Most members of my HEMA club have painted their fencing masks in some way that’s meaningful to them.
I had long wanted to do so, but the thing I wanted to paint—the face of a sloth—was going to require at least three shades of brown, which I feared might be difficult to find. But when I finally went and looked on Amazon for acrylic paint markers, I found a set of acrylic markers in 12 different shades of brown!
I ordered them, they arrived yesterday, and I have painted my mask:
In the years that I was particularly suffering from season depression in the winter months, I found various things that helped. (Click the SAD tag to see various posts on the topic.) One thing that was kind of in the middle in terms of both value and effort was taking myself on an Artist Date. (There’s an Artist Date tag as well.)
Lots of different things can quality as an Artist Date, of course, but I usually used the term to refer to going to someplace (anyplace) that I found inspired me. At the top of the list, because there’s already art, which helps me get into the right frame of mind, is to go to an art museum or an art gallery. But almost as high is going to a natural area, or some place like the Japanese Garden at Japan House.
I haven’t been particularly depressed this winter, but the Krannert Art Museum had an exhibit of textile art that Jackie wanted to see, so we decided to make an artist date of it. On a whim, we added the Conservatory, which has a greenhouse with a bunch of tropical flowers, and is always nice to visit in the winter, because it’s warm and sunny. (Sunniness, of course, depends on the sun being out.)
It’s hard to get a good picture of the art museum, except by just taking pictures of individual works of art, which I don’t like to do (out of courtesy and for copyright reasons), but I thought this one was valid:
There was a term (that I have already forgotten) for having numerous paintings covering the wall, rather than a spaced array of individual paintings.
And this one was produced as part of the WPA’s Federal Arts Project, by artists who were paid a modest wage to make art that belonged to the government (and all such work is copyright-free):
As I said, I wasn’t really depressed, so it didn’t so much matter that the Conservatory greenhouse gave us a clear view of the complete lack of sun:
This summer, while in Chicago for other reasons, we went to the Art Institute. I made a point of tracking down the room with the arms and armor, where I found, among many other things, a copy of Thibault’s Academie de l’Espée.
The picture above gives you and idea of the fabulous (and fabulously detailed) engravings, but look how big the book is! I mean, it’s half the length of a sword!
So, I was delighted to discover that HEMA Bookshelf has a plan to publish a book with these images, “the first time this art has been published at close to full size since 1668.”
Read about the project here: The Thibault Project. While you’re there, go ahead and pre-order a copy yourself. I mean, it’s only money. Oh, and way more bookshelf space than I have available. But I’ll fit it in somewhere.
Every time before, when we were ready for lunch after visiting the Art Institute, the Berghoff had a line, but this time not, so here we are. Both of us are drinking their session ale, called Globetrotter. Good. Refreshing. Jackie likes it better than All Day IPA.
On Jackie’s last visit to see our friend Rosie, they visited a Navajo trading post, and Jackie bought a Navajo blanket. This morning we got it hung up in the living room.
This is directly over my living room chair, a spot where I’ve long resisted hanging framed pictures, out of an irrational fear that they might fall on my head. With a small blanket, I figure it’s no big deal.
Two of my favorite WebComics, False Knees and SORROWBACON are presenting broken RSS feeds from Tumblr. I don’t know what’s up. When I tried to look it said I needed to be logged in to Tumblr.
“the comic book was a groundbreaking success. But its second issue never came out, Mr. Quattro said, because white paper mill owners refused to sell Evans the pulp needed to print the comics.”
