Weeknotes 31

4 May 2025
Table of Contents

    itsgonnabemay.jpg

    Current media

    • Reading The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen; next up will be (hopefully, lol) Mỹ Documents by Kevin Nguyen.
    • Playing Blue Prince obsessively (currently: 26 hours in, recently reached Room 46, having a lot of fun); Control more sporadically; pausing Destiny 2 until it does something wild like announce a new expansion and campaign and blow all our minds (May 6th stream, I am waiting for u)
    • Falling behind on watching things—behind on Daredevil; watching one Black Mirror season 7 episode a week (seen the first two now); apparently Thunderbolts is good but I have Marvel fatigue?; I finished The White Lotus season 3 and am mentally jamming to the full moon party theme at any given moment.
    • Listening to The Last Dinner Party—their cover of Blondie’s Call Me lives rent-free in my head.
    Pencil sketches of a singer posed with a microphone, referenced from a performance video.
    abigail, performing sinner

    PleinAirpril

    I did 19/30 days of PleinAirpril! Most days, I spent about 30–90 minutes. A couple of them were actually done en plein air, rather than from a photo reference, and a few I gave up on because they were going badly.

    Compilation of last month's digital paintings, featuring various landscapes, streets, objects, and food.

    19 days is the most I’ve ever done for a monthly art challenge. I missed eight days from travelling, and three days from other life priorities. All in all, I’m proud of myself for this level of consistency.

    Digital painting of what appears to be bits of strawberry ends and leaves floating around in a bowl of water in a sink, alongside a metallic plate and a mug of tea.
    this one is perhaps my favourite—it's different from my usual landscapes and buildings. I felt really uncertain about how it was coming along the entire time I worked on it, but in the end I'm happy with how it came out.

    All paintings are compiled over in my sketchbook, along with any stray notes about them and timelapses.

    New York City

    I visited New York for the first time, which was very cool and exciting. Highlights:

    • Loved the Met so much!!!
    • Also went to: Cooper Hewitt, Guggenheim, MoMA, and Whitney (which, apparently, does not use the Whitney font anymore).
    • Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge was fun.
    • The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was soooo nice. Sadly it was too early in the month for the cherry blossom trees to be blooming, but it was still lovely. I really liked the various greenhouses with different climates.
    • I went out for dinner with people from work! After working remotely for so long, it was nice to finally meet people in person.
    • Shout out to trains

    Here are a bunch of photos and sketches.

    A wall in an alleyway covered with colourful graffiti, ripped up posters, stickers, and other such street artwork.
    The outside of the Met
    it was nice to spend such a rainy day indoors
    A large room full of Greek and Roman statues.
    Sketches of sculptures at the Met
    Sketch closeups, featuring various figures and busts, drawn in ink and cross hatched
    A small grey, brown, and red bird on a ledge.
    a bird (a house sparrow? h/t Noah) outside the guggenheim
    A bunch of tall buildings.
    Me on the Brooklyn Bridge, taking a photo.
    Me, holding two cameras on the Brooklyn Bridge.
    Closeup of a cherry blossom tree.
    Me, standing in front of a pink magnolia tree.
    photo by jillian ^_^
    A planter of pink tulips.
    Ink sketch of the counter of a cafe and an iced drink labeled ‘tiramisu latte’
    had time to kill, so I sat around in Koré Coffee in Chinatown
    A tiramisu iced latte, which appears to have a layer of cream and chocolate powder on top.
    tiramisu latte. was so obsessed with this that I ended up making tiramisu when I got home