Ok. Not gonna lie. I’m typing this blog post from my phone, something which I don’t normally do. And the main reason for it being that I noticed that SwiftKey had an update. And further googling led me to find out that apparently Microsoft reverted the decision to stop SwiftKey support on ios. And reinstalling the app made it work again! Hurrah! Before reinstalling it wasn’t really working but yeah. It is working again!
I was so devastated when it just bugged out and stopped working previously. Like. The keyboard is just one of the things that you use everyday. And most of the time you don’t think too much about it. It’s there. It exists. And you use it happily ever after. Until it’s suddenly not. It just bugged out and kept reverting to the default keyboard with one ios update. I don’t even remember when that was. And it was only then that I realised that msoft had bought it over abs discontinued support. They reverted that decision fairly quickly according to Wikipedia. Just three months later. But obviously you can’t go three months without a working keyboard. So yeah.
In the meantime I tried many other keyboards. Like the google gboard and others. I quickly made the decision that I needed a smart keyboard. Those multi colored, super customizable but dumb keyboards were pretty but useless. I loved having a row of number keys at the top of the keyboard. If gboard had that instead of having to press and hold the top row of alphabets to get the numbers, I would have used that. But nope. I found it faster to just change to the next page instead… So much deliberation later I decided to just stick with the stock ios keyboard.
What I really loved about SwiftKey and really hated about ios stock keyboard was how quickly SwiftKey learns new words. Just once. Then it saves in the dictionary. With ios? I had to type the same thing for weeks before it finally learnt it. And even then it still doesn’t do singlish right. It would capitalize my lahs and lohs thinking they were special words. So annoying.
In typing this blog post though, I realised that there is one thing that the ios keyboard does better. The auto correct is way more powerful. And actually useful most of the time now. If anything that makes me go back it would be that…
I’ve also forgotten that there’s the very handy punctuation thing beside the space key on SwiftKey. Just slide to get! And? And, # @. Yeah. I just automatically go to the next page now. Oh wells. To stick with SwiftKey and my years of prior language training? Or go back to ios keyboard? For now I’m gonna be using SwiftKey. As it relearn my typing heatmap, the times when I need big phrases corrected – which is what the ios keyboard is good at, should decrease. And now that I’m making a concerted effort to use the quick punctuation key again, that’s coming back to me real quick. A small little slide for a comma. A big one to the left for! And a small slide to the right for? That’s pretty much all I use anyway.
That’s pretty much all I have to say for today. I still want to keep typing though. It’s like meeting an old friend. So much so that I actually, legitimately, just missed my stop. First time ever lol. Just lost track of time. Shit… Oh wells. At least I’m not in a rush to get to work today. And it’s a quick ride back. Look I’m already at the next stop. It’s only been a hot minute. Guess the distance between these two stops are shorter than I imagined. Not that I pass by it often. I just go to work and go home. Rinse and repeat. Such a boring life right.
Ok. Back at the right station. Wasted about 5 mins of my time maybe? Or was it 7 minutes? Not too bad overall. And I’m really running out of things to say. Besides that all my Is are appearing as J. Yup my typing is wildly inaccurate. Hence the need for smart keyboards.
Ok ok. I’ll end here and spare you the joyful reunion rumble. Till next time!
Update: I just checked my discord chat and found that it was 26 Oct 2022 when I was complaining about SwiftKey death. Gosh. Absolutely didn’t keep up with the news. Else I’d have switched back to SwiftKey immediately the moment it was revived. Geez.
Crazy how time just flies by. And it’s only getting worse as we age… Half the year is gone already huh?
What have I been up to? Lots, and lots of art. I’ve been doing a sketch (occasionally more) everyday after work. Or if I head out on the weekends…. So that means I’ve been doing loads of art on a small sketchbook. Started doing it since the 23rd of May and have not skipped a day since! Pretty impressive for me really. I’ve rarely kept up with doing something almost daily (well, typically just weekdays) for so long! I do not have much stamina when doing things, really! All the sketches are on my Cara account here as I have shared in the previous post. Do check it out! I post pretty much the moment I finish the sketch, so you kinda get live updates. And I do write a lot there too, like some fun stuff (to me anyway) about what happened when doing the sketch, some backstory… Thoughts about the art supplies etc. All there!
So today…. I did some swatches, and also put together a Holbein travel palette! Because I bought all those tiny palettes and they need to be used right? They deserved to be used. So yeah, that’s partly why. It just is fun too… But I definitely feel the barrier to using a new palette because I’m not as familiar with the new palette. I put together a 12 color qor palette before this and I was so unfamiliar with that since I put it together somewhat hastily… That I grabbed the wrong color a couple of times. I also missed some of the convenience colors that I had in my other palette, like the buff titanium especially. With this Holbein though, I have a whooping 24 colors… My first urban sketcing palette only had 21 colors even after all my add ons! So 24 colors was such a luxury. So I’ve included a bunch of fun, convenience colors like oranges and tons of greens. So far I’ve hardly, almost never mixed a green from yellow and blue… I have mixed my greens with other colors, but hardly do I make it from scratch so to speak. And this palette has a whooping FIVE greens lol. I do love drawing foliage so… That’s my excuse lol. That, and I have space. So why not right?
Alright. I’m getting really sleepy and it’s past 12 midnight… So, till next time!
I have ‘moved’ to Cara. Kinda. Tldr: Follow me here to see my art works.
I will mostly only be posting my art to Cara I guess. I *might* post art occasionally to instagram. A big *might*. Sure, as a hobby artist I’m not like, loosing money or anything to the meta AI. But ethically it disgusts me so much. I would have to figure out the whole glaze thing on Cara… If it’s easy to download the glazed images from Cara and repost it on instagram, I would do that. Otherwise… I don’t really feel like posting my art to instagram anymore. I’m going to be doing so much more art moving forward and I’d rather post it all to a proper, art centric platform, and Cara is it.
My old instagram posts are not going anywhere, nor is my account… But I’ll slowly repost some stuff onto Cara I guess. Including adding the pieces that I’m proud of to Cara. And mini blogging there too. Like twitter, but longer. I am enjoying myself so much there. The ability to just write long posts without worrying about the word limit especially. Yeah, it’s 5k characters but I’ve wrote a pretty long post,, said everything I needed, and kept it under 5k characters. And it’s mostly just, much easier to do on mobile and that means I’m posting there a lot more often.
In fact I’ve talked about everything art related that I’ve done recently there. Setting up my urban sketching palette (night time edition)… Getting a new etchr field case and filling that up…
Definitely check out my profile there. I’m a lot more active on there than I have ever been on this blog, and will ever be I guess. A blog post feels like something that I have to take more time to write, write something longer, more substantial. Whereas that gate isn’t there with Cara.
I’ve kinda been on an urban sketching mania lately, and apart from the ridiculously hot weather, I’ve been enjoying it lots. I want to put together more tiny palettes and bring that out. But I have to figure the clipping situation out… It’s so fun though. Tiny paintings and tiny palettes…
Alright. I’m also so very tired now, so I guess I’ll end off here. Mostly just wanted to share my Cara profile link. Good night!
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.
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!
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!
For the most part my unread mail count is kept below 100. Sometimes it’s a little over that. Then I do some culling… Hasn’t gone above 200 yet. And definitely none of that few thousand unread mail nonsense.
Been doing some art every week. Even if it’s a quick doodle. Other weeks I do a lot more art, like yesterday. I’ve also been trying out my new art supplies. Still have more new art supplies to try… But I’m doing more art and using my supplies so I call that a win.
Can’t say I’ve stuck very well to my low buy though. I bought new sumi inks (I tried them yesterday, at least!). Just ordered stuff from Jackson’s yet again… And I still have all that stuff that I bought end of last year that I’ve not tried. Like the blue pine arts stuff.
I do have been using my khadi fat book lots and I’m loving it. It does have that weird behavior sometimes but… Over all it’s very fun to swatch and paint in there. Definitely will buy more when I run out. Making good progress towards finishing it as well, though admittedly I have been using my watercolor paper blocks a lot since I’m just using the khadi fat book… But I’m sure I will finish that this year!
The only real downside to the fat book is that it’s too big… My table is just not quite wide enough to accommodate the sketchbook, even after I have packed my table and all. I do love the size of the sketchbook… It’s just that I need more desk space.
Another sketchbook that I’m hoping to finish this year is the Nerdforge sketchbook. I have another 4 of those brand new… Including a full set of the three notebooks… I’ve found that the paper is really nice for marker or for doodling… And like I did so many doodles in the Sketches n Scrubs zoom session on it… Initially I just hoped to get as far as I can in it… But now… There’s *some* hope that I could finish it this year. We’ll see. Sometimes when I doodle a thing or two at night it’s in that book too, because it’s a hard cover sketchbook so I can easily use it in bed. Though yeah I am still not a fan of that paper overall, like it’s not that great for color pencils, nor for watercolor. But it can handle alcohol markers ok (bleeds to the other side though), and it can handle water based markers just fine. Crayons and oil pastels are ok there too… So it’s really depends on what you wanna do. I used the Tom’s studio Lumos in it quite a bit and it works great there.
Hmmm what else did I talk about previously? Reading wise. Meh. Not much progress. I… Ok no. Scrap that. There has been zero progress on that front. Yeah I read lots of web novels. Some scientific journals even. But the last book I finished was in Nov last year… So nope. Yeah. Gotta work on that this year…
Writing wise… I still haven’t send out any pen pal letters. But I started writing again, did some journal scrapbooking, which I am proud of myself for doing that. It’s a start. I also… Bought a second hand pen. My grail pen pretty much.
THE grail pen that I have wanted since I got into the fountain pen hobby really. The Visconti Homo Sapiens. I got it at a good price from a fellow fountain pen lover in the local buy and sell group… Yeah. It really writes nicely, and feels very nice in hand. The only thing though is that it’s an EF… which is a tad too fine for me. Like I would probably have bought an F or M myself, but then hey, I wouldn’t be getting such a good deal. I did go ahead and ground the nib a bit though, so now it writes more like an F nib than a EF, and is wetter too, and I love it a lot more now that it’s wetter. I also pulled out the Visconti travelling inkwell to use with it, and it fits the pen like a glove. I got that travelling inkwell off Drop lonnnngg ago, shortly after I got into this hobby. It wasn’t even called Drop then. And I ended up getting two out of it because the first one was short of defective, with a super loose cap for the top part holding the wick… And also the plastic part of it looks like it’s already corroded with acetone or something… Definitely NOT ok for a US$100 product. So yeah they shipped me another one. Both are still usable though…
But I found out to my great distress last week that the inkwell can get ridiculously hard to open if you cap it all the way… I turned and turned till my finger got a blister to no avail. Even got dad to help and nada. I finally found the rubber grippy thing and it finally worked. Still. So damn tight. Never gonna cap it all the way again.
Another recent purchase was these two Tom’s studio lumos and the dip nib holder. Very pretty stuff indeed, and so far I’m liking the Lumos. I put a brush tip and 1.0 tip in one, and the 0.5 and 0.2 tip in the other. I’m feeling more on the 1.0 tip size now though, it’s a great size for doodling. 0.5 is ok for doodling too, but for sure the 0.2 is for more detailed drawings so to speak. The quality of the pens is very good, though I did have trouble taking out the nib unit with the wick on the black lumos, and again I had to rely on that rubber grippy thing to help. Thankfully that worked immediately. And thank goodness I found that rubber grippy thing. Phew! Overall, I like the pens a lot. Haven’t tried the oblique nib holder yet. But the Lumos duo is really well machined. It is a tad more trouble to open the cap with the screw cap though, and the cap is a bit small and unless you take the effort to screw it on the back every time, you sort of run the risk of losing the cap, especially if you are using it on the bed like me. And the half sized pen is rather small. Not for me if I were to do anything more than making a quick note/label. You can turn it around and screw it on top of the other pen to make it full sized, but that just adds that few seconds more to the set up time… Which does irk me quite a bit… Especially since I don’t like leaving my pens uncapped even if it’s for just half a minute. So on that front, the cheap sakura fine liner or just about any other fine liner with the pull cap wins. The Lumos is great quality though and it’s also refillable… Oh and you can use almost any ink you want in it, barring those with big pigment or shimmer particles. And no acrylic inks either of course. For me I have the sketchink lotte inside. I wish the ink was blacker… But otherwise it works really nicely. Eraser proof and waterproof. Like I did a wash on top pretty much as fast as I would (at my usual drawing pace) after doing the line work and it didn’t budge one bit. So that is something that I really like about the sketchinks.
Oh yes, back to the pens. I really like it. Wish there was a blue color option, and that the black also came with the gold bits in front like the green did. That would look so classy and cool and I would like it a lot better. I wonder if they would sell me just that front bit lol! Maybe wouldn’t hurt to ask. My verdict? It’s a really nice pen, and very good quality. I do think it’s worth what you’re paying for, and it is definitely a nice treat for yourself. But it still is very expensive compared to your typical fine liner. Sure it’ll last a life time though. As a fountain pen user, I’m ok with the price… (I mean, I just bought my second hand grail pen and that one pen even at the second hand price is like… more the price of buying 4 brand new lumos duo?). But if you are prone to losing your pens etc, then I guess you’re better off sticking to the cheap disposable fine liners.
Alternatively, if you want a cheap pen that you can use whatever ink you want in it, the Kuretake karappo pens are just the thing for you. It’s like the Lumo, but plastic and meant to be single use only. If you carefully pry open the back plastic cap you can refill it till the plastic cap wears off, but it’s not meant to last a lifetime like the Lumos, and is also wayyyy cheaper. It comes in several different nib options too. I heard that Guitar also made similar pens. And of course I found similar but much cheaper options from Taobao… So yeah, check those out if you want the Lumos but not the price tag. Of course, if it’s the whole environmental thing you are concerned about, those plastic dispoable alternatives will not be what you are after.
I’ve been sharing my art mostly on the SnS discord group… And also Sarah Renae Clark’s discord. I started posting to instagram again this week though… Well I’ll try to update instagram more often…
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.
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.
