Learning sketch

One of my friends who is an innate artistic person whom you can find that almost every thing of hers is modified to be artistically eye-catching. For example, once she gave us a tea towel as gift which was made out of 3 different materials: retired bath towel, lace and satin ribbon.

The lace and the satin ribbon are stitched to the towel to become a more attractive handicraft good for giving away as souvenir.

From that episode onward I noticed that she was really a multiple talented artistic type of person as I got to know her more she was not only good at making handicrafts but also good at photography, oil painting, water color, pencil sketch and cooking. And I noticed that the reason she could be good at so many different artistic skills is from her diligence in learning by either self-taught or through fee paying tuition. To my view point she is indeed a great learner. What she got out of all the hard working? Decent quality of life that is full of beauty.

 

Following her path, I started my sketch learning by way of the free sketch teaching from YouTube late June 2020. Apple was the first object of my practice.

One month has passed yet I am still struggling with the creation of a sensible and balanced highlight, midtone and dark shadow across the area of the apple.

I always send a copy of my work to her. I know it's difficult to comment on a beginner's work. But my submission doesn't seem to bother her as each time the return comes back with encouraging words and brief advice.

There is a saying in Taiwan which goes "it's hard to find a good friend, it's even more difficult to find an excellent teacher. It's almost impossible to befriend with the teacher." How lucky I am that I did it.

a beginner's works.

A power outage night

After I had lied in the comfy of my bed and was about to drift  into sleep on the night of last Thursday, a loud noise was heard from somewhere in the house. Jean was using the bathroom brushing her teeth yelled with a bit of horror "power outage!". A chill flew through my body. I endeavored to get out of the warmth of the bed to sort it out. With Jean's assistance, we found that the outage only affected the rooms in the West side, the rest of others and all of the power points were OK. 

I concluded that the outage was a result of a short circuit caused by the condensation of the moisture from the shower. I explained the situation to Jean and assured to fix the problem tomorrow.

(To be continued)

I nearly died

I experienced a deadly choking last week, or 8 March 2020 to be precisely. That experience was really dreadful that I was nearly suffocated to death.  

What happened was when I was engaged in a phone conversation with my sister living in Sydney.  In order to stop the annoying dry coughing that had bothered me for the past 3 or more years. I held some water in my mouth for the purpose of suppressing the coughing.   

Suddenly I had an urge of swallowing some of the water being held in my mouth. I followed the urge to proceed accordingly.  Feeling some of the water running down the esophagus l also felt at the same time some water droplets splashed Into the trachea.  When this happened, A series of reactions arose.  

The nerve system detected the foreign particles intrusion and Immediately tried to fight back to get rid of them.  Could this happen? As I could not let this happen because there were still some amount of waters being held in the month.  I would not open my mouth to let go the pressure being pushed from my lungs. 

At this moment, I felt the trachea tried really hard to shut itself off the incoming water while at the same time my physical body was in dire need of breathing in some air. 

I began to feel that I might die this time. I had actually stopped breathing for about 5 seconds. Suddenly there was a little gap went loose  between these 2 opposite forces which was the rescue of me.  

When I got the chance of breathing the air in, I knew that my life had been secured.  And although the aftermath was seen a very long period of coughing, My consciousness had sensed a very pleasant relief.