:faded traces:

Winter is limping along to hopefully a quick end, with the calendar proclaiming spring right around the corner. With it ends my choice of working only in black & white for the duration (not counting Chinese New Year). It was an interesting experiment, although I'm not sure if it did much "good." The world is pretty black and white this time of year anyway, and we saw waaaaay too much white. It actually made me not want to photograph it.

I hope I can find something really colorful to signify the change. I was trying to find some Indian Holi celebration for that, but I wasn't able to find any public festivals in the area, at least not through a decent internet search. Perhaps it's not meant for "outsiders."

I'm also taking a Facebook detox, at least until the end of the month. I'm really focusing on how I spend my time, and what I want/need to do, and while I don't think I spend an enormous amount of time on there, it's still time better spent doing other things. It's sad that it's become the main form of contact between people today. Others lament it along with me, yet they don't answer my invites to hang out in real space. We'll see if my absence is noticed. Probably not.

And I'm also just trying to follow the maxim of "you're an artist, so make ART." Just started a pencil drawing, mainly to see if I still can do it. I didn't honestly think that I can't, but it's best to keep in practice nonetheless. I'm copying a photo of a Suicide Girl, one I wouldn't mind photographing as well. Don't judge. I'll probably link to her page once this is done so you can compare.

Forgive the crappy camera shot, hopefully my scanner will show it more faithfully when it's finished. I'm treating it as I do most pencil drawings now, working in layers, first with softer H pencils, then darker B pencils. So this is still pretty pale at the start.  

Two days in I noticed that the hand was a bit off, so I had to erase and redraw it. Glad I caught that now and not later. Another reason to love digital, true, but that's not the point with this one.

Lucky for me Blogger has rescinded its recent "adult content policy" decision, or maybe this wouldn't be allowed. The internet's fear of nipples goes on.