The Perfect Light Bulb

Hello friends, here's a stream of consciousness. Here's the stream right from my brain. Here's all my thoughts as a puddle. Maybe you'll see your wobbly reflection in them, who knows, who can say?

I'm listening to one of my favourite deliciously loud and angry, yet somehow gentle bands - Hello Sleepwalkers. They have an exhilaration to them that I love, and that makes me feel  sort of released into the wind somehow, on an emotional level. I feel the same kind of thing when I listen to Pvris. It's just the right kind of passion. There's a swiftness in the sound that I like a lot.

I'm finally going to push One Direction out of my top eight artists on last.fm this week, and I'm excited about this. Not that I MUST ELIMINATE ONE DIRECTION or anything, no, I will always think their song Diana is a beautiful and rousing stadium style hit, but it's nice to see artists overtaking those that have sat high for a long time. I love the game of listening to an artist so much that they get up there in those ranks. They've made it. It's a nice feeling. I know I'm still far too invested in last.fm, but honestly you'll have to wrestle that broken website from my cold, dead hands.

Moving on to a Sad Thought™, I wonder how much other people feel like if others just knew everything about them then they wouldn't like them. I mean, I wonder how many people have that kind of secret insecurity that maybe if something was uncovered about them, that would be it. No one would like them, they'd be shunned forever. Proof you're secretly terrible, somehow. It's just an idle thought, rolling around like a loose ball bearing. Realistically, we know everyone pretty much has insecurities, and weird little foibles and worries. It's just a sad thing I'm thinking about. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that kind of stuff about myself. Not even truly consciously, but there's just this feeling like waves against the riverbank, of "that's right, I'm terrible". What's up with that? What's that about?

And howcome it's easy for me to pass over the flaws and strangenesses and uncomfortable things about people I like and love, but when it comes to me it's so easy to unthinkingly propagate this well of discomfort about myself?

It's as if other people can be these moving lights, blinking and changing in brightness and colour, sometimes turning off because there's a power cut (I might be taking this analogy too far), you know, they're always changing. The light is always different but the bulb is always the same, or something. But me? No sir, that flickering means you gotta change the bulb.

I just wanna be the perfect light bulb! Okay?!

But really, I don't know what that odd anxiety is about, or why the right kind of music can take it away, but I wonder how many people are doing that silently all the time. Also, sometimes breakfast helps. Thanks, breakfast.

Blippo Surprise Kawaii Mixed Bag ♡ Review & Giveaway・°☆

✶✵ This post contains items gifted to me for review purposes. ✵✶

Blippo have kindly sent me a new and exciting surprise bag of mysterious goodies to check out, and we're hosting a giveaway so you can win one of your own too!

This is a mixed bag, and features a mix of toys, stationery, and practical items. Here's a look at everything:

We have a Hello Kitty pair of scissors, a notebook set, bear charm, a panda eye mask, an ice cream fan, a small purse, nail gem stickers, a skipping rope, another fan, a crown headband, some hair clips & hair bands, a nail polish, and a flip out mirror. An interesting mix of stuff.

I think my favourite item has to be the Hello Kitty scissors, because they're so cute but also super useful.

I have a soft spot for the headband and skipping rope because they're such cute and quirky little items. I love the transparent rope. Does anyone want to go the park and play skipping rope games with me? Please say yes.

I also really like the flip out mirror in particular. It has such a satisfying flipping action, and of course who can resist a cute alpaca? Certainly, I cannot.

So now that you've seen the fun stuff in this surprise bag, it's time for the giveaway. Simply enter through the widget below to be in with a chance of winning your own surprise mixed bag of delights! Entry is open worldwide. Good luck!

Oh, and let me know what you think the nicest item in this bag is. I'm a fan in particular of the Hello Kitty scissors, but the flip out mirror and pink bear charm are pretty cute too! :-)

[LINK REMOVED - GIVEAWAY CLOSED]

My Passion: Doing Nothing

Ahhh, is there anything more satisfying than lying down, wearing some fuzzy socks, and scrolling some good online websites while listening to ABBA? I think not. It's funny that "doing nothing" tends to mean doing a particular kind of aimless something. It's still a something, but maybe a restful or thoughtless something. A nice something. Sometimes I really do take a minute to just stare at a wall though. A pure nothing. Sometimes that's necessary.

It's weird though, I think that most of the time I'm always doing something. I always have a to-do list and a swirling cloud of ideas and things I want to attend to in the back of my mind. I always need to tidy up or organise some files, since those things are just constant maintenance things rather than a specific "do this now and then it will be done" type of thing. Right now I have two small animation projects that I know I have to work on later, and I plan on making some drawings later to post on Twitter and Tumblr. I'm writing this post right now, which is a thing. There's a series I want to start watching on Netflix, and a movie a friend talked about that I want to watch soon. Diary entries to write. Songs I've bookmarked the links to on YouTube and last.fm that I want to add to a Spotify playlist. Plans.

But I've been taking time to just sit and scroll lately. I used to do it a lot more. I would scroll through Tumblr all day and look at all the paintings and strange pictures of animals and screenshots removed from all context in order to be more poetic or mysterious or silly. And I think that doing that can be really valuable and relaxing. Obviously it's pretty easy to do it too much, or become a bit too compelled to keep scrolling or refreshing when you've long since gotten bored, but it's pretty nice to take some time out to just look at things and rest.

Scanner Adventures: Unchanging Darkness

I have some black and white scans - these were some fun ones that I made real quick. I was in a happy little mood here. I just love these hearts, and the clear look of greyscale.

It's pretty fun to try and pose for the scanner, although I think this is quite hard to do effectively, in that since the scanner limits you so much, it's hard to express something that really looks like a pose. They always look more like something captured organically somehow. Not like I fell onto the scanner, but more like it just captures such a clear you. Of course, you can do a lot of weird things to manipulate a scan, but at its core there is a very straightforward realness. It's so unavoidably precise.

I mean, that's part of why it's so compelling. I know that I can do this for years and have results that are incredibly similar, yet constantly varying. Just a little bit different all the time, but so comfortingly immovable and unchangeable overall.

That strange warping of an everyday reality. A record of what it's like to be the same person your whole life, but always a little bit different. It's so oddly grounding. And I love the heavy darkness and living there.

Things are supposed to move.

It's really weird how our perceptions of ourselves exist. How we judge and nitpick at our appearances and how we categorise and think about the things we do, and all the things about us that are 'us'. I caught myself recently, I was walking to a train station, looking down at myself and fussing about whether my shirt was tucked in properly and whether it was sitting right. It was like it just wouldn't quite sit right and it kept moving, and it was bothering me, and then I realised how unnecessary I was being.

These pictures are just here so that there are pictures.

I'm sure it would have looked fine from across from me, but I was looking down and trying to smooth out lumps and folds to perfection and have my clothing sit in perfect still harmony. Why? Why is that something I can't help but focus on? Tiny little things like that, that probably no one else cares about. It's pretty strange.

This sure is a picture.

I guess it's impossible not to do things like that sometimes, maybe, but I'm writing this as a reminder to myself to just calm down sometimes. Just live and let your shirt billow and your hair stick up. Honestly, just don't worry about it. Things are supposed to move. And here we are, all the time, trying to stop everything and staple it down. That's not how it works. That's not how anything works. Come undone and fall in the mud instead, and maybe you'll have a better time for it.

Animating SHINee's '1 of 1' Intro

Several months ago I had the idea of hand-painting/hand-drawing a version of SHINee's '1 of 1' music video, or at least a little portion of it, and so I started working on paintings and drawings frame by frame, until I had made the first four seconds of the video.

I initially thought about painting each frame for a look that quite directly replicated the original footage from the music video, but as I started making the frames, I realised it might be more fun to switch around to different mediums and have a bit more of an experimental feel. I really like how this turned out and I think the combination of more complex painted frames, one colour pen drawings, and super simple sketchy frames, all together looks really nice.

I've included a few of my favourite frames in particular in this post, selected from a total of forty frames!

Dogs Should Wear Hats

Hat dog? Yeah that's right, he's a dog, and he has a hat. What a charming and stylish dog. I have never been so impressed. I don't know what the cloud of pink mystery is about, but I trust that's also part of the look. I respect it. It's really not my place to question these things.

Anyway, here are some colourful paintings. I've been enjoying putting the occasional small hat on some creatures recently. It really does add a perfect little bit of sartorial flair. It's a beautiful thing, a small hat like that. I really should have given more of these guys hats, but I don't want to bombard them with hats. Only so many hats are allowed.

I love this painting of a bunny floating through the air amongst numerous strange shapes. I love to float through the amongst numerous strange shapes, personally. It's a great activity.

Look at this soft, sweet cat dog creature. I've noticed that the more I draw cats, the more they merge into dogs. Who can tell which paintings are cats, and which are dogs? It shall be a beautiful hybrid creature. A cog, I'll call it.

I love the gentle happy blue and the earthy green here, alongside a nice soft pink/red. Such nice, gentle colours.

Look at this bright and wild bunny though:

She knows what she wants.