SEPTEMBER

I got back from Louisiana a few days ago and it really was an incredible experience! (This is going to be kind of long and probably not make much sense, so bear with me! Also, there are paintings towards the bottom of the entry, if you'd rather just skip down there!)

I guess I should start off by saying, me and my family are all fundamentally very different people. This is generally okay when we're all allowed to go off and do our own things, however, here, for this vacation my mom was super anxious and wanted us to basically be tethered together the entire trip. This is an issue because... my sister has an extremely high amount of energy, she needs to be constantly on the move, exploring things, doing things. While I have an extremely low amount of energy and am easily overwhelmed. If we're stuck together by the ankle, there's no way to satisfy both of our needs without the other being tortured, y'know?

Like I mentioned last time, my mom and sister wanted to constantly, constantly, constantly go to bars. And that's fine! Please, go have fun, live it up! But I do not know how to properly express to you the extent to which a packed nightclub that you can still hear down the street is literally the definitiion of Hell to me!! And since we were all forced to do everything together, I was forced to come along and had panic attacks every night from becoming too overstimulated!

At one point, for example, my mom needed to take a break and rest her feet. "How about this place?" she asked, standing in front of a random bar. We were led into an alley that fed into a courtyard. As we walked further and further in, the music got louder and louder until you couldn't hear yourself think. I tried to sit there, but just could not fucking take it! I ended up sprinting out and halfway down the street on autopilot before realizing I went the wrong way. And then she got mad at me for "not being able to handle it for even just ten minutes." I'm sorry, I have absolutely no tolerance for that sort of environment at all! And I've told you this how many times!? Like, this happened so often, that I was dragged into a bar while I was crying from how loud it was and told I was not allowed to walk back to the hotel by myself or take an Uber or even just stand outside! My sister said, "Y'know, you could just bring noise cancelling headphones if it bothers you so much." But, y'know what's been a better solution to avoid breaking down when exposed to the huge crowds and noise you find at bars and nightclubs? Not going to bars and nightclubs!

If you were so worried about "our safety," why were you still staying out drinking to excess every night on Bourbon Street, even though literally everyone we met told you not to!?

*takes a deep breath and sighs* ...With all of that out of my system, this really was a life changing experience for me. Like, I have no frame of reference whatsoever with this basically being the first time I've left my home state and everything, but does every city have so many little niches and such an appreciation of art and artists? Truly, the thing that stuck out to me the most was that people had ambitions and hopes and dreams.

For example, one day, as we were getting ready to leave a park (Armstrong Park, specifically), I noticed a bunch of people congregating at the gates. One man, trumpet in hand, was standing back from the rest of the crowd. I asked him what was going on and he started explaining how this was the beginning of a parade for a wedding. There used to be parades at all times of the day and night in the French Quarter, but they had stopped in recent years due to Katrina, Covid, etc. It was making him sick, so he and a few buddies were planning on reviving the tradition -- the only reason he hadn't gone along with this one was that someone had literally just stolen the mouthpiece to his trumpet. And so, he described the history of second lines and jazz music; how when Louisiana was ruled by the French, they allowed slaves six hours of free time a week and they'd meet up in Congo Square (right where we were standing!) and dance and play music. He was also teaching himself law to sue the city for abandoning a building that previously was a youth enrichment center.

And across the street was a building that used to be a recording studio, but now is a laundromat, that is not only also a museum to the recording studio, but also the owner's personal art studio, where she sells her paintings and gives pottery lessons to kids.

And it seems like every street corner has a building displaying local artist's works. And there are several locations where up and down the street, artists will hang up their work on the fence behind them to sell and talk to those who walk by.

And specialty shops, like fountain pen / stationery stores and playing card stores and vampire-themed shops and cafés where employees write short stories and make artwork to put in weekly zines.

And they all said something to the effect of "And the next time that you visit, my store will be much bigger, I will have accomplished all of this, etc." While, where I live, it's like everyone has given up. They've dug their heels into their shitty, low paying jobs that they hate and accepted that things will never get better than they are. Nothing will ever change. There's no point in trying. And it's so sad... and being here I feel so hopeless and defeated...

Finally, while I didn't end up doing as much painting as I wanted to down there (mostly due to panic attacks and extreme overscheduling), I did end up doing a few!

This one was based on a photo taken during a bus tour of the city:

And this one was painted in Congo Square, just before meeting the man with the trumpet I mentioned earlier. I'm really going to miss these live oak trees...

This was done the same day as above. I'm really glad I was able to see a little lizard, as well, I was really looking forward to it!

And the next couple were done after a swamp tour, in which our boat's engine malfunctioned and we were stranded there for like two hours. Surprisingly, there were no mosquitos whatsoever, but we were constantly swarmed by lovebugs the entire time. Honestly, just sitting in the swamp, watching all the little beasties go by (and listening to everyone else on the boat's conversations), I think that was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.

Eventually, I'll get around to painting more architecture (and some crepe myrtle trees!), but this is all I've got at the moment! Also, inspired by the artist culture there, I really want to get into making zines, actually, and selling them on Etsy or something! (But, if you were curious, immediately after I said something nice about my printer in the last entry, it decided to suddenly stop printing in color. I haven't really tried to fiddle with it since, but *sigh* guess I got what I deserved for complimenting it...)

We're leaving in less than a week! Time really flies, doesn't it?

First, some more paintings:

The first one was based off a random reference photo of a Japanese garden from Pinterest. The second was from the same Italian travel / photo book I mentioned last time.

I watched some Youtube tutorials in the meantime and I think they really helped me try to simplify very complex organic patterns like leaves and patches of flowers down! I still need to practice more, obviously, but I think these were a success!

Then, I decided that I wanted to try something a little different. So I tried to draw / paint the view from my old college dorm with a Sailor Moon-inspired color palette.

But, like I was saying before, this paper literally does not function at all! I was reading some reviews and apparently other people had it get super bad when they tried to do any erasing at all, too. In conclusion, while they're a nice size and format and cheap, I really wouldn't recommend the Arteza watercolor sketchbooks. Or, I wouldn't recommend them for actually watercoloring, at least. (Brief edit: Also, it seems to be falling apart, actually -- the spine wasn't glued properly. What a fool am I for being a cheapskate. *sigh*)

Here's the painting, though:

The paint just soaks in and doesn't move around at all, normally, making it impossible to do flat washes or anything subtle. But it was especially awful here. I think, while the texture does look kinda cool in this specific painting, if I was trying to do something more complex I actually would have cried. The paint really just fought against me every step of the way! Why is the green so dark?? I watered it down so much, and when I tested it on another sheet of the paper I usually use (Canson), it was hardly even visible, but here it just punches you in the face! Aaaaaaaaaaah....

In other news, I'm making my mom a personalized travel journal. She said she wanted to write about her experience but since she's not really a journaller, she was worried it'd feel weird to write it down. So I found some prompts online to help her out a bit and printed everyday's plans for easy access. Also, I printed out maps of the areas we're gonna be in to use as the endpapers.

(I'm still *really* surprised by how ink efficient the Epson EcoTank is, by the way! I've literally printed out several full books and full page maps and pictures over the course of like two years and still hardly a dent in the ink! And rarely does it ever jam or anything, either. Genuinely changed my opinion on all home printers being evil.)

But also, something that I'm kinda worried about with the trip (besides, y'know, general travel anxieties and whatnot) is that she wants to go to a bunch of bars ("There's a really cool cocktail here! It has a pickled scorpion in it, and you get a t-shirt for drinking it!" or "This one has little plastic mermaids around the rim, and when you get it, they say on the intercom that 'A shark has been sighted in the area!' and someone comes and throws a plastic shark in your glass that has a sweet red liquour in it! And you get to keep the shark!"). I just don't like bars or alcohol.... It's totally fine if she wants to do that or whatever, but I feel weird when she tries to pressure me into drinking with her... Also, she wants me to get a tattoo, and I just really don't want to do that, either.... Like, I don't want to kill the vibe of her trip, but, again, I'm just really not comfortable doing any of that, y'know? ....

There are a lot of things I'm excited for, though, obviously! Like, the aquarium, a number of supernatural-themed tours, the swamp tour, trying different types of food, etc, and just the experience of going somewhere, in general.

I was thinking it'd be cool to play some ttrpgs together on the train, since it's literally going to be a 20+ hour ride, but we aren't all going to be seated together, so I guess I'm gonna be getting a ton of reading in, huh?

First, I have to thank pomelo for helping me fix an issue where the text appeared behind the image for some reason. Thank you so much!

The background is from a post by @scenic-simpsons on instagram, from s8ep16 of The Simpsons. The color palettes and perspectives shown in The Simpsons are really pretty and distinctive, so I thought it'd make a cute inspiration for a journal layout. ^^ Also, the header font is Simpsonsfont by Sharkshock, and the body font is Farming Town by MJType.

Originally, I had the background image stretched out to be the full width of the screen, but that just ended up super pixelly and awful. :( So I think this version looks a lot better in the long run (it's still a little weird, but let's just say the jankiness makes it feel more cozy and homemade, yeah?). Yippee!