New moon time coming up and that means a fresh cycle for the blog posts. Originally, I was going to be strict using the moon as a writing prompt. I had themes for each one, but that waned a bit. I do use the moon as the trigger to write the post still, but it is more fun to write about things exciting or interesting instead of the rigid schedule.

Using the moon as the schedule has made me more interested in the less famous phases of it as well. So, this is still a good way to blog for me.

The new moon is the recent phase, and that was supposed to be writing about things I am starting in on. Probably the most recent thing is that I am practicing drawing from a book called The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. There is a drawing practice schedule in it that I am following loosely.

I bring some random paper in some form with me and do the exercise while killing time somewhere. Cafe time is good. Waiting for someone shopping or whatever is good. Waiting for some band to start is good.

Also, my favorite thing so far with the book is that the author is s.｡oO particular about pencils. I laughed out loud when the first exercise called for a 3B pencil on newsprint-level paper. I proudly have those on my desk.

My colors for this blog are white, black, grey, and light blue. For quite a while I’ve been trying to find a couple shades of blue for the link colors and things like vignettes. Sitting at a desk trying to conjure colors was a bust.

On our trip to the mountains last weekend, I decided to add “find a couple shades of blue” to the stuff to do list.

We were up on a mountain right above the cloud line and the sky was so blue. I sampled the color with an app. It got a little darker a couple hours later and I sampled that sky as well.

Added the two blues to the CSS and crossed my fingers. They look so good. Very stoked about them.

We are going to Nagano and Hokkaido this month. There is chances of snow for both places. If there is, I am going to sample white and black.