New paintings
Jul. 2nd, 2024 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillilahI have two new paintings I'm working on.
Actually, first, I should mention that yesterday we went to sign some paperwork for the house. This is the paperwork Joel has been working on for almost a year. It would update all the information that the government has about our property. The previous owners had been working on it for years. Anyway, instead of getting to sign the papers, we were told that everything we were doing was very suspicious, that there were things that were obviously wrong with our application, and that we would need to bring a whole lot of proof with us to get this stuff signed. Of course, that proof was submitted years ago. Anyway, after that, Joel called the realtor, who said that he will have the agency's lawyers look at everything again. Probably we will have to ask him to come with us next time.
Today, I went to the gynecologist as a followup to the surgery. He says all is well, so that is resolved. I want to get a urine test to make sure that the bladder infection is gone, but since I have never had a clean test at the hospital where my gynecologist is (and have also never had any symptoms), I decided to try going to a private testing place. I'll do that soon.
So, back to painting. I wanted to paint one of the lavender clusters of flowers on the jacaranda tree in our yard, and yesterday, I finally got a photo of it with a bumble bee on one of the flowers. So, I will use that as my reference photo. I also am going to paint a jungle picture (for a friend who hates the cold). I downloaded a bunch of "fantasy jungle" images with a plan to make my own. I talked to Claude.ai about how to go about making my own image, and it was really helpful with very very basic instructions on how composition and contrasting light and dark work. The most interesting thing was that when I used the rule of thirds, as it suggested, I discovered that almost every "fantasy jungle" image had an opening or a path that led to the point where the bottom horizontal rule and the right-hand vertical rule cross. The right-hand vertical rule almost always was over an area that was lighter than the rest of the image, and the top horizontal rule was generally on top of a bridge or arch of some kind. There is almost always a giant tree in the middle. So, I took a photo of a giant tree growing over a ruin and a statue of a lion or dog that we saw when we visited Cambodia and threw those into the painting plan too. In almost all of the "fantasy jungle" images, there was also a figure looking away from the viewer. I decided that he should be looking at the dog statue. Joel suggested a troll under the bridge, so I made the troll be waiting for the guy who is looking at the statue. I've always liked pictures with weird, bright colored mushrooms in them, so I plan on throwing some of them in too. I sketched all this out, and it seems like it should work. I painted the background of the flower picture and the basic structures of the jungle picture, and they both seem okay so far. Of course, they will need a lot of work. I'm going to focus slightly more on the jungle painting, as I would like to send it out this weekend if possible, while the flower picture will go with me to the US to be sent out when I get there, so it is a bit less urgent.
Oh, and in other exciting news, I have been wishing that I had the timeline for my Mass Effect story in a database for a while now, as I have all these entries that are related to all kinds of different plotlines and characters. I have been copying them into different pages in my wiki, but it is kind of a mess to have just tons of copied lists of what happens on which day, because of course, when you change one, you need to then change all of them. Also, the copying is annoying. Anyway, the answer is to make a different page for each timeline event and then link the other pages for plotlines, characters, and timelines to it. I worried it would be too much. However, last night, I finally gave in and did it.
I decided to only worry about doing it for the stuff that hasn't happened yet in the story, so I gave that portion of the timeline to ChatGPT and Claude.ai and asked them to take the date format that I had for the events and change it (in a way I described) to make those dates into links to wiki pages. ChatGPT isn't great at this, but Claude.ai did a great job. I discovered after, though, that the date format I was using wasn't going to work quite right, but I was able to fix all of that this morning. Now that I have worked with it a bit, I like having the timeline in this format. Because one day is a page rather than just a couple of lines in a larger list, I can transfer all my notes and thoughts about what happens on that day onto the page. There was a lot of stuff that I either hadn't taken into consideration or didn't know about that I have been able to clean up because of this. I have quite a bit more still to do, and I don't have the bad guy's plotline done by any means (I think I have part of it organized and then "and then they are stopped" at the end, which isn't enough). However, as I go through the main plotline that I already have written and flesh out my ideas, I am coming up with more and more opportunities to tell my story.
Actually, first, I should mention that yesterday we went to sign some paperwork for the house. This is the paperwork Joel has been working on for almost a year. It would update all the information that the government has about our property. The previous owners had been working on it for years. Anyway, instead of getting to sign the papers, we were told that everything we were doing was very suspicious, that there were things that were obviously wrong with our application, and that we would need to bring a whole lot of proof with us to get this stuff signed. Of course, that proof was submitted years ago. Anyway, after that, Joel called the realtor, who said that he will have the agency's lawyers look at everything again. Probably we will have to ask him to come with us next time.
Today, I went to the gynecologist as a followup to the surgery. He says all is well, so that is resolved. I want to get a urine test to make sure that the bladder infection is gone, but since I have never had a clean test at the hospital where my gynecologist is (and have also never had any symptoms), I decided to try going to a private testing place. I'll do that soon.
So, back to painting. I wanted to paint one of the lavender clusters of flowers on the jacaranda tree in our yard, and yesterday, I finally got a photo of it with a bumble bee on one of the flowers. So, I will use that as my reference photo. I also am going to paint a jungle picture (for a friend who hates the cold). I downloaded a bunch of "fantasy jungle" images with a plan to make my own. I talked to Claude.ai about how to go about making my own image, and it was really helpful with very very basic instructions on how composition and contrasting light and dark work. The most interesting thing was that when I used the rule of thirds, as it suggested, I discovered that almost every "fantasy jungle" image had an opening or a path that led to the point where the bottom horizontal rule and the right-hand vertical rule cross. The right-hand vertical rule almost always was over an area that was lighter than the rest of the image, and the top horizontal rule was generally on top of a bridge or arch of some kind. There is almost always a giant tree in the middle. So, I took a photo of a giant tree growing over a ruin and a statue of a lion or dog that we saw when we visited Cambodia and threw those into the painting plan too. In almost all of the "fantasy jungle" images, there was also a figure looking away from the viewer. I decided that he should be looking at the dog statue. Joel suggested a troll under the bridge, so I made the troll be waiting for the guy who is looking at the statue. I've always liked pictures with weird, bright colored mushrooms in them, so I plan on throwing some of them in too. I sketched all this out, and it seems like it should work. I painted the background of the flower picture and the basic structures of the jungle picture, and they both seem okay so far. Of course, they will need a lot of work. I'm going to focus slightly more on the jungle painting, as I would like to send it out this weekend if possible, while the flower picture will go with me to the US to be sent out when I get there, so it is a bit less urgent.
Oh, and in other exciting news, I have been wishing that I had the timeline for my Mass Effect story in a database for a while now, as I have all these entries that are related to all kinds of different plotlines and characters. I have been copying them into different pages in my wiki, but it is kind of a mess to have just tons of copied lists of what happens on which day, because of course, when you change one, you need to then change all of them. Also, the copying is annoying. Anyway, the answer is to make a different page for each timeline event and then link the other pages for plotlines, characters, and timelines to it. I worried it would be too much. However, last night, I finally gave in and did it.
I decided to only worry about doing it for the stuff that hasn't happened yet in the story, so I gave that portion of the timeline to ChatGPT and Claude.ai and asked them to take the date format that I had for the events and change it (in a way I described) to make those dates into links to wiki pages. ChatGPT isn't great at this, but Claude.ai did a great job. I discovered after, though, that the date format I was using wasn't going to work quite right, but I was able to fix all of that this morning. Now that I have worked with it a bit, I like having the timeline in this format. Because one day is a page rather than just a couple of lines in a larger list, I can transfer all my notes and thoughts about what happens on that day onto the page. There was a lot of stuff that I either hadn't taken into consideration or didn't know about that I have been able to clean up because of this. I have quite a bit more still to do, and I don't have the bad guy's plotline done by any means (I think I have part of it organized and then "and then they are stopped" at the end, which isn't enough). However, as I go through the main plotline that I already have written and flesh out my ideas, I am coming up with more and more opportunities to tell my story.
