saturday post a while ago or on Thursdays about Wednesday’s Inauguration.

So here’s to seeing how long I can keep writing/posting every day.

Might Slow Up on Posts

I’m not sure if I want to keep it up because of the time it has been taking. I think I could use the time to learn more modern CSS and JavaScript to help look for a front-end coding job.

Between outlining posts, thinking what I want to say, and writing the first draft of posts. Then coming back to posts to edit/finish them and then one last check before posting takes time. Even these shorter style posts are taking anywhere from an hour to three hours.

Or it might be a mix of code learning and blog posts, with some of them being about what I have learned.

Other Activities

I also need to keep time for my 100 Day Project wine bottle shape drawings or adding restaurants to Gotta Eat Here. Doing so helps for when it’s safe to travel. I want to have plenty of places to eat when I’m away.

I want to add some features like a map of all the places for a given location on a separate page. Doing it this way as not to slow up the downloading of the main list of restaurants. The maps feature needs more research for the best way to add them without cost to me.

I would like to make the website a progressive web application, too, at some point.

Doing All the Things

So here’s to making time to both write, learn to code, etc., while still getting time to relax too.

Coldest Day So Far This Winter

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The walk to the Old Town Alexandria farmers market this morning was the coldest day this winter for me so far. I know for those of you up north where it gets cold, this wasn’t too bad.

Okay, it was 32 F, but with the 20 mph winds, it was 19 F.

It’s not that bad being from Buffalo, NY. With only wearing a heavy and a lightweight hoodie for layering, the wind was going right through them at times. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t over a mile each way to the farmer’s market.

My big mittens were making my hands warm and a little sweating. The wind seemed to be chilling my upper body and my legs. It made me wish I had long underwear to wear under my pants for on my legs.

Going forward, on weekends, before heading to the farmer’s markets, I need to check the weather better. I need to see if there is any significant wind to get an idea of the windchill.

Today the warm temperature and the sun were a bit deceiving.

Here’s to dressing better for the weather when I’m outside for the next month or two.

100 Day Project

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Back on April 6th, 2015, I started the 100 Day Project to do 100 days of something creative. Some people wrote for 100 days, while others drew or made mini-movies, sang, coded, etc.

Preparing to Paint

I decided it had been probably eight or ten years since I painted, so I thought I would do that. I checked on my paints, and even though they were old, they were in great shape to use.

A week or two before, I went to get a few new brushes and some small canvas boards to paint on. I ended up getting the following size boards: 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8 x 10, and even a few 10 x 12. All those are in inches not feet.

Started Painting

On the evening of the 6th of April, I started using my new boards and brushes to paint wine bottle shapes on a colored background. It was rough going at first, but I kept at it.

As my skills improved, I used my pallet knives to paint either the bottle or the background. Doing so allowed me to learn again how to use them. At some point, I even did both bottles and background with the pallet knife.

Switched to Digital Drawing

I kept this up for about 180 days or so before going to New York City for a long weekend. So I wasn’t going to bring my paints, etc. to paint while in New York. I was concerned about how to bring wet paintings home in the train. So I carried my iPad and learned how to do a digital drawing using Paper by 53.

At first, I did my drawing with my fingers. The drawings weren’t that good and probably wouldn’t have been much better using a digital pencil either.

Then when Paper by 53 came out with their pencil, I bought one. Purchasing the pencil gave me more features/tools in the application and improved my wine bottle shape drawings.

At some point, I missed a day or so along the way.

I’m currently at drawing/painting 2,107 out of I think it’s like 2,117 or so days.

So not bad being creative each day minus ten or so days over almost five years. Some of it could be a bit of miss numbering, but I think it’s more. I missed a few days.

So I have missed on average two days a year. Not bad in my book.

Application Upgrade

At one point, the application wanted people to pay a monthly fee after upgrading to the newest version. So I held off for many, many months.

At some point during the summer of 2020, I mistakenly upgraded after such a long time. Because it had been so long since the improvements, I lost 1,700 – 1,800 digital drawings.

I think they are still on my iPad somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find them, and I never downloaded them. Which I had thought to do many a time but didn’t.

It was a momentary feeling of loss, but I figured what was I going to do at that point. Okay, there might have been a few swear words mumbled under my breath. Only because it was late at night, and I didn’t want to wake up the upstairs neighbors.

Other Daily Creative Projects

I have done a similar thing with GitHub for a project to keep track of places to eat when I travel (Gotta Eat Here).

Then I started another drawing thing with a friend’s child. After they saw me doing my drawing each day, I was visiting them and showed interest in doing the same thing.

I will write more on those in future posts.

Here’s to More Creativity

So here is to doing something creative each day to break up work, life, and the pandemic. While not making it into something that makes you feel bad/stressed if you miss a day.

It’s supposed to be fun and not stressful.

Yesterday’s Inauguration

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January 20th, 2021, was an interesting and enjoyable day.

As a government contractor, I had the day because the government was closed in the DC area for the inauguration.

The bonus was I took an extra day off on Tuesday to give myself a long five day weekend. Doing so gave me a much-needed break from work and allowed me to get things done but still relax too.

My Midday Walk

So I slept in a bit and laid in bed and read some.

Then I realized I need to get going for a walk since I typically take a 20 or 25-minute walk around lunchtime. Today I wanted to be home around noon to watch the inauguration ceremony.

So I got dressed and gathered my things. I then went for an hour and eight-minute walk that covered 3.1 miles in the process.

Late Breakfast

Once back home, I toasted up a piece of baguette that I sliced in half lengthwise. When it was done, I added some cream cheese and strawberry jam to hold me over to closer to noon.

I started eating my breakfast and looking at Twitter to see what everyone was saying about the day’s events.

After a bit more reading, I started some blog post editing. I need to keep ahead of things by a day or more. So all I have to do is edit them the night before posting and maybe a final check the day they go live.

Lunch

For the Inauguration, I wanted a bit of a different meal for the event.

So I made a large bowl of popcorn that fit in my blue plastic bowl that is about 12 inches wide and three inches deep and was filled past the rim.

The main meal items were two types of cheeses, an aged white cheddar, and a stinky Smythe cheese. Two types of cured meats from The Fermented Pig.

Some plain crackers and a super sharp pairing knife I got at the flea market were on my cutting board. I needed a sharp knife to cut the meat and cheese.

The cutting board was from Martha’s Vineyard that I purchased 30+ years ago on a trip there.

NOTE – I need to get back to Martha’s Vineyard again after it’s safe to do so.

Inauguration Ceremony Viewing

I watch the inauguration ceremony on CNN.com since I got rid of my cable TV in the early fall of 2019.

I started watching somewhere about 11:30 AM or so. I was able to see Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez both sing.

I then witnessed history with the swearing-in of Vice President Kamala Harris. She is the first-ever Black, South Asian, and woman Vice President in the United States.

Following that, I watched President Joe Biden get sworn in. He gave an excellent speech on the country needing to unite and work things out together even if people have differences. That’s my summary if you want all the details to watch his speech again on the internet.

Then the star of the show was listening to Amanda Gorman’s poem. She is an American poet and activist from Los Angeles, California.

Today’s “The Hill We Kill” poem during the ceremony was very moving. I even went back and listened to it again later Tuesday evening.

I’m looking for great things from her in the future.

Post Ceremony

Once the ceremony was over, I listened to a bit more of the CNN commentators. At the same time, I was looking to see what friends on Twitter were saying. After some more listening and reading for about an additional 30 minutes, I stopped. I then took a nap on my sofa to unwind a bit.

After the ceremony, I cleaned up my desk of the food, of course.

Once refreshed from about an hour nap, I watched a few videos on YouTube and then for another walk.

Once back from my second walk of the day, I edited a few future blog posts and wrote most of this post.

Later tonight, I plan to do a bit of rereading and editing of this post, so it’s ready for posting on Thursday.

The Future

As for myself and many others, I follow on Twitter. We are all looking for a much quieter four years with Joe Biden as President. Some even said boring would be good for a change, and I agree.

Meaning I expect him to work towards his promises. We need to make sure the House and Senate both work to the benefit of the people of the country they serve and not their parties.

Mostly they need to work towards repairing the divide that has happened in the last four years and ones before it too.

So here is to less drama and more nation-building. While making things safe for all citizens in the United States and abroad.