 Good morning. It's Sunday morning. September. God, I don't even know. September something. Hold on. I don't even know. September 14th. Maybe. I don't know. Let me log into my computer. September 13th. Sorry. Sunday, September 13th. It is 10, 18 a.m. Sorry, getting texts from the sun. I'm on status this morning on the fire. So late last night, Clackamas County, which are, they have, they're the closest county to where we are. We're a few miles from the outskirts of Clackamas County, like three, less than five miles. And all of Clackamas County at one point was on, at the very minimum, a level one alert to get ready in case they needed to evacuate. There's a big fire there, Riverside County, and then the adjoining county of Marion County also has Beachy Creek and Lion's Head. And Beachy Creek and Lion's Head have joined and they've become one big fire and they're close to joining to Riverside. Although I don't think they have yet, and the firefighters apparently have gained some control. They don't have containment, but they've gained some control on the fire lines and they're able to stop it for the last two days from spreading too much farther. Yay, because it's encroaching on a very populated area, not just ours. And I feel sorry for the people who have already lost property, loved ones. There's just so many people I think that we don't even know about who have passed away yet from the fires. Anyway, regards to our situation, the air quality is over 500 again today. I literally can't go outside. If I'm even at the front door for five minutes with the door open, I get a headache, which is a sign of smoke inhalation issues and I have to close the door and use my inhaler. So right now for the first time in more than 30 years that we've been together, Bob is doing the grocery store grocery shopping by himself, which has never happened. I usually always go with him or I just go. Not that I don't trust him, but it's just something that we always seem to do together because both of us hate grocery shopping, I think. But he's going to be doing it alone. He's at the gym right now to try to get some exercise in if he can get in. He's taking all precautions and he's carrying one of my inhalers, although he doesn't often need it. He has allergy related asthma, not asthma all the time. And that just means when he has an allergy attack, it usually goes into a breathing problem like right away, which he shouldn't be outside either probably, but he's a stubborn gym in New York, man. I don't know what to tell you. He's just, yeah, there's no telling him. So I just told him, here, take this. That's all I can do. Trust me, we've been together almost 40 years. There's nothing else I can tell him. Anyway, so he's at the gym right now doing some low impact exercise just to get out of the house. He is not an introvert. He does not like being down to the house all the time. This whole thing has been with COVID and everything has been really hard on him. He likes his people. He likes going to the office. And yeah, so anyway, I'm perfectly happy to be stuck at home most of the time, except if you tell me I can't go shopping. That's a problem. Anyway, so I'm rambling, aren't I? So hey, it's been a fun week, kind of maybe. It's been interesting. That's for sure. And it hasn't been boring. I think I was talking the other day about trying to turn this little salve tin that I had into a watercolor tin. And when I first showed you all on social media that I was doing that, I used some air dry clay to make this to fit in it. I don't like it. It wasn't real happy with the way it turned out, although it did work fine. And I think if you coat it with a good quality water resistant sealer, it would work well for watercolors. I just wasn't super happy with that. I thought there was a lot of wasted space for one. So I used some plastic and E6000. And it needs to have a couple more. There's a couple spots I think that need some more glue. But I created this instead, which I like much better. I do really wish that I had a 3D printer because I think it would turn out much better. But yeah, that's it. There are a couple places I can see that I need to add a little more glue and let it dry, which is kind of one of the drawbacks of doing this kind of shape this way is, it's going to take a long time to make sure you've gotten all the spots glued together. So each little well is like what, you know, watertight. But yeah, I don't know what I'll put in there. But yeah, it's cute. I may decorate it and take the labels off the outside and actually put a piece of artwork on the top and sell it in the Etsy shop empty. So I don't know. I don't know yet. Anyway, and I'm working on the bowl, the air dry clay bowl. I just sewed the outside, I need to turn it over and just sew the inside. So I'll be working on that today. Good morning, people. It's Monday morning. It's about 9 30 a.m. 9 30. Take that back. 9 13 a.m. I got a little bit more sleep last night than I had the last few nights. But you know, we're not completely out of the woods yet. Although things with the fires here in Oregon are improving. The smoke is getting worse. We won't be out of the woods for quite some time. But I think we're in a place enough that in the next 24 hours, we can maybe unpack the car. Some of the bags will stay permanently packed like we did create a emergency bag of go clothing. Basically, you can grab the duffel bag and just go in a hurry. And that'll just stay packed in case of any emergency. So bonus to this whole thing is now we have go bag go bags packed. So yeah, and I will be creating a permanent art go bag either out of my two travel cases and using them when I'm not traveling or getting a case to do that in something something like that. I'm not sure yet. Okay, guys, here's the status right now. It is what time is it 1141 a.m. I think I'm set up and ready to go to film a video that I did tell them I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get done or not. I might be able to get it filmed today. So I'm going to give it my best shot. I did put the empty suitcases and boxes and things we're not going to use even if we do evacuate away. It looks like we aren't evacuating at least at the moment. So I do think at some point today or tomorrow we're going to be unloading the car. As long as there's no drastic changes in the fire lines or anything. I have to be careful how fast I go up and down the stairs. Even though the house air inside is fairly clean and we're keeping the furnace on circulate so it recirculates and cleans the inside air pushes it through the filters. I still have to be careful how fast I go up and down the stairs. Air quality is currently 501 according to Oregon Department of Environmental Quality whatever whatever. And I went into the weird attic closet that's here just outside the art room where I store my blank canvas to grab something and the attic space that's on the other side of that closet which there's another door for. Of course there's no circulation in there and it's vented right out to outside and although the door between the closet and the attic is weather stripped it's yeah that's closet. I'm going to go in and I'm going to tape and plastic off that attic door into the closet and then close the closet door and I'm just not going to go in there again. I am going to have my inhaler handy just in case. But yeah that's going to be a thing and yeah fun times right. All right I'll be back. In regards to the fires they scaled back the evacuation zones again which is good news for those people affected. We of course as I've said are on the outer edge of clock in Miss County and just outside and so it's a concern for us and we're keeping a close eye on what they're doing because as I've said if you know the area closest to us goes to you know level two we're out of here. Good morning everybody it's 9 29 a.m. Tuesday September 15th. I forgot to do yesterday's writing for the Facebook groups I didn't do all of it I usually do Monday's writing and then I actually usually do all the writing for the week on Monday and I post the Monday stuff live and then I schedule everything else out I forgot all of it. So I'm going to do it first thing this morning after I get things booted up here on the computer and then I have the video commitment to edit that I got filmed yesterday hopefully the lighting was semi okay and all of that jazz because you know yeah I've used my inhaler once already it's I'm gonna say it's so very sweet of you all to check in on me and make sure that I'm doing okay with my asthma and the smoke and everything and that Bob and I are safe I'm not going to tell you not to because we appreciate it and and we feel so blessed at so many care and I want to tell you how much I appreciate that is edited and rendering at the moment and I will get it uploaded and scheduled on YouTube as soon as that's done I've been working in a Strathmore soft cover tone tan sketchbook if you follow me on social media you've seen some of the drawings for that especially recently if you don't follow me on social media.com you can click on my link tree list of links in the video description and find all the places I am on the internet Etsy shops Amazon affiliate links if I still have that in there I don't even know but also Instagram Facebook art groups and all that stuff so check it out anyway the soft I love the paper so let me start off by saying I love the tone tan and tone gray paper and it's often a nice change of pace rather than just sketching on white paper all the time I love the idea of working with a colored solid colored background and I enjoy both of these tone colors very much the tone tan or the tone gray what I don't enjoy is the soft cover book I'm finding because although they say it opens flat it doesn't really open flat and if you're like me and you like to draw on both sides of the paper like you can't really draw on the backside I've been trying and it's just not working that being said I don't know right now if I'm going to stop using the sketchbook because it does irritate the crap out of me or if I'm going to just let it go and fill it up on just single sides I did find I had and I must have been concerned when I bought it because I do did find that I have two of the what size is this oh five and a half by eight and a half inch spiral bound tone one tone tan and one tone gray already in my collection which means I either picked them up on clearance somewhere or at one of the art salvage places when I was traveling or something I don't remember and these may be from an art salvage place I don't remember but I don't really enjoy always spiral bound either but the bonus benefit to that is opens very very flat and if you want to draw on the backside you just fold it right I mean y'all get the idea right so yeah so that's a thing I don't mind working in the hard bound or soft bound books when I am watercoloring but generally speaking it seems like the watercolor notebooks of that variety open a lot flatter than the sketchbooks I don't understand what the deal is maybe it's just me what am I doing wrong maybe I'll have a tip or trick or a hint or a brand or let me know in the comments below I'd love to hear all right I've got my random collection of washed out containers to use for art or other projects I brought upstairs to add to the horde I've got my air dry clay bowl that I need to work on I haven't done anything with this yet so I need to work on getting the labels off always things to do it's never boring around here all right that's it guys I didn't film all of it because I literally have spent like at least an hour probably more mixing paint but I took some old tubes watercolor paint and I haven't used in a while but I don't want to get rid of some I'm glad I did because somewhere really one I had to throw out it was completely dried up and I honestly I could have reconstituted it but yeah and mixed them together to get a neutral palette hey guys yes we're on the floor of my closet so I just wanted to this week go over some emergency preparedness so no matter where you live in the world in the country there's some form of natural disaster that could happen it doesn't hurt to be prepared and Bob and I haven't been in it to do this for a really really really long time the fires just made us do it like now so I have this bag here this is by the eyeglass and sunglass company Boulay this bag is probably 30 plus years old fun fact for those that don't know back in the day I was a state and nationally licensed dispensing optician and lab tech I was the person that made your glasses and fit you properly for them and I worked in the field back in the day when you got merch and PR from the companies and this bag was one of those things and I have had it so long and we have used it so much and it's been washed more than once it still looks like that it's a great bag and it's very big so we have both of our clothes in here for a few days a couple pair of shoes and we are now putting emergency meds in here and basically getting it ready I did put a notation in my cell phone to remind me you know yearly we have the reminders in our phone change out the smoke alarm batteries and now change out the emergency bag meds so you know it's just one more thing right so I'm going to show you what we're doing for emergency toiletries that will be added to this bag within the next week and there'll be a permanent addition to the bag and like the medication we'll check on them once a year and yeah let's go to the bathroom now and do that I'll be back and oh for the bags for clothing we have you know a few days of underwear socks at least two pair of pants some shirts a sweatshirt a sweater um you want to have enough stuff to layer you know I don't you don't know when the emergency is going to happen it could be summer but it could be in the middle of winter when it's snowing and you might not have any time to do anything except grab this bag so you want to have to grab the minimum of stuff before you leave the house in case of an emergency if you have extra time cool but if you don't you can at least grab this bag all right let's go to the bathroom and I'll dollar tree has these little clear plastic bags today have a name just says ladies clear plastic bag they're from dollar tree and cost a dollar I've used them for a number of things I have a little mini drawing bag and one on the couch um I grabbed a couple extra last time I was there didn't know why I was grabbing them but now I know so they will be the emergency toiletries bag and I have one I've started filling mine Bob's going to fill his the next time we're out at the store I've already started packing mine he's going to do the same and then whatever sort of small trial size or travel size products that we're missing we'll pick them up one more at the store we'll fill this put it in the clothing bag and it'll just live there in case of an emergency we can check on it once a year make sure nothing's getting gross and in case of an emergency we're good to go all right that's it for the moment I'm going to go upstairs now and check on email and stuff I'll be back a good morning it's a Wednesday morning September 16th I think I think they have some small percentage containment on the three big fires southeast of us the riverside fire in Clackamas County and the beachy creek and lion's head fire in Marion County I think um there are three big huge fires and they're close together and they've burned like 6,000 acres 600,000 acres or something anyway it's good news uh smoke still smoky outside um although our air quality is a bit better today it's not 501 anymore it's less than 300 at least this morning I don't know what'll happen as the day goes on haven't gotten any rain yet but I'm hopeful all right I'm going to check on my computer morning everybody it is 10 35 a.m Thursday September 17th I almost said Friday I have been a filming maniac the last two days and I've got a bunch of video clips I've just downloaded to my desktop um from the phone um to create two patreon videos and then to youtube videos I played with my phone settings and hopefully things are a little clearer and sharper um I've had the phone for a few months I just now discovered the settings I don't know what to say it's the apocalypse I don't know um good morning everybody it's about 9 30 in the morning Friday September 18th I think um I almost said February there are sometimes like right now where I really wish I was a prepper I really wish I had things like an air quality meter um we are hear that it's raining um air quality is rapidly dropping into healthier ranges and while it's not perfect by any stretch it is good enough that I can open the garage door and be standing out here I have my carbon filter mask which funny enough I have filters that filter out things like smoke I carry them in around in the house all the time because there are times because of my asthma that we're in situations where I need to wear a mask with one of those in it um I don't wear them all the time but we're you know especially when we're traveling I bring them so I have one of those I've been feeling like I'm in jail I like staying home but uh yeah so I'm going to run out and run one or two really quick errands as safely as I can while I'm feeling okay yes I'm a little bit crazy throated so I'm going to use the inhaler a little bit I'm going to go try to get it done we might be getting some more thunder and lightning so I don't want to be out driving in that so I'm going to try to get what I want to do done before that happens and we'll see how it goes I'll be back all right so lighting is funky at least this time I don't think it's from just smoke it's um not even three o'clock in the afternoon yet it's very dark in here despite the fact that I have lights on because it looks like it's getting ready to storm again did I mention earlier when I got on camera that I've been up since about 3 12 this morning so yeah anyway I'm making some more um of the small daily drawing books um the finished ones look about like this so how I do these I get asked a lot I make my daily drawing books because I like them a particular size a particular kind of paper and when I work in them I like the book to be just for one month I don't like it to have more pages than that so I take a file folder and I cut it to eight and a half by 11 and then so I get two sheets of paper out of it and I print some of my digital artwork from the Etsy shop on one side of the paper and that becomes the cover these are a natural craft colored file folder from state you can see from staples then I have a ream of 70 pound drawing paper like a particular weight and kind of paper so that it enables me to use most mediums not all but most on both sides of the paper without work showing through too much you can see it shows through a little bit but it's not too bad and that one's got a lot of water coloring stuff on it so I prefer this weight and texture of paper for these a little practice daily drawings anyway I'm out of the ones with white paper and I'm so I'm making four more because I've got a project coming up for October that I want to do so I need something to do it in all right I'm going to get to it and I'll be back for these done I pulled one out for the project you need to work on the other three are in the closet when I was looking for the book binding supplies I found a bunch of yarn fibers that y'all have sent me and or have accumulated over the years not to knit with but to do book binding and slow stitching with they were in the book binding box I'm never going to remember to use them if they're over there nice talking to the myself without the camera on so I took um this drawer here which now is full of the yarn type fibers that you all have sent me that I'm not necessarily going to knit with I'm going to use for stitching and maybe book binding too I put the tools and fabric and things that were in there and here I have a couple aprons I need to embroider and I've got some napkins down here and stuff like that the embroidery hoops won't fit in there but that's okay because I put them here I had some stitching tools here anyway I found a strip of magnet I didn't know where it went to and I just realized that magnet goes to this board that I used to hold my embroidery charts when I'm working on like a cross stitching project now that means that my bin is cleaned out and really truly only has book binding stuff in it down there no hidden surprises um I did something else that I can't remember I got the book done oh I rearranged some things in the closet um I combined paper making and dyeing distressing tools and supplies together in one bin so I have one less bin in here and it makes it easier to get to things like the polymer clay and some of the larger cutting tools when I need to get to them because there was like a bin on top of the bin like yeah I need to make it simpler not harder I think all right I think that's it for the minute I'll be back hey guys all right so one of the projects that I'm going to work on for October is part of the project pan art supply style that I've been doing all year um where I go through supplies especially ones that I haven't used much or have way too many of and I use them up use them and decide to give them away use them and decide to put them in regular rotation with my other art supplies you get the idea right use it or lose it um one of those things is pencils I know right so for those who don't know I used to teach um painting and drawing for Michaels um and a lot of these are from there from teaching not all but some um I haven't touched these since before we moved I found them in a bag they were very neatly put away I think there's a few more somewhere so hold on I have a rack over that way of mark making tools and each colors and have been like this with a label um and I saw this on somebody else's videos not my idea anyway all the orange things are in a bin together and my orange pencils are in there so when I want to color with an orange color pencil here's one right here I want a stabilo all pencil that is water soluble in the orange there's one there and I think I do still have a few Crayola pencils I'm not a huge fan of prismacolor but I do have some and there's also some like Derwent artist pencils so these I grab when I'm working on a project up here on our journal page these I grab or if I'm gonna do some drawing downstairs I know I'm gonna do say california poppies which are orange then I would grab a few things out of here and take them and use them in the meantime I've got all of these so and I don't even remember what but what all of these do and I need my glasses so I have a stabilo carb fellow which I think is sort of a pastel chalk pencil I have a lot of different kinds of graphite pencils the different hardnesses um some charcoal pencils pastel chalk pencils there went graph tint which I think is another kind of charcoal pastel pencil generals sketching pencil um a drafting pencil interesting let's come in a set um sketch and wash that one's water soluble there is a stabilo all pencil generals layout pencil love this pencil um so my point is that I want to talk to you about this we're going to go through like these pencils as part of what we do um next month and I'm going to try them the ones that I like I'm going to keep if I feel they need to stay in the set that they're in like all of these graph tint pencils then I'm going to find a different way to have them here in the art room because have them away in a bag it's too hidden I forget that I have them um but there are some up here that I want to take downstairs for instance this is a prismacolor um graphite pencil uh 6h um this is a double-ended currentosh uh colored pencil right on one side blue on the other and then those three I was just talking about the sketch and wash layout pencil and the stabilo pencil these I want to take downstairs um I generally don't erase anything in my daily drawing book which is why sometimes things turn out and sometimes I don't but you know but I'm going to take these um I may take a blending stump with me downstairs the rest of this is going to stay down here and we're going to work on using it or losing it in October I have a journal all set up we do have a list of special prompt words we have a name for the project it's called artpocalypse 2020 and the words will be released at the end of the month I think I already mentioned this in the vlog already I don't know in the footage somewhere um it'll be released a day or two before the first so you'll have time to like print it and all that stuff um and decide what you want to do if you want to like me uh work through a daily drawing book um trying out some new supplies um drawing wise or painting or um maybe you want to do some collage prompted by each thing maybe you want to do some photography maybe you want to do some writing whatever it is share it I'm going to combine combine project pan art supply style and the idea of using it or losing it like all together like kind of thing yeah anyway I'm going to grab these I'm going to go downstairs it's raining again yay air is clearing every time I check it it's getting lower and lower we're not below 100 yet I don't think but we're getting there so whoo I want to go to the we have to go to the grocery store um tomorrow um I'd like to go with him just because other than the trip like this morning for like an hour I haven't been out of the house and um to the point where I'm missing going to the grocery store which is something I hate doing so yeah I don't know I'd also like to resume my evening walks at some point that would be nice all right anyway that's it for the moment I'll be back bye so it's Friday evening it's 5 30 and we are our grand dog sitting so yeah pause in my face so it's Saturday morning I'm looking at the computer I still get it wrong it's Saturday morning September 19th 905 a.m um we're puppy sitting for a couple of days and here she comes up the stairs to see what I'm doing um anyway I am turning on the computer to check on a few things and we're gonna go out and run some errands and I can't believe I'm gonna say this but I'm looking forward to going to the grocery store it's how long I've been stuck in the house so we got a bunch of shopping done this morning we had some lunch we're now gonna go out for a walk and I am so enjoying being out in the fresh air yes I do have this with me just in case but hoping I don't need it all right I'll be back garage now because we finally got the last pair or set of feet in for the last cabinet that one on the floor that's going to go in the corner with the gardening stuff and sporting equipment in it I just have one question so new age yeah I'm gonna hashtag you down below but um so we just needed four feet with the adjustable lever leveling little things four of the feet brackets and four of the actual leveling feet for this cabinet we told you twice for the first time you sent us a bag of screws second time we got two boxes we got the four black feet with the leveling little things that we needed thank you because you can see they're on the cabinet you see that box over there yeah we got a second set of brackets same as the black ones only white if you don't believe me it took four weeks to fix the whole thing and you can see our cabinets are so white huh so a little confused they did come out nice we love the quality great product but yeah I don't know and you can see and you can see my dad fixed the outlets so yay yeah anyway we're gonna get the cabinet up we'll be back hey guys so it is sunday lunchtime but I forgot to close last week's vlog last night oops so as you saw in the previous clip the air has cleared up although things are still on fire I'm able to breathe and walk and it's all good so we'll hope they get the fires under control soon and out they have partial control but not a lot anyway it's been another weird week but what do you expect at Sea Apocalypse all right that's it for this week don't forget to like share and subscribe support the free content here on youtube and over in the facebook art groups uh check out the description for ways to do that by shopping in the atc shop or becoming a patron over in patreon or there's a number of different ways there's a link that says link tree and then my name in the description click on it you'll find all the places I am on the internet including ways to support so there you go if you have a favorite content creator here on youtube or an artist over in facebook they probably have a way to support them too so check out their video descriptions and if you can't figure out a way ask them all right that's it for this week stay safe stay creative stay healthy go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and yes lily go poop anyway all right talk to you later bye guys