Oil Pastel Portraits

One of my favorite subject matters.  Practice from magazines.  Dollar store oil pastels and Classic Cachet Black sketchbook 5×7 inch.

The lowly ant

It could pull many times its weight!

 

Bookmarks

This one is Caran D’Ache Luminance colored pencils.

 

Oil Pastel Sunsets

This week at Wetcanvas Oil Pastel Word Challenge, it’s orange and its complement, sunsets, serene and I’m in the mood to dirty my fingers tonight.  The first three were done with Mungyo Gallery Oil Pastels in Classic Cachet Black Sketchbook 5×7 inch 70lb.  The last one, as you could see, a duller color is a from a mix of Portfolio Watersoluable oil pastel and Mungyo oil pastel in Strathmore 3.5 x 5 inch 60 lb sketchbook. These are all practices from Walter Foster landscape art instruction magazines.

 

At Church

I really try hard not to fall asleep at church but sometimes I just couldn’t help it.  I’m not 100% myself.  But I do enjoy worship section when our church worship team leads in old songs and new songs all with mysterious intros and you could never tell which songs they were going to sing.  This song, Living for Your Glory by Tim Hughes, got the whole church praising energetically.  The hand pumping from the adjacent aisle, the lifted hands and the full throttle of voices all caught my attention.  My town is very white and if I were still in the Bay Area, I would be furiously jotting down everyone’s expressions rather than listening to the sermon or singing along.

The better ones of my art

Last summer, I had the opportunity to put the majority of the better art I did in soft pastels, oil pastels, watercolor, ink and colored pencil in a show before my cancer.  I still like every one of them and have given a few away but in my drawers, there are more.  I don’t think I could recreate with an equal urgency as I did back then, an urgency because back then, I couldn’t wait to become good at it and ambitious at all interpretations.  Plus I’ve sold 80% of my art supplies since then to declutter.  Now, I enjoy the easy pace I take.  It doesn’t matter anymore if I’d be well known or not.  I do it really to enjoy the discovery of the view and to depict the essence of it, and therefore, more and more reverted to Chinese brush and sumi ink and the minimalist approach.  It would take a very super mood for me to fill up abundantly every square inch of the paper. And without soft pastels since the dust is bad for my lungs, it would require a bit more resolute to lather the oil pastel all over.  Watercolor? (Roll my eyes – I still don’t get it.)

Here’s a slideshow of my art show.

Pop Music

I met the parents of this girl today on a painting trip.  A very wholesome offering.  Hazel Ra – Register Cliff.  She is releasing her fourth CD already.

Posted September 27, 2013:

There are some songs that are quite pretty and pure and worth listening to and I will keep adding them in this same post.  Check back often.

Aoyama Thelma- Zutto (Forever and Ever) – she wrote this for her friend who was getting married.  English lyrics here.

Soulja feat. Aoyama Thelma – Hanasanaide Yo (Never Let Go) English lyrics here.

What’s On The Stove

This weekend, I made water chestnut with chicken with a bit of hot sauce, rice wine, white vinegar; typical Cantonese dish of marinated tofu, cubed mushroom, Szechwan preserved vegeteable and diced pork; and black bean sauced eggplant.  On Friday, I spent a whole day making taro root cake – mashed up all the boiled taro root, mix with rice flour or cornstarch or flour or a bit of every type of flour, dried shrimp, shitake mushroom and marinated pork bits.  Stick it into the microwave for 20 mins instead of steaming it and then the next day, pan fry slices.

[Book Review] Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power In A Violent World by Jean Bethke Elshtain

I was not very happy with the conclusion from What About Hitler?: Wrestling with Jesus’s Call to Non-Violence in an Evil World by Robert W. Brimlow that I reviewed last week and am glad I made an effort to read this author which Brimlow also mentioned.  This book is a must read if you want to know what kind of a position a Christian should take in this imperfect world.

Jean Bethke Elshtain was a professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago and had written several books on state, God, military.  This book was written one year after September 11 attack and she was one of the 60 academicians and scholars invited to write, “What We’re Fighting For: A Letter From America”, which was not publicized by the local media because they didn’t think it was newsworthy whereas the overseas press picked it up.

何も言えなくて…夏/Nani Mo Ienakute…Natsu by J-Walk (Japanese, Romanji, English lyrics translation)

I have to say this is J-Walk’s best song back in 1991 and I couldn’t find any ready made English translation around so I translated it here.  Scroll to the bottom.  You could watch the live performance here and a better quality music video here.

何も言えなくて…夏 /Didn’t Say Much…Summer/Nani Mo Ienakute…Natsu
Performed by J-WALK
Lyrics by 知久光康/Tomohisa Mitsuyasu
Composed by 中村耕一/Koichi Nakamura