Part 5 is up, right here. I’ll do what I know to do because apparently the Brick Stories page is not operational … more work at the coal-face coming up! But anyway, enjoy!
Category: Creativity
Lego Robot
My new not-yet-totally-complete robot posing against the experimental terra-forming.
The robot is from the Dreamzz series, set 71454. He’s called Z-Blob but I will be thinking up a name appropriate to the role he’ll be playing in the the ongoing storying.
The terra-forming needs over-painting in places, and a way to attach the long sides to each other that will allow changing the pieces around. Maybe.
In the story, there’s a city in the background on the other side of the mud-flats and river channel, that I’m still cogitating how to make. Paint and draw? Collage? A 2D Lego build? What do you think?
Art Journaling
One of my favourite meditative activities is working on the decorated margins in my dream journal.
They are always different and often suggest living creatures, such as here a beaked being on the right, and a fox-like entity in the centre.
The process is simple. I use my water colour paints and a 0.4 Artline 200 pen. Today I used Quinacridone Gold and Scarlet.
Since this book is new and the paper is an unknown quantity, I’m starting with primary colour mixes. I’ve already noticed there’s a vast amount of spotting on this paper. Don’t yet know why.
I painted patches and streaks of the first colour round the margins surrounding the blocks to be saved for writing, and waited till moderately dry.
Sloppily over-painted with second colour, leaving some of the gold patches and streaks, and making new patches and streaks over the first, and any unused areas.
It doesn’t pay to be too exact. Wait until thoroughly dry. Some people use hairdryers to speed the process.
In my next session I use the outliner—I prefer black—to make lines wherever the colours change including in areas of shading, though it’s easy to go too far.
It pays to keep checking how the work looks, and whether any recognizable entities are cropping up, and then to give them an eye or ear.
“Add new post!”
Seriously? I’m completely boondoggled … is that even a word, I imagine you’re asking … I’ll need to check that myself. It’s been a while since I saw it written.
That suspicion was right. Not the right meaning. The Navy has my favorite explanation … a boondoggle is a fun, but unproductive meeting.
So. Try again. I’m completely at a loss … not as descriptive is it?
But me going to the thesaurus from here and then trying to get back with a good word under my arm… will take me another half hour.
I’m at a loss. My writing is on my laptop and the external hard drive. My research ditto. Everyplace where I might check somthing, also inaccessable.
It’s Friday, and here in Queensland, Monday is a public holiday. I won’t be able to take my ailing laptop to a repair place until Tuesday!
Couldn’t take it today, yesterday or day before due to too much other stuff those days. I have ME/CFS and am constrained by a frequent lack of energy.
I’ve been training myself to take 2200 steps per day. If I go over my daily limit, I’m setting myself up for a three day crash.
The computer repair place visit has to be done on the same day I need to go into that direction for another thing. Three blocks distance is all it is, and three blocks back. It’s all I’ll be able to that day.
Life: Cataracts? Done!
Colors have improved! In this photo of a sunset during rain looking into the center of the complex where I live, lights are whiter, the pink clouds aren’t as pink as I remember them, but the greens are definitely greener. And there’s a difference now between the greens of the shrubbery and the green of the lawn. The palms at the back look grey-green. Being able to see more colors has also improved my depth vision.
Now to wait for four weeks of healing and having my brain adapt to my eyes’ new lenses, and adapt to how they can now work together before being prescribed new spectacles for reading … maybe.
An additional plus for me is that the original reason that I started wearing spectacles is gone too. When I was 17, I was diagnosed with astigmatism, and my new intra ocular lenses take care of that. I’m sitting here typing without any spectacles. Almost unbelievable after wearing them for nearly sixty years! That, below, was me about twenty years ago.
This, the second day after having my second eye done, I can already clearly see what I’m typing on my laptop, on my lap … a distance of 60 cms … that previously I wouldn’t have had a hope of seeing clearly.
One of the amazing things is how the quality of light has changed to a lighter and brighter tone. The sky is now sky-blue. Clouds are both whiter and greyer, and don’t look like thunderheads rightaway. I’ve had to trust my phone weather app for a couple of years already to figure out what to wear, or whether to take a brolly with me, to go out. I should now be able to learn again, to gauge the weather by looking at the sky, as I used to.
Previously I thought the walls of the complex where I live were a gold-cream tint. I discovered when I had my left eye done that the color is a more neutral-cream tint. The carpet in the unit I rent is grayish, not brownish. Still a “tenant-grey”, according to my son. It’s easier to tell close shades apart.
Another ability I have got again is peripheral vision. Anyone first getting used to multi-focals will know that feeling, of the world suddenly narrowing. I hated that, not being able to see out of the corner of my eyes.
I could go on and on. Colors of anything and everything have always played an important part in my life. I’m happy!
Lego: Skeletons
I had a great time over the weekend constructing a tiny ‘skeleton’ using Shaun AKA @brick.sheepa’s design that I discovered on one of my favorite Lego-dedicated websites, Tips and Bricks. My first result …
… with a couple of changes in the arms, where I was unable to fasten the hand-and-forearm component to components I don’t yet have. Never mind for the present, the creature’s arms are hanging together quite well with alternatives.
Shaun uses his skeletons to construct Star Wars figurines, and they look fabulous with appropriate helmets and weapons and customized with different colored body parts.
But, although I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fan, my intention for these is for alternative characters to take part in the on-going storying. (Lol, though if I do end up going with these, I will need to rebuild nearly all my infrastructure!)
My first attempt at customizing, I put on a girl’s minifig head with hair on it. I didn’t like the effect. She looked like a body builder. My next try made her look like a robot.
Next, I played with some rounded elements to make her face, a bit of white hair and a cap. A skirt and top. The colors of her head and face can be definitely be improved on, they are what I had on hand.
But she standing upright! And has her own personality already. She needs a name. Got any suggestions?
What my table looked like … tidying afterwards aka sorting is complicated. Finding stuff is complicated. And I still have a 500gm bag of unsorted Technic elements. Nowhere to put them. Just need to find/buy a good set of little drawers.
Life: Over-extended!
‘Over-extended’ sums up my state of being pretty accurately when I realized I was hardly doing anything I really enjoyed, but started to feel harried! This time last week I had two blogs and a Substack to populate with interesting posts. I’d signed up to receive a dozen newsletters to read through the week. And that all is not counting my presence on FB.
And lol, I was expecting to be able to continue gardening, mending, painting, and Lego construction. And keep up with real-life socializing, medical appointments and dream journaling. I even thought I could write three long stories at the same time! Tch tch tch. Truly over-extended. But don’t worry, this blog is a stayer. Lodestar is a stayer. MELD, second part of the Monster-Moored series, is being prepped for a structural edit. Earth Fall, a prequel of the Monster-Moored series, that I started to serialize on Substack, is stalled.
Because I’ve been pruning. The Substack account? Is gone. Three quarters of the newsletters? Unsubscribed. Half a dozen FB groups? Unfollowed.
Last Sunday I decided to learn a new Lego technique at least every week. Not necessarily anything to do with Lego storying projects, which will continue once the stream of visitors I’ve been having dries up. Visitors mean that my Lego-ing table, aka the dining table, must be empty for dining on.
Some of my visitors were here a couple of weeks ago for the ‘Three Sisters’ weekend I hosted at my place when I had both my sisters to stay. We try to do this every year though we live all over the country.
Some of my visitors are here for the cataract operations I’m booked in for, when I need an in-house carer to stay for the night after the op. Two eyes equals two cataract operations needing two in-house carers a month apart, first one of my sisters, then my son. It’ll be a relief to get my eyes working together again. At the moment, I’m doing all my reading with the now-good eye and a magnifying glass as my old specs don’t work anymore.
The new Lego-technique in that small bunch of Lego flowers up above, concerns the stamens in the orange California poppy. Four tiny stamens, each made with two of the elements that I had no ideas on how to use. I have another dozen of these mysteries in my collection.
But going back to that feeling of being over-extended, and not being able to do anything well. Feeling harried by the amount of reading. Feeling my creativity nose-diving. I’ve hardly done any painting lately. An installment for Lodestar was taking months to write instead of a couple of weeks. I haven’t knitted at all this winter. And sitting down with a good novel ? Fell by the wayside.
So here’s to trimming, pruning, and cutting back! Organizing life to be able to live and enjoy it!
How and what have you trimmed recently? Apart from your finger and toenails. 🙂
Rita de Heer 