The Extraordinary Tourist Life

Work continues on my Three Wise Color Monkeys, acrylic painting. Last post I had just begun Stage 3, painting in all the base colors.

At this point I've now completed all the base painting and am moving into the next stage. As you can see from the image my base colors layer is still very rough but I'm starting to be much more mindful the edges - where one color stops and another begins.

I'll say, right out of the gate, I enjoyed Justice League. Sure it has a fairly straight forward, let's get the team together and battle a world destroying common enemy, plot but, after the complexity of Batman v Superman, it was nice just to see my favorite heroes come together and fight as a team.

I've seen a few reviews that claim you don't get enough backstory for the newer team members, Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg, but honestly, knowing more about their history isn't essential.

Rock-to-Fakies, the act of riding your skateboard up a ramp, hanging half your board over the lip, then lifting your board back into the ramp, and riding out backwards, is one of the most basic ramp tricks.

Yet I can't do them anymore. At one time I could, without giving it any thought - even on my home 5' high mini ramp with an extra foot of vert extension added to the top of the transition.

But as my skating got less, and skateboard spots with ramps diminished through the mid to late 1990s, I got out of practice.

I did have a two foot tall, driveway mini, quarter pipe (with coping) I used to practice my mini ramp tricks on.

Then one fateful day (I say that because this is scarred into my brain) I tried a rock-to-fakie and the tail of my skateboard dug into the pave stones at the base of the ramp as I came down, throwing me, hard, back into the ground.

To be clear, I didn't hurt myself, anymore than you can imagine from such a fall. Bit of a bruised leg, maybe a sore wri…

My Three Wise Color Monkeys painting has progressed this week.

If you want to follow along but this is the first post you've seen, you may like to go back and read Part 1 and Part 2 for the previous stages. It'll give you a good insight into how I create my paintings that you may wish to try yourself.

When I first saw the online ads for the JJRC H37 ELFIE Foldable Mini RC Selfie Drone they made it look so easy to fly and film dynamic footage of you and your friends.

My very first flight was indoors. This thing took off, careered out of control and smashed into the wall. The same thing would keep happening time after time. Take off, completely fine. Then the drone realizes it's flying, freaks out and promptly chooses some random direction to fly into the ground.

I shelved it for several months because I just couldn't fly it, at all.

Recently I decided to give it another try, initially with similar results but, as I took a little more time to study the wafer thin manual, I've gradually gotten to learn how the controls work.

I'm now at the point where I can at least keep the drone under some degree of control. Not yet good enough to frame the camera for decent video footage though (as you'll see in the video below).



Before taking my drone out for a spin, as I ment…

Skateboarding is like surfing, it just becomes a part of your life. Once you take that deep dive into becoming the best skater you can be, always progressing, you'll always consider yourself to be a skater.

For many of you skateboarding is not about becoming a pro skater, even though you're probably good enough to turn pro. For you it's just a fun activity, that's challenging, creative, and often a great way to pass the time with your mates.

That's pretty much what it has always been for me.

I'm 47 years old and I still skateboard for fun but you don't want to aspire to be like me... and there are lots of skaters like me.

I started skating at 18 years old. Late in the game but 1987-88 was when skateboarding experienced a massive resurgence.

I used to skate virtually everyday, only skipping days if it rained, and even then I might find somewhere with cover to skate. I built ramps, including a 24' x 16' x 5' mini ramp in my backyard where all my …

Last post I announced the start of a new painting titled, Three Wise Color Monkeys. Turns out I was serious about getting back into creating some traditional art because I managed to get over the first hurdle... making a start.

For most artists, making a start means setting up the canvas, paints, and actually painting the first brush strokes. For me it's working out how I'm going to set up my camera so I can film the whole process with the least disruption to actually doing the art.

You'd think I'd know where to set up a camera by now considering I have filmed myself painting more than 30 artworks on my YouTube Channel.

The problem was, if I set my camera up in the usual way, it would constantly be in the way of a major thoroughfare through my studio.

With a bit of thought I managed to find this amazing elevated camera angle just over my right shoulder (see the photo above), achieved by standing my tripod on top of a bookshelf. Not only is the camera nicely out of the …

After completing the InkTober challenge where I spent everyday completing at least one digital ink artwork, I feel I really need to keep my hand in on the traditional art too.

Partly as an excuse not to be staring at a monitor for some of my day but also because the traditional art I create has a very different look to my digital art.