Confessions of a researchaholic

January 28, 2020

Obnoxious shared-ride passengers

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:03 pm
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I was in a shared Uber ride today, waiting for a couple heading for the SJC airport.
After the driver and I arrived and waited for a couple of minutes, the husband showed up waving at us, while tying his dog to a fence. The wife showed up after another couple of minutes, taking the dog to the car, while the husband went back to retrieve luggage, for a further couple of minutes. When both finally settled in the car, the wife said she could not find her wallet, and took another couple of minutes searching around.
After we were officially ready to take off, the husband said to the driver: do you know how to go to the airport? Turn right here, without even realizing that they might not have the first stop.

Meanwhile, the driver told me (in a language that the couple would not understand) that he could not understand why anyone heading to the airport would want to take a carpool, and (fortunately) ignored the husband and followed the Waze instruction to drop me off.

One best part about Uber/Lyft rides, especially carpools, is the chance to see different kinds of people that do not tend to show up in my usual social circles.

January 23, 2020

Quick sketch of a wall lamp

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:56 am
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After waking up at 5:30 am today, I tried to catch an earlier train but missed it by a few minutes. The next train took around 40 minutes to arrive; meanwhile I sketched this wall lamp near the platform.

January 17, 2020

Drawing a bowl of fruits and vegetables compost

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:56 pm
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I am on a roll of drawing food residues.

January 14, 2020

Drawing a plate of edamame shells

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:51 pm
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This is a frequent sight of my family dinner, which I managed to draw when we sat together on the same table after a long while.

January 13, 2020

Working in a dream

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:53 am
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Since I have this habit of thinking about stuff all the time, even when I am dreaming, I sometimes could not tell if I have done something for real.
For example, earlier today when I looked at a comment I made in a paper draft, I found it missing a part that I thought I have added, but then I realized that I only did it in my dream a few days ago.

January 12, 2020

Meditation

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:33 pm
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The best way (for me) to relax is to tackle the source of the stress/pressure head on.

January 11, 2020

Touch contour exercise

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:45 pm
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Following the instruction under “the natural way to draw”, I have been practicing touch contour, in which one fixates at the contours of a subject and synchronizes the eye gaze and hand pen movement so that they move together (i.e. the pen point should correspond to the eye point all the time) without looking at the drawing (except when backtrack from inward bending contours).
So far I have found it difficult to synchronize, as my eyes tend to saccade away frequently and my hand can go out of the boundary of the canvas.

For such exercises, it is the process, not the outcome, that matters.
Nevertheless, interesting results may appear sometimes.

I was hoping to finish a normal drawing afterwards with the same subject, but it was too dark to see anything.

January 8, 2020

Drawing a portly hand

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:01 pm
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I felt the need to draw something before going to sleep, and recalled this visual image from a morning news post to spend some twenty minutes.

January 5, 2020

Fountain figure 4

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 4:53 pm
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I saw this sculpture in Anderson collection at Stanford and captivated by its structure.
I started with the contour exercise and still found it hard to coordinate my sight and touch and finished too quickly in about 10 minutes.
I then switched to ordinary sketching for about 30 to 40 minutes.

Because it sat high on a pedestal, it was difficult to photography.

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