And so we make do with what we have. There's Morning Light for some of our art supply needs, and the mall for art dates because the rotational power outages have gone up to four hours and more every day so staying at home in this summer heat is not really doing magic to our productivity and creativity.

We hang out at J.Co until we finish our drinks.

Recently my friends and I did the Switcharound Meme, only traditionally instead of digitally which was probably how it was meant to be played anyway. Still, it was pretty fun and interesting observing the different styles, not only of the art itself but the lining and the coloring. Doing it with original characters also lets you see how other people would interpret your creation if they've never seen it before, like how my friend couldn't decide on the color of my character's dress and ended up making her look completely different from what I intended!

@galacticlycoris Friend's color choice made my swan queen look sinister but that look ain't bad on her, maybe! 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/CNaK8Oa1u4

— 地味な花 (@galacticlycoris) April 9, 2016

We drew quite a bit of attention from other patrons and passersby, possibly because people don't usually bring out their art materials in this side of the woods. Someone even thought we were studying until she saw that there were no books nor anything remotely educational on our tables. Good thing I wasn't working on anything questionable that time...

Anyway, I think exercises like this help stretch everyone's creative muscles, so I definitely recommend doing it with friends! I want to do more of stuff like it someday.

Another interesting exercise is redrawing one of your old art so you can see how much progress you've made in the time between your old art and your redraw. I've been meaning to do it with the first thing I've drawn after deciding to get back to traditional art again.

Progress? The old one makes up for it by having a more accurate skeleton wwwwww #redraw #drawthisagain #traditionalart #watercolor #holbein #winsorandnewton #sakuramat #posterpaint #artph #watercolour

A photo posted by 地味な花 (@galacticlycoris) on Mar 29, 2016 at 8:34pm PDT

I didn't think there'd be much progress, if any, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how far I've come. Then again, the materials I used before were different from what I use now so I suppose that was a big factor to the change as well. Trying to paint with Crayola markers on crappy paper is obviously completely different from painting with actual watercolor on better paper.

I'm not really sure what I was trying to write about in this blog entry. I suppose I just wanted to update this blog at least once every month and there's really not much to write about these days besides the occasional art date. It's probably quite conceited of me to write about my art; I'm not good enough, my skills aren't something to write home about. But perhaps documenting my art journey and putting it somewhere can give me something to look back to someday. I wonder if I would give up, if I would keep going and for how long?

Anyway, if you're interested in following more of my art adventures and art dates with friends, I post about them on my Instagram account! I even upload videos sometimes! :)