Week 10

I took the whole week off because I was very tired of life. It’s the year anniversary of the last time the world was normal and it’s bringing me down. Between covid and immigration delays it’s looking very 50/50 on whether I can attend my closest cousin’s wedding this fall in Romania, and I’m beyond gutted at the thought of missing it. All I can do about it is wait, and that’s making the pandemic fatigue worse by a thousand.

I made two prints of Barnsley ferns. They looked cool in the end, but they were a bit of a struggle. Barsnley ferns are these super popular fractals that (spoilers) look like ferns, but honestly, fractals in general are not my favourite. These ones come out of 4 equations and 6 parameters which sounds like would open a whole world of possibilities, but it turns out most combinations of values produce absolute trash. Which is fine, but that’s not my style of generative art. Instead, I spent all my random numbers in trying to paint the ferns like furry brush strokes and letters I don’t think anyone other than me appreciates that 😅.

I got deep into linocuts. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the things that come out of a computer also come out of my hands, and hand prints can definitely be that thing. Doing the linocut itself is my favourite kind of relaxing; it keeps my hands busy with stabbing squishy things (also see: that time i picked up felting in meetings). I can’t believe I haven’t tried it before. Also, Frances says that the linocuts I’ve been doing look a lot like the kind of carving I used to do with my pottery, which is great news because that means I have a *~style~*.

As usual, I am undeservedly lucky: one of my cousins, Raluca Iancu is an enormously talented printmaker and professor of printmaking, so I got to text her with questions. I don’t think everyone who starts up with a hobby can text a professional in that area and be like “hello I bought 10$ tools and some linoleum, please hold my feelings with your 10+ years of domain expertise”.

Zach and I have been babysitting our friends’ smol puppy. Her name is Penny and she is SO CUTE. The cat feels infinitely betrayed.

I am reading “Wow, no thank you” by Samantha Irby because she is hilarious and hates people almost as much as I do. I just finished season 4 of Below Deck and I think I need to take a break because I got way too invested in the romantic life of Ben the chef.

I am looking for a chill, weekly “draw this” prompt from instagram. If you’re reading this and you know one that you’ve used or you like, please let me know!