The Contingent Stones
Sep. 26th, 2019 02:39 pmI did not do any homework for brush-painting class this week, as I was frantically trying to finish a papercut for the Fall Fair instead.
Every painting in the Mountain Style (the style I am studying) features rocks. So it's important to be able to make a lot of different kinds of rocks - jagged rocks, swirly wind-carved rocks, slippery moss rocks - so you're not just putting the Same Three Rocks into every painting.
The instructor was still in a rock-teaching mood, but took the exact opposite approach this week. Instead of teaching the formal artistic conventions around creating rocks - brush strokes layout - she had us make random ink marks on the paper. Then she had us look at our ink marks and try to see in them the planes and facets of stones, as an exercise in understanding rocks as 3-dimensional objects. Then we were to add ink to highlight and bring forward the rocks that were already there on the page.
( rocks )
Every painting in the Mountain Style (the style I am studying) features rocks. So it's important to be able to make a lot of different kinds of rocks - jagged rocks, swirly wind-carved rocks, slippery moss rocks - so you're not just putting the Same Three Rocks into every painting.
The instructor was still in a rock-teaching mood, but took the exact opposite approach this week. Instead of teaching the formal artistic conventions around creating rocks - brush strokes layout - she had us make random ink marks on the paper. Then she had us look at our ink marks and try to see in them the planes and facets of stones, as an exercise in understanding rocks as 3-dimensional objects. Then we were to add ink to highlight and bring forward the rocks that were already there on the page.
( rocks )
For my own benefit, I'm reposting things I've written on other sites here, because dreamwidth is reliable and less likely to delete my stuff than anywhere else I post. This is unlikely to be of interest to you.
( Post from Juli's and my mushroom community )
( Post from Juli's and my mushroom community )
autumn is icumen in
Sep. 21st, 2019 12:14 pmIt is not technically autumn yet, but the rowan trees are full of red-orange berries and happy birds clambering about upside-down to get to them. The crows drop acorns in the streets and wait for the cars to drive over them and crack them open. Fallen fir cones sprout dozens of tiny yellow mushrooms, gleaming in the dew. There are foghorns every morning. The sea is green, and there are maple leaves floating in it, even kilometres from land. We've made crabapple jam, and our pumpkins ripen on the vines.
( Too many photos )
Next year I hope to take on the sacred honor of a vegetable butt.
( Too many photos )
Next year I hope to take on the sacred honor of a vegetable butt.
The Rock Clinic
Sep. 8th, 2019 07:05 pmHooray, Chinese brush painting classes have resumed! Today the instructor decided everyone should practice rocks, which I've done before, but was happy to return to in more depth.
The instructor demonstrated three different techniques for painting rocks:
This rock is drawn with a stroke called "spread out hemp fiber." I missed the very beginning of the demonstration, so I'm not sure how to do it, but I like the way the way it's a long graceful stroke but still has jagged frayed edges without thinning or fading.
This rock is drawn with the "axe head" stroke. This one I know how to do! I used it for the rocks around waterfalls. It's a long straight stroke done with the side of the brush, and then you sweep the brush sideways at the end to get jagged thorn shapes. It's good for rough rocks with corners and cracks, or, done sideways, for slate and layered beds.
This is the "veins of a lotus leaf" stroke. It's done lightly with the side of the brush. It's for sandstone and other soft rocks carved by wind and water.
Other useful rock techniques:
It was an abstract scene of waves crashing against rock, with a roiling and menacing energy, like it was about to escape the page and knock you over. I had no idea brushpainting could produce anything so intense. The sea was a broken indigo. The stones were jagged, with gaps and hollows lashed by spray. I have no idea what kind of stroke was used for the rocks, unless she was firing the paintbrushes at the page with a crossbow.
"No, do this one," the instructor said. I stared at it transfixed.
"Uh." I said. "Um. I was going to practice the lotus leaf vein stroke."
"I'm forcing you to do this one!" she said, and laughed cheerfully.
I love the instructor's willingness to just straight up tell me what to do and what to work on to become a better painter, but I had no idea how to begin to make something like this. It didn't seem like something you could actually make on purpose.
"It looks... complicated," I said.
"OK. Do this one instead, it's the same kind of rocks. Next week, the ocean."
So she gave me a different piece to learn from, and I did these rocks jutting up out of an implicit ocean (axe head stroke):
They don't look like the same kind of rocks at all. I don't think I'm actually any closer to painting the shattered-indigo sea lashing against the stone.
(Narratively, I'm not sure how this turns out. Either this is the part of the movie where the training montage happens, or a bunch of other stuff happens first, and after the credits roll, it cuts to me, after every other problem in my life has been resolved, old and wise and finally at peace, painting that scene.)
The instructor demonstrated three different techniques for painting rocks:
This rock is drawn with a stroke called "spread out hemp fiber." I missed the very beginning of the demonstration, so I'm not sure how to do it, but I like the way the way it's a long graceful stroke but still has jagged frayed edges without thinning or fading.
This rock is drawn with the "axe head" stroke. This one I know how to do! I used it for the rocks around waterfalls. It's a long straight stroke done with the side of the brush, and then you sweep the brush sideways at the end to get jagged thorn shapes. It's good for rough rocks with corners and cracks, or, done sideways, for slate and layered beds.
This is the "veins of a lotus leaf" stroke. It's done lightly with the side of the brush. It's for sandstone and other soft rocks carved by wind and water.
Other useful rock techniques:
- rocks should have three "sides", a left, a right, and a top, like an isometric drawing of a cube
- lines at the top of a rock should be thinner
- you can shade the rock either according to where light falls, according to what's closest to the viewer, or both
It was an abstract scene of waves crashing against rock, with a roiling and menacing energy, like it was about to escape the page and knock you over. I had no idea brushpainting could produce anything so intense. The sea was a broken indigo. The stones were jagged, with gaps and hollows lashed by spray. I have no idea what kind of stroke was used for the rocks, unless she was firing the paintbrushes at the page with a crossbow.
"No, do this one," the instructor said. I stared at it transfixed.
"Uh." I said. "Um. I was going to practice the lotus leaf vein stroke."
"I'm forcing you to do this one!" she said, and laughed cheerfully.
I love the instructor's willingness to just straight up tell me what to do and what to work on to become a better painter, but I had no idea how to begin to make something like this. It didn't seem like something you could actually make on purpose.
"It looks... complicated," I said.
"OK. Do this one instead, it's the same kind of rocks. Next week, the ocean."
So she gave me a different piece to learn from, and I did these rocks jutting up out of an implicit ocean (axe head stroke):
They don't look like the same kind of rocks at all. I don't think I'm actually any closer to painting the shattered-indigo sea lashing against the stone.
(Narratively, I'm not sure how this turns out. Either this is the part of the movie where the training montage happens, or a bunch of other stuff happens first, and after the credits roll, it cuts to me, after every other problem in my life has been resolved, old and wise and finally at peace, painting that scene.)
a wishful shade of mauve
Aug. 28th, 2019 09:17 amThe Ulawun Volcano in Papua New Guinea erupted August 3rd, flinging ash and sulfur oxides eighteen kilometers up, all the way into the stratosphere, which is unusual. Patchy clouds of stratospheric volcanic ejecta have recently reached North America.
Volcanic ash scatters light and makes the sky blue, which isn't normally visible, the sky already being blue and all, but the blue ashglow can mix with normal reddish sunset light to make intense purple sunsets. The pattern if a patch of ash happens to be in exactly the right place is a purple sky above a yellow arch at the horizon, the yellow banded with faint darker horizontal lines (the ash itself), sometimes with blueish-purple rays radiating out from the yellow arch.
There can also be large faint blue halos around the sun during the day.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
juli and I have been keeping an eye out for a purple sunrise, or a blue halo, and we got a teeny bit of purple this morning, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. Hello tiny adventurous ash cloud! I hope you enjoyed
your wander over to our island. Yay volcano sky.
(PS A volcano sky that requires less wishful thinking, fromdorchadas 's vacation photos: third photo down.)
Volcanic ash scatters light and makes the sky blue, which isn't normally visible, the sky already being blue and all, but the blue ashglow can mix with normal reddish sunset light to make intense purple sunsets. The pattern if a patch of ash happens to be in exactly the right place is a purple sky above a yellow arch at the horizon, the yellow banded with faint darker horizontal lines (the ash itself), sometimes with blueish-purple rays radiating out from the yellow arch.
There can also be large faint blue halos around the sun during the day.
juli and I have been keeping an eye out for a purple sunrise, or a blue halo, and we got a teeny bit of purple this morning, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. Hello tiny adventurous ash cloud! I hope you enjoyedyour wander over to our island. Yay volcano sky.
(PS A volcano sky that requires less wishful thinking, from
dorchadas 's vacation photos: third photo down.)the lights that can only be seen once
Aug. 4th, 2019 09:55 am1.
On Wednesday, July 31 2019, I was riding the usual ferry to work, and looked out the window, and there was a roiling yellow light in the pewter-grey sea, apparently underwater. It was strange and lovely and vanished after about 30 seconds.
My only guess as to what happened is a momentary perfect alignment between the sun behind me, a gap in the clouds, the ferry, and a fancy house with a lot of windows up on the cliffs on Piers Island, reflecting sunlight onto the sea. It's not impossible there were divers doing something underwater, but I don't know what it would have been.
Needless to say, I spent all the rest of the ferry rides this week scrutinizing the water in front of Piers Island, but the accidental sea-light stonehenge did not reoccur.
2.
On September 28, 2018, I was at Fort McCauley park with my mother. It is an old gun emplacement and the various concrete mount points, ramparts, lookouts, and bunkers offer excellent things to stand on and gaze out across the sea. We were walking atop a rough stone breakwater at sunset, when suddenly a gap in the walkway filled with lambent light, like someone had suddenly switched on strings of old-fashioned incandescent holiday lights underground.
We think there was a cave in the seabreak, maybe where the waves had cracked the concrete, which, a bare week after the autumn equinox, lined up with the setting sun and poured light into the ground. For about three minutes, there was a light from the cracked stone, and then it was gone.
On Wednesday, July 31 2019, I was riding the usual ferry to work, and looked out the window, and there was a roiling yellow light in the pewter-grey sea, apparently underwater. It was strange and lovely and vanished after about 30 seconds.
My only guess as to what happened is a momentary perfect alignment between the sun behind me, a gap in the clouds, the ferry, and a fancy house with a lot of windows up on the cliffs on Piers Island, reflecting sunlight onto the sea. It's not impossible there were divers doing something underwater, but I don't know what it would have been.
Needless to say, I spent all the rest of the ferry rides this week scrutinizing the water in front of Piers Island, but the accidental sea-light stonehenge did not reoccur.
2.
On September 28, 2018, I was at Fort McCauley park with my mother. It is an old gun emplacement and the various concrete mount points, ramparts, lookouts, and bunkers offer excellent things to stand on and gaze out across the sea. We were walking atop a rough stone breakwater at sunset, when suddenly a gap in the walkway filled with lambent light, like someone had suddenly switched on strings of old-fashioned incandescent holiday lights underground.
We think there was a cave in the seabreak, maybe where the waves had cracked the concrete, which, a bare week after the autumn equinox, lined up with the setting sun and poured light into the ground. For about three minutes, there was a light from the cracked stone, and then it was gone.
I enjoyed the sky being on fire in one particular spot yesterday.
the end of night
Jun. 13th, 2019 10:52 pmTonight is the last time it will be officially night here until June
29th. There will be twilight, when the sun is below the horizon and
not visible, but it will still light up parts of the atmosphere we can
see. Long slowly darkening green-blue twilights, like the lasting
resonance of a bell. In the small hours of the morning, the twilight
will have faded to a faint whisper of grey on the distant horizon. But
there will be no night.
There are sometimes strange clouds. Noctilucent clouds: wisps of water
vapor coalescing around smoke left at the top of the atmosphere by
meteors. They are so high up the sun is never below the horizon for
them, so they are lit up like daylight. Insubstantial blue wisps
shining in the twilight sky.
Last year I did fine, but this year the nightless hours are kicking my
butt. The house is perched atop a random lump of rock on the side of a
mountain, and there is nightless sky in every direction. (Even our
closets have windows. Who builds a house and puts windows in the
closet?) I am not sleeping well, and my dreams are strange. Exhausted
during the day. Been staring blankly at my work a bit more than I’d
like, though I think this particular project would be confusing even
if I was well rested.
Something in me aches for the safe return of night. And still: it is a
lovely luminous blue-green sky, like a bell whose ring does not fade.
29th. There will be twilight, when the sun is below the horizon and
not visible, but it will still light up parts of the atmosphere we can
see. Long slowly darkening green-blue twilights, like the lasting
resonance of a bell. In the small hours of the morning, the twilight
will have faded to a faint whisper of grey on the distant horizon. But
there will be no night.
There are sometimes strange clouds. Noctilucent clouds: wisps of water
vapor coalescing around smoke left at the top of the atmosphere by
meteors. They are so high up the sun is never below the horizon for
them, so they are lit up like daylight. Insubstantial blue wisps
shining in the twilight sky.
Last year I did fine, but this year the nightless hours are kicking my
butt. The house is perched atop a random lump of rock on the side of a
mountain, and there is nightless sky in every direction. (Even our
closets have windows. Who builds a house and puts windows in the
closet?) I am not sleeping well, and my dreams are strange. Exhausted
during the day. Been staring blankly at my work a bit more than I’d
like, though I think this particular project would be confusing even
if I was well rested.
Something in me aches for the safe return of night. And still: it is a
lovely luminous blue-green sky, like a bell whose ring does not fade.
the gosling week
Jun. 7th, 2019 11:28 pmThis week, every day except Friday, on my way to work, I have had to slow down for this Tiny Goose Parade, which ambles down the only road to the ferry for about 500 meters each morning at 6AM.
I have no idea how I would go about explaining to my work that I'm late because I missed my ferry because the world's most relaxed goose family was walking in the road.
... and then Friday there were two families of geese sauntering aimlessly down the road.
I have no idea how I would go about explaining to my work that I'm late because I missed my ferry because the world's most relaxed goose family was walking in the road.
... and then Friday there were two families of geese sauntering aimlessly down the road.
reviews of trashy Chinese snack foods
May. 28th, 2019 12:43 pmJust down the hill from the university building I work in, there is a Chinese convenience store that mostly seems to exist to sell small packages of assorted fried snack things things with chili oil and vinegar to students. It is an excellent place.
I have Many Opinions About Snack Foods, which is not the reason anyone logged onto dreamwidth this morning, but here they are anyway!
( Snack reviews )
EDIT:juli found a website selling the Spicy Black Boletus Snack, the last remnant of a more delicious era! They called her to make sure she hadn't put it in the virtual shopping cart, checked out, and given them her payment information by mistake. "You meant to order this? You've eaten this before? You liked it? Are you sure?" Apparently it was the first time someone without a Chinese name had ever ordered anything from them. :D Hooray! Most Delicious Snack is on the way!
I have Many Opinions About Snack Foods, which is not the reason anyone logged onto dreamwidth this morning, but here they are anyway!
( Snack reviews )
EDIT:
juli found a website selling the Spicy Black Boletus Snack, the last remnant of a more delicious era! They called her to make sure she hadn't put it in the virtual shopping cart, checked out, and given them her payment information by mistake. "You meant to order this? You've eaten this before? You liked it? Are you sure?" Apparently it was the first time someone without a Chinese name had ever ordered anything from them. :D Hooray! Most Delicious Snack is on the way!summer line
May. 13th, 2019 08:52 am
I'm really fond of the sort of cryptic markings we leave on things to convey technical information. It seems like a sort of magic. I like looking for the loadline marks on the boats when taking the ferry to work.
The circle with the line through it marks the summer line, the legal limit of how heavily this ship should be loaded; if the water is above the line, no good. AB is for the American Bureau of Shipping, which assessed this particular boat. The little staircase thing to the right shows the permissible waterlines in other circumstances: F for freshwater (which is less dense, a ship that floats at the freshwater line in fresh water will float at the summer line in salt water) and C for when passengers are on board.
There are lots of weirder steps you can have on the staircase, though, which I keep an eye out for: steps for "this ship is set up to dump its cargo if it runs into trouble, so it's allowed to carry extra cargo", steps for tropical waters and for ice-choked arctic waters, for various combinations of passengers and cargo. It's like looking for license plates from various states or provinces, but for people who take a boat to work.
a slightly conquered sun
May. 8th, 2019 08:53 pmSaw a nice ice halo where ice crystals in cirrostratus haze caught the sun today:
Thematically - but not scientifically - related also enjoyed the new soft grass making feathery glowing sun lumps on the forest floor, brighter than the hazy sky.
It's hot and there's too much sun and we're only a week into May. Blarghh.
Thematically - but not scientifically - related also enjoyed the new soft grass making feathery glowing sun lumps on the forest floor, brighter than the hazy sky.
It's hot and there's too much sun and we're only a week into May. Blarghh.
The Worst Cake In The World
Apr. 27th, 2019 11:44 amOnce upon a time, we had a coop student at work. And every time someone completed a pull request (a small but publicly visible unit of accomplishment; a couple day's work), it would be automatically posted on our internal chat room and the coop student would reply with the octopus emoji.
When asked why he did that, he answered that the octopus emoji used in our internal chat, which looks like this:
was clearly waving its arms around in celebration. It was a party octopus, celebrating the creation of delicious code.
Then I sent him an octopus in a funny hat and he - woe unto us all - dug too deep into the internet and returned with The Fell Image. And thus began his dark reign of terror. For months, everyone dreaded accomplishing anything in particular at work, because the coops student might respond to the automatic announcement in the chat with ... this:
( the terrible image is behind a cut so it doesn't keep existing at you when you innocently try to read your friends list in the future )
All the whiteboards in the building developed a strange propensity for drawings of octopods, followed a few hours later by drawings of octopods being attacked by assorted complex death traps.
So yesterday, the coop student finished his entire project and celebrated his last day.
And I knew what I had to do. I was on a Holy Mission From The Powers That Be: Dancing Argyle Octopus Puppet Cake.
Unfortunately, the purple icing was somehow both thin and runny and lumpy and bulging, and the octopus' head developed horrific tumors and began to flow off away over the cakescape as if desperately trying to escape what it knew it would become. It came out even more horrifying than I could have possibly imagined.
Truly, this is the Worst Cake In The World, and a worthy incarnation of that horrible image.
I may never sleep again.
Someone had to make The Worst Cake In The World. I'm proud it was me!
When asked why he did that, he answered that the octopus emoji used in our internal chat, which looks like this:
was clearly waving its arms around in celebration. It was a party octopus, celebrating the creation of delicious code.
Then I sent him an octopus in a funny hat and he - woe unto us all - dug too deep into the internet and returned with The Fell Image. And thus began his dark reign of terror. For months, everyone dreaded accomplishing anything in particular at work, because the coops student might respond to the automatic announcement in the chat with ... this:
( the terrible image is behind a cut so it doesn't keep existing at you when you innocently try to read your friends list in the future )
All the whiteboards in the building developed a strange propensity for drawings of octopods, followed a few hours later by drawings of octopods being attacked by assorted complex death traps.
So yesterday, the coop student finished his entire project and celebrated his last day.
And I knew what I had to do. I was on a Holy Mission From The Powers That Be: Dancing Argyle Octopus Puppet Cake.
Unfortunately, the purple icing was somehow both thin and runny and lumpy and bulging, and the octopus' head developed horrific tumors and began to flow off away over the cakescape as if desperately trying to escape what it knew it would become. It came out even more horrifying than I could have possibly imagined.
Truly, this is the Worst Cake In The World, and a worthy incarnation of that horrible image.
I may never sleep again.
Someone had to make The Worst Cake In The World. I'm proud it was me!
