Reflecting on Blueness

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Location Taken: Benzie County, Michigan
Time Taken: June 2012

Nothing special today. Just a pretty cluster of leaves over a river.

Well, I did have to fiddle with this one in Photoshop. This one was like this older piece, where I’d accidentally had it in the Cool Light setting.

This time I fiddled with the color in other ways, since the Auto Color turned it purple. It’s tough to explain what I did, since I only half-understand it myself. I used the Levels feature, which lets me adjust how much of the various tones of the color come through. I usually use it to clean up scans of drawings, since it lets me easily lighten the background to white and darken the lines to black at the same time. This time, I switched it to only adjust the blue tones and fiddled around some with that.

It’s still not perfect. I’m not sure if those blue tones on the leaves in shadow are a remnant or actually what was there. The weather that day was clear and the blue sky was quite brilliant. And those leaves are shiny, and the blue is all on the parts of the leaves facing the sky, but still, that is a strong blue…

Ah well, at least it’s not blue. Or purple, for that matter.

  

Watching the world go by is more of an old folk thing. Guess I really am old at heart…

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Location Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

It’s nice to stop, sit, and just watch the grass wave in the wind every so often.

Modern life seems addicted to constant motion. You hear so many people whining about being bored if they have just five minutes without something to do. Although, these days, they’d have pulled out their phones four minutes before that, since constant connection is another modern addiction.

I saw some of that on this trip. We didn’t have much internet connection, something about camping our way across the largely empty island of Newfoundland. Every time we came across some place with even a hint of internet, one or another of my fellow travelers pulled out some device and tried to connect. If we had a meal at a place with a hotspot, there would be three people staring at their gadgets and me, sitting there reading a book.

I can unplug easily. I don’t need to be constantly connected. Neither my introversion nor my social phobia would be able to stand it. And I’m both patient and not bored easily. I will quite happily sit and watch the world go by.

For those despairing about the state of the world and the way we’ve forgotten how to stay still, don’t despair too much. There will always be oddballs like me who buck the trend, who are quite happy to just watch the grass for a bit.

  

Driving to the Clouds, Uphill all the Way

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Location Taken: Northwestern Vermont
Time Taken: July 2012

I’ve only been to Vermont once. And I’ve never set foot there, either. We just drove through it.

I still managed to get some nice photos. We went on a lot of back roads, so our speed was slow enough to keep the foreground blur down.

And we saw some really pretty mountains along the way. Especially the one we drove over. It was a narrow winding road with a steep slope. Half of it was unpaved – the top half. And there were raised bars on both sides of the mountain with signs saying “Road closed when bars lowered”. It must get very snowy during the winter.

Admittedly, we saw signs of that all along the way. Mind you, we didn’t see any snow or anything of that ilk. But we passed river after stream after creek, all much larger than the water flowing through them would normally carve. All of them were highly rocky as well, and the larger one had rocks larger than cars peppering their banks.

When Spring thaw hits, those streams must be full and overflowing. It actually doesn’t take too much to float a rock. You just have to have strong enough pressure from the flow of the water to move it, spread over a large enough area of the rock. Still, to move car-sized rocks requires a very large amount of water just to get the surface area requirement.

All of Vermont is, well, as bumpy as this photo. And no, I didn’t get the horizon line tilted. That’s actually a natural tilt. Well, at least half of it is. Or maybe a quarter… It’s tough to get photos taken in a moving car perfect, you know…

  

A Daring Tale for the Ages – yes, it has zombies in it.

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Time Taken: August 2012

I think it is time to tell you a tale.

‘Tis a tale of bravery, of perseverance, of near-defeat and desperate times. It is a tale that shall shake you to your very bones, and bring light into the darkest-

Ok, enough of that. It’s a Minecraft story, not some high fantasy.

On the small server I play on, we just recently updated to the 1.3 patch. Amongst other marvelous things, one of the things added was trading with villagers. It’s quite a powerful addition, so I wanted to get right on with it.

There was only one problem. We hadn’t found any villages yet.

Villages are somewhat rare. They only show up on two of the eleven biomes, specifically deserts and plains. And even then, they don’t show up in every desert or plain.

We’d explored more than 10 deserts and plains by the time 1.3 hit, and not a one had a village.

Thus, it was time for a Hunt. I went north, on land, while another player went south, by boat. We searched far and wide. I found an elusive Jungle Temple, supposedly more rare than a village, he found a mushroom island,definitely more rare than a village. It’s really bad luck when you come across Mooshrooms before villagers, though at least now I can go watch mushroom cows whenever I want.

I’d come across just about about every biome except for deserts and plains (including no less than three jungles) and then, there it was. A large plains, stretching as far as I could see. I searched it thoroughly and there, in a lonely outshoot of the grasslands, was the village.

I’d found what I was seeking. Now for the next challenge. I was one and a half miles from home. That would be a very long walk just to trade for a hat, even one made of diamonds. Luckily, it’s possible to convince villagers to emigrate to another village, and I’d even built one for them already.

The problem, then, was transport. The answer was minecarts.

Villagers will hop into minecarts placed by them, and then the player can push the minecart along a track fairly easily. Of course, I didn’t have the 2500+ pieces of track that I would need to connect the old village to the new one. I’d have to do it piecemeal.

I packed carefully. Plenty of food, a supply of dirt for building temporary houses for the night, a whole lot of wood and coal for torches, six powered rails and redstone torches to make going up hills easier, and 128 regular rail tracks. I’d figured out a rough route on the way back to my house, and on the way back up to the village I laid bridges over water and set torches all along the path to have an easier time finding it again.

After the 1.5 mile hike back to the village, the next task was gathering the villagers. I’d decided to haul four of them to their new home. I only technically needed two, since they would breed more, but four gave me a nice margin of safety.

I got to the village at sunset, as the villagers were fleeing to their homes to hide the night away safe from the zombie hordes. I laid track through their houses, shoved them into their new carty homes and set up temporary dirt homes around them while I waited for the sun to rise. I had to fight off several zombies, including one that was chasing a villager that hadn’t made it to safety in time (he was one of them who jumped into a cart).

Dawn rose, I laid track along the route I was taking, then pushed the villagers one by one along it, and realized it was nearly sundown again. I set up temporary housing, then turned back to collect the track pieces for reuse – and realized I was still within sight of the village. This was going to take a long time.

A couple more days passed fairly smoothly. Each day I’d move the villagers 120 meters further along, each night I’d set up small houses and go move the track ahead.

Then, some four days out of the village, I had finished laying my track at night and headed back to the small houses. As I got closer, I heard the terrible groans of zombies. Fearing the worst, I hurried over, slaughtered the ones outside the house, then checked on the villagers.

Two of them were no more. Zombies stood in their places.

This was the point I was very glad I’d spent the extra time to haul four of them along with me. I hastily built the ugliest house I have ever built, out of dirt and far too many doors, trapped the two remaining villagers inside, and told them to get busy while I fended off the zombies that were scenting villager meat inside.

That’s when I smacked myself on the forehead, went out and sheared a few sheep, and built myself a bed. In Minecraft, when you sleep in a bed, the time skips to morning. And nothing even tries to eat you at night, even if you’re asleep under the stars in easy reach of zombies. And, as an added bonus, if you go to bed as soon after sunset as you can, not one enemy even spawns. This meant I could continue the rest of the journey without fighting every night, and I’d have much higher chance of making it with all four of the villagers alive.

So, after the two villagers produced two cute little baby villagers (which, luckily, grew up quickly), we set off again. It was much simpler with me sleeping at night, and things progressed smoothly from there.

Well, as smooth as a six hour repetitive task can be. One and a half miles at the rate of 40 feet per minute (400 feet each day, on average, 10 minutes per day) still takes a really long time. Especially since I had to walk back those 400 feet for each and every villager. The 1.5 mile trip was more like 6 miles. 10 if you count in the long detour around an ocean I had to make, plus the 1.5 for walking out there in the first place. It may have been a digital game, but I was physically exhausted by the time I was done. I couldn’t put it off for later, or even take a break. Disconnecting would have released the villagers from their carts, and multiplayer can’t pause. And every minute I spent doing other things was a minute closer to night and the zombie hordes.

I was very glad when I saw the towers and sky-bridges of the civilized lands.

I was even gladder when I finally reached the new village, pushed the last villager through the portcullis of the wall gate, and closed it behind me.

Now, there are hordes of villagers roaming the streets of their new metropolis. And the village will only continue to grow, as it’s still only half built. I’ve made many valuable trades and have plenty of the emeralds they use as currency stored away for future use. It was quite worth the long slog.

Still, I wish there had been a village just a wee bit closer…

  

Yes, I do know dragonflies don’t look quite like that.

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Time Painted: August 2012

This is yet another experimental piece.

For this one, I started with the colors, creating vague shapes somewhat in the form I wanted. I didn’t really have a plan when I started, I just went with what felt right. Then, once that dried, I went back in with black ink. Using a fine-tipped brush, I outlined and shaded and turned the vague shapes into firm ones.

I think I like how it turned out. It was fairly simple to make, too.

Though it still doesn’t quite feel “right”.

A large part of why I’m constantly doing experimental pieces is that I have a feeling there is a “right” style of art out there for me. One where I’m not fighting against any element of the creation process, one where inspiration flows smoothly from head to paper.

I’m not there yet.

I’m getting the physical side down. I work fairly easily with the materials I’ve chosen. But the mental side, well…

It’s tough translating ideas from head to hand, and even tougher getting them to come out like you want.

Still, I do like this piece.