Painting for breakfast

There was no alarm to wake me up this morning. Just the way I like it. No place to go. No things to do. A genuine day off. Nice! 

I overslept by about an hour. But I stayed up late last night reading. I'm currently reading God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert. The further I get into the novel, the more enthralling it becomes. 

Back to this morning. I take a few minutes to stare at the ceiling while I wake up. Then like a cat I poke my head between the blinds. Yep, a beautiful morning outside, which will heat up soon. After my morning necessaries, getting dressed, and a glass of water, I decided to postpone the morning coffee. I decided to paint first. 

It started with a landscape concept sketch that I made a few days ago. The painting itself started the day after. Working in short bursts of about 15 to 30 minutes, I have been slowly building the image over a few days. This seems to be my usual way of working with acrylic paints. Completely different to how I make oil paintings, which I typically make in one sitting which lasts no more than two hours. 

My fragmented acrylic painting process suits me well. When working with acrylics I tend to think about an image in stages, almost like it's a puzzle. After the composition is established, I tend to work from background to foreground, and I often layer the paint in a way that lets a little of the colours underneath show through. For example, if there is a field of grass. I will often paint the dirt first, then the average green colour for the area, then perhaps some highlights on top. All while letting a little bit of that dirt show through.

Here are some photos demonstrating the process. These are not from the painting that I have been working on. They are of a quick demo completed in a sketchbook.

First layer - earth and sky. 

Second layer - grass (single colour).

Final layer - grass (highlights).

While this is a mere fragment of how I work with acrylics demonstrated simply, it represents my method. If anyone is interested in the colours used they are: 

• Earth = burnt sienna + ultramarine blue. 
• Sky = titanium white + cobalt blue. 
• Grass = cadmium yellow + cobalt blue. 
• Grass highlights = Grass mix above + more cadmium yellow.

Starting the day by doing something like this can almost feel like a luxury in our busy lives. Many of us have developed the habit of reaching for our smartphones immediately upon waking. Once the scrolling, checking, and notifications start capturing out attention it can be difficult regain any sense of deep peace and mindfulness. But if you find simple activities which keep you away from the online world, and build them into brief morning habits, then I'm sure you will agree that your day gets off to a better start.

The return ...to whatever this is

Hello, hello, my friends. How are we all today? My name is Geoff. And this is my blog. 

I found this old thing in the drawer. It was under an assortment of yellowing faint-ruled notepaper, paperclips, and half-used 2B pencils. Once I dusted off the ...well, dust, I was hit with a sense of nostalgia. 

Blogging has been a long-running fascination. I remember my earliest attempts at something like it. I had one of those MSN Live Spaces. I can't remember a great deal about it, but I know that I had a profile picture in which I was wearing a backwards cap. The cap was inspired by the character of Randall from Clerks 2. I liked his laidback attitude, and his assessment of the Lord of the Rings films - "Three movies about walking to a volcano." 

I briefly wrote a newsletter about an online game, Chosen Space, which was shutdown a long time ago. The layout was a quaint design which reminded me of school newsletters from back in the 1990s. I would report about the happenings within the game each week. It didn't last too long. It felt too much like work. But my fondest memory of it was getting paid. It was a single modest tip from a reader. It wasn't much but it was nice. 

I wrote a political blog back in the day. I tried to write about Australian politics from a relatively neutral perspective. Now that felt like work. I kept it going for several months, until I realized that it was just an unpaid job. And that's often how regular blogging feels. The highlight of that blog was that it gained significant traffic. That was the first one which brought in over a 1,000 pageviews on some posts. Mind you I used to promote the blog on Twitter and Facebook. 

Other than the abovementioned, I have tried personal blogging more times than I can remember. And I have quit personal blogging just as many times. It's interesting how I always run out of steam. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks. Sometimes a couple of months. But it always happens. 

Earlier this year I returned to the hobby of art. Painting and drawing has taught me a lot about myself and my motivations. There's a lot to unpack. But the most important takeaway has been that I have to love the process more than the result. If I'm focused on making a pretty picture to impress other people, then I end up hating the process of making art. When I flip it around, so that I love the process regardless of the final outcome, then I have a lot more longevity in my practice. 

So what does that mean?

Maybe I need to blog. Maybe I need the wordplay and creativity. And maybe I would stick with blogging for longer if I shift my focus toward the process, learning to love it regardless of the outcome. That's probably a little inaccurate. The process exists because of the goal. A journey exists because of the destination. So the end still matters. Maybe a gentle rebalance is all that is needed. 

Review: The Paradox of Choice

The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz. Just go and read it. I mean it. It's not often that I could honestly recommend a book to everyone, but here is a rare exception. The content of this book would stand to benefit everyone. Barry approaches the matter of choices in our lives from a variety of angles, and they all point to an important theme - while some degree of choice is needed for us to feel happy, too much choice tends to make us unhappy. Anyone who lives in a relatively wealthy part of the world, in which supermarkets and stores abound with a baffling amount of things for sale, would benefit from reading what Barry has to say in this book. 

Most of us tend to think that we are rational decision-makers, and the pressure of marketing doesn't sway our choices, but the truth is that we are usually wrong about it. Our lives are an ongoing series of choices, and this book highlights how easy it is to act against our own best interests and remaining ignorant while doing so. Barry also makes some useful suggestions for us to tackle the problems of choice.

Final score: 4.5 / 5

Review: The Light Years

The Light Years, by R. W. W. Greene, is a dystopian science fiction novel which I finished reading yesterday. It was thoroughly enjoyable. 

The story is set in a future in which humanity has fled to the stars and colonised several planets. Societies have continued to deteriorate as the schism between rich people and poor people keeps expanding. Most people live out their lives planet side, but others find work in space and spend most of their lives onboard spaceships travelling between the planets at speeds nearing that of light itself. The novel is presented from the perspective of two main characters, told in alternating chapters. One character, Adem, he is a space trader. The other is Hisako, and she isn't even born at the start of the book. And yet they have been arranged to be married when she is an adult. At first it seems bizarre even though the reader is made aware of the impact of relativity. But as the motives of each character's parents are made clear, it's easy to understand why such a marriage would be sought.

As the story progresses we see Hisako go through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, all while Adem barely ages. As both characters struggle with the internal conflict of the arranged marriage individually, we see the various worlds change around them. Families, people and neighbourhoods come and go in a short span of time for the spacers. But thanks to some excellent storytelling, I never felt that their lives were insignificant; if anything, it made their fleeting lives seem even more valuable. And when Adem and Hisako eventually meet, which is on their wedding day, this novels starts to feel like a good romance novel in which I really wanted the best for the two main characters. 

There are a lot of interesting themes and feelings that came up while reading this book. I won't go into more detail, because I think it's best if you feel the full weight of those emotions as you discover the story for yourself.

Final score: 4 / 5

Unexplained absence

A fair bit of time has passed since my previous blogpost. Obviously, I have been attending to other matters, and I think that's all the explanation I'm going to provide. I hadn't forgotten about this blog, but I simply chose to give my time toward other activities. Maybe I'll write a new post soon. I hope that everyone is doing well.