Music Monday (40): Flume, Tove Lo, and Miguel

   Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: Oh man, I haven’t been listening to a lot of new music recently. It’s been a couple of those kinds of weeks where all I want to listen to are playlists of all my favorite music, which is great for me, but not so good for blog content. Oh well....

My first pick this week is Say It by Flume featuring Tove Lo. There’s not really a story to how I came across this song. It wasn’t a happy accident, or even really an accidental discovery since I sought it out. About a year or so ago, I happened to be looking up Tove Lo to see what other music she’d been a part of outside of her three albums (two at the time)—Queen of the Clouds, Lady Wood, and Blue Lips. That’s how I found Say It. I don’t listen to too much of Flume’s music. However, when I find a song by them that I find particularly catchy, it quickly joins the same ranks as some of my all-time favorite music....

My second pick is Bannana Clip by Miguel. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been making my way through more of Miguel’s music. There are so many songs that I absolutely adore like Waves (which I already mentioned on a different Music Monday post), Adore, and Sky Walker featuring Travis Scott....

What are you listening to?

Acrylics #1: The Night (It's Something)

For a while now, I've wanted to try Acrylic paint. I've used watercolor. I've dabbled a little with gouache, but it never became a medium I would automatically reach for. And for the past several months, I've only used watercolor or painted digitally on my Samsung Galaxy Tab A. I've used a combination of paint and colored pencil to get the effect I was looking for. With watercolor, I can spend hours building up layers from light to dark. Too dark too early and the colors get muddied. However, with acrylic paint, I can go from light to dark or from dark to light. It’s the same way with gouache, but like I already mentioned, it just wasn't my favorite medium to use even though its like acrylic. But again, same old same old gets boring after a while, and I was ready to branch out again and try something new. Acrylic seemed to be the obvious choice.

For my first foray into acrylic painting territory, I wanted to try something with dramatic lighting, limited color palette, and darker tones (alternating between pink, purple, and dark to medium blue). And this is the end result, which I've nicknamed The Night. I like the painting. It was fun to play around with the paints and get a feel for them, for example: how much water to add, how the paint behaves on paper, things like that.
However, now that I’m no longer working on this piece, I can pinpoint a few areas that I want to work on. If you look closely at the cheek you can see that the contrast between light and dark is sharp—almost too sharp for my liking. I probably needed a few more shades to bridge the gap between light and dark. I could have used a purple that then transitioned into lavender and then pink, and perhaps a yellow, white, or a lighter blue to brighten certain areas. But it is what it is. And now that I know how I prefer my acrylic paintings to look, I can work towards achieving that on the next one I work on.

Overall, I actually like acrylic paint a lot more than I thought I would. It fits with my process of making art, and I’m now much more excited to continue working with this type of paint. Up next: this sketch. And with the aforementioned things in the second paragraph of this post, I’m more confident that I’ll be able to get the result that I’m looking for.





Have you used acrylic paint? If not, would you try it?

Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Title: Ready Player One
Series: N/A
Author: Ernest Cline
Source/Format: Blogging for Books; Paperback
More Details: Science Fiction
Publisher/Publication Date: Broadway Books; August 16, 2011

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines--puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win--and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape...

For the longest time, I’ve been hearing about Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This author isn’t completely new to me. I read Armada and liked it, so, I didn’t go into Ready Player One totally in the dark about Cline’s writing. However, my expectations were very high. I expected to be wowed. And, I wasn’t disappointed. I liked Ready Player One

The OASIS was described as a “vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days”, which is the only accurate way to describe it. There were more than a dozen different worlds within the game, made up of original places or franchises licensed for use in OASIS. It was open platform and the majority of the setting (where the story played out) was within OASIS. It wasn’t just a recreational pastime, but also a place to learn and make purchases using real money. It was also a place to form friendships and even romantic relationships.

The plot focused on the contest, or “the Hunt”, left behind by James Halliday (the creator of the OASIS). So, Ready Player One is a Willy Wonka-esque story with a heavy emphasis on virtual reality, peppered—almost on every page—with references to pop culture primarily from the 80s. There were mentions of Star Wars, Back to the Future, and many others; as well as video games and consoles, for example the Atari 2600. But, this was a book that also had something else to say: an underlying message mixed in with the action and the Hunt, kind of about escapism via virtual reality told through the experiences of past and present characters.

And that brings me to the characters. I thought Wade Watts was a relatively interesting protagonist. He was down on his luck and had horrible relatives. His situation wasn’t the best and the OASIS was his escape from his life in the stacks. He was also like a walking dictionary for 80s pop culture. But then again, so were a lot of the “gunters” involved in the Hunt.

So, I thoroughly enjoyed Ready Player One and will definitely read future books by this author.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by Blogging for Books for this review...

About the author...

Ernest Cline is a novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. His first novel, Ready Player One, was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and appeared on numerous “best of the year” lists. Ernie lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games...

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The Friday 56 (127) & Book Beginnings: Envy of Angels by Matt Wallace

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

Synopsis from Goodreads...

In New York, eating out can be hell. Everyone loves a well-catered event, and the supernatural community is no different, but where do demons go to satisfy their culinary cravings? Welcome to Sin du Jour - where devils on horseback are the clients, not the dish...

Beginning: "A hotel room in São Paulo is the third worst place in the world in which to go into cardiac arrest."

56: "Bronko grins. "All evidence to the contrary, kid."

Comments: I've been getting into more novellas lately with Aliette de Bodard's The Tea Master and the Detective (March 31, 2018 from Subterranean Press), and now Envy of Angel's by Matt Wallace. This book was good. I wish it was longer, but that doesn't change how much I enjoyed the story.

What are you reading this week?

Lets Talk About Older Artwork...

I haven't done a discussion post in a long time. It was one of my blogging goals of 2017. "At least once a month," is what I told myself; although, I never really found my rhythm and didn't find the time to write as many as I wanted (or couldn't think of topics to write about). That being said, it's a new year, and I finally have another discussion post ready. So, today, I'm here to talk about old artwork....

Old artwork. If art is your hobby or job, you’ve inevitably got a pile of old artwork stashed in some deep, dark, and forgotten corner of a closet or drawer. I mean, I have a lot of old art—some of it is from when I was kid—and admittedly, it’s a little awkward to look at. My immediate response is to cringe at it, laugh it off, or just quickly shut that drawer and walk away. However, old artwork is a good thing. And, like it or not, it’s always going to be a thing.

I view old artwork as a roadmap to my current art ability. If not for some of my old artwork, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I didn’t get this way overnight. It took years of practice, and even to this day I still find areas that I feel aren’t as on par with other aspects of my abilities.

I say that old artwork is a good thing because it serves as a visual reminder of where I was. Its a literal documentation of all the learning curves I've gone through, the style changes, and experiments. If I look back at pieces from early 2017 and compare them to some of my current projects, there’s a big difference. By comparing old with new, I can see the areas where I have improved as well as others that I still need to work on. But the signs of improvement are often sources of encouragement to continue. For example, the pictures below. The one on the left is a drawing from 2016 and the one on the right is the redraw I did for it on March 2, 2018.

What I’m trying to say is there’s no shame in old artwork. It’s older artwork for a reason. Is it kind of awkward? Yeah, sometimes, but that doesn’t change the fact that a year from now, I'll look back at everything I'm currently working on and will label it as older artwork. And, in a way, those ones (Those roadmaps to every learning curve) will always be just as important as recent pieces of art. Where's the shame in that?

What are your thoughts on older artwork?