Kat Johnston

Tag: blue

  • Sketch: Just one of those days.

    Kat Johnston Sketch – A poor little bunny, discarded to the corner. Oh what days we have, hmm?

    I actually meant to do this post last night! Eep! However, what with having to do a trillion other things, it kinda just slipped by the wayside. No matter – it is up now, and that is what counts.

    So as you can probably tell (yes, two in a row is telling), I’m back on a bunny fix. I stole out one of the ikea sketchbooks I bought the other week and I’ve been drawing a bunny on each page – see, you can even sneak a peek at a disgruntled bunny using his ears as a comb-over on the next page if you squint at this one. The pages are fairly thin.

    So far, I’m up to 27 bunnies, only two of which you see here. Perhaps I will dust off the ole Kat Johnston flickr account and get to posting the entire sketchbook up there when it is completed. So far I don’t have a page in there that doesn’t have at least a few redeeming qualities.

    The only rules I have set myself are these: at least one bunny per page, and the colour of the pens used cycles in this order: pink, purple, blue, green, orange. Because I bought more of the coloured bic biros, and despite the fact that they are leaky little bastards, they’re also very fun to play with – if only for the fact that I might turn around later and go ‘are there any trends in what I do based on the colour I draw with? Does it influence me more than a little?’ I guess we’ll just have to see – only finishing off the sketchbook might reveal that one, and that might be a little ways away. I feel as if I’ve barely left a divot yet!

  • Sketch: Scruff.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: Scruff the owl. He’s cute, he’s scruffy… he’s Scruff!

    This, my dears, is Scruff. Although an unassuming little owl, he does have a rather interesting way about him. He’s enthusiastic – its what sets him apart from all the other owls – nay, all the other creatures. He’s not the best, he’s not the brightest, there’s certainly smarter, fitter, and more beautiful creatures out there, but none may match him with the pure passion with which he approaches things. Everything he does, he does with a raw enthusiasm most have seemingly been weaned off of.

    Can you ever watch a child, with their eyes shining bright, their hands simply covered in every colour imaginable with the sheet in front of them smeared with the most ungodly mess of paint, and not smile? For sure, what they have produced is generally fairly lacking on the artistic front, and things are undoubtedly going to be a pain when it comes to the ‘cleaning up after’ stage, but the look on their little faces when they hold up their hands so proudly, saying ‘look what I’ve done!’ – well… its something I don’t see so much in adults. This pure, enthusiastic joy of creating for the sake of creating, or doing something just for the process of doing something, rather than necessarily the end result… I like it.

    My hubby can tell you that every so often he will come home to find me engrossed in something or other – it doesn’t really matter what – only to see me giggling with insane glee at discovering something… or perhaps figuring out ‘ahh, so I can do things this way’, or getting a stroke of a pen just right to the point where I just know that I cannot touch it even once more, because what I have already created is simply perfect. Its rather incredible just how much fun one can have when you’re just doing something simply because you enjoy it, not because you have to do it, but because you just really really want to.

    Oh… and I still paint with my fingers. There really is just no better way sometimes.

  • Sketch: Waiting for the bus.

    Kat Johnston Sketch – waiting for the bus with over a hundred other people… is rather an interesting exercise.

    So, yesterday I popped into town in order to fetch some fimo and a few other choice bits and pieces which can’t easily and immediately be obtained through use of either an internet connection or the bribing of a conveniently loving husband. After a wonderful, if exhausting few hours of looking around at shops, picking up books, jewelry findings, and other bits and pieces, it was time to go home. I decided I’d take the train.

    Long story short: bad idea. The power lines over the Ferny Grove track (which is the one I require to get home) had fallen, or something of the like, making that particular route home unusable. It was just cresting three, and every bus in the city was swept up in the usual daily rush to get children home from school. Thus one, and then two train loads of people wanting to get home were lined up across from the Brunswick Street Station, waiting and waiting for fill-in buses that were taking quite a while to come.

    I found it amusing, though many others, of course, did not. I love watching people (no, not in a creepy way!), so a day like this, although slightly annoying, yes, is also good in its own way. I guess I just find it fascinating to see how so many different people react to such a thing happening.

    There was the annoyed person, of course, who seemed to believe that the customer service rep standing there in the middle of the street in his bright orange safety vest must have been at the top of the Queensland Transport hierarchy – because lord knows he must certainly have the power to order people to ‘fix things’ and ‘get buses now’.

    There was the talkative old gentleman who was quite willing to fill me in on his day – where he came from and where he had to get back to, as well as to ponder on the unfortunate nature of the situation on those who did have appointments to meet. He started talking to me because I rebandaged someone’s wrist, when they were unable to do so themselves.

    Then of course was the schoolgirl who had no qualms about having a long and intimate conversation with her boyfriend, or once-boyfriend about his perchance for cheating, seemingly oblivious to the number of ears quite happily listening in to the mini-melodrama laid before them.

    All of this – a buzz of a crowd of over a hundred tired commuters murmuring against a backdrop of over-loud music from the strip club just behind us, while someone saw fit to film a portion for the evening news – it is just not something that happens every day now, is it?

    Is it wrong that I was close to laughter for most of the time I was waiting? That I found it so incredibly amusing, that on the one day in quite some time that I venture out far enough from home as to require public transport it decides to break down on me?

    People-watching is a very enjoyable pasttime, I must say. Especially under conditions such as these. That’s not to say that I want to see people inconvenienced for my sake, so that I may observe them – but I can’t say that I entirely regret not taking the bus home in the first place to avoid the redirection of passengers from the train.

  • Sketch: George. He’s waiting for the train. The train is not coming for George.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: This is George. He’s waiting for a train that is never going to come.

    I’m not sure if this is going to be a short post today, or a rather longer one. I think I might keep my musings on the Brisbane public transport system, the depressing crush of humanity with its buzzing need to be heard on the matter of waiting for buses, and the music played by strip joints at 3pm on a Monday afternoon to myself for this post. You might be able to expect more on that one tomorrow. Needless to say, train line out of commission yesterday equals my twenty twenty hindsight to kick in and say ‘you know, I just should have taken the bus.’

    As it is today, with numerous computer upsets and a missing spindle of dvds devoted to anime, I think it is time for me to trundle off to bed and curl up for a while: either to sleep, or to continue on with Professor Layton and the Curious Village (a Nintendo DS game, for the uninitiated). I think it depends on how soon my eyes close when my head hits the pillow as to whether it shall be the former or latter of those two options. I’ll let you know how it turns out tomorrow!

  • Mmhmm. This is a post.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: oh yes… you’ve guessed it. She’s not incredibly pleased right now at all, is she?

    No Sanu stuff today, just a quick sketch which is probably an all too good reflection of my mood from the early afternoon onwards for various reasons. Luckily though, some comfort lasagna and peppermint tea can do well to sooth a little grumpiness… especially when it comes with a side of cat-cuddling.

    I’m keeping this post short today – I think it might be time to lure the hubby to bed for some snuggles rather than sitting in front of a computer for even a minute longer.