Sunday, 14-Jan-18 17:33:32 CET

Miró 14 January 2018

Today it is Sunday 14 January 2018, and you probably guessed it already. I am on my way to a life model painting session with a model that I think has the name Mirkel. I cannot recall painting her before. It is almost sunny this morning. When the train passed a garden allotment area outside Weesp, it looked idyllic.

Yesterday I took out my aquarelle gear and painted at home for the first time in a very long time. I was thinking of painting with Cobra color on aquarelle paper, but I decided for doing a regular aquarelle painting instead. My motive was Dianna Cowern, and I wanted to practice my portrait skills. It did not work well.

I think that in a way it was successful, but there is more to learn. Luckily. It is the second time that I got the same aha feeling such as that when I established the central part of the face, I am so keen on starting painting that I forget to go over the drawing and doing a couple of extra checks. The technique I use now is working from inside out as that book says, Painting Portraits by Suzanne Brooker. But then the outer periphery of the face is crucial for the likeliness. I need to measure the width of the kin, the distance from the mouth and other parts to the ears, etc. May not forget that!

Next to me on the train, there is an elderly lady with a little dog on her lap. She speaks to her dog.

On the electronics side of things, I finally received the package from China that I ordered on 20 December 2017. It took 20 days to arrive. Now I could continue working on my plant watering automation project, but I could not decide on how to measure the water levels of the bucket. There is a ready-made method for 80 euro and a self-made for 3. For either way, I need to buy more stuff. Instead of doing that I have been investigating what I want, but I have not been able to figure it out yet. The best solution sounds like ordering something cheap and make it myself but order it from Europe.

On the PCB making side, I figured out I should not do PCBs myself right now. It is too tricky, and the gain is marginal. Instead, I will go for experiment PCBs with strips and holes. That is good enough. Especially when you consider all the stuff and time I need to plow into the project before I can do any electronic things.

Now I am almost in Amsterdam.

There was a total misunderstanding of her name. It was not Mirkel. It was Miró, and she was a he. From Finland.

He had a slender figure, and I changed my mind from painting a portrait to paint a full body and then work a little more on the fabrics on the cushions etc.

The artists today were Dick, Frank, Irene, Saskia and me.

Miró had studied to fashion designer in Amsterdam. He got to sit with his face leaning back a little. I have done a portrait like that before a couple of years ago. It can go well, but it is a bit odd to place the model like that if you want to paint a portrait. It brings up associations of perhaps someone not feeling well or even being dead. To deal with these feelings, I decided on not to paint the face of Miró but instead to paint the full body. He got a slender body. I can imagine there is an older woman in his family that tell him to eat more.

It was a chatty session today. Usually, it is quieter, but today people needed to talk. We learned about the history of Finland. There were talks about work etc. All in all, it was a pleasant atmosphere.

On the way home I experimented with my camera, and I took an animated image of my train trip to Almere when we passed a couple of classic Dutch windmills.