Month: November 2019

This is a good late night trance mix from DJ Miss Monique. I got a little worried during part of it while on the 7th rose or flower design from that page of 9, but probably unrelated. Most of her mixes are safe and adaptable as one may think all trance is, but they do vary if you are paying attention and can sneak up on you. This one stands out a bit from the others.

Here is a link to an article on SmartShanghai.com listing the most expensive places to stay for a night. Besides what may be some leather furniture, it’s cool to see some of these views and spaces’ possibilities.

I’ve been avoiding this topic/update, but since it’s a holiday, I’m back at watching tattoo videos after practicing a fourth rose from the page on Pinterest and the fifth Winnie sketch (one where she hangs, arms hooked on Mom and has a pacifier with shocked/awesome eyes). As you know I was recently really sick and out of commission for several days, finding it difficult to get back in the routine of things. Especially challenging getting back into the Tattoo Journey among everything else. It’s taken me double the effort to avoid quitting indefinitely this part of my life. Luckily when I first saw Miguel after a week of not checking in, he said to be at the shop the next day to observe a client. I watched the complete setup for a bigger, expensive project (traditional clown face on photorealistic girl with rose) and a few hours of the tattoo process. I wasn’t able to see too much and Miguel was really taking his time and paying attention to the work, but he did reiterate some important points as well as explain the setup. It got me out of the danger zone of never returning to study tattoo arts from an artist’s perspective. So we continue for now past the threat of discontinuation from natural causes. Wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and safe shopping deals!

I rented The Grinch (2018) on Saturday and Dora and the Lost City of Gold today. The Grinch started off a little weird to me, but the rest of it was a good Christmas season movie. I really liked the Grinch’s dog and their scenes together, but actually the premise of the movie and the night before Christmas was unsettling to me. I saw the original in my childhood and didn’t think much of it as far as I can remember, but this time it made me uncomfortable to watch Grinch steal Christmas and with trying to get into the holiday spirit, it set me back somewhat. Dora and the Lost City of Gold has some similarly bothersome scenes. I guess I am super sensitive after being stuck inside with such a painful flu or whatever and off traditional meds, but still couldn’t believe how mean some of the kids were to Dora at first when she visits the town. Isabela Moner or Merced is a talented actress and fun to watch in this movie. The rest of the cast do their part holding this movie together to be pretty impressive. I didn’t know what to expect and it was way more emotional I guess than I prepared for, but about as fun and adventurous as it could have been. I was able to get a few songs from MixList 15 on a fluke and trying to piece them together. I realize it’s been awhile and I haven’t even gotten to the Halloween one, but I’ll resume fully when possible.

November is about to turn into the last week. I am still not well, but have been able to try and stay awake doing minimal things. It could be the first month I don’t finish all the Ckwal Summary items. It may be a reversal of the month as I took out the tongue ring for good due to the illness. So far no other news.

I’m regaining enough strength late this evening to write a post. As a vegan getting sick is like the gong on hanger’s hill. I have had my head low and inching around in pain not able to get much done. I was able to wince my way to the corner store before the worst hit and have been using Red Bull and vegan candies (YumEarth) to numb the pain. I had no appetite though and even that was tough to try to get a base. Anyways, on Monday before this all happened, I finished my fourth Winnie the Werewolf. It’s the one of her towering on top of two brothers. It was challenging. I am also going at the basic rose page and struggling for the last two days was able to get a third one finished. They take a long time for me free sketching from the original. The second one when I was well took two hours. I’m hoping to be better by tomorrow. Buena noche.

Continuing mostly with the dreaded free sketch and using more and more complicated examples. I did these three so far on my DeviantArt favourites. I also partially traced a few checkpoints on an original by my Grandma from my Father’s side of the family and then practiced shading and sketching on the rest. It looks like a rendition of Jesus and ghostly child with unknown expression on his face. Lois is the artist of the family and learning from this work revealed some geniuses and gave me strength between characters. I added some to-dos to the personal Pinterest page as well. Last night I unpublished the site in anger, defeat, feeling failure/apathy and was thinking about the future as I may have sabotaged two teaching opportunities in Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as this tattoo journey. I had the feeling I was never going to tattoo nor had the desire. With body art it may numb your sensitivity to how serious it can be when you spend so much time with it. Many never consider it until later in life and I wonder if it is part of God’s design for us to grow with our increasingly longer lives. I believe a lot has changed with youth in the past five years even. Not only youth, but education, communication and how so many things happen and play out. Of course there is a battle in it with competing sides and the more serious it gets the less fun, game-like or of a beautiful art it may feel. Even in video games we die and can be reborn. This story ends without a moral or conclusion except for that I kept drawing and/or listening to music even when either one was shutting me down. I was more intensively productive and could see my own progress. I walked away from my best sketch yet tonight of my life probably and realized it was annoyingly difficult to finish in one day. It wasn’t even an original of mine, but still may advance me to the next step.