Day Trip to Tūja (picture-heavy!)

Decided that I should stop spending all my weekends at home and that I should go on a walking trip. I had wanted to visit one of the stony beaches in Vidzeme, the northeastern part of Latvia and chose to go to Tūja (pronounced "tooya"), one of the villages on the coast. Riga (not shown on the map) is just a bit southwest of Carnikava (shown on map).
I got my friend Edite to come with me and we arrived to the Tūja highway turn bus stop a bit after 11am after an hour-and-a-half's ride from Riga. After checking out the bus return times on the spot, we went a bit through the forest, where we found some late cowberries:



It had been raining and snowing (wet, immediately melting snow) the previous day so the forest was somewhat foggy.







While searching for a place where we could exit to the sea from the village without ruthlessly crossing private property, we encountered a huuuuuge puddle. That's me in the red skirt (despite the looks, a long skirt is actually pretty comfortable for walking on day trips and warm, too :V )



Edite had wisely put on rubber boots and feared no puddles.



Somewhere along the way I gave Edite a crash course on taking photos of flowing water - wide apperture, long exposure, tripod (which was absent here, lalala).



In the end we gave up and asked someone on the road about how far we'd have to go to get to the beach without crossing someone's property, and he just allowed us to get across his yard. Yay~
We found a water spring forming patterns in the beach. Edite took a photo of me taking a photo of stuff floating in the water.











At some point we started gathering sea-polished pieces of glass and each went home with a handful of these. Hands are mine.







While taking a stroll through the dune forest, we came upon this shriveled fly agaric. Shroom jokes ensued, because I had been telling about how Siberan shamans use them while on our way to the sea. Then, coming again to the beach we noticed a conformation of clouds, which without a doubt resembled a mushroom. More giggles.





Slowly marching back to Tūja~





Fooling around with Edite's hat before reaching the finish line - bus stop again. I know this is an emo angle of taking pictures and, frankly, I don't really care. :B



All in all this was a very nice trip. Tiring and I didn't get much else done today, but a pleasant change nonetheless. With that I bid you all goodnight.

FIN

Gull. Notes to self about drawing #1

One of the newer uploads on my dA profile, although the picture on it's own is quite old, a Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) at the Central market in Riga, hugely zoomed.



Artblock is torture gnawing at my sides. I've come to the realization, though, that the root of it most likely lies in my lack of knowing many basic aspects of drawing and the untrained eye for seeing, so in the nearest time I'll be trying to spare a bit of time every day to read and doodle a bit. Basically, it will be a journey of learning to draw from the basics, in hopes that I can regain the joy that drawing brings and maybe some day be able to create pictures in a way I see them in my mind.

--> This is a useful site with tons of drawing lectures, by the way. <--

Starting from the top, today's lesson, discovering my natural hatching stroke direction(s). I'm left-handed in drawing, so my strokes seem to work best when executed from upper left to lower corner, or straight down. Any other direction either leaves curved pressure marks... or is just freakishly irregular. I'm going on a day trip tomorrow and hope to try out the paper rotation trick in the evening.

Dream #1

10.10.10. (morning)

I meet a black dragon (shaped much like the Night Fury form HTTYD; I had viewed fanart of this movie on the previous evening) in a conifer forest at night, seated on a rocky ledge, surrounded by a clearing. I am afraid that it will burn me, but it doesn't. Gradually, over days we become acquaintances. There are some meetings with people in-between, about which I remember only that I was afraid they would find out that I had made friends with a dragon – I perceived that sharing this knowledge will make both me and the dragon vulnerable. After a while I silently lead the dragon to a wooden shed and it willingly enters it, to be transported by air to where I live. The dragon can only fit in the shed by curling up, but it doesn't seem to have anything against this. I fight an undefined antagonist while on the way home with the shed and the dragon, and he falls to death through the clear blue sky. At home I enter the shed and touch the dragon's cool, smooth skin. Then I learn that a former classmate (who in reality had recently moved to study in Southern Germany) had died and that it is yet questioned if her body will be transported home.

September Requests

I'm still in an art rut, so I took a few requests on the DragCave forum. One of those is still on hold/in progress, because, sadly, I've been quite nervous of the pencil lately. /sigh

Ice dragon adolescent for which I received no feedback from the requester. :-/


Shuckle (Pokemon) in its shiny variety for satyr76.