It's been a busy couple of months, but I plan to return to painting very soon. On the top of my list are three incomplete works, including the banner for this blog, the Mama Nunusshu piece, and the vampire cyborg below.
I have also entered the planning stages for a short teaser trailer for the Afroid story, the redraw of the second Guila installment (to be sold via IndyPlanet.com) and my first series of t-shirts to promote and fund the Afroid project.
I've also completed a level 1 kanji class at City College of San Francisco with ラスチガン先生。I learned a lot, but I have a long way to go if I ever hope to become functionally literate Japanese. There's a fascinating correlation between writing and drawing rooted in the Chinese characters used for the kanji. For me, a high level of concentration is needed just to get all of the marks to balance in terms of spacing and proportion.
I also had an opportunity to study with artist Aiqin Zhou at the Richmond Art Center. Her Chinese calligraphy course introduced me to the classical art behind the kana and kanji. I feel lucky to have gotten to try my own hand at this rich and beautiful tradition. I'm also painting with my right hand for the first time in my life, which makes me wonder how further practice might rewire my brain after a lifetime of writing, drawing and painting with my left hand.
The good weather here in the East Bay resulted in an explosion in wild flowers growing around town, some in gardens, and others growing wild. The colors are vibrant and inspiring. Even the cherry blossoms bloomed for an especially long period of time this year. The rains also brought a lot of weeds, so I've been spending weekend mornings hacking and pulling with a curious calico looking on.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting back to the art stuff very soon.
