I love you all over again.

Trixie Mattel's country folk album came out at the beginning of the month.

98% of the music I listen to these days is Kpop. Barely listen to American music anymore. But when I did previously, it was mostly heavy rock and a bit of hip-hop. I can enjoy just about any kind of music. The one exception I've always had was for country.

I have a really hard time listening to country. It's the twang. In the vocal. Sometimes in the instrumentation even. That twang has always been nails on a chalkboard to me. Like when you have to take cough syrup as a kid and you get the full body shudder from the taste.
I can't deal.

But not all country has a strong twang and I can typically tolerate the genre fine when it isn't present.

I wasn't initially aware that Trixie was so musically inclined from watching Drag Race and other media stuff. But she started incorporating singing and guitar relatively recently along with her standup. Stuff that she had been doing pre-drag.

Late last year I stumbled onto this video.



And I turned into a bit of a sobbing mess.

Brian has a lovely voice. It's not particularly unique or spectacular. There's something about a simple, clean, warm, vocal performance, cutting away any frills or crazy production, that's so damn nice.
And really no twang. Only the occasional tease of one, which I don't mind.

Also an incredibly sad song. Oh heavens. The travelling artist's woes of their personal life being abandoned or falling apart for the sake of their job and what they love to do. Not uncommon. But the lyrics cut straight to the heart of it. Forthright and accessible in such an effective and heartbreaking way.
It hurts.

But I need to go off on a semi-related tangent first after the jump.

Winter Meditations

Winter Meditations (formerly Winter Zen)

It poured rain at times over the last couple days. Come at me, El Niño!
Above: Refreshed the doodle I did in February '14. Now available for purchase.
Working on so many things that I've just gotten to completion... took a bit of a break to make a metric fuckton of Ikea furniture for the family office/room. And to watch how my hand does.
I procrastinated too long on the Project for Awesome Art Perks. Did a ton of long-term preparation since last year, but was in such a psychological funk this year that I couldn't find the motivation until really late. Got it done though. I'll cover that in the next post. Anyway, got a couple swollen spots on my fingers, but only slight, and I've wrapped/taped them so diligently from the start that I think I've prevented a full-blown episode. Woo! Means I'll be able to keep working on things.

Once the furniture situation is handled I'll focus on end-of-the-year Kpop stuff. The annual re-coding Kpoppy.com, this time with the new Bootstrap, finalizing my 2015 Best Of playlist, and getting started on a History of Kpop piece I've had in my head for a while... aiming to finish it sometime next year.
Also a couple of commissions to crank out before the New Year. Fun stuff. 

---

Arsenal was having a nice start to the season. Mesut has been on fire. Broke a record for assists in consecutive games. And a few goals to boot. Really rough November for the team though. Got hit with the curse of injuries again. Almost the entire starting 11 with knocks. Mes is the last man standing. Lol. *Knocks wood*
Been a weird season. Leicester kicking ass and Chelsea in an epic downward spiral of failure, both quite delightful to witness.



Jae and Chun serving well in the military. I'm more comfortable with all that now. Junsu released a mini-album (awesome), just finished a tour with it (awesomer), will feature at the upcoming Epik High concert (even awesomer), will have 3 days of his Musical/Ballad concert to end the year (awesomest), then will have a 2nd run of Dracula early next year (awesome x infinity), and probably wind down around then to start his service. We'll see. Jaejoong will have his pre-enlistment album out in February. Also the 'JYJ Bill' passed, which is attempting to make blacklistings of that nature punishable by law. Many folks celebrated that they'd be able to be on TV again. But those who are better informed know that it mainly just reiterates and confirms the current situation as illegal and corrupt, but you can't force broadcasters to have JYJ on TV. They'll just continue to make arbitrary/creative excuses that they can't get in trouble for... and the exile will remain. It's nice to have it out there though. On principle. And that it's named after them.

PSY had his first proper comeback after Gangnam Style.

Took a screencap when I first watched it. 328 views. Just checked and it's currently 25 million views. In 4 days. Ridiculous. Lmao. I prefer Napal Baji, which is just shy of 7 million currently. Been looking forward to what he might do for a long while. In the lead-up to the album he announced the collabs, one of which was Junsu. Nearly peed myself from sheer glee. Their track turned out to be my favorite on the album. It's a lovely tribute to the late Shin Hae Chul. And Junsu sings the hell out of it. His tone is great for it--both emotional and bright. It's called 'Dream'. Touching lyrics.

Mad sleepy. Off to bed.

SHE WORE! SHE WORE!

Two in a row. 12 total for The Arsenal. A new record!
Mesut was awesome! Everyone was awesome!
YA GUNNERS YAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

All that is gold...

Got to doodling and overlaying and flipping and coloring and...

somewhat gilding the lily.

Heh. Kinda wild.

Big rainstorm coming. Woo!

Sky...

Sora. Loves peanuts. Never squawks. Sits next to me out back and warbles like we're in conversation. Just the sweetest. Scrub Jays are the sh*t.

It's mid-January, the days are over 70 degrees, not a drop of rain in sight, and the skies are blue.
While the rest of the country is apparently under a frozen blanket, we're in a warm drought. Climate change, dude. Climate change.

KPOPPY 2.0 has been up for a couple weeks. The old site is gone. Seems to be working smoothly.

Arsenal are STILL top of the league and won the FA Cup match against Coventry yesterday 4-0. Mes got an assist. ^^

Helped out a Gunner on reddit and designed a logo for his Swedish Arsenal fanclub. Fun.
Working on like 4 pieces that will be prints.

My eyes are burning from need of sleep.
Peace.

ASPARAGOOSE

:P

I do art things sometimes...

Sometimes...
Not of the greatest quality.
But sometimes.

Thusly, a little set of zentangle doodle experimenty thingy-mabobs:

Electric Paisley

Lil Tangles

Oceania

Exploring some odd color combinations that I would otherwise not choose.
Playing. Satisfying.
I've actually begun drawing again. Not just simple zentangles, but some proper graphite renderings. Sketchy still, but my fingers have been resilient through each test. In that regard, I had an idea to make a little Özil sketch after every Arsenal game during the season. Could be an amusing series. Mostly just amusing for me, but I might post them to my art tumblr if I can keep up with it.

A little preview. The actual series will be only greyscale... I think. Mesut played his first game for Arsenal last Saturday. He had a stomach bug. Poor kid. Wenger wouldn't have played him if the team wasn't so thin due to injuries/illness. Despite being sick, coming off of two successful International games, being slammed by nasty Spanish press, and having his life turned upside-down... he made his first assist for the club after just 11 minutes. And it was a beauty. Great long pass from Gibbs as Mesut took off down the left wing. Timed his run to have the ball come down over his left shoulder, split-stretched to slow its fall with the perfect touch of his left foot, passed it with an exquisite nutmeg to Giroud, who knocked it into the goal with a perfect finish.

Jokes were made that he adjusted rather quickly to the Premier League. I couldn't stop laughing. Partly from how great it was. Mostly from relief.

His debut at the Emirates (Arsenal's home stadium) is in... about 2 hours. My schedule is a bit screwy again, but NBC has full game replays online, which is amazing.

Alright. That's all. I'm off.

Just a patina...

A Paisley Patina.
Liked that tangle so I messed with it in Photoshop. Finally posting something that looks vaguely more finished for once. ^^
Paisley/boteh has a fascinating history. One of those things that you touch on in art history and then see it everywhere you look. Love those old elements of deeply shared culture and design going waaaay back.

Robins in the rain...

A ton of robins in all their rainy delight.

I don't think I had seen a robin since the last spring rain, which was a really long time ago. The weather has been unusually dry and warm here. Some days it felt like summer in November. But at last, it rained! Heavily, too. On the first day, I looked out the front windows to see a dozen robins splashing around in the puddles and gutters. When the rain got hard enough to hurt they all flocked into this fig tree that spills into our backyard. At one point, I counted about thirty robins. The scrub jay and mourning dove fled when it really started coming down, but all these robins looked positively gleeful. Robin doodle!

Whenever the rain kicks in I think of this poem:

All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.

It is raining today in the mountains.

It is a warm green rain
with love
in its pockets
for spring is here,
and does not dream
of death.

Birds happen music
like clocks ticking heaves
in a land
where children love spiders,
and let them sleep
in their hair.

A slow rain sizzles
on the river
like a pan
full of frying flowers,
and with each drop
of rain
the ocean
begins again.
-Richard Brautigan

Luckily, it should be dry tomorrow while I haul 90% of my Silkscreen equipment to class. The screen is just large enough to be really uncomfortable to carry under an arm. And there are three more bags to juggle. Yeehaw. Commence printing! Maybe I'll have something to scan on Thursday? I don't know what the policy is on drying or bringing prints home yet. No more oil-based inks though, so that's nice... or at least, less toxic. Woo!

Oh yeah, I forgot to transfer all of my brush and tool presets over to my new computer. Fail. I'll have to set up the old computer and put them on a flash drive or something. Oof.
I must get some sleep!

おやすみ！

copypasta

For a change of pace...

Editing pictures falls into the category of meticulous fun. I love me some Photoshop.

Combining pictures...

Cleaning up damage...

And good clean fun...

let's get digital

For years, I used a mouse to work in Photoshop. It was painstaking, but I was accustomed to it. Then I got a Wacom Tablet and my world changed. There is no way I could go back to a mouse now.


Above is my first whack at the Tablet. Got a feel for it with a little self-portrait.


Summer heat-induced boredom.


A quirky work in progress during a time when I got rather excited about obnoxious colors.


And finally, taking MarbleBlast Ultra far too seriously on my Xbox360. Once a nerd, always a nerd. Geek4life, yo!