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Hobbies Video

Improving my 8-ball game

Totally spaced on posting yesterday, sorry about that.

League was last night–another two-win night, not that great. Talking to Delayne made me realize I’ve been ignoring a valuable tool for learning more–YouTube. I’ve been reading a lot, and asking questions from the better players in the league, but really, how could I forget about the wealth of info to be found on YouTube?

Having since corrected my lapse, I’ve learned that my stroke probably sucks, I’ve been under-appreciating the importance of the tangent line, and I tend to aim too low for the ever-troublesome draw shot. Here’s one of the videos that I think is particularly well-done (despite the frequent misspelling of “possible”):

Who knows, maybe this is the season I’ll learn how to make a jump shot!

Categories
Gratuitous Picture Post Hobbies

Portrait of Riley

This is the portrait of my nephew that I mentioned yesterday:

Portrait of Riley
Portrait of Riley, charcoal and acrylic (Xmas present for Nan and Todd)

It was not done free-hand, of course–I suck at drawing. Instead, I took an existing photo of Riley and used Photoshop to simplify the lines and brighten up the colors and contrast. After printing it out, I charcoaled the back of the paper, then traced the image onto the canvas. After that, it was just a matter of coloring it in–a challenge in itself, of course. I couldn’t get the perfect strawberry-blond color of his hair, and the shadows under his arm and chin refused to conform to my will. But I think it’s still pretty damned good for my first portrait ever.

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Hobbies Whining

My failure to paint

I wanted to paint this weekend, but I couldn’t settle on a subject, which is what I’m finding to be the hardest part of this new hobby of mine. That, and the fact that my last two paintings (the Japanese Maple and a portrait of my nephew) came out so good that I’m now afraid of future failures.

I have a Pinterest board where I save photos of things I might want to paint someday. When I’m feeling this urge to paint, I troll the board for hours, trying to pick one thing to commit to canvas, but I have undone myself, ’cause I want to paint them all. The ones that came closest to reality this weekend were a cat on a bicycle in the snow and a cat climbing up someone’s leg. I guess I was in a cat mood.

Sadly, neither became a painting this weekend. Instead I read more of Two Graves, and watched a lot of football. Maybe next weekend.

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Hobbies Links

Wine and Canvas FTW!

I’m a huge fan of Wine and Canvas. It’s a three hour class where you can order food and drink while an artist walks you through a really cool painting from start to finish. They provide the paints, brushes and canvas, you just bring an open mind and a sense of fun. I’ve been to four of their classes since, I dunno, June? And I’ve loved it so much that I’ve been painting my own stuff at my kitchen table. Seriously, it’s a great way to spend an evening, and at $35 a class, it’s a bargain, but today Living Social has class coupons available for only $17! I’ve already bought two for myself. Check it out and take a chance on a great new hobby! (Here’s the calendar for January in Los Angeles, see if there’s anything you’d like to paint.)

Results from three of my four classes:

Categories
Dollhouses and Miniatures Hobbies News Shopping

Dollhouses and miniatures

Once upon a time I was big into dollhouses and miniatures. I was fresh out of college, unemployed, bored, a little depressed, and on a whim I purchased a kit to build a dollhouse. Building it, painting and decorating it, furnishing it–it all became an obsession (as many of my hobbies do), and not a cheap one at that. I eventually moved on, gave the house away (keeping the awesomest furnishings and dolls, of course) and never went back.

Until now, that is. For some reason (I think it might’ve been something on Pinterest that sparked it), I’m all about the miniatures again. I’ve already ordered a new dollhouse kit from Amazon, and I’ve been plowing through dozens of blogs and tutorials, perusing the online hobby stores, and checking out houses on the streets looking for the right exterior finish for my (not-yet-arrived or built) new house (I’m thinking brick, or maybe stone). I dug out a box of the old furniture, and still need to find the box with the dolls (which, it turns out, are pretty rare and expensive now–who knew I had such good taste at 22?).

It’s all very familiar, yet new at the same time. The world wide web didn’t even exist the last time I was into miniatures! So many blogs and forums and pictures and experts and ideas and stores and damn, I love the internet. It really does make everything better.

I couldn’t find any digital pics specifically of my old dollhouse, but it’s here in the background behind Skitzo, our beloved and very much missed orange tabby:

Skitzo showing off my dollhouse
Skitzo showing off my dollhouse