It was my birthday this past weekend. The family surprised me with a ukulele!? So, obviously, I spent a day messing around with that (instead of doing all the things I'm PLANNED to do on the weekend...)
Portrait of the Artist as a Turtle Playing a Ukulele
My first thought was “I should see what the library has and how-to-play books or sheet music for ukuleles…” when I said this out loud, Keiran looked at me like I was some kind of idiot (a look I am quite used to getting, at this point) and said “there are YouTube videos for that…”
Sure enough, there are a LOT of YouTube videos on how to play Ukulele - and lpads on how to play specific songs. Did I watch any of the basic how to play videos? ƑÜ¢K NO! I went straight to the How-to-Play specific songs videos!
It is the cutest little purple ukulele, but I gotta say, it is hard to squish all of my fat, sausages-like, turtle claws on that teeny-tiny fret board and shifting positions is hard…
Hey Tim ~ I just want to express my respect & admiration. I’ve enjoyed visiting your gaming blog sporadically over the years. Which, eventually, led me here. You are doing some Really Good Work. Keep it up. I’m greatly enjoying being able to view & experience the extensive body of work that you are sharing. (How the hell do you get all of those figures painted while you burn through your sketch books?!?)
ReplyDeleteI’m an old, essentially retired, self employed jeweler whose hands don’t work like they once did. I can still hold a pen & these days I, again, write poetry. Thanks for reminding me that I am also still able to wield a brush too ~ whether painting miniatures or what I see in the World.
Thank you for the Inspiration.
~ Tom T
Thanks Tom!
DeleteIf you look at the number of posts per year on both the miniature blog and this blog, you might note that years that I've been very productive at one, I'm less productive at the other. I did a LOT of drawing and painting (pictures) last year... and painted very few miniatures (compared to what I used to do!).
These are also kind of the ONLY things I do. I don't go out much. I used to be able to paint while watching (or listening, actually) to TV or movies - when I did watch TV or movies, because for a long time, I just didn't. I don't play a lot of computer games.
Not that I'm judging anyone that does these things, I just noted, over the years that these are things that other people do that I didn't - which freed up a lot of time for drawing and painting.
For years I was also a stay-at-home/homeschooling dad and had a wildly flexible schedule and, because I had a painting station permanently set up in the house, I could sit down for a few minutes here and there to paint a bit of paint on a few miniatures whenever I had downtime. A few minutes here and there, throughout the day, ends up adding up to a lot of time.
I live a very similar life style, though without kids now. Haven’t gotten any painting done since just before the plague hit. Care giving had to take priority. Things are calming down a bit more now. I used to paint figures in the evenings, but never as prolifically as you! I’m beginning to get the itch again. Quite enjoy viewing your art work. Don’t stop. Seriously. Said by an old self-employed jeweler. Best of Wishes Tim. ~ T
ReplyDeleteCheers!
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