Month: February 2024

It’s the Year of the Dragon!

And I’ve thought of a couple of goals that to add to the new year resolutions. Yeah 1 month in… But who cares? Chinese New Year resolutions maybe?

1) Keep the unread email count low, below 100 as much as possible.

I’ve been clearing my mails a lot more, but I didn’t over the CNY holidays and now it’s over 200 unread mails now… Opps. Gotta par that down soon.

2) Finish a Khadi fatbook. It’s a nice, fat book. But it’s not *that* many pages. If I use up 2 or 3 pages per weekend, I should be able to finish one this year!

3) Work on finishing that Nerdforge sketchbook.

Reality is that that sketchbook has too many pages, and unless I use a page everyday, I’m not gonna be able to finish it this year. And finishing it this year isn’t really the goal either… But I’ll work on it!

Other than that… Well I can’t think of much else. I’ve already got the rest covered previously, I think. I definitely want to keep using up all my stock of watercolor paper. It’s always nice to finish *something*. Whether it be a stack of paper, or a sketchbook.

The email count thing is something that I’ve wanted to do since the start of the year, and have been doing it pretty well since Jan. No more 999+ mails again, I hope. Clearing mail is much quicker on the gmail app, except also not really because of the stupid lack of navigation options within the mail itself, at least not that I’ve been able to figure out thus far in the iOS app.

I finally got back to using my supplies again. Did I mention it? I think not. I cleared out my room big time. Massive spring cleaning. Not that it’s really clean now, far from it. But I threw out so much stuff. You can’t imagine how much sh*t there was in my room. There’s still so much stuff on my other desk… But at least I put away the iMac on the desk I’ve been using as my main for many years now… And now I have a lot more space for art and stuff. Still not quite enough, but much improved from before.

I finally looked through my watercolors yesterday and found like four pans with mold and scrubbed off the mold and added clove oil to them. So far so good with the clove oil, no more mold, even on the worse offenders. Which is a huge relief.

Practiced doing some dragons today, and ended up with the above photo as my ‘final product’. It was fun… But now I’m back to easy roses… Well been trying out different brushes though. Actually liking those natural squirrel hair brushes a lot more now, though I do wish they were stiffer. But seeing as how much water the khadi paper needs… Yeah I’m definitely liking them more now. In fact the dragon was done with the natural squirrel hair brush.

Will probably give the goat hair one another try.

But hmm… I suppose that’s all for now? Oh yeah, I put together a ‘bed arting kit’ yesterday, haven’t actually used it yet. Maybe on weekdays? Then I can do random sketches in the NerdForge sketchbook and inch closer to finishing that.

Ok, till next time!

Updated, and in an easy to read point form.

1. Do art every weekend.

Whether it’s full blown piece of detailed part. Watercolors. Color pencil. Or just a quick doodle in bed, before bed, to tick the checkbox. Or maybe a few strokes towards a big piece. It all counts.

2. Use the happy mail dots from sketches n scrubs.

Ideally I’d try to finish it every month. But I have two month’s worth already and haven’t even tried the one from Jan. Oh wells. I’ll try.

3. Tidy up the desk space and just keep it free so that I can actually write and do art. (Working on it, hoping to finish by CNY?)

4. Write more.

Especially those pen pal letters! And do more scrapbook journalling/diary writing. Also update the blogs more.

5. Read a book a month, on average.

I have this every year. I set a reading goal on goodreads and the recent years I have a very modest goal of just a book a month. I read too much webnovels really, and those don’t count since they aren’t books. I also tend to read a lot of non-fiction books which are fairly long, and takes more time to read and digest. End of last year I did go on a short fiction reading spree and some days I even read two books…

6. Try out all my art supplies, and use those neglected supplies.

Yeah, all the stuff that I bought in the past, especially those that are still brand new, in wrappers and all. I’ve been wanting to use them, but with my general lack of space… It’s been hard. But that *should* change soon so…

Is happening. I threw out a ton of stuff this weekend. Cleaned like, half my room. Which unfortunately still leaves me with the other half. And the bookshelf beside my bed, which is very dusty sigh.

Did clean up a bit and threw a bit more stuff in the ‘other half’. But it’s still really messy and there’s a sky high pile of stuff on my chair, and quite a mountain on my table. I need to finish packing and cleaning the area beside the window, so that I can pile those writing pads, notebooks, coloring books, and reverse coloring books back in that area. And then I can move on to packing probably the most important part of my room – my desks. Ideally I would pack that up, move my iMac to the floor or something… And then I’d have a lot more table space. I’m also really hoping to keep my chair free of stuff so that I can do art/write anytime.

Can I get that done before Chinese New Year? I have no idea. I don’t think so… But I’ll have to try. Probably will take leave this thursday to pack… yeah. Sigh.