Robot Claw

For a couple of years now people have been using social media to showcase original artwork during the month of October. It started as ink drawings, but people now use various methods to create and share the art under the hashtag #inktober.

For some reason, I decided to do it myself this year on twitter.

For the last 31 days, every day, I tweeted a drawing I’d made that day on my phone using the app ‘Sketches’. There was no real theme and little forethought put into the pictures, I just made them up as I went along!

My talent – or lack thereof – often got in the way, and rarely did the final picture match the one in my mind.

Furthermore the app itself was maddeningly frustrating to use because the terrible UI overlaps the canvas. Thank god for the liberal undo function, else many of these would have been utterly ruined.

Often the influence was the news of the day, such as one of the members of Babymetal leaving, or reading an article about Kit Kat candies (guess which one that influenced?), or illustrating the protagonist of a story Adam wrote on his blog.

Looking back this made the month seem longer! I can remember the days looking at the pictures, such as KLS’s birthday, Yossie being sick and going to the vet or me myself struggling with a respiratory illness for almost two weeks. Even in the midst of this I did one every day.

Many of you encouraged me, either directly or via your likes on twitter. When I started it was a lark and I didn’t think I’d actually finish. Not that it’s a great life achievement or anything, but I’m glad I did.

There are 31 drawings in total, and I asked many of you your favorites to illustrate this post. Funnily there was very little consensus and all sorts of images were liked by different people. I posted the images that at least two people listed.

You can see them all on my twitter if you’re interested. And no, I’m not going to do ‘Inkvember’ or anything (two of you have asked)! Maybe next year I’ll revisit this, but for now I’ll limit my art to cards and postcards 🙂

That’s KLS with her avocado breakfast sandwich and enormous latte. The ‘mug’ had no handle and was drunk like a soup. She said it was very good!

So many kumas!

Yesterday it rained in the city and we went to an attraction called Gullivers Gate which showcased insanely detailed miniature dioramas. The faq claimed the display was HO scale (~1:87) but we question that since the figures were only about 10-15 mm tall. It was a tad pricey (its NYC!) but we loved it. To give you an idea, the boat about is <10 cm in length! (And that’s not real water!)

Did I mention we shopped? We did. A lot! So much so we had to buy two large shopping bags just to get everything back home 🙂

And speaking of home – where we are now – we once again booked a cabin on the train. As usual it included a meal but to our horror the full kitchen that once served cooked steak or salmon is now replaced with boxed food similar to airplane meals!! Cost-cutting I suppose, but the cabin was still cozy and the return trip relaxing.

We’re in NYC for a brief mid-semester getaway.

It’s cool but not uncomfortably so, and we’ve been spending the time shopping and sightseeing.

I’ve been to the city many times but not this late in the year and this was the first time I’d seen the Rockefeller center ice rink!

Here’s a local, not too bothered by the tourists gawking at him:

And here’s Times Square at night in temperatures of ~5 C:

No matter the time of year, it always seems to be busy here 🙂

We’ve got a brand new wild bird shop near us and today they had some rescued birds to see. Of course we went for a peep!

That’s a bard owl, a big bird that is apparently becoming increasingly common.

That’s a common crow. He could talk! He didn’t do it on command but we clearly heard him say “Hello who’s there?” It was a little creepy to be honest.

This was the highlight for us, a big beautiful raven. We don’t see these around our place (crows though are very common) but apparently they’re common in the woods just south of here. His feathers were glossy and handsome and his beak wickedly curved. These are amongst the most intelligent of birds, and we still don’t understand how they are able to communicate sophisticated information to each other.

This is a screech owl. He was only about 15 cm talk and motionless. If it wasn’t for his blinking he could have been a statue. As you can see, he was extremely cute!

And lastly a barn owl, which are our most common owl. He was a bit alarmed and kept making a raspy warning sound.

They were all cute and the owls reminded me of the owl cafe we visited in Tokyo. Maybe I should go back there one day…

I’ve seen my fair share of real bad Star Wars merchandise over the years and thought I was immune to excessive awfulness but this product tested my limits:

‘Star Wars Science’ they say, where you excavate alien skulls of beloved Star Wars creatures. Science…

That’s the list of possible skulls to be found, educationally compared to mundane Earthbound examples. I wonder which one I’ll get…?

The contents of the box. I reckon that’s alien dirt waiting to be dug, although since this could be some sort of space shipping container I guess it could be space vermiculite? I was impatient though and upended the whole thing:

Golly gee is that a Zabrak skull I see? Ancient remains of Darth Maul’s noble race that sometimes has the horns growing out of the head and sometimes stuck on as decoration?

Well yes it is a Zabrak! It’s in three pieces no less, so this sucker must have died a wretched death. Cleaning the space dirt off was a chore, and the inch-high skull didn’t go together as cleanly as it should, but I suppose it’s a curiosity if nothing else…?

Nah it’s awful, has zero play value and isn’t close to worth the $6 I paid for it. Even for a SW maniac like me this is terrible, so avoid at all costs…

(Except Bernard, who can expect one for Christmas!)