Love, Lydia - Notes from a geeky, plus sized artist.: Days 155-161 New things

Friday, June 6, 2014

Days 155-161 New things

Welcome everyone,

Blog News
So this week has been a busy one between a bit of work, family time, and various other projects.  For starters I'm thinking about making some changes to my blog.  I'm sure you all have noticed that I've been talking about much more than art lately, and while I expect art to be a continued focus I am contemplating giving my blog a new title to reflect to many aspects of what I feature.  I'll be brainstorming and getting back with an announcement about that as well as an accompanying new look for the page design soon.  As it is I'm trying a new format here with added subject headings to help you find the sections you're more or less interested in reading about easier.  I'm also looking at joining a blogger community or two to help me come up with some fun idea for my writing and get to know more bloggers and readers!  I'd love to tell some more stories and allow more creative details from my to be shown to you all.

Art
Next up there's lots of new things on the horizon as I'm working on a new art history themed project that I don't want to share too much about just yet.  However, I can say that it will involve some fun learning experiences and lots of research and work on my part.  This week I've been laying out some ideas, but should have introductory content ready by late June or early July.  If it all goes well it could be a very big series of work for me, which would be a great new challenge.

I've messed with bits and pieces of projects, and should have some finished items to show soon.  Though it will depend on what projects I'm able to focus on next week.  The last few weeks I've been more focused on photography with my new camera and all.  Then I'll have inventory going on at Anthro next week too, so things will be extra busy!

Pinterest
I'm working on the Pinterest project too, and will have the finished post and tutorial up next week, because I wanted to put a little more polish on some of the photos and have been delayed in finishing it this week.  It's coming along well though!

Games
Otherwise I've been working on getting a Pokemon RPG game started (yes the kind with dice) along with a bunch of family members.  It'll be a fun summer game with each of us writing our own stories of what kind of trainers we'll be an my husband acting as GM (game master) throwing different scenarios and Pokemon our way.  We'll be putting aside our bi-weekly Magic games for it since one brother who's home for the summer dislikes playing big group card games, so it's a nice trade off.  Plus we get another "brother" to play too, giving our group people 5 plus our GM.  Normally I cook when we have our Hackmaster RPG nights, but for this I think we'll be gathering at Bryan's parents with the whole family for dinner.  Because, yes, they still have family meals....it's really quite nice!

Besides that we're still working on the randomized game of Pokemon Platinum, which we are approaching the halfway point of now.  So many silly things happen on the random settings, it's just great.  My Charizard managed to have about the best move set ever with powerful fire, ice, flying and ground moves!  And then there's my poor Drifloon, which will never evolve because if it does his ability will change to normalize, making all its ghost moves fairly useless.

Books
During April I read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, which I enjoyed, though not as much as I did Pavilion of Women.  I'd still recommend it, but I think I simply found it less relatable in some ways.

In April/May I also read Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, which is a sci fi book with a really interesting story.  I don't want to give too much away, but some strange things happen on a remote planet with some well thought out ideas about possible first contact with another life form.

Additionally in May I read The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer.

It's the non-fiction account of a Jewish woman who married a Nazi and managed to stay alive in Germany throughout WWII.  I found it particularly interested because she was very well educated and during the war acted as a passive housewife.  Only after the war could she go back to her chosen vocation, shocking her husband and being a strong precursor to the feminist movements that were to come in the next few decades.

Now I'm a quarter of the way through The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett a book that examines the idea of parallel earths, and also just picked up Pinterest Power by Jason Miles and Karen Lacey, and book on how to use Pinterest in new and interesting ways.  I'll write more on them once I finish them!

Conclusion
As you can see I probably could have broken this into 3 different posts and gone into more detail, but I'm always working on new ideas and am horrible about simply writing the small posts frequently so I won't overwhelm you all with information!  For now the heading should help, but it's something I'm trying to work on, so keep giving me feedback and I'll see you all again very soon.

Love, Lydia

1 comment:

  1. Joining a blogging community sounds like a great idea. I've been looking for some sort of weekly sketch group I can join to generate some peer critiques myself.

    I guess I've never thought much of Pinterest other than just "sort pictures into categories". Mention of this "Pinterest Power" book has led me to believe that there may be more to it than I initially observed.

    I imagine that reading, especially history, can be incredibly inspiring. Maybe I've been cheating my imagination by spoiling it on so many oversize art reference books.

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