And a few more

25 Dec

These three I’m not quite that happy with. I also have several nudes I do like, but since I haven’t actually tried to find out what WordPress thinks about putting something like drawings of nude people up I’m not going to use them, not right now anyway.

Ah, Christmas. It’s noon Christmas Day where I live, and this year I did not go to visit anybody, I’ll do that on New Year, so since I live alone I’m mostly fiddling my thumbs here. I don’t watch television, I haven’t rented any movies and am not in the mood to do that, I have read for several hours already and I’m getting a bit bored now, to tell the truth. Maybe I’ll start cleaning some of my closets, I should do that anyway. Generally I’m not all that social so living by myself usually suits me just fine, main problem can be these big holidays when I don’t feel like I could, or should, start doing anything major, especially nothing which might disturb the neighbors like rearranging my furniture or building something which requires the use of something noisy like a drill – I moved to my present apartment nearly four years ago, problem being I moved from a slightly bigger place, and trying to get rid of the excess stuff which doesn’t quite fit anymore is still a work in progress. And that has included periodic rearrangement sprees.

Yep, I know, should have done it before and during the move. Problem being, the furniture (and a lot of the small stuff I have too, like my dishes) I have is mostly inherited, old rustic pieces which have been in my family for either over or very close to a century, and I have been having a really hard time deciding what I’m willing to give up. And then there are the books. Lots of books. Same problem, I sparse them one book at a time and that is rather slow going. And half of the time I realize I would really like to reread that one I sold six years ago right now anyway, even if it was one I thought I would not miss back then… So I rearrange things, and have build a couple of somewhat unusual shelves in order to fit them in places like the wall over a big chest when I don’t want to drill too many holes on the wall (this is a rental, and the firm disapproves of that) and you can’t really find anything that would work ready made. Besides, finding bookshelves which actually go all the way to the ceiling seems to be near impossible, they all stop within reaching distance of a shortish person. And I need ones which go all the way to the ceiling, the lower ones just aren’t enough in a place as small as mine.

I like the location, and I like the rent, but I could use something a bit bigger. Oh well, maybe if I keep on getting rid of things one small piece at a time and rearranging the rest periodically, maybe there comes a point when, magically, what is left finally seems to fit here comfortably (and I have managed to forget most of the stuff I did get rid of, well enough anyway that I won’t suddenly start missing something… and if I ever move someplace bigger maybe I can find replacements which look similar enough? Oh hell, one shouldn’t get attached to mere things like that, unfortunately it can happen when we are talking about things you have been living with practically all your life, especially when there are quite a lot of nice memories connected to those things).

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Pretty people

23 Dec

So I have been practicing drawing people again. Well, the guy isn’t technically ‘people’ since I gave him those wings, but since it’s Christmas and all one angel might be appropriate, I guess.

I used a very soft pencil so these are rather smudged.

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Photos of two paintings

19 Dec

Lousy ones, the camera I used is on its last legs. I really do hope scanning will produce better quality copies. Only that has to wait a few weeks, these are still wet, and just a liittle bit unfinished – there is an unpainted spot in right lower corner of the elf picture (the yellow/black/grey one – the colors are off, too, although the clouds are supposed to be sort of yellow, there is a city just below the horizon and they are reflecting the light from it – yes, these are both based on my stories. I might be able to fix some of that color problem with one of the editing programs, but I don’t think I will try before I see what I’ll get with the scanner) since I painted it while holding it in my hand (these are both small, about A4 sized) and I may add a lace shirt for the vampire. Maybe.

I will put up some drawings tomorrow or the day after, I have some ready, I just wanted to see what kind of result would taking a photo of an oil painting produce. Yep, not good, at least not with that camera and under the circumstances I did it. Might work a bit better if I tried to do that using daylight, or the daylight lamp.

Still no pictures

16 Dec

but at least I’m progressing in the clutter clearing department. A bit. Slow going as it is.

The big problem I have at this time of the year is seasonal affective disorder. All of Finland is above the 60th parallel, and this time of the year it gets dark. Daylight lasts about six hours, and whether it can really be called ‘daylight’ is debatable, it’s more like a three hour morning twilight changing into a three hour evening twilight, and since it tends to be also overcast around this time there really isn’t much light to be seen.

The worst problem with SAD, at least for me, is that I lose my ability to concentrate. I have been writing, but it’s very slow going, sometimes I can produce only a few hundred words a day, sometimes not even that. I will probably get the novel ready sometime in the first part of next year, but that will be perhaps around the end of February.

One thing it doesn’t seem to affect much is painting and drawing, those I have been able to do almost as well as during any other part of the year. Perhaps, in the future, I will dedicate the darkest months solely to that, and do all my writing on the other parts of the year, 3 months just painting and 9 months mostly writing. Might work.

Besides not being able to concentrate much I’m also sleepy, and I crave sweet stuffs. I can do completely without sweets most of the year, I don’t eat them and I don’t miss them, but now I’m daydreaming about ice cream and pastries and chocolate, and have succumbed a few times too. Also everything else that gives you a quick blood sugar raise, like rice, breads, potatoes, and to those temptations I have fallen a bit more often than to the sweets. I’m borderline type 2 diabetic so that is really a rather bad idea… I will probably gain a few kilos during these months again, and that’s something I really couldn’t afford. And besides that I shouldn’t be eating breads anyway, I seem to be somewhat sensitive to gluten grains, while I shouldn’t have the celiac disease – at least according to the blood test – they do give me digestive problems if I do eat them more than very occasionally, and sometimes even something like once a month sandwich may do that. Shouldn’t do even that, I suppose, but have you ever tried to find something cheap to eat while out which does not have some form of grains in it? So yep, sometimes I do end up buying something like a grilled sandwich or small hamburger on those occasions.

Well, less than a week to go until winter solstice, and after that about a month before I will start to notice the increasing light. Depending a bit on the weather, if there are lots of sunny days the beginning of February starts to give some noticeable relief, if it’s mostly overcast it may take a few weeks longer.

There are some ways to ease the symptoms. I have a daylight lamp which I do use, but perhaps not quite as much as I should since the light can give me problems too, bright light seems to be one of the triggers which give me migraine auras. I don’t usually get the actual headache, but I do see those damn auras, and have most of the other symptoms connected to migraines.

Some supplements seem to help too. Vitamin D3 in very large doses is one. With it I take K2 since there seem to be claims that large doses of D can cause problems like hardening of arteries but taking vitamin K at the same time should eliminate most of those. I also use fish oil. I used to get the SAD symptoms bad, there was about a decade and a half when I was mostly nearly completely useless for anything during about three months every year – I did work, but could do only simple menial stuff like paper routes or cleaning, and then I’d sleep most of time I wasn’t working. There were times when I was doing only paper routes which took about four to five hours a day, and then I could sleep up to 14 or 15 hours, and I would still feel sleepy most of the time I was awake. With the lamp and the supplements things are not nearly that bad. I still sleep more, but most times it’s only an hour or two more than during the summers, I have problems concentrating but I can do that, not as well as the rest of the year but at least to some extent, and while I do feel more down now than during the summers I get nowhere as bad as I used to – I was diagnosed, several times, as having moderate depression, a couple of times bordering on severe, before one doctor noticed that those depressive episodes only seemed to happen during the winter.

If I had known what the problem was when I was still young I would have done my damnedest to move somewhere closer to the equator. I dropped out of university due to this, I have spend most of my life living on those badly paying and boring menial jobs due to this, and besides the practical problems it causes having depression just isn’t exactly fun, whatever its reason the symptoms are pretty much the same. But SAD was ‘found’ during the 80’s, and for me it took until the end of 90’s before I knew what the problem with me was, for sure, and even after that several years before I found the best ways to deal with it. Maybe I should be happy that at least I was born in the era when that particular problem was discovered, a few decades earlier and I would have spend my whole life just being labeled lazy or indolent, or maybe as having a weak character, or possibly depressed, but I have to admit that the whole thing, finding out what and why and what to do only when in my late 30’s, still irks me. And I did get quite a few of those ‘weak character’ and ‘indolent’ comments from some people, still do at times since not everybody is willing to believe that yes, some people really can react to lack of light that badly. Especially since while mild winter blues happens with lots of people symptoms as bad as mine really are quite rare.

One of the minorities I belong to. Others being: I’m left-handed, I have AB- blood and high enough IQ that I was accepted to Mensa. Lefties seem to be thought to be about 10 to 15 %, AB negatives 1 %, Mensa membership qualified 2 % and people who can get severe SAD symptoms, I think, about 2 % of the population. 🙂

Okay, next time some drawings. I should get that post up in a couple of days.

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Busy

14 Dec

painting, writing and cleaning. I’m usually rather lazy when it comes to housework, and many a year the end result has been frantic cleaning consuming most of Christmas eve, and then ending the day with a late meal and falling into bed, exhausted.

So I decided to try, for once, to get everything done at least a day or two before. So, cleaning. Very thorough cleaning, I’m also sorting out some of the clutter – books and magazines, mostly – and carting the ones I probably can’t get rid of by any other means to the paper recycling bin. Painful. Especially the books. But I have several which I just can’t get rid of, no used books store will buy them and I haven’t been able to sell the privately either – or give them away for free, I have tried – so yep, I guess I have no alternatives left but that bin. I simply don’t have the space to keep ones I will probably never again want to read, the limited space will have to be reserved for fiction which I like well enough for multiple reads, and nonfiction. I do have a very eclectic collection of the latter too, I like to have at least a bit of everything I might ever need for researching any subject I might possibly need to look at when writing so there are books about such things as poisons, historical weapons and armor, modern weapons and warfare, field medicine, plants you can eat, plants with medical uses, physics, chemistry, astronomy, ancient Egypt, folklore of different European nations, folklore of several non-European nations, geology, cryptozoology, different magical systems (ones actually in use now, plus historical ideas of magic)… okay, perhaps you are getting the idea. I buy what interests me, but I can also simply buy what I can find cheaply, especially if it’s about something I don’t know anything about. Or what I find amusing. Or weird. I love to read about all kinds of fringe theories, they can be hugely entertaining. And sometimes those books may ask good questions. The answers they came up with are mostly rubbish, but some of the questions seem actually to be valid.

Okay, some art next time. It will be weeks before I will be able to scan the first painting, but I will show some of the sketches I have been doing while planning the next ones.

Standing by a tree

9 Dec

And some hand positions, plus by a random wall.

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Still life with some of the props

6 Dec

And some more sneaking around, we were playing with ideas for suitable images of ‘hero tries to find a way into the castle’. Those ruins are a bit boring in some ways, there isn’t much more left than doorways and straight walls, and most of the walls are rather low. It was demolished in 1528, and after that locals used what was left as a source for building stones, so perhaps it is bit of a miracle there is even that much left.

There is a still standing actual castle here too, but if I want to use the photos taken there anywhere public I need to buy a permit before shooting them. But since that permit doesn’t cost much more than the entrance fee I will do that sometime next year. In some ways that castle is kind of boring to wander in, it was bombed during the Continuation War and restored thoroughly after the war, but that means there are parts which look rather modern. I think the idea had been something like making different time periods visible – some rooms were built into looking like they used to be when that part of the castle had been built, but they thought the building should also show something of the time period when it was last touched, between 1946 and 1961. Makes sense, in a way, but means one can’t pretend it’s not a modern museum while in there, plus means that if I want photos which don’t look like something taken in a modern museum I have to either be very careful about where I point the camera or try to do some photo editing afterwards.

Well, I should learn more photo editing anyway…

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Background sketch and monsters

3 Dec

Okay, these worked out a bit better. I’m trying to figure out cover paintings for a couple of vampire stories, and been sketching ugly ones – I started writing that series of stories in a moment when I had gotten tired of reading about sexy ideal boyfriend hero vampires and felt like going back to the roots a bit. Meaning the folklore versions, who weren’t usually particularly attractive, often resembling the modern movie zombies more than what we now get in vampire stories. Hence this guy who seems to have found his clothes dumpster diving and should actually look like he is starting to decay a bit, but I think I will try to do that, in the painting, by giving him a thoroughly unhealthy skin color.

And since I had been doing vampires I figured I’d try a werewolf too.

The colored rock formation is musings about what would make a nice background for another painting I’m planning, an explorer on an alien planet. I think I will go the easy way and use a desert landscape, maybe with just a hint of plant life in some cracks, and with the suited up individual standing looking at the scene with her back towards the viewer. Or not. We’ll see.

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A few cat pictures…

2 Dec

I tried a bit more complicated drawing this time, but wasn’t happy with the end result, so here: cute cats.

The photo of the black cat was taken three years ago when I moved to this apartment, and she was already nearly 17 years old then. So for the last year I have had only that other one, Pörri. I think I need more. With just one I’m in the danger of losing my weird cat lady status. Well, maybe not the ‘weird’ part, being in the habit of going for long walks well past the midnight, and practicing with that sword in the nearby forest, and some other stuff like that I probably will keep qualifying as weird, but a cat lady definitely needs more than one cat.

Nightly walks and the sword actually go together, I don’t want anybody to call the police so I do the sword practice, during summers anyway, when there is nobody else around. Meaning at night. Since I live above the 60th parallel there is plenty enough light throughout the night for several months (I work then too, but that’s only for about three hours now), and hopefully any potential muggers or other problem makers will steer away if I look crazy enough. Well, not that they are much of a problem around where I live, I remember reading about one case close to here some six or seven years ago, there are a couple of big stores and a man threatened a shopper walking home from one of them with a knife and took her bag with the groceries and her wallet with him, but I think that’s the only incident that has happened here during the last decade.

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Photos

30 Nov

Some more art reference photos. As said earlier, for me one of the main reasons for this photo shoot with Nina was to get pictures I could use when I try to figure out how to paint or draw a full cloak. So she is wearing that green cloak in almost every one of the photos, and even so I realized I could use more, ones where she is doing things like kneeling. Well, maybe next time. Nina said she is willing to pose for me again, but it might take until spring, with bad luck. First of all we are now in that part of the year when we get only a few hours of sunlight in this part of Finland (and I live in the southernmost part…), and second, the weather has been lousy so even what little light there would be if it was clear has been hidden behind clouds and the days have been just one long morning twilight changing into a long evening twilight. Well, usually the weather starts to get better around February, when, with luck, we might get some nice sunny days with a good snow cover and the snowbanks glittering prettily in the light. Or not. In this part of the country having a whole winter of slushy, muddy snow alternating with no snow, just some ice in places where the slush got hardened by people walking on it – yeah, icy sidewalks are one of my banes, I rarely manage a winter without falling down several times, and I really hate that even if I have, so far, only broken my wrist once – is quite possible.

Oh yes, I have finally started painting again too, but since I paint with oils it will take a while before I can show anything. Finishing a small oil painting takes me somewhere between a month to a month and a half – oils need to dry a bit between layers, and I prefer to go slowly even so – and after that it will be several weeks before the painting is dry enough for scanning. But during this winter I intend to make enough for a portfolio I can show here, and some other places. And start advertising for commissions after that. Some of these first ones will become covers for my own stories, but if anybody wants to make a commission for something I’m open to offers even now. If you ask for something now, based only on my sketches, you can even have it for free (well, apart from mailing the original, I would want the mailing costs covered, and the right to show it in my portfolio if I happen to like it well enough myself so ‘nude portrait of my girlfriend’ might not be a good choice). 🙂

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