Paint Stains

It is JUST WRONG for a so-called Australian bar in Singapore to not play Australian music on Australia Day. YYMV over what Australian music is, but even if it had just been Men at Work on a loop (just kidding), it would have been at least something, ya know?

Work and work has been keeping the days quite packed. Belatedly I've realized that my day job will soon be getting to the point I won't exactly have a lighter schedule during school holidays, not if I'll be leading adult tours more often now. Training has been almost constant. What gets me miffed is that I'm not losing weight even though I'm walking all over the place. It is NOT FAIR.

Layout for the field guide is going at a good speed. It's nice that we found the perfect font. We had to pay for it (not too much), but it is worth every penny. It is in fact a bit amusing that I once looked at an old newspaper in a museum and said, "I want to print something in that font face one day" and I think this is it. We in fact have the option to make "s"s in the text look like "f"s, you know, THAT font (except we're not going that far).

Singaporeans get an unexpected mention in an article on the Organic Consumers website: Who Loves Junk Food the Most: U.K., USA, or Canada?

I thought I had more to cover in this post but it's slipped my mind. Ah well, back to work.

Photo taken last week (I think, I can't remember now) of the pile of botany illustrations that took half a day to scan into the computer. (Note to self: MAKE BACK UPS!!) Yes, this is the first and only teaser for the Field Guide to date. And no, probably not be the last. At this stage I'd just rather be laying out the pages than uploading browser-friendly looks at the art. Things may look mighty different by the time the pages are done anyway....

Two pictures are drying on my desk right now, waiting for further watercolor work. But since there's been precious little updates on the Surreal Botany project on my blog, consider this, well, me announcing that we're THIS close to getting the art done for the book! That's 10 left out of 48. What actually surprises even myself is that I do have 38 plant illustrations done already. The past few weeks actually gave me some days where I was able to complete 3 or 4 of them in a day, so 9 to complete before this Friday (when we're leaving for Kong Kong) is looking doable, although I stupidly left the "hard" ones for the last... you know, the ones with the architectural and historical details. (THOSE writers should know who they are...)

Another MAAD Market went by this weekend with yours truly in attendance on Saturday, feverishly splashing up watercolor portraits alongside other artists from OIC. Things started slow, but we got swamped, I think, from 3:30pm onwards, and it was non-stop after that, and it was pairs of people nearly the whole day through. That means actually drawing and completing 2 people in 15 minutes flat. That doubles the work compared to a single portrait, people! Be kinder to the artists, and purchase more pieces when you do that -- credit cards are accepted... all to make it easier to support starving artists, y'know? :)

And alas, I brought a lot of pieces home (as opposed to getting them sold) this time. It ain't a big deal, but even if I say so myself, most of my results were pretty good looking and it sucks only slightly that I just have to bring them home to put them in my "If I ever want to be a courtroom artist one day" portfolio. Haha!

Two plant paintings finished while typing this up. Which means only 8 plants left to go!

Finished two botany pictures yesterday, one of which was hilarious.

Monday, converted the US dollars in my Paypal account to Singaporean dollars. And closed my local bank account that was a US currency account. The bank officer was flabbergasted.

"You want to convert your US money to Singapore dollars today? But the exchange rate is so terrible!"

"It's not going to get better anytime soon," I said. And yes, I should have done this months ago, because I freakin' saw it coming. Anything I earn now in USD is worth less and less here. I'm not typing a sob story or anything, just a statement of fact. The US dollar is heading downwards measured against most of the world's currencies.

Saturday morning: had to go to Ikea the second time in 2 days to make an exchange. Buying new furniture is a last resort when I can't find something second hand - like a map chest. It also irritated me that I'd looked for months for something, and when I finally caved in to buy the Alex, the box we picked up on Friday had a badly chipped board - the last board I removed from the flatpacked box, to boot. Punishment for buying new furniture, I bet.

Saturday afternoon: I had very, very fun 5 hours at the Red Dot Traffic Museum that's between the business district and Chinatown here. It was an afternoon of doing quick portraits of people, with the possibility of getting your work bought if they liked it. (You're sitting to be drawn by several artists at one go.) It was my first time doing portraits from life in over 10 years. The challenge? Drawing and painting the pictures in 10 minutes, as opposed to 3 hours back when I was an art student. 10 minutes! hahaha (Results can be seen on my Facebook page, but you'll have to be on my f-list there to see this album. Hollar if you're there.) Really, it was a lot of fun. And very addictive - can't wait to do it some more. Pity it only happens there once a month!

When it rains, it pours.

I have about 4 things on my plate right now. Earlier this week I started going through the roughly 60 submissions for Surreal Botany that were on the final shortlist - and acceptances are going to whittled down to about 50 when I'm through. This unfortunately, is due to overlaps. (Great minds think alike?) There were a number of submissions that, while good, were very similar to other good submissions, sometimes down to the name. I think I've mentioned that we received several carnivorous plants, and that was probably the most commonly occuring feature (this won't be reflected in the final book). The first runner-up after that was graveyard plants.

If anyone who submitted is reading this and hasn't received a reply yet, I apologize. I'm trying to get all the last emails out before the end of this weekend, but admittedly this is still on my work list behind 3 other items. Also, making the final decision is hard - there's already been a few times where it's come down to thinking about the submission in terms of the illustration it would inspire. (Yeah, I know. Artist as editor - scary thought.)