Choke People

Crazy crowded everywhere for New Years celebrations. This is in Harajuku, but it was the same at Tsukiji and Ameyoko as well. Me and Landon joined the crowd along with the rest of the tour group, but came right back to the bus after only a little while. Waaaay too nuts. After this we heading to Shinjuku Crossing, busiest intersection in the world.

Am blogging this from the bus BTW. using a pocket Wi-Fi I rented from KDDI on Kaheka. Thank you Phyllis for the scoops! Super, super handy!

Fell Off Da Wagon

Wagyu yakiniku. Sorry having trouble posting from iPad.

Kurisumasu Omedeto

MERRY CHRISTMAS, PEOPLES!!  Hope you have a good one! I gotta go finish cleaning house before my family gets here, but didn't wanna neglect you guys today.

Guess where I'll be tomorrow! 

JAPAN!!  Wendell didn't wanna leave Kona so just me and Landon are going. It'll be a really short trip. We come home on New Year's Day. 

Below is a glimpse of how I prep before a trip. 

Landon wanted to check out Go Go Curry while we're there. I found a picture of their ordering machine. It's all in Japanese so guess what I did. 


So nuts, yah! But was fun making the cheat sheet. Hope I no forget to bring it with us.

One Beeeg Lobstah

Landon caught this on his fishing pole. It scared me to death when I opened the 'fridge and saw it. 

He cut up the tail portion and cooked it with mayonnaise.  Was ono.  He also made miso soup. That was awesome. 

My Kona

Such a sweet dog my Kona boy. 

Checking In

How you guys doing? Pau Christmas stuff? Baking? Shopping? Hope so.  I think I'm mostly pau. I must say that Amazon has made Christmas shopping a whole lot easier for me. So convenient and stressless.  I just love it!!

I forced myself to stay away from crafting/art-ing for a bit (one week?) to tend to HoHoHo stuff. 

It was such a cool feeling to be sitting back down at my craft desk when I returned to it . . . so joyful.

I totally mucked up this face. I picked up the wrong color Copic marker to shade (the pink outline). I couldn't fix it so I decided to do flaming hair to distract from it. LOL.


I painted the background on this page with black gesso and then used matte medium to glue down torn pieces of silk napkins on it. The napkins are leftover from ones that I used to make favors for Sweetie's wedding about 20 years ago! I think they're so pretty! 


I don't really know what this saying means, but I like it. 


Random question: Does creating new online accounts and having to deal with User Names, Passwords and Security Questions and their Answers stress you out? Dunno why but it totally stresses me out. 

New Art Journal

Here's the bolohead girl I told you about. She's shaded using a technique taught in Jane Davenport's book called glazing. You mix matte medium into acrylic paint to make it translucent. The different areas of shading are painted in layers. I  used Ceramcoat paint and Liquitex Matte Medium. 



Here's another page I'm working on. I got the idea from the internet. It's fun. 


This is the journal book I'm using now.  It was on sale at Fisher for 25% off. I think I paid $5 something. Not sure if it's still on sale, but you should go get one. 


I named this journal "embrace imperfection" to remind myself that everything in the journal need not be perfect, and that I should just relax and enjoy creating pages. I made this title page using Stampin' Up stamps.


K den, it's Marathon Sunday and I can hear commotion going on outside. But for me, that means it's cookie baking day. I took the butter out earlier and it's 7:45 am now. I best be getting to it. 

Latest

Nothing really interesting to share so here's a page from my Volume 2 Art Journal. It's actually not my latest. My latest page is a scary-looking bolohead girl. I'll show you guys later.

I painted this with some Winsor and Newton acrylics that I got in a small set from Ross for $5. I really, really like the quality of the paint. This scene evolved from the shapes of the torn-up ephemera that I had glued on and painted over. It wasn't planned . . . it just happened.

I seem to like things floating in air . . . first a kite, then a balloon and now flower petals. The girl is similar to one in my Jane Davenport book.

Perfect Project

I've been volunteering for a few hours a week at Lunalilo Home in Hawaii Kai. I help the adult day-care staff with small-kine stuff. 

Iwa, the day-care coordinator, gave me this Christmas project . . . to paint and write names on ornaments. Howzdat for the perfect project for me, yah!

Faces Faces Faces

I'm into faces right now.  Soooooo hard. 

Vegan Pizzas from Pieology

Not really sure if these pizzas really do qualify as vegan because of the crust, but I think that Landon said that the cheese was vegan cheese and for sure there is no meat topping. I liked both of them. 

I Made Manju!

WHAAAAT??!!  I know . . . I made manju! First time! And was good!

Leslie gave me some pumpkin butter manju about a month ago, and it was so ono that I kept craving it. I asked her for the recipe even though I was thinking that it probably was too hard for me.

I decided to make it for Thanksgiving and was totally shocked that it came out. 



Sorry, too lazy to type out the recipe for you.

Last Page

Here's the last page in my art journal. I started the journal on October 1st and it's become a good record of the progress that I've made in the past 2 months. 

I bought a "real" journal from Fisher to use for my Volume 2. It has a spiral binding so I'm not sure how that's gonna work for two-page spreads, but it was on sale and at least I don't have to glue two pages together like I had to for this journal. 

For this page, I used Liquitex black gesso, Shinhan watercolor paints, Prismacolor colored pencils and uniball white gel pen. 

Color Burst Powders

Do you remember CQ? She's a friend that I used to work with. If you search "CQ" on my blog you'll find that she's in it a lot.

CQ took a class at Ben Franklin about a month ago and learned how to use Ken Oliver's Color Burst powders. She came over to my house the other weekend and taught me!! 

Here's my Flowers in Vase.  


Color Burst are watercolor powders that are activated with water. It's very, very potent, kinda scary to use, and very, very fun. 


Here's CQ's masterpiece.  !!!!!!  Holy Crap, right!!!??


Thanks CQ!! You can come over again anytime!!!

And HAPPY THANKSGIVING, PEOPLES!!!

Webcam on Mt. Kongo in Osaka

I just watched a Document 72 Hours program on NHK that was about a live webcam on the top of Mt. Kondo in Osaka. 

A photo is taken at the top of the hour every hour and is posted online. People gather there at the top of the hour so that they can be in the photo.

I just took this screenshot at 6:00 p.m. tonight! Funny, yah!!

Mt. Kongo Webcam




Update:  Wednesday, 12:00 p.m. our time. Raining. Hahaha. 

'Ai Love Nalo

I went to pick up eggs from OK Poultry the other day, and on the spur of the moment I decided to go check out 'Ai Love Nalo.



Landon's Medi Bowl ($14).  Kalo falafel, fire-roasted baba ganoush, beet hummus, millet tabouleh, greens and creamy balsamic dressing. Lan liked it a lot.


My Buddha Bowl ($12).  Roasted kabocha, sauteed mushrooms and kale, kim chee, wakame, avocado, brown rice and ginger tahini dressing. Was ono.


It might be a good idea to call in your order before going. Even though it wasn't busy, they took kinda long to make my food. 

Inktense Ink Pencils

I want to put some kind of quote on this page, but can't decide which one yet. Thought I'd share anyway. 

Cute circles on torn origami in the sky as well as Dalai Lama sayings on the ground are obscured due to too-thick/opaque acrylic paint, but it's all a learning process . . . I guess (bah).

Cute da sun, yah. Got the stamp at a rummage sale this past weekend . . . so perfect.

Four people helped contribute to the supplies that I used for this page! Honolulu Aunty, Izsmom, CQ and Sweetie. Thank you peoples!! Love love love, mwah!



I used this to color the houses. It's different from watercolor pencils in that when it's wet it turns to ink!


I brushed water onto the right half of each square. It's very, very cool. 

Don't Believe

I find that a lot of times I make assumptions that are not true.

My Mop Brush

I bought this Winsor and Newton brush from Ben Franklin with a 40% off coupon. Even with the coupon it was around $8 . . . sooo expensive. 

It soaks up a lot of water and is great for painting background washes. As good as it is though, it has one drawback, and I only used it once because of this drawback.

When the brush is wet (and only when it's wet), it smells like . . . 



GOAT!

My First "Beautiful Face"

I love Jane Davenport's book entitled Beautiful Faces. It didn't disappoint.

I decided to do my first attempt at a "beautiful face" upside down in my art journal book because (1) one of Jane's samples in the book was upside down and I thought that it was cool, and (2) I was pretty sure that it would be a failure, and I figured that if it was upside down you couldn't tell right away how bad it was. 



I'm happy with how the sketch came out, but am stymied with the color blending of the skin tone. Not sure if it's the type of paint that I used (2/$4 at Ben Franklin) or my technique. Or maybe I should water down the paint . . . or . . .  hmmmm . . . 

I used origami paper from Honolulu Aunty for the background, painted over with one of the paints that I used for the girl's face. Thanks again, Aunty!

Friends

Here are a few of the Fuji Instax selfies that I took of me and my former coworkers. I kinda don't like calling them "former" anything. I think I'll just call them friends now. 

I wore sunglasses to hide my crying eyes. Some joined me.



My art journal is almost full already! And to think I only started it on October 1st. You should start one too! It's fun and will probably become something that you'll treasure for a long time. 

Cow

I thought this saying was funny. Now that I'm retired, it should be more like "nobody else knows what day of the week it is either!"