heart history

heart history

The sun slants low and languorous
on lands that I reclaim
ancestral sweethearts amorous
recline by rivers of my name
a thousand years before us,
young once — lost, astonished,
in love perhaps untrue
unsure what future's favor wanted —
they made me for you.
A thousand years of mystery matches,
runaways and perfect catches
along the ancient riverside
sun setting shimmers, silver signs
a thousand years of sweethearts
frozen banks of time

© AYF 2013

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I love this little blog, and both times I've been sad to see it end with the month. Always make more art, you wonderful awesome people!!

Little book backlog

The Japanese post office staff gave me
some custom-made candy.

 

October's almost over! I've gotten bored with my "draw using basic shapes" technique and haven't done much lately! As October comes to a close, any artist types out there have any suggestions on how to spice up my own drawing self-teaching? Techniques you use to draw — from life, from reference? I also want to practice drawing perspective.

Mini projects

I made a Halloween puzzle for my students. The bike I did in about five minutes. Because drawing comes less naturally to me than, say, writing, I often get that "I don't wanna" feeling about it. So I figure committing to five minutes keeps me practicing while avoiding the "I don't wanna" zone.

A few days' worth

Sometimes at work there are slow days. (I know, this is kind of the antithesis of teaching. Trust me, I don't feel good about it.) It's amazing though, when you're sitting in a lobby with children who refuse to engage with you linguistically, how the gesture of a proffered sketchbook and a pencil is pretty universal. One girl drew her house, and a little boy drew himself (I made him be in a forest. I should really develop it).

A little context

Nine days in and I've hit my first couple days of not really wanting to draw anything. I've mostly been trying to practice with references, but some of the ones I find around me are so boring. I know I'm going to start slacking if I don't find stuff I really want to draw.

I like it when other people say stuff about the things they've made, so here are a few interesting tidbits. The sunglasses I bought in Hoi An, Vietnam for about 100,000 Vietnamese dong. That's like $5. The bench and umbrella are fixtures at Asunal shopping center, near Kanayama station in Nagoya. My first week in Japan, I accidentally dropped a scoop of orange sherbet onto a bench and left it there while I went to whine to the shop staff for a new one (in broken Japanese). The poses were practice for drawing capoeira poses, since I recently started capoeira.

The offending scoop — July 2013

Halloween costumes

Jigglypuff and a flight attendant. I tend to do subtle costumes so I can use real clothes that I'll wear again! For Jigglypuff, I'm gonna curl my bangs and spray them pink. For the flight attendant, I'm gonna sweep my hair back into a shiny bun haha.

Where the Love Comes From

Like the sketches, this didn't get made because I'm awesome at the art form. It's an exercise...

Homesick

From the mouths of babes

This girl basically made my day. For me, she was a breath of fresh air because sometimes I get a little weirded out that Japan is still so homogeneous even though it's becoming more and more Westernized. She's adopted (I think) by Japanese parents, and speaks Japanese natively but speaks the same amount of accented English as her peers, which really threw me off (maybe that's racist of me). I only subbed her class for one day but afterward, she came up to me smiling and said, "Alex sensei, I love you. Daisuki!" Daisuki means, "I really like/love you."

Four fun things

I'm catching up on many years without any drawing practice. I watched this video and it's helped me a lot! I've got a ways to go.

Sketches

There is a lot going on here and I am definitely not sorry that I Instagrammed two photos of my sketches which I had already filtered up with PhotoWonder.

Markers