Optimize Route for 'Tinky

It has come and gone, but one of my favorite seasons of the year is the stinky season of kinmokusei. There was a bit of a false start to it. It had started to bloom around us and then a typhoon came through and knocked out all the smell. We were quite disappointed that it barely lasted a week. We had gone out for an evening walk to go and find the lovely stinky flowers. And there’s a lot of them near our apartment. But the typhoon came in and seemed all done. Tokyo also had an incredibly long series of rainy/not sunny days. And it wasn’t until we got another sunny day nearly a week after the typhoon that the kinmokusei started to finish their bloom. When the bloom finally arrived we had several more evening walks. Trying to find where the flowers might be blooming. On our way to the train station we’ll move from one side of the street to the other where we have found the big trees.

But now the flowers are done for the season. Now we’ll enjoy the actual stinky of the ginkgo. Their colors are not quite yet turning here, but we can smell them. It’s a strong – not good – smell when it gets intense. It’s a smell of the season and I want to embrace that.

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I’ve wrapped up my forth oil painting. Going to put it in a small community exhibit in December, but I gotta frame it first. While that’s drying I started a small oil sketch of a cast torso with a panel. It was such a pain to figure out what Japanese call those canvas panels. Finally found them under ボールドカンバス or board canvas after looking for a bunch of different permutations. And of course like magic as soon as I finally found the word I was able to spot them in the store. Somehow missed them before. Goal for using these is that they’re simply thinner so it’ll be easier for storage. Especially for early practices. I’ve done a couple of regular canvas paintings. I want to try and do some paintings of people. I signed up for a croquis session at the art school. To try out some more people practice. They have a lot of cast statues in the school. This will be my first time ever doing a live model session. I have some photos that I’d like to turn into a painting. S even reminded me of an old photo of me and sibling that would be a good painting. I’m hoping I can pull that one off so I might do a few others first.

Lots to practice. I should do more gouache sketches.

Oh! I even ordered a pochade-box-plein-air setup thing. Hopefully, it arrives in time for the good fall weather and before it gets too chilly. International shipping please be kind to me. My goal is to run over to the park in the early morning doing some painting. That’s the intention anyways. I’ll probably start with gouache to keep it easy. I’m excited to try it out.

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S wanted to go checkout a store for shoes. It’s the tabi shoes which are those two toed kind of like how flipflops have the toe separation, but they’re covered shoes. I often see these kinds of shoes at festivals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them at the chain shoe stores. But S found the name of a shop and heard good recommendations as good walking shoes. I bought two different ones. They’re neat and very light.

We finished up this three-day weekend with another super sento day. Weather was great. We had a picnic with some nice egg sandwiches. I had to flick off a few fuzzy caterpillars from the tarp, but it was a good time.

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album of the week