I try not to write too much about my day job because, that isn’t really what I want to talk about here. However, this year the day job has thrown a curve-ball my way that is impacting the time and energy I have for doing the things I do that I write about here. So for a little while I’ll probably be mentioning it a bit more here than usual.
In case I haven’t covered it, the curve-ball involves the retirement of my manager who is also the only other person on my team. He made it known in a somewhat unusual way, when he was filling out his self-evaluation part of our yearly review. In the section for career development for the next year, he put that it didn’t really matter since he is retiring at the end of quarter one. Yes, that means the end of this month. When our line manager laughed and asked if he was kidding my manager responded that he wasn’t. That of course set off a bit of a frenzy with all the rest of the management above, and in other departments that rely on our services.
As you can imagine, in the time since, as they have gotten more serious about understanding what he does and knows, my involvement in learning what he knows and taking over things he has been doing has grown. Just this last week we had the big push for management to really get an understanding of the knowledge of how our systems work and are connected something that he has a very good grasp of. And it made me realize how much documenting I’ve done over the years that needs updating. That’s a different story, though part of the same issue. We run a lean organization and like in many lean organizations backups for key people and key knowledge do not always exist.
Anyway. Because of all that has been going on at the day job I don’t always get to shut down at the “scheduled” time and even when I do it can take me a while to mentally recover and refresh to do anything else that I might want or need to do. This past week was an exceptional challenge for that given that of the four days of meetings at a meeting facility, at the end of the day I had to dine with everyone two of those days. At least the company was good. Some of our colleagues from our “home office” made the flight over from Germany to attend and ask questions.
The last week isn’t the only week that I have found it difficult to do much more than my language lessons after the day has ended. The time since his announcement has been very busy. That doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten anything done on my projects. I have. Even to my surprise. I just haven’t gotten as much done as I might otherwise.
I finished the watercolor painting of one of the pictures my sister took on her trip to France last year. It’s ok. Color is ok and the composition is good. Though she took the photo, and I didn’t really make adjustments to the composition so I can’t take credit for that. I did have a little issue with some perspective. Mostly that had to do with my challenges with the watercolors. Some might have been influenced by the age of the architecture and the possibility that things weren’t perfectly lined up to begin with, not to mention any repairs of the years, and all that type of thing. Mostly, I just didn’t get it right. Look what I learned.
After completing that I was looking at another photo that I thought I might paint, and I realized that I need more practice with those type of scenes. Buildings, alleys, city scenes and the sort, hard surfaces. I don’t do a lot of art of those sorts of subjects. So, I got out a sketchbook and have done a little practice. Not much because of the day job stuff. At least I’ve started. I plan to do a bit more practice before trying to make some sort of painting of it.
I also revisited a pastel painting that I started long enough ago that I don’t remember when that was. It’s been since the pandemic started; I just don’t remember which year. Anyway, I got the background in and then did some work on the subject. I’ve thought to work on it more a couple of times however, I don’t want to deal with the dust right now. Not because I’m picky about the chalk dust. Meh. I probably should be, but we’ll move on.
The reason I don’t want to deal with the dust is because I have another painting in progress that takes some time to dry and I don’t want to fight the dust with the wet paint and so on. Yes, I can move the other painting to another room and if the urge to work on the pastel piece is strong enough and not five minutes before I need to be in bed, then I’ll move it.
That new piece? It’s my very first oil painting. Yeah, really. I like guitars and I have a few and one day I was looking at my Telecaster and thought it could be cool to make some art from it. I have this long-ish skinny canvas board that I thought would be really cool to use for it. I started sketching it out on that canvas board without a real plan as to how I was going to finish it. My choices were to do stippling, which didn’t really excite, or try acrylics, or try oils. I bought a set of oil paints early last year thinking I might try it with the wrist in the brace. I didn’t need brushes really since I inherited many from my grandmother. And that’s how I started my first oil painting.
I’ve tried to take my time and be patient with the process of oil painting. I know for some of it I really could just plow through from beginning to end. I don’t feel like I can do that with this piece. There is enough finer detail that I want to include that I want to be able to have some of it as crisp as I can get it. So, I work on it weekly. I do a part and then give it the week to dry so that any finer details that go over the top of what I’ve done won’t be muddied by the wet paint below it. So far it has worked well for me. I think I am a week, maybe two from being done with it. I have strings to put on the guitar and some background to tighten up and then I think it will be ready. I’ll need to figure out what sort of varnish to use with it after it cures but I can to that later. I think I’ll let it sit for at least a month maybe longer before I do that step. I made such a mess with my last stippling painting of the Gretsch because I tried to varnish too soon. I’m going to wait this time.
Oh, what song am I working on? Well, remember that book of songs from Charlie Brown Christmas? I’m still working on songs from that. Specifically, I’ve been working on the song ‘Skating’ that is played while they are ice skating on the pond. It’s a great song and the type of music that always reminds me of watching after school shows when I was a small child. Some jazz music reminds me of my childhood. That’s a whole other story.
And if you are wondering if I’m still playing guitar the answer is yes. It’s why the Telecaster is sitting out instead of in its case. I was reading a book on the history of the electric guitar and learned something really cool about the Telecaster and wanted to try it out. Apparently, the original audience for the Telecaster was the western swing guitar players in southern California who would use a hybrid picking method that used a plectrum (guitar pick) and their fingers. The single coil pickups on the Telecaster were designed or used to pickup the finger picking on the treble strings better. Cool. I’ve been working on this one song, and I wanted to see how this sounds. Out comes the Telecaster, plug it in, tune it up, adjust the tone a little and give it a go. Oh yeah. That makes a big difference. So, even though the scale is a little long, for my short fingers, the fact that the strings don’t require near the grip and the neck is skinnier than the acoustics I’ve been playing, the Telecaster has been getting some love again.
I’ve learned all the notes for the song, now I’m trying to get it nice and smooth and flowing. It’s coming along nicely and I’m almost ready to start to tackle the song ‘Linus and Lucy’ which I think most people recognize as being the Charlie Brown/Peanuts theme song, whether it is or not I wouldn’t say.
The other thing that I’ve made a little progress on is the next character for the Blender character and animation course I’m taking. I finished the steps to build the character and was ready to do any fine tuning before the rigging part and I ran into an issue. I’ve figured out what the issue is and even how to solve it. I haven’t finished fixing it though. It’s a problem that I did in the first step of creating the limbs and because that piece was copied and used for other parts of the limbs, the problem was copied. Which means I either have to fix it in all those places or re-do that whole part. I got stuck deciding what to do and then the day job. So, I haven’t gotten back to it. That frustrates me a little because it puts me behind where I wanted to be with the character course and the project that I’m taking the course for. I’ll probably get back to it soon. I’m kind of excited for this particular scene because as I was watching the next videos, beyond where I am with the actual work, it inspired me to create something that I had thought to do a few years ago and even sketched out. It happened that, after watching the videos I came across that sketch and I got excited about the possibilities.
I’m also excited about the possibilities with the oil painting. After I worked on the Telecaster painting this weekend, I started thinking about what else I might want to try to paint in oils. Now I just need to squeeze out some time to work on all the cool stuff. It may be a challenge. My manager has extended his retirement date to the middle of April and right after that I have a trip to the main US office for the day job which means a trip to Florida. From there I will be on holiday for a week and traveling with my sister. I’m excited and I have an awesome sister. I’ll tell you more about the travel later. Until then I’ll be working on my projects bit by bit and will try to do better about posting updates. Cheers