Category: Sketching

A day for getting things done – 14 October 2020

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The sewing machine came out for a while.

I’d misplaced one of the pleated masks I’d made for myself and it was the most comfortable one I had. The fitted masks are very neat, but they don’t feel that comfortable on, especially when you need to talk. Talking and yawning mean the mask has to stretch and because I’m making the masks from cotton fabric, which doesn’t stretch, so instead it rides up over my chin or pulls down exposing my nose to the cold. They may look elegant, but the pleated mask has enough stretch in the pleats to allow some jaw movement. Besides they are easier to make, once you work out how to stitch pleats. I should have said they are usually easier to make. Today the stitching fairies were having a day off. However, after an hour or so both Scamp and I have a new mask each. Scamp has stars on one side (to celebrate the fact that she’s just announced that she can see Mars tonight) and stripes on the other! Mine has Dr Who on one side and frogs on the other. Stylish!

After the swearing and the stitching I took the Sony 7 out for a walk in St Mo’s, but the light was low and results were disappointing. The brightest thing I saw was the PoD. It’s a Berberis bush that grows beside the path to St Mo’s. Beautiful orange and red leaves. So startling against the dark green foliage. Ticks the box every autumn. While I was out I saw a long skein of geese coming in from the north west and heading almost directly overhead. They were constantly separating into smaller groups and then rejoining. ‘Talking’ to each other all the time. Fascinating.

Fish and Chips for dinner tonight. What’s not to like and Scamp had baked a couple of cakes too!

Sketch topic was Armour. My take on modern armour is a motorcycle helmet, and that’s what you see here.

Tomorrow we may go for a run somewhere, although we need to be back for Scamp to get her flu jag. Let’s hope it doesn’t hurt.

Immortal – 13 October 2020

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A dull day until late in the afternoon, brightened by coffee with Val

Off this morning for coffee with Val. I really enjoyed our hour of moans, rants and laughs. Coffee was just ok. You can’t say much more about it when it’s Costa’s finest :-/ After an hour of good natured conversation ranging from the technicalities of photographic sensors to the Italian method of cooking Spaghetti a la Carbonara with a nod to viewing Mars tonight and micro computers, it was time to go. We said our goodbyes and agreed we’d meet up again in a couple of weeks, all being well. He went to meet his wife, I went food shopping for lunch and dinner.

Back home and after lunch I took the new toy out for a walk in St Mo’s. I also took two pots of chestnut saplings that I’d been growing at home since February. I’d fully intended planting them earlier in the year, but things got in the way. Walked around St Mo’s trying to avoid two different tribes of school kids on their October break with nothing to do and nowhere to go. It might have been the same tribes as earlier, it might have been different ones. I didn’t look too closely. I just smiled at the dress (lack of) sense of these kids. Dressed as if it was summer, when winter is just around the corner. What worried me the most was that they were in great groups. We’re being told not to congregate in large groupings, but these idiots are wandering around in tens and twenties, completely oblivious to the risks they are taking with their health. Reminded me of a bloke I saw in Condorrat a few years ago. He had a tattoo on his arm of a biker with the logo “I’m Immortal … so far”. They say those under 15 don’t run a very high risk of Covid. That may be true … so far. I avoided most of the tribes and managed to get the saplings planted. Hopefully far enough away from the pathways and far away from the grazing areas used by the deer.

Got a PoD which is a male Common Darter dragonfly resting on the boardwalk. Looking at it full size on the computer I realised it had a lot of damage to one of its forewings. Such a delicate framework and such a short lifespan. They live fast, the dragonflies. Perhaps they too are immortal … so far.

Dinner was my take on Frittata. I should have asked the Italian man this morning for his recipe. Mine was based on a recipe I’d found somewhere and on Scamp’s timing. It worked out fine for me. We scoffed it!

Prompt for today’s sketch was Dune.  Cryptic. I wasn’t at all settled on a solution to this vague prompt, but I finally settled for a bottle of Mixed Spice. Cryptic, like the prompt.  If you’ve read Frank Herbert’s book you’ll understand.

I got an email from Hazy today to say that Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell was on sale for Kindle today of 99p.  I grabbed it.  Thanks Hazy.  Like I said, I don’t think I would have paid full price for it, but I’ll risk a quid!

Tomorrow looks wet again, so we may be reduced to doing inside stuff.  Work, in other words  🙁

An almost wasted day – 12 October 2020

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Today was wet.

Not thumping down torrential wet, more a smirr that strengthened to a drizzle, then returned to a smirr again. Almost turned itself off to catch the unwary before continuing again as a slightly heavier drizzle. Look, just give us a soaking and be done with it, but no it was lazy rain.

I was struggling with the Sony website today. I have never seen such a convoluted piece of badly written HTML. Ok, Hazy I hear you, nobody uses HTML any more, but the coding on that site is horrendous. Captchas, don’t talk to me about Captchas. Those infuriating “Prove you’re not a robot” nine picture grids where you have to identify ‘crosswalks’. I live in Scotland you moron, we don’t have crosswalks. We don’t even have happywalks these days. Eventually got through the maze of crosswalks, bicycles, school buses and traffic lights, only to be told “There’s been a problem”. No kidding, a problem eh? On this magnificent piece of artistic code, there’s been a problem. The only reason I was there was to download a shitty app that didn’t work because it needed another piece of code that it wanted me to download after I’d signed into another webpage. What, and go through all that Captcha nonsense again? I think not. Sony I know none of your grunts are reading this, but you really need to employ humans to do your coding. The monkeys you have just now are simply messing you about.

There, that’s got that out of my system. By the time I’d given up on Sony and had lunch the clouds were lifting, literally, the clouds outside the window were lifting. I went out to buy some milk and got today’s PoD on the way back as the sun came out. It’s pretty good, but it would have been better if I’d remembered to set the ISO back to a reasonably 400 rather than the 6400 I’d been using for practise earlier. Still, it shows the power of a full frame sensor. Every year I promise myself I won’t shoot the golden leaves we get in autumn. Every year I give in to the temptation, and so it was this year. Low, warm coloured sun just lights everything up and I’m lost in it.

Sketch prompt today was ’Slippery’. I almost gave up and did my own thing, because I’m beginning to hate these vague prompts. Too airy fairy for me. However for another day I stuck to the script and drew a frog. They don’t come much more slippery than a frog, unless they’re an MP. I think I prefer frogs. You know where you are with a frog.

That was about it for today. Tomorrow I hope we’ll go out somewhere for a walk in the autumn sun and I’ll forget about Captchas and the ISO will be set to something sensible, maybe even Auto, and we can enjoy the light. Before that, I’m booked for coffee with Val.

Your parcel has arrived – 10 October 2020

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The message appeared on my phone and about ten seconds later on the computer.

I was cool, and calm before I collected. Had my coffee first then drove in to JL to pick up the parcel. Back home fairly sharpish on a beautiful SATURDAY, yes today was Saturday, morning. Unpacked it and it was a bit heavier than the A7 and maybe just a little bit bigger too, but it had more magic stuff inside it, so it was bound to be both heavier and larger. It was a Sony A7ii. Inevitably there was no power in the battery and the only way to charge it was in-camera with the adaptor and the cable provided. The A7 I’d owned for a few days came with a charger, which confirms my belief that it wasn’t just a display model. Someone had been using it for a fair amount of time. Don’t ever believe what the sales people tell you.

With the camera sitting charging I had time for a couple of slices of toast and a read at the manual, not the paper manual which had instructions in about 27 languages and was about 5cm thick. Instead I downloaded the PDF version which I can put on my phone, my tablet and my computer. I’d plenty time to read it, the charging process was going to take about 150 minutes. I think I counted each one. Eventually it was done and I could ‘play’ with the new toy. More buttons than the last one and a better button layout too. It was still a beautiful autumn day outside, so Scamp and I went for a walk … with the camera of course. I got today’s PoD on the walk, a Black Darter, one of the late hatching dragonflies. After that, Scamp went for a walk to the shops and I did another circuit of St Mo’s pond. The treeline was plagued with wee neds and nedettes today. Scamp felt sorry for them with a whole week off school and nowhere to go. I’m afraid I disagreed, having seen the other side of these poor children. Any excuse for a ‘bevvy’. Parents aren’t allowed to meet in groups of more than two households, but school kids can walk around in what one Principal Teacher once described as “tribes”. He was shouted down by many at the meeting, but secretly we all agreed with him. It’s all tribal at that age.

Messed about taking photos in the house until Scamp returned from the shops. I know I was just pushing the limits of the camera, putting it in situations that were far removed from real photography, but impressed when it passed the tests, one after the other.

Dinner was from Sim’s menu book again, Spinach Stuffed Chicken. It was lovely, served with broccoli and potatoes. Watched the qualifying for tomorrow’s GP from a cold Germany.

Sketch prompt was “Hope”. After a few false starts I settled on today’s subject, an almost empty whisky bottle and a glass. The link to Hope is in the sketch. Rather an abstract prompt and I nearly, just nearly gave up on it, but I liked the finished article.

May go for a walk tomorrow if the weather holds.

A cold day – 9 October 2020

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We didn’t go far as a result, but we did walk to the shops to get tonight’s dinner, M&S curry.

Today was Saturday, well it was for us. For some reason, both of us were convinced it was Saturday when in reality it was Friday. The start of the mid-term holiday here and the start of what is being called Lockdown 2. While we are not exactly locked down firmly like we were in March, we are constantly being reminded that we SHOULDN’T be going outside our own region. There’s not a lot of interesting places to go in North Lanarkshire and with restaurants and bars closed, yes, it is Lockdown 2. We did, however go virtually outside our region today.

Scamp went to Skye over the phone to speak to her sister and after some consultation they agreed that it would probably be best if our proposed trip to Inverness was postponed for a variety of reasons. That’s a pity because I was looking forward to the photo opportunities of the drive up north. Maybe things will change, but I fear not.

I travelled virtually to Glasgow to see if I could get a decent price for that camera I had for a weekend last week. One shop I phoned said they had one in stock. I asked if it was a display model. The woman said “No it’s not, it’s just been in the window, but we don’t let people play with it.” Obviously she didn’t really understand the meaning of the word “Display”. It used to be a good shop when it was simply called “Quiggs”. Since it’s changed its name to “Merchant City Cameras”, it’s got delusions of grandeur. It’s not even in the Merchant City! I said I’d think about it. Which means “I think I won’t buy it.”

After lunch and our phone calls ‘outside our own region’, we walked down to the shops. When we left the house it felt fairly mild, but as soon as we turned our back on the sun and felt the cold blast of the wind the mildness disappeared. I carried the messages back and then went for a walk where I got today’s PoD which is a hover fly called a Footballer, because it looks as if it’s wearing a football strip. That and two spiders that look as if they are fighting over today’s lunch. When I tried to upload them Flickr started one of its hissy fits, All the typing and clicking I’d done was lost and gone forever. Sometimes I praise Flickr to the highest, more often though I am more truthful.

Topic today was “Throw”. More soul searching to find something thrown or something to throw. I did consider Flickr going out a window, but that might have been hard to draw. I finally chose a dart being thrown. Fairly happy with it after resolving some of Scamps honest crits.

Tomorrow WILL be Saturday and we may go for a drive Outside Our Own Region. I hope you read this Nic.

More bad news – 7 October 2020

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Nic the Chick gives us more grief.

Scamp was out for coffee this morning, she only had a few minutes to speak to Hazy, before she gave me a wave and was off. That left Hazy and me plenty of time to discuss books and life in general. Thanks for the website recommendations and and for jogging my memory about a missing book from my Becky Chambers collection. It’s now on my Kindle. Laughed out loud at the cat picture you posted on FB! Fair enjoyed our wee hour long chat.

After that, it was back to gathering together the stuff to go to the tip, after I’d tried and failed to kick my Iomega Zip drive back into life. My pal reckons it may be a dodgy power supply. Put back all the stuff I’d taken out of the cupboard in the room apart from the big heavy pile that was loitering in one of those enormous Ikea bags. That was going into the “Small Electrical” skip. The other smaller Tesco bag held the “Household Recycling” junk.

Had lunch when Scamp returned and then hauled the two bags off to the council skips. Drove up to Fannyside and parked in my usual place. Listened to Nic the Chick’s proposals to make our lives even more dull and uninteresting. Yes, I know she has our safety at heart, but this is not what you want to hear heading towards November. Pubs closed (doesn’t affect me). Restaurants closed (that does!). Recommended not to travel (won’t affect me). Went for a walk along the road and back again getting some fresh air and some lovely (for me) photos of the moody moor to match my mood. Drove over to Val’s and handed him a camera he has been wanting. Nice to feel you’re doing some good. I don’t use it and he will. That makes sense to me.

Came back home and then walked to the shops to get the makings of tonight’s dinner which was Bacon & Borlotti Beans, recipe courtesy of JIC and Sim. Scamp was chef tonight and she admits it wasn’t as good as the original, but it was close enough to be worth making again. Thank you pair for the recipe.

Today’s PoD was one of those moody moor shots, because I liked the sky. Today’s Inktober prompt was “Fancy” which I turned into “French Fancy”. I’m getting to like sketching on the Craft paper. It’s like using cheap pastel paper.

No plans for tomorrow. Scamp suggested we go to a pub before they all disappear for good. That’s perilously close to the truth.

The dream is gone – 5 October 2020

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If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Today I took back the Sony A7. It was so nearly perfect, except I have the feeling it might have been bashed about by a few people before it met me. Scratches on the baseplate. A deep scratch on the border of the back screen. I could have lived with those. There was nothing there that my own collection doesn’t have in some fashion, but it also had lots and lots, I mean LOTS of baked-in spots on the sensor that I couldn’t shift with sensor swabs and sensor cleaning liquid, that was the final straw. I couldn’t live with that. It’s only a bargain if it’s worth more than you paid for it. This one wasn’t. So with a heavy heart I took it back to JL today and got my money back. However, before I took it back I did find out what that APS-C switch did. It worked. It automatically cropped off the bits the lens couldn’t cover. Nice work Sony.

After driving back home on a beautiful day and having lunch, I did my Sudoku and eventually dragged myself off to St Mo’s to take some pictures with my ‘old’ cameras. The ones with the clean(ish) sensors and fewer scratches. There wasn’t much worth photographing today, because the clouds had rolled in and the light was decidedly dull. I watched Mr Grey stalking something deep in the reed beds, but he was too far away even for the zoom of the TZ90. I did grab a few shots using the post focus trick, but again, the light wasn’t directional enough to make anything worthwhile of them, but it’s still a clever trick.

Spent a profitable half an hour after dinner sketching tonight’s Inktober topic which was ‘Blade’. Mine is a fairly direct interpretation of the prompt, but the clever ones were Blade(runner) and Blade, the Wesley Snipes character. They probably took hours to get just right. Mine was the rough for a more detailed piece, but as it was progressing it got better and better and I just liked it. So did Scamp. She gave me the greatest praise by saying she was wondering who had drawn it!

PoD was a mediocre St Mo’s landscape. I should have taken some time out this morning in Glasgow and gone for a walk, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

I hope some of you recognised the title of this blog which is the second last line from “Comfortably Numb” by Gilmour & Waters. Possibly the best Pink Floyd track ever.

No plans for tomorrow.

An improving picture

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It started off dull, but then the sun found a way through.

Spent most of the morning struggling with the Sony menu system and after reading many pages on the net, began to see how to control this full frame beast. Managed to get two Nikon lenses working with it, but the third, the long zoom was uncontrollable and I gave up in frustration and had lunch.

Scamp suggested a walk to calm my nerves, I think and I agreed. We walked a circuit of Broadwood Loch, stopping a couple of times to get some shots. The best one I got IMO was what you see here as PoD. It’s a view of the loch from the car park using the old Nikon 10 – 20mm lens on the Sony A7.

<Technospeak>

The problems are:

  1. The ‘Type G’ lens has no aperture ring, so aperture has to be controlled with a ring on the adaptor. Therefore you, the photog, have no idea what aperture is set and are shooting by eye.
  2. The lens is an APS-C which means the coverage of the lens is meant to be for a smaller sensor than the full frame sensor, so what you get is a sharp image enclosed in a circular frame with a dark surround.

In other words, it’s a bit hit and miss, mostly miss up until now. With that said, once the image has been cropped and exposure adjusted, it looks fairly reasonable, if a bit distorted. Later in the afternoon I discovered that Sony had thought about point 2 above and included a switch, buried deep in the labyrinth of the menu system, to adjust exposure for APS-C lenses. Too late for the afternoon’s photo session.
</Technospeak >

OK JIC, you can come back into the fold again

It was a very pleasant walk for all the photo babble. Sun was shining, birds were singing. A beautiful October day.

However, I’m afraid the lovely A7 has to go back to JL this week. I don’t know who owned it before me, but they didn’t know or care how to keep it clean. Today’s sunshine revealed hundreds of dust bunnies all over the sensor. You don’t notice them on dull days, but on bright days they come out to play. If I was conscientious I’d get out my cleaning swabs and give it a good scrub, but not after I’d paid good money for it. It was cheap, but not that cheap. Lovely though the gradation of tones is, it has to go back and well within the 30 days too. However, before it does go, I’m going to have a good look at that APS-C setting (the one JIC doesn’t know about, because he skipped that part of the blog.)

Dinner tonight was Scamp’s Just Soup followed by Mushroom Risotto. Soup was up to Scamp’s usual high standard, risotto could have been better, a bit stodgy.

Spoke to JIC and got the lowdown on interview technique and things going on down south. Scamp booked a house we’re hoping to have for a week at Easter 2021 all being well.

Today’s Inktober sketch was a Radio. I chose Scamp’s DAB radio. The drawing is a bit rough, but it’s good enough.

Tomorrow it’s going to be dull and wet. I may go to the butchers in Muirhead and get some carnivore food. It will stop me mourning the loss of a dream camera.

High Hopes rained off – 3 October 2020

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Well, I had high hopes that we’d manage a wee walk early in the day. The weather thought differently.

The rain started about 11am and it hasn’t stopped since. To be fair, the weather fairies warned us this would happen, but you live in hope, don’t you? Instead I spent the day … doing nothing. Nothing creative was achieved today. I think I sat in front of the computer for most of the day and hardly moved. At 11.15pm my Fitbit records 2,097 steps. That’s well below our daily average.  To give myself something to do I made a loaf.  It’s ages since I baked and I thought I’d get some practise in so I can criticise the efforts of the numpties on GBBO.  It actually turned out very well.  Impressed!

What I did do today was fit all three of my useable Nikon lenses on the Sony A7, using an adaptor that the kind Amazon man brought me this afternoon. I’ve used one of these before on the Olys, but it was always with heart in my mouth, hoping that when I pressed the button to release it from the lens, the pin it controlled would actually disengage. Sometimes it did, right away other times it had to be coaxed. As you can imagine, that didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. This one seems far better engineered and more solid. What’s more it works. Of course you lose all the electronic connections between lens and camera, but I don’t mind having to do a bit of manual focusing if it means I get to use my quality Nikon glass again. Unfortunately because of the reduced light levels today I couldn’t really test them fully. Hopefully we’ll get that done tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was Baked Potatoes. Accompaniments were Tuna Mayo for Scamp and Venison Burgers for me. Both were deemed brighteners on a dull, dreich day.

The topic for today on Inktober was ‘Bulk’ and my drawing for that was a well stuffed car with lots of bulky stuff. Not quite the exact solution the author of the list was asking for, but it was my interpretation.

PoD was one of Scamp’s roses, Troika. Beautiful colours when it’s in bud, but they reduce in intensity fairly quickly, even outside. It was taken with the kit lens for the Sony A7 in poor lighting tonight. I took it while we were watching The Birdcage on Amazon Fire Stick. Brilliant film, even if Robin Williams wasn’t at his manic best. It was far, far better than the film we sat down to watch, Get Duked. Just don’t watch it.

Tomorrow we’re hoping the rain will stop for a while.

Another warm sunny day in October – 2 October 2020

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We went for a walk.

Packed a bag with the new camera and an old camera, although they were both manufactured around the same time. With the bag packed we set off on our travels. It was the reverse of our normal route. Heading out to Broadwood Loch and back round to the new shops. ‘New’ is relative as they are only about a year old. Anyway, we went in to get crème fraîche and came out with a full bag of stuff, most of which we’ll use over the next few days. Couldn’t believe that tomorrow its to be wall to wall rain and today was blissful sunshine with only a few little clouds to create some interest in an otherwise blue sky.

Back home after a second cup of coffee today, I grabbed both cameras again and went in search of beasties. Found a whole line of them ranged along the edge of the boardwalk. All except one were common darter males. Possibly just finished work and waiting for the pubs to open. The odd one out was a black darter and he was certainly in the mood for darting. No quick pint for him, he was off attending to business, or so it seemed. That’s where the PoD came from. I was quite pleased with it. It’s had loads of views on Flickr, possibly from disappointed viewers sucked in by the title: Full Frontal! Oh yes, and Schoolgirl is still trapping the unwary.

Took a few moody shots of flowers and cow parsley seed heads with the A7 and they looked impressive. I’m sure some folk on Flickr will love the ‘bokeh’ that it produces. Just looks like out of focus blobs to me. Overall, I’m settling down to it. It’s still not a definite keeper, but I’m quietly impressed.

Dinner tonight was Cod with Prawns and Fennel. It’s rapidly becoming a family favourite.

Today’s topic for Inktober was Wisp.  It stumped me for a while, but I chose a couple of dandelion parachutes to become the drawing of  the day.  Not exactly a wisp, but light as a fairy.  Close enough.

That was about it for today. Tomorrow, as I’ve said, looks like rain, so I don’t think we’ll be going far.