recent posts
Finding the way
In the two months since my last post I’ve done a lot of traveling, working and thinking. I went on a two week trip to Croatia and Italy, leaving greatly inspired by their fine food, art, and way of life. I started working on a personal project: a…
Surf Queen
This one is actually from a couple weeks ago. The model was wearing mermaid earrings and a necklace referencing St Christopher, the patron saint of surfers, she said. She said she was going for a regal expression, so I added the tiara. Amazing how…
New stuff
Okay, it’s been a while. I’ve still been making art, just haven’t been updating the blog. I’ve been saying “yes” a lot lately, maybe too much. Here’s my latest portrait from last night’s class. I was sitting almost exactly opposite of the light…
Let's get abstract
Portrait of a model named KT God contemplating the fate of Donald Trump I’m getting better at being less representational in my art. It’s like swimming in the ocean and gradually getting comfortable with being farther and farther from shore…
Chance encounter
Sadly, when I first passed by in my pre-caffeinated haze, I mistook them as another group of vagrants up to mischief on the sidewalk outside of Bean Bag Cafe, where I was heading to putz around over coffee for a while. They were doing something with…
Flower Piano
In the botanical garden, pianos are distributed throughout as if sprouted from seeds, inviting any wandering maestros to give a performance. I meander until I find a pond under a canopy of trees. In the middle of the pond, a piano hides on a tiny…
Slowly but surely getting decent at (digital) painting
Last night I went to portrait drawing class, that is, people sitting around in a room making representations of a model sitting in a director’s chair somewhere in the middle, with some music playing for inspiration. It meets every week at a new…
Contrasting experiences
Yesterday a couple friends and I went on a bike ride that took us across the Golden Gate Bridge, to the top of a mountain where it was unpleasantly cold and windy, then down to a beach where we passed out in the sun for a couple hours before…
Zen and the art of giving a f***
Last night I attended a “sit” at a Zen meditation center , as has been my custom lately. The “sit” is a 30 minute meditation. Sometimes it’s guided, but this time it’s completely silent. Afterwards the facilitator fields questions from those…
Why
What hubris. Publishing a blog at a website named after yourself? Adding to the ever-growing ocean of information whatever commonplace thought crosses your mind? For whom? Who cares? Why? You’re looking at it all wrong. It’s not for anyone but myself…
Back at it
Hey, it’s been a while. Since my last entry I started and finished a contract job. It wasn’t the kind of work that I really want to do, but I learned a lot (mainly about the nature of contract work) and was compensated well enough that I have time to…
Fostering creativity in the Excelsior district of San Francisco
A resident I met that day described it as hell’s armpit. Though perhaps she meant it in a good way. I was in one of the last working class neighborhoods left in San Francisco, at an event called Sunday Streets, which monthly hops from neighborhood to…
A dharma bum afternoon
Things had come to a head. My head, to be exact. They were prancing about and demanding my attention. I had decided to go home early because I could no longer feel the importance of anything. There I curled up in bed with a book and put on the radio…
Getting cultured, on a dime
So I went on a little adventure last month. I’m posting this a month after the fact because I wanted to finish this thing I made to accompany this blog post. Been putting in a couple hours a day a few days a week. What is it? A box that shows photos…
A tale of art, psychology, San Francisco and Burrito Project
I was at Burrito Project the other day, a non-profit that gathers volunteers at Martin de Porres house of hospitality on the last Monday of each month to assemble and deliver burritos to the homeless or merely house-less. As it’s my first time…
Sleep, mindfulness, and art
I finally feel like I’m winning the war against my insomnia. I’d been fighting this war for over two years and every night felt like a new battle. Daily exercise helped a lot, but it seemed like I needed eight hours of exercise to buy eight solid…
On the being and nothingness of Patrick / end of 2017 reflections
There’s a lot that I want to become, and its overwhelming when I try to conceive of what it would take to fulfill my most ambitious visions of myself. One good trick I’ve found that works for me personally is writing it all down. Once the words have…
Bikesgiving!
Above an interactive map slash photo gallery of our adventure. Click on any photo to zoom in. You can also use your keyboard to switch between photos: right arrow / enter / space => next photo left arrow => previous photo escape => view map tl;dr…
How come vs. what for
Mmm, cozy. Anyone have any chestnuts? When people ask “Why…?” what they are really asking is at least two possible questions: “How come” and “what for” 1 . For example, suppose you ask why is my TV showing logs burning in a fireplace? One answer is…
Atlanta
The whole EventRay team, all three of us, got together in Atlanta this past week for a coding “sprint.” It was pretty successful on all fronts: We accomplished five weeks of work, ate real bar-b-que 1 , chicken and waffles, and saw Marietta’s giant…
Is Facebook listening to us?
I don’t know, but you know they’re on to you when you start seeing ads for tin foil, or one proclaiming “we’re not eavesdropping, trust us!” right after having a conversation about such speculations. According to my friend, the recent Reply All…
Deadline
If I seem flakey or unresponsive in the recent past or in the next couple months, it’s because we ( EventRay ) have an important deadline to meet. There are two big events we need to land as clients. There’s a lot of work we need to do on our…
Glacier National Park
Was in Glacier National Park in Montana earlier this month. We saw some mountain goats, some birds, and this guy: Grizzly bear! 📷 by Shing Some other hikers coming the other direction warned us and we backtracked to the top of a hill then stopped…
"...my superior in some way..."
It has struck me that some great human beings have entered my orbit. I’ve been aware of this fact for some time, but for whatever reason it’s been bubbling up in my mind more as of late, so it seems like a worthy subject to write about. I know one…
When was the last time you played —
- — a puzzle?
- — a platformer? (WIP)
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