Thursday 31 December 2020

Holiday Greetings! (and Goodbye 2020!)

I hope you have a safe and happy festive season!
May 2020 be gone forever and never return!
And may 2021 bring you everything that you wish for and more.

Tuesday 15 December 2020

2021 Hobonichi Diary Unboxing

Normally I make this yearly post in September each year, when the Hobonichi diaries for the next year go on sale. The Hobonichi company have an order holding service, so this year, with the turbulence in the mail delivery system, I kept my order on hold for as long as I possibly could. After that, it arrived very fast, as it came by courier. 

I'll just show the unboxing photos without too much commentary, as I didn't order very many interesting things this year. 

The Etsy shop I bought my covers from last year was no longer open, sadly, but thankfully Hobonichi were offering one cover I really loved (both outside and inside!). It's by Aki Kondo, the same artist who invented Rilakkuma! 

 

I also ordered these cute Astroboy pencil boards for myself and Husband. They have a holographic effect!

This year's fold-out has a guide to uses for the Hobonichi with lots of ideas! It's in English as well as Japanese for the first time, though now I have a translation app on my phone I could read it. It's amazing to think that didn't exist a few years ago!
Here is the page I did in this year's Hobonichi to celebrate the arrival of next years', and also the backlog of stationery packs from my Rainbowholic Patreon subscription. They were being held until the post could get through again, and I received 5 months' worth at once! I felt like a (stationery) queen!

Monday 7 December 2020

What I've Been Doing Lately

I've never been one to apologise for not posting for a long time, but gosh, it's been ages, hasn't it? With everything that's been happening in 2020, I'm sure you can't blame me. Whether I post once a week or once a quarter, I'm always intending to keep on blogging.

I thought I'd kick things off with a little wrapup of what I've been doing these last few months:

An exhibition!
I was lucky enough to be chosen once again to hold an exhibition at NOIR Darkroom, called Before(During)After. It was originally supposed to be in April, but was postponed a couple of times due to the pandemic and the gallery not being able to open. The gallery allowed me to change the theme, which I did to something more current. It explores how my art has changed during the pandemic and my uncertainty about what the future holds (for my art, but in general, too). There's a digital gallery on NOIR Darkroom's website which has photos and also an artist talk I did. I managed to talk for quite a long time for someone so shy!



Art! and a Conscript!
More specifically art-wise, I've been working on a series I call my Codex Pages. They're inspired by the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval book written in a mystery language that no-one can decipher, with strange illustrations. I've been fascinated with it for years. I finally had the idea of trying to make my own version. I created my own constructed script (conscript) for it. I always find this a lot of fun. I say 'always' when I've only created one before, but you get the idea! I'm hoping to write a post on this in more detail in the future.



These ones aren't finished yet:



Building a City!
Not a real one -- I was furnished with a game called Cities Skylines. It's like SimCity if you've heard of that (but better, by all accounts). My city just hit 80,000 inhabitants, and is called Lavender Town. I know! But it's not named after the location in the Nintendo game, but the pre-made map I chose in the beginning, which was called Lavender Lake. It's just the kind of game I like, and I've been spending a lot of time playing it lately. Here are a couple of screenshots.





Reading!
I was in a reading slump for several months, from about May to the start of December. I was given some ebooks to review, and of course whenever you're obligated to read something, it's no longer fun, so even though the books were good, I found it a little bit excruciating to get through them. (I still have 3 to go, oops!)

My friend Emilie started a Youtube channel a few months ago: Teacher Emilie in the Dining Room Library. She reads illustrated childrens books -- like an online storytime! It's kept me from having to admit that I read absolutely nothing in that time, if you believe that books usually for toddlers count! She often has wise comments to add as well. I recommend it.

I discovered The Story Graph a few weeks ago, and that's what really got me out of my reading slump. It's a reading community like Goodreads (but better, I daresay), with stats and graphs of books you've read. It aims to develop a really accurate and satisfying recommendations system. It's still in beta at the moment so you need to sign up to see everything, but for me it's definitely worth it so far. Reading challenges launched a few weeks ago, and members (including myself!) are enthusiastically creating and signing up for challenges.



Music!
Late last year I started a project to replicate my itunes library in Spotify. I ran into some hiccups at first which I won't go into (nothing to do with Spotify) but I've had lots of time to work on it while lurking in my cocoon this year. I'm working by artist and I've just finished the Gs, plus Eurovision working backwards from the present to 2004 so far. All the while I'm discovering new artists and songs. Who knew there was so much music in the world?
(The title of this playlist comes from a private joke of mine.)



Gardening!
Even through Winter there's usually something to do in the garden, but now that Spring (early Summer really) is here, it's all stations go! I'm barely keeping on top of the weeding, let alone planting new plants and re-potting old ones. But it's honest work and it makes me happy.



Well, that's about all I can think of for now. Hopefully I'll see you again soon!