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Today I bought a one-year subscription to Skillshare Premium. Skillshare.com is website with a bunch of online courses on all a bunch of different subjects. I heard about it when one of my favorite graphic designers, Aaron Draplin of Draplin Design Co., shared on his Instagram (@draplin) that he released a new course. He's taught 6 of them. Tonight I watched his 2-hour course on improving your Adobe Illustrator workflow and it alone is worth the $59 I paid for the whole year.  I went on a 2 hour hike at Alum Rock Park today and snapped a few pics along the way. It got dark on the way back and I came across a wild/feral cat, a little bigger than a large house cat, in the middle of the trail. It climbed up a hill and watched me from above as a I walked past. You can see it walk off the trail at the beginning of the video below. It's been 4th of July for about a month in East San Jose. That's how long people have been lighting illegal fireworks. It wasn't even the ones that light up, just loud AF and setting off car alarms. Tonight they lit up everything. It was crazier than years before. I stayed home in the backyard listening to the police scanner and ready with the hose in case there was a fire. I'm getting old.  As I've been SIP'n for the past few weeks, after protests and DJing a gig, I've been working out less frequently. Today I went to Lake Cunningham to walk a couple laps (4.09 miles.) I had been exercising 4 days a week in April & May but have only gone out a total of 4 times in June. It's time to get back on the horse and drop some more lbs. I decided to go last minute to the NAACP "die-in" at San Jose city hall today. I designed a BLACK LIVES MATTER graphic and rushed to transfer it onto an old canvas I recently painted black. I only had time to draw the outlines before I hit the road. There was a ton of people outside city hall when I arrived and a bunch more kept coming. I couldn't hear what was being said over the PA but when it was time to do the die-in, most people took a knee or sat down. I don't think there was enough room for everyone to lay down flat. While everyone was down it was really quiet. I took a video and you mostly hear the sound of the crosswalk signal and the construction across the street. It didn't last long, maybe 5-10 minutes? I thought we were gonna lay down for two hours. Afterwards I met with my cousin and her husband who just arrived then we were off on a march heading towards 1st street and taking a right. I didn't know the march was on the agenda or where we were going. I found out we were heading to the police station right before we arrived. I was nervous since I arrived downtown but now I was a little scared. I've been arrested twice (story for another day) and I don't even like driving near there. When we got close we could see police on the overpass ahead. The crowd turned down another street and soon we were there. We took a knee, chanted, and as a group said Happy Birthday for Breonna Taylor, outside the police station. We weren't there long. The crowd turned around and we headed back the way we came. When we got back to Santa Clara street my cousin & her husband went home and I went to Pizza Flora to grab a beer. I finished it then walked back to city hall. On the way there I saw a guy wearing one of my black & blue SAN JOSE t-shirts. I saw him again later outside of city hall, he said he had to wear it out today and I told him he made my day. In the two videos below, the top one was during the "die-in" at city hall, the bottom one is everyone taking a knee outside the San Jose police station. Everything was peaceful the whole time I was there and I really hope it statyed that way. I inked a few more eyes and a mouth today and drew a spider preparing to eat a fly after witnessing it in real life. True story, bro...   It's been a few weeks since I'd drawn on the iPad so today I picked it up and did a few "quick" doodles. The timelapse videos were exported from Adobe Fresco and sped up in iMovie. I took a break from inking today, and didn't do anything artsy at all, so here are a couple of videos I recorded yesterday of me filling in a mouth. That sounded dirty. I finally got around to filling in the background. Before inking the piece I did a mock-up in Photoshop, printed it out, and made a few edits. When I started I didn't take into account the black space between shapes so some areas barely have any background showing through. My solution was to shave some shapes down to allow more black to come through. I did everything on the photocopy before transferring them to the piece. I also tested Sharpies vs Copic markers on the same photocopy to see which black is blacker. The Copic was just a tiny bit darker so I'm been using that to fill in the background. Today sucked. I felt depressed all day and I didn't know why. Maybe the loneliness of sheltering-in-place is finally getting to me. I barely did any work on my Hearts & Stars piece, just made a quick digital mock-up with a black background but didn't lay down any ink. I couldn't get myself to workout or go for a walk. I went for a long drive, took Capitol Expressway from east San Jose all the way to Campbell, but didn't feel any better when I got home. Later that night, still in a funk, I noticed the the note on my calendar, "MLK Exhibit Day One." Today was supposed to be the opening of my art show at the Martin Luther King Library downtown. I wonder if that's why I down all day. I wasn't aware of today's date but maybe subconsciously that's what has been bugging me. For the past few weeks I've kept my head down and worked on my drawings for the show. It was a goal I was working towards. I recently got confirmation that my art show, and all other exhibits, were postponed until further notice. Now I don't have anything to work towards, besides finishing my current drawings. There are no DJ gigs till June, if at all this year, and no event vending opportunities in the foreseeable future. I hope this depression was a one-day thing. I don't want to lose any more momentum and risk undoing everything I've worked so hard to do over these past few months. Wish me luck! That's how long this is taking. The more I work on it, the more I see it needs more work.   I thought today was Thursday. It's actually Wednesday but it feels like Groundhog Day This afternoon I went on Instagram Live and DJ'd a 90-minute set and only stopped when I was booted off Instagram, when it detected certain copyrighted songs. There was a 30-minute chunk from my set, all 80s music, that Instagram won't let me share so I did a screen recording and uploaded it here. The 1st, 3rd & 4th sets (as of right now) are up for a another 18 hours on my Instagram (@frankiemcfly) Enjoy!
That half a house key I pulled out of my tire yesterday wasn't what caused it to go flat. Today I removed the tire, put some air in it, sprayed it with soapy water (where I pulled the key from) but there were no bubbles. I was confused till I looked on the other side and saw the nail head. I videotaped myself pulling it out with pliers. It was a big fucker, as you can see. I had a tire plug kit in my car so I was able to plug it up quick, put the wheel back on, fill all the tires to the recommended tire pressure, then went out for a spin. It was a beautiful Saturday so I drove up the hill and back. Not a smart idea, incase it went flat again, but luckily nothing happened. Check out the video. I've just about finished penciling the bottom half. All the Eyes & Mouths are pretty much done so I gotta finish the details in the skin, or whatever it is that surrounds everything and keeps it all together. I can't wait to ink this and be done with it. This is kinda what it looks like when you go to @sanjoseday on Instagram and scroll to my post. It's one long seamless image broken down into 10 slides. I laid out a bunch of different digital drawings & designs I've made over the past few years. It was fun making this and participating in the virtual art show since we're all still sheltering in place. The actual San Jose Day event has been postponed to July 18. Hopefully we'll be over the 'Rona by then. Fingers crossed. The updated Coronavirus guidelines & rulings are requiring gyms to close for a few weeks. Lately I've been going 3 times a week to use the treadmill. Luckily I can go run & walk outside, as long as it's not raining. Here's the time lapse from the Adobe Fresco app, with some music, of the drawing I inked last night. |
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