451° F

"Why aren't you in school? i see you every day wandering around."

"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. being with people is nice. but I don't think it's social to get a bunch of poeple together and then not let me talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place and wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamp-posts, playing "chicken" and "knock hip-caps". I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"

-Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

On the 11.29pm Train home.

Rickshaw

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I really enjoy watching people, and drawing the interesting and beautiful strangers that I see. I should do this more often. It seems to revitalize my soul.

The 11.29am Glen Waverly line from the city. A delightful couple looking tired after a night out. I couldn't finish the wife's face before they got off at Kooyong station.

I had spooted this couple when I was casually looking around me. He was in a full tux with brown outer jacket. He caught my stare, I nodded in approval with a smile, and he smuggly winked back. I love old people.

12.09am, Got off at Mount Waverly Station. Woolen black jacket, flowing black dress, helmed with a delicate black lace. Light cream heels, black handbag with thing leather cross body strap. Gold accents in jewelery.

I find it really hard to draw young people, and present them in a way to retain their beauty. Old people are easy to draw, their wrinkles and lines guide the form and structure. Young people with their elastic tight skin have little imperfections for my graphite to transfer on to paper.

I'm not a creep.

Model Making

ze plans

So this is what I've been working on for about 2-3 months. At university, I was required to undertake this Model Making Class (IDE1502) where we were to build a aesthetic model of a drill (or equivalent) with the university workshop equipment and learned skills.

I had decided to make a Nail Gun.

So, there it was, every spare moment throughout my week, I would hop over to Caulfield to utilise their facilities until they close. It's amazingly fun, but utterly time consuming. On any given week I would spent around 21hrs in the workshop machining each piece, and making sure that they are to the level of required perfection.

The process starts with some initial concept drawings, working out appropriate dimensions (given a bit of room for error), drafting sketches before we head into the machining process. In laymen's terms, we get blocks of wood and shape them with band-saws, sanders, mills and lathes.

Safety Prongs, Front Guard, Barrel (13 pieces)

Central stock and Front Housing (8 pieces)

Handle and Trigger (14 pieces)

Back and Vents (19 pieces)

After everything has been machined and sanded, we prepare for the painting stage. Oh exciting. Priming each piece and applying automotive paints. Then polish till it's as reflective as a coloured mirror.

I share an interesting love/hate relationship with this stage. Priming and Painting makes all your pieces of wood look absolutely presentable. But paint is less forgiving then wood. If you ruin the paintwork, you have sand off the entire layer and start again.

Every time I accidentally dent the paintwork with my fingernail, I have to sand everything back and repaint it. Every time I place it down on a piece of soft cloth, without the previous knowledge that it will leaves marks; I have to sand everything back and repaint it.

Since this week, I have been up to my painting stage. If we factor out all the mishaps and muck-ups, I would of been done by Wednesday. Why Wednesday? Well, because I was putting my last coat of paint on Tuesday in the spray booth at Caulfield. I left it to dry in there, and went off to work on other things. There were plenty of people in the workshop at the time, a lot of third years rushing to finish off their final products. One person came in to prime their work piece. His spray bottle splattered, and I got drops of primer on my drying paint. What to do? Sand everything back, repaint.

In order to avoid accidents that cannot be blamed on others, I decided to set up a workshop complete with spray booth at home, in the garage.

The workshop at home, complete with spray booth, old ruined table tennis table, and absolutely no ventilation!

The spray booth: gotta love the paint fumes.

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It was Saturday when I wrote the majority of this. But I had sanded and repainted that night.

It's Sunday evening now, and apart from cleaning up bits and pieces, polishing it up a bit more. I think I'm finished.

In my boredom and procrastinating from studying for my other exams, I had decided to make a carry case out of cardboard and masking tape. I don't know why, I love masking tape.

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shhhiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyy

Missing Tail

4th June @ 11:10

The day was cold, windy and cloudy. A perfect winter's day. We spotted this bird on the road, next to a girl who was making a distressed call. Was it a parrot? It was. Green bodied, blue headed and red beaked. It was scared, paranoid and missing a tail. Gentle I picked it up, hushing it, telling that it's "okay". I took it from the gutter and placed it at the nearby tree. Hopefully it'll recover.

What I didn't mention was that it's neck also showed signs of damage, and it looked dazed and traumatized.

I tried to pick it up a second time, deciding that it would probably be safer in in some bushes where it could hide from stray cats, but it squawked at me ferociously and flew across the road.

It's flight was beating it's wings extremely hard, you could hear the tips hitting the asphalt as it went. It didn't even make it over the gutter; though it tried desperately to climb up with it's beak hooked on the ledge.

I went over again in attempt to pick him up, but he again squawked loudly and flew in the other direction, although this time, he made it to a base of a tree.

I was glad that it had enough energy to fly that distance and gain a little more height than before. But from the distance I could see that it was pretty exhausted from that flight.

I feared for it's future.