Monthly Archives: January 2021

In a crowd

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(Refs: google image search for crowds on sidewalk, particularly a photo of New York.) Related to a song I was listening to:

The war was lost, the treaty signed

I was not caught; I crossed the line

I was not caught, though many tried

I live among you, well-disguised

– Cohen, Nevermind

The story’s told with facts and lies

I had a name – but, never mind.

View from a Tram

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Practicing watercolours. Also, I like trying to freehand fish-eye perspective, though it usually comes out a little wonky.

EDIT: poor reviews from the Significant Other. Nicely done but poor choice of subject matter, says she; the fact that I even wished to paint such a thing, and went so far as to take photos for reference, caused the word “autistic” to be uttered. (I am unrepentant.)

Krtek a Popelář

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I was pencilling last week’s post and the Significant Other came up to me, asked what I was doing, and informed me everyone in the flat was drawing The Little Mole (a.k.a. Krtek, or Krtko). This was for the benefit of a small child who likes the Mole; as he also likes bin lorries, I drew the following.

(Don’t worry; the Little Mole always gets help when he cries “pomoc!” Most likely the bin lorry will end up in a lake, the binman will end up in a large dumpster, and Krtko will dance around with his friends laughing.)

2020: Year in Review

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Hello all, and thanks for reading! Another year has gone past, with both good and bad. The worst has been personal matters which I won’t go into; I have, thankfully, been relatively untouched by coronavirus. I know two people who got it, but both recovered (although a friend of mine lost a friend of 40 years to it) and the lockdown has been a minor inconvenience to me (although friends are being driven slowly crazy by it, and I know others in the world are having their lives and jobs destroyed and being driven to suicide).

Life is busier than previously, and in the last year I’ve had to improve my (almost non-existent) time-management skills quite significantly. However, I failed to meet most of my blogging goals for 2020, which were:

  • Update every week: failed. (I succeeded until November, then fell off the wagon; that’s a 2-year streak of sticking to the schedule.)
  • Update the Artistic Relative’s blog every week: failed. (Updated most weeks but not all.)
  • Complete a certain comic: succeeded.
  • …and thereafter get a page of some other comic done every 3 weeks: failed, miserably. (I managed two in the whole of the rest of the year.)
  • Do Inktober, and draw more of the prompts: succeeded. (I got 12 prompts done, one more than in 2019. However, unlike 2019, there weren’t any pictures I was really pleased with.)
  • Do a painting or technique-post once a month: failed. (I did it most months but not all.)

In addition, in the last few months I’ve fallen into a rut of posting almost entirely quick stuff – sketches and minor scribblings – without any more involved work needing more planning and effort. Possibly related: 2020 saw an uptick in pageviews and visitors, but a small decrease in people hitting the “like” button.

The most popular posts this year, as judged by likes:

Stuff not garnering likes but that I was pleased with:

This year, I may see my available time go down drastically from July onwards. Thus, my plans for the first half of the year are as follows, and are similar to those for 2019:

  • Weekly post on this blog (week = monday to sunday).
  • Weekly post on the Blue Hat Blog until the pictures given to me run out (which will not be too long).
  • Monthly painting/technique-post.
    • …and finish one comic page a month (to be posted in batches).
  • Do pictures which require time and effort more often.
  • Do Inktober again, improving on the number of prompts, and hopefully on the quality

God bless and stay healthy!