Lorien1976's blog

Wow, I forgot about this blog!

Seems like such a long time ago that I started this blog... and it seems that it has also been a long time since I added anything to it. Yay, I qualify for another statistic, ha! Well, just for fun, here is a photo I took while camping in the Blue Mountains last December:

Dragonfly

Rant

I was checking out a Rihanna video today and glanced down at the comments (I should know better by now, but it's the whole "Fascination with the Abomination" thing) and saw this little gem:

77acc3fe5acf293332256415a44426bd.png

My problem isn't his/her appreciation for Rihanna's appearance, but with the qualification of her race. Here's a screen grab from that same video:

820dabacb3675214563a88bed230fd4f.png

Isn't she as much white as she is black? Turns out, she's from Barbados and of Guyanese descent. I realise that I'm treading touchy ground here, but as a person of "mixed descent" myself, I guess I'm more sensitive to these things. Maybe overly so. BUT. I think I have a point here and it's that she's no more black than white, but because she's apparently a little bit black, she's not white anymore? Maybe it's just a "white country" thing and in Africa, she's regarded as white. In Barbados, she's probably just Barbadian (or Bajan). In China, would they regard her as black? Possibly. If I go to China, I wonder if the natives would regard me as white or chinese...

This is stupid. I'm not sure what my point is anymore.

*sigh*

/rant

QotD: Tomorrow's Daydream

If you could do anything you want tomorrow, what would it be?
Submitted by Becca-Pink.

I would have a day of pure indulgence. Wake up without the alarm and bask in the sunlight in my bed for a while. Maybe finish the book waiting on the bedside table. Then a hot shower and jump in my jeans and an old t-shirt, put on my coat (it's a sunny day, but still chilly in the morning) and walk to the café down the street with Mike. French toast, a glass of orange juice, some Earl Grey tea. Sunglasses and grins. Idly decide what to do with the afternoon. It doesn't matter what, just whatever we feel like. Maybe a movie. Maybe go to the river with the dogs. Having the luxury of choice is what matters here. And so the day ambles on, relaxed. Happy.

Mmm, yes.

There is definitely something quintessentially awesome about designing while drinking a fine single malt. This is all I have to say about that!

Oh, and my current malt of choice is the Talisker 10 Year. Which, I have to say, is a little more sour than the Macallan 12 Year that I've been slowly making my way through.

Life is good. :)

Wherein I try on my last pair of coloured contacts and rediscover Photoshop.

Yonks ago, I splashed out and bought three pairs of coloured contacts (it was a special deal and reasonably priced). I had tried the grey contacts and the blue contacts, but found that the shape of them didn't quite suit my eyes and were frustratingly uncomfortable. So I never wore them for more than a few hours at a time and then ditched them altogether.

I found the last pair in the bathroom cupboard, still in their packets, but apparently expired. I figured that it was unlikely that they were rotted, so I tried them on. Once again, the colour changed totally freaked out my boy and he refused to look at me until I removed them. But not before I took a photo of them in! So here is the (almost) original shot:

Violet Contacts

Normally, I would have left it like this, without further embellishment, but I had been looking at some photographers' works and got all inspired to spend a little more time on my images. Not quite airbrushing like the magazines, but not far from it, either. As an exercise, it was fun but it did make me wish that some things would translate from the digital world into the analogue.

Violet Eyes, Touched Up

The funny thing about this is that you can barely tell that I'm wearing coloured contacts!

This is what makes blogging so good.

It's like a conversation with people who are actually interested in the topic. And the diversity of responses is what makes the internet as a forum so unique.

I'm inspired in two ways by this particular example:

1. The participation re-piques my interest in contributing to the blogging world.
2. I now want to revisit my old "crappy" photos.

On Sketching and Moleskins

I have pretty much spent the entire weekend reading about Moleskines, GTD and sketching kits/hacks. I would include a list of all the links that I explored, but it would take too long and I've closed most of those tabs already.

Oh, okay, fine. Start with this link at 43 Folders. And have a look here for creative inspiration for what you can do inside one of these notebooks. (Also, if anyone can tell me where I can get that pen holder clip he's got on the spine of his moleskine, I'll be eternally grateful.) As for the GTD stuff, it's all over the place. Google it.

My other key diversion was sketching in these books. I've already finished one moleskin a while ago and I'm halfway through my second. Plus, I have the larger sketchbook, but I haven't done much in it so far.

So this weekend, I stopped reading about sketching and grabbed some supplies and went to sketch the doggies. I didn't use a pen/pencil at all. It was pure watercolour and I am sadly out of practice. But I guess that's the whole point of the exercise, right?

Sketch Kit

My next step will be to find a little mint tin with a hinge so that I can make a little water colour box out of it. Those Pelikan paints are easily 25 years old and it wouldn't surprise me if they were 35 years old (they were my mother's originally).

They're baaaaaaack.

Geeks of Hazzard Podcast

OMG! It's actually going to happen! Teh Geeks of Hazzard are going to start podcasting again, yes! I missed you guys goofing around, I really did.

Dr Sketchy Melbourne - Aug 07

I went to this month's life drawing session and it ROCKED! It took me a while to get back into the groove, but I'm pretty happy with the progress I'm making with this.

Cutest. Dog. Ever.

Some people might disagree, but I don't care.

Maya