Month: May 2024

I have been sketching a ton. And just making a ton of art in general. For the past like… Week or so, I have been doing at least a sketch on the way home. By that, I mean, I stop somewhere along the route home and sketch. Unfortunately… I also dropped my expensive rotring 800 while sketching yesterday. (Or well, the day before since it’s past midnight.) Arghs. Not sure if I can still find it… But I’ll take a look tomorrow… It is on the way to work after all. Sigh.

I started sharing my urban sketches to instagram, thought I should update it more… But the whole AI scrapping thing is really putting a bad taste in my mouse… Like. Yeah there’s way more people using instagram… But… I don’t know. But I’ll be posting a lot more on Cara for now. And I think more people are flocking to Cara now precisely because of these AI issues. A schoolmate and acquaintance of mine (and a professional, accomplished, photographer) made the app, specifically for artists. It’s definitely built with professionals in mind… And I’m not sure how it’ll grow as a place for more casual artists like myself etc. The app is still in beta and it’s still early days… But whatever. I’m gonna give it a go and see. I haven’t been using instagram much after they switch the feed format/algorithm anyway. I just go in, see if my close friends posted any new stories, and at most scroll 5 items into my feed then get out. I definitely used instagram a lot less after the change because I mostly only want to see the stuff my friends post.

Anyway, here is my cara profile. Make an account and follow me there!https://cara.app/themessydeskxyz

I’m also liking the 5000 character count limit on Cara. It’s longer than instagram and I kinda… treat it like a microblog as well. I guess it is what I make of it after all, who’s to tell me how I should or should not use it? After all the twitter/X nonsense and now facebook with it’s Meta AI shit… Yeah a lot of people went to like mastodon and stuff? I haven’t used it at all lol. Maybe I should… But for now I’ll be posting my art stuff on Cara, and post longer backstories and thoughts and what not there. Mini blogs. Not as time consuming as my full blown blogs like this one, but something I’d be able to do way more often… So do check out my profile there. I’ve been posting all my urban sketches there as well.

Alright. It’s really late and I really should get some sleep. Good night and till next time!

And art supplies. Lots of art supplies.

So much so for the low buy huh. I just ordered a bunch of rosemary and co brushes this morning, and because there were sales, I bought more beam paints and more blue pine arts paints like… last week or something? Yeah… Bad me.

And erm. Arrtx simptap markers arrived last night and I had some fun playing with them. They seem a bit more dry and less wet than I’d have preferred… And being brush nibs perhaps? They performed really poorly on the Khadi fatbook, which has become my favourite sketchbook now. Not for acrylic paint markers I guess. The nerdforge hot press sketchbook is great for that.

Which brings me to the main reason for updating the blog. My sketchbook usage! Started the khadi fatbook just this year and I’ve already gone through more than half of it! Similarly I’m past the halfway mark in the Nerdforge sketchbook, although that was started like mid last year? But I wanted to finish at least one, hopefully two sketchbooks this year, and more specifically I had these two sketchbooks in mind when I wrote my New Year’s resolutions, so I’m glad that it’s been going well. Definitely going to finish up this first Khadi fatbook and then I can break into the new one! I bought a whole set of three nerdforge sketchbooks as well, and on top of that I bought two of the same green covered sketchbook first, so that means I have nerdforge sketchbooks aplenty to use…!

Alright. I guess I’ll end off here, because I want to do another “blind” solve maybe (see my other blog!), and then shower, and do some art!

It’s only the start of May, but there’s been quite a bit of ups and downs in terms of my emotions thus far. I cleared most of my penpal letters, then ran out of steam for the last few, which I’ve still not replied to this date…

But I sent out a whole bunch of art… And then painted lots more. Finally also got around to organising most of the more recently purchased watercolors, panning them out (as in, putting into half pans) and swatching some of them.

Here’s what I just did on like… This past Thursday? That will have to suffice for my art this weekend/week… Since I am here now in Lotus Desaru Beach Resort & Spa, just staying here for the weekend aka one night. I bought along my iPad (which is what I’m typing this entry on), and a 3×3 cube and a clock. Will talk more about the cubing stuff in my other blog. But no art supplies on this trip. I mean, there’s really not much time since we are only staying for a night!

I tried doing an urban landscape last weekend with my holbein gouache and that turned out nicer than expected.

Also… Gosh, the new granulating colors that holbein announced on their instagram. The colors looks amazing and I am a sucker for granulating watercolors AND color separating/chromatography stuff. Like the dusk colors in the Rembrandt line. Gosh. There goes my money again. I want those. All of it. Fuck. I think I’m gonna be collecting the entire series of them…? Well depends on how many colors they will have in total I guess. So far they have announced 12 colors. A very collectable number thus far.

I’ve kinda tried to reduce the buying… But also not really. Just placed a fairly large order for Blue Pine Arts watercolors, because of their 25% rebranding sale… And I stocked up a lot on my Kuben’s gold pan. And also bought a lot of other shiny colors. Yeah. Absolutely in love with Kuben’s gold. Also ordered some more shinies from Renneiscence colors… Gonna have to dig out my current supply of those and use them…

I also… Decided to take the plunge and get those arrtx simptap markers. After being tempted by them for ages. Reason being because there was an abstract piece that I tried to do with gouache and I had to keep laying on the gouache and wait for it to dry between coats (or well, use the heat gun, which I did)… It was a long process. Would have been way faster with arcylic markers. And the posca pens kinda do the splattering thing on certain surfaces with annoys me soooo much. Either way. I’ve been tempted for months and finally decided to do it.

Also, absolutely in love with shinies. Shiny gouache is what I’ve been using. Mostly holbein. And that one Kuben’s gold from BPA. Hope more will join me soon. I wonder when they will ship it out… Because I did add on some paper products which they said are preorders and will take a month before they are shipped… I wonder if they will do two shippings… I did buy a lot afterall! We’ll see.

Hmmm. That’s it for now I guess. Till next time! It’s getting late and I still want to blog about cubing!