Scrawls

Sometimes I can’t breathe because there is too much air and my lungs can’t expand to make room for it all.

Sometimes I find the world so painstakingly beautiful…

Sometimes I am so excited my heart and stomach hurt

Sometimes all I want is the taste of chocolate on my tongue

Sometimes I am in love with each person I pass on the street

Sometimes thinking about the summer sun is more beautiful than the real thing

Sometimes I need to touch another person’s skin

Sometimes I can’t stop flexing my hands and looking at them, silently awed by their engineering

Found in a college sketchbook, and there is no date because I never date things properly. Written sometime between the fall of 2008 and spring 2009.

Updates

Whoops! How quickly the time passes. Already it’s May, and I am once again in the throes of travel preparation. In a little less than two weeks, I’ll be heading to Shibaricon, which I attended once before in 2010. This time, however, I’ll be staying with Max.

That marks somewhat of a ‘first’ in our relationship, as we’ve never attended a conference this way. When we attended Shibaricon in 2010, we had separate rooms and pre-arranged playdates, though we certainly saw a lot more of each other than I had expected or, indeed, had hoped. So it’s exciting to have progressed further – though this was made possible, of course, by the fact that none of Max’s other partners are planning to go themselves.

Given that the only other event I’ve attended in this capacity with Max was at Folsom Fringe during our very first extended encounter in 2009, it’ll be interesting to explore just how much has changed in three years.

The other big news in my life is that I’m planning a three-month-long summer sojourn in Seattle after Shibaricon (hello alliteration!). I’ve been thinking about doing this since the winter, and I finally committed to it last week by finding a room to rent and subletting out my SF room. So yeah, that’s a big deal.

Amidst the preparation for all of that excitement, I’ve also been drawing more and taking more photographs – even submitting some of my work to a few shows and galleries. I got a few images accepted for the SEAF store, and I’m excited to attend this year to see all of the artwork they’ve picked out for the festival.

My biggest personal project is a kinky webcomic that I’ve been planning for – well, it’s lived in my brain since the latter half of my college years. I even drew a few test strips to get a feel for working in that format, but it’s been a long time since I’ve attempted any more. This time, I’ve got more experience and content to draw from (literally!), and I’m pretty excited about making this a reality!

So, bear with me as I more or less abandon this space in favor of a more visual medium. And, if you’d like to be kept abreast of the webcomic’s progress, including where it will appear once I start publishing it, feel free to send me a note! My contact email can be found in the sidebar under the RSS feed icon.

I’ll keep the archives up for now. Who knows, I may become inspired to write more now that I’ve started drawing more as well!

Life update

It’s funny how it’s when my life is joyful and fairly content that makes for the most boring and sparse blog posts.  I wrote a lot more when I was more morose, unhappy, or lonely, it seems.  Added to the general feeling of contentedness is the fact that I’ve just been consumed with other life happenings, and so I don’t often find the time or space to write here.

Because busy I have certainly been.  There was the week of family Thanksgiving back on the East Coast, the flight back to San Francisco, and the flight up to Seattle two days after that.  I spent the extended weekend with Max, and there is plenty to talk about there, except I came home and was immediately thrown into host-mode as a college friend was visiting San Francisco for a few days.  I spent a couple wonderful days with her and the friends she was with, exploring parts of the city I’ve long neglected.

Still, it’s nice to carve out some time for myself this week, and I have been catching up on all the mundanities of life that constantly need attention, boring as they are to mention.  I’m trying to become more organized – in the space I take up, the physical objects I own, and the way I generally go through life.  I’ve coasted well enough so far, but that will only carry me so far before I start floundering.

Foremost on my mind is wondering where I will be, this time next year.  I have, for the past five or so months, been making moves to apply to a certificate program in Seattle.  That portfolio is still underway, and I’ve just discovered that I in fact can’t apply for their Fall 2011 enrollment until the spring.  This leaves me a lot of time to think over what, exactly, my life will look like for the next couple of years.

I recently read this journal entry of one Neil Gaiman, and once you get past the funny (and cute) photos of Neil in a ridiculous number of layers of clothes, he answers letters he gets from his readers.  The two letters on being creative writing majors had me drawing a lot of parallels to my own experience in the arts department.  I found a similar discouragement to draw anything fantastical – though I admit some of that was self-censoring, because the curricula were fine arts oriented, which often holds a very strong bias against graphic design, illustration, and cartoon art.  I struggled with conceptual art and art theory because I was more interested in creating characters and caricatures, and seriously had no illusions of creating any deeper meaning to my work.

I have been interested in this particular Seattle program because it is for natural science illustration, and I think it would help any kind of illustration I choose to do in the future.  I also believe I currently have the ability to draw from life and draw to anatomical standards, and could do this without shelling out tuition money and uprooting the life I am building for myself in San Francisco.

On the other hand, I have pretty compelling reasons to want to be in Seattle as well…

Bah. It’s late, I’m rambling.  I think it’s time to go to bed…

Clocked out

I haven’t had much time or frame of mind to be at the computer the past few days.  First, I spent Wednesday through Friday last week finishing my first kangaroo hide whip. Saturday, Max arrived in San Francisco, and I gifted him the finished whip that day.  And now my weekend and week is all about Max, which means I am barely connected to my phone or computer.  It’s a glorious feeling.

With that, we are getting ready to head out for an evening of leather hoods, sushi, and rope.  Yum.

On a lighter note…

I haven’t been taking as many photos lately, and it’s something I’d like to get back into (among the other fifty things I’d like to get back into).  It always helps to go through a photographer’s portfolio and be inspired to produce similar work.  I just discovered the site of one Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann (1906 – 1999), and I’m smitten by his figure studies and still-life-like portraits.  I love how eerily quiet and evocative the following photo is.

There is this insanely muscular, flexible guy in my yoga class that I’ve been sorely tempted to ask to model for me to do gestural drawings, and I bet he’d be a lot of fun to photograph as well.  The rippling muscle on his back when he’s in a twisted posture is mesmerizing.  (Not that I’d know, since I’m always very focused on my own poses…)  However, I haven’t yet worked up the courage to ask, and I’ve missed the past two yoga classes.

Would that be too weird? I can’t decide.

—

Thinking now about all those things I want to keep doing but have let fall by the wayside recently, I wonder how I can incorporate at least a few of them into some kind of organized schedule.

If I were a more organized and disciplined person, for instance, I might set up my days as follows:

• 1 hour of walking somewhere new and taking photos every day
• 1-2 hours of drawing every day
• 1 hour of whipmaking twice a week
• 2 hours of climbing twice a week
• 1/2 hour of aerobic exercise three times a week
• 1/2 hour of core/strength exercise four times a week
• 1 museum visit a month
• 1/2 hour salsa practice three times a week
• 2 hours of writing three to four times a week
• 1 hour of reading every day

It sounds like a lot, but on a weekly basis I could definitely pull something like this off, if I managed my time more efficiently.  In other words, if I just got off my ass more often to actually do the shit I want to do.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I’ve historically gone through phases of intense, focused obsession over a particular interest, one at a time, and this schedule would spread things out across a longer period and give each interest more equal time.

Another problem is that some of those things – like writing and drawing – are more organic, so it’s hard for me to see them as a thing to be scheduled.  But I know that people in those professions will often clear hours each day to devote to their craft, even if it means staring at a blank canvas for most of that time or a ending up with a trash bin full of rejects.

Sigh.  Nothing comes easy.  I need a muse.

Deliberating phone calls

Amongst my many neuroses is the inner monologue that occurs each time I debate whether or not to make a phone call to someone.  This is something I’ve always done, and as early as I can remember I seldom ever called my friends unless prompted or unless an immediate response was absolutely needed.  I find talking on the phone awkward at best and frustrating at worst, especially now with cellphones where the signal may be spotty.  I overwhelmingly prefer texting to calling.

Oh, and I hate leaving voicemails.  I used to stutter (in both English and Chinese, no less), so I’m forever trying to mentally compose my dialogue before speaking.  It’s a habit that’s hard to kick, and talking to an answering machine does not make that easier as I feel I’m being timed.  I’ve gotten better at this now, but it’s still not my preference to call and leave a voicemail.

So.  An example of a phone deliberation monologue might run something like this:

“Should I call X? I should – we haven’t talked in awhile, and I’d like to catch up; grab coffee or something.  Let’s see, it’s 12:10 now, he might be at lunch.  I don’t want to interrupt him while he’s eating or in line or something.  Maybe I’ll call after 1.”

(1pm rolls by)

“Oh, I was going to call X.  But – what if he’s busy? It’s so annoying having your phone go off when you’re in the middle of something.  He could be driving, too.  Or in the middle of a meeting.  But – what if he is free right now?  I just don’t want to call and get to voicemail…”

(half hour later)

“Ugh, now it’s even later.  Forget it.”

Years of this means that I am now rarely inspired to call someone spontaneously; calling is just not the first option that comes to mind when I think of getting in contact.

New project

I know why I feel so listless lately – I have no new project to obsess over!  Well, I think I have an idea for one now.  While brainstorming ideas for a drawing I’m doing for a friend, I pulled out Anatomy for the Artist from my bookshelf.  I got this as an arts intern after a colleague showed me her copy, but in all honesty I’ve never really used it.  I’ve come to rely on using Google image search to find references when I draw.  But it’s a bit of a shame; the book is filled with amazing visuals detailing every aspect of human anatomy, including translucent pages that overlay bones and musculature over photographs of people.

And this made me realize how out of practice I’ve become with figure studies.  I haven’t really done any since I left the East coast, and I feel a little rusty with the human figure.  That just won’t do!  So I am going to attempt a series of figure drawings of each of the reference photos in the book.  At over 200 pages of multiple photos per page, this should be a good exercise for me.  Ideally, I’d have a live model to draw from, but until I live that dream world of having someone at my beck and call for modeling purposes, this will have to do.

I anticipate heavy use of graphite and maybe some ink, but I may also go crazy and experiment with other media.

I should also note that my obsession with whips is not at all expired.  I am simply biding my time to build up enough momentum – and resources – to make a few more!  More documentation to come.

Carnalnation: Rope Bite

Hey, another Carnalnation article is up!  This one talks about Rope Bite, the rope-centric munch that Lochai started here in San Francisco.  Well, Lochai’s leaving for the opposite coast, and I’ll be hosting the munch after this month.  So this Wednesday is Lochai and Janice’s send-off and thank-you party.  Stop by, grab a cup of coffee, and get tied up!

In other news, a reader sent me a link to this amusing youtube video, titled “Fetish Memoirs by Baron Long Winkle”:

2. obsession

I obsess.  When I develop an interest in something, I dive headlong into it until, weeks or months or years later, I re-emerge, exhausted and ready to move on.  Thus far, rope has held my interest the longest, and I’m pretty sure it’ll stick around for awhile, although I no longer obsess furtively over “best conditioning practices” or whatnot.

Easy access to the Internet has allowed me complete research power for finding out every factoid, rumor and forgotten technique I could ever want to know concerning my subjects.  From Photoshop to rope to bootblacking, and most recently, leather whip-making, I literally have the expertise, learning process, and detailed examples of thousands of people to peruse, from blogs detailing a personal project to forums dedicated to the topic.

I suppose you could say that my sudden interest in learning to work in leather is more an extension of my growing passion for bootblacking.  It is a fairly natural progression to want to expand one’s knowledge in leathercare beyond just footwear (delightful as such footwear can be).  When I was at IML, I received some great advice on how to care for my leather jacket – an article of clothing whose condition I’d taken for granted.

But back to whip-making.  Brought on by sudden inspiration, curiosity, and the question “just how hard is it to actually braid leather into a whip?“, I started searching for tutorials online.  Youtube is a really tremendous resource, and I quickly found these gems.  So now I want to make my own leather whip – a 4-foot snakewhip or signal whip, I think.  I don’t really want or need a handle, nor do I want a monstrous 8 foot bullwhip.

Granted, this would be a tremendous project, given the time and materials it requires.  Precut lace at the width I’d need (6mm it seems) is expensive, so my other option is to collect leather straps and make lace myself.

We’ll see if this ever comes to fruition, but in the meantime I had fun de-cording some nylon rope I had and making a test whip with 12-plait braiding (and an 8-plait belly).  It was actually quite easy once I learned the braiding pattern, and the whole thing took less than 5 hours, including undoing and rebraiding the belly once I got the hang of dropping strands.  Like learning to make rope, once you’ve seen how it’s made, it becomes demystified.

Yes, I am obsessed.

Bootblacking at the Citadel

As seems to be the trend lately, I’ve been procrastinating very heavily; this time, I’ve waited till the absolute last minute to get ready for tonight’s Citadel party, where I will be volunteering as a bootblack (yes!).  It helps that there isn’t much to prepare for – my bootblack kit’s pretty much set with some fresh polish rags thrown in, and I probably wont’ get too fancily dressed since I’ll just get black polish and shoe grease on everything anyway.

However, I did neglect to get dinner earlier, so I may have to skip out of the party to grab some food.  Or maybe there’ll be food there.  I’ve always been impressed by the spread provided by the Citadel party organizers.

Anyway, if you are looking for something to do this lovely Friday evening, stop by the Citadel!  This particular party is the only one where photography is allowed, so I daresay there will be some lovely fashion and fetishwear to admire (even more so than usual) – and you can even get your shoes polished up for the camera!