I have a problem: I define my “ego” as always being right. For this reason, I find offense in correction, I’m afraid of being questioned, and I’m afraid of having my errors pointed out to me. I’m also afraid of rejection, and maybe this is why I’m afraid of asking for help.

What can solve this? How can I replace this thought?

A more correct way to define the “ego” is to see it as always improving: it is never really “there”. Like a pilot who always has to correct a plane’s direction, a pilot who must always consult his co-pilot and traffic control. Pilots who always thought of themselves as right, many crashed their planes. “Always improving” is consistent with being “good”, skillful, and competent. Like golf. You know that not every shot will be a good one, but you are confident enough to enjoy the game. This is because you do have skills. It’s just that we never ever assume that our understanding or skills are perfect.

Ego must also love practice. Now this may be hard. Starting is hard, making mistakes is hart, and most of all, hitting a wall is frustrating, and hard. But one can come to love practice if one does not seek perfection at the moment. Let me explain.

We love to set goals and achieve results. But sometimes once those goals are achieved, there’s nothing more to prove. Or, finding that the effort to achieve those goals turns out to be much harder than expected we turn to distractions or procrastination. The solution in this case is to love the PRACTICE, leaving the accomplishment of the goal as something more open ended. Something like a by-product. Put another way, we can try not to look forward to the reward at the end, but the reward of just doing things.

Now, this kind of INFINITE GAME mentality is compatible with pushing people or oneself to achieve results, particularly because PUSHING PROMOTES PRACTICE. Golf isn’t my go-to sport: ff there were no invitations to games, I would have little incentive to practice. Golfers sometimes overdo it out of competitiveness, or out of passion: injuries from golf come from pushing yourself too hard. Excess aside, if you loved for practice you will also push others to push. Great teams and great friends “push” each other, and make practice a fun game.

I may need to find something to love in some of the things that I do or need to do. I know I love writing once I’m into it, but it’s not usually easy to start, especially on technical writing work. But the thought of getting published does get in the way: I focus on the publication and not on the enjoyable part of writing and even of being corrected. Sure there are deadlines, but an open-ended spirit can still apply to writing. Sure one has to produce a certain number of publications, but if you could see the publication effort as a process to enjoy in itself and see the publication itself as a bonus, not only will you want to write more but you will also want to do anything that will improve your writing, including seeking criticism.

Make no mistake: not all corrections will be easy to take. One reason may be that one is actually right. But it would be wrong TO FEEL BAD. If one is right, then it’s part of the game to defend one’s position, while being open to the merits of the other side. Again, this will not always go pleasantly because all correction in proud people will always hit the ego.

What one should aim at is enjoying the game, and scoring must lead to that pleasure. Scoring is both a sign of progress and a sign of life. Nothing more. This world puts a lot of emphasis on achievements and results. Maybe that is wrong. Results do mean you contribute, but one has little control over whether one’s contribution will be used. One has more control in working. Also, playing the game is itself part of the contribution. By playing the INFINITE game you ensure that you will always love being in it, which could even give you the flexibility to achieve outputs that others are not looking at. This may be part of being creative. And it also helps push others to be better.

Again, make no mistake about it: creative people have always been criticized. One reason for this is that they love the game so much that they put value in results that other people find strange. Later on their products might be appreciated. But there’s a lot of hurt along the way, even for people with lots of talent. It is also certain that creatives will have to be business savvy and must enjoy the sales and pitching process. They know that they have to pitch to people for whom the game itself is different, and whose values about what makes an enjoyable result will be very different. Especially if one is pitching to other creatives.

Of course, creatives understand other creatives, but this does not mean that they share the same values, either for the results or for how the game is played. It should be part of your ego to enjoy your game as you play it, but also to appreciate that others will have different styles. Enjoying the diversity EVEN IF IT WILL BE PAINFUL should be part of the creative person’s ego definition.

There’s a lot to be said about being open about the things you love. It’s about love expressing itself. When a person hides his values and fails to talk about the things he loves it shows the low measure of his love. This is not to say that the person who loves should be stubborn. It all comes down to sharing. If you don’t want to share, it may be because you are afraid that people will not appreciate it. Maybe you’re right. It’s almost certain you are right. But that’s not why you express your love. You express your love because you love; the reaction of the others are just data, they are not your objective. If you make it your desire that others love like you do, you will be frustrated all the time and eventually you will drop your love.

People have been discouraged because of how others reacted to their love. The reaction may have irked them. Or the perceived offense was great. But it is more likely that they have never really loved what they said they did.

Make no mistake about it: one’s purpose in life will be a cause of annoyance and frustration for oneself and for the others, even among people who believe. Sharing some purpose does not mean sharing all other values. Love does not mean always being in the clouds and accepts these differences, and reactions. Love accepts there will be doubts.

So, decide what you love practicing:

Don’t be apologetic. You love them, you love them.

I have to include working hard, which does not necessarily mean overworking. Work hard but work smart. I love that.

I think I will love the stainless steel egg timer I use to write these essays.

Top LR: Blue (300 gsm); white hot press (250 gsm); white cold press (250 gsm); grey (90 gsm); brown or natural (250 gsm); capuccino (90 gsm); black (250 gsm)

I recently gave a short talk on my drawing process. I described the paper, medium and brushes, subject selection, posting, and drawing as a business. This is a summary of that talk.

The Project

I began a challenge to draw one plate every day for a year starting September 20, 2019, and to post one plate a day on Instagram. I’ve kept it up for 21 months now. Why the challenge in the first place? Why do people climb mountains? Same answer.

I aimed to draw or paint, from quick sketches of as little as a few minutes to paintings taking hours.

The Process

Materials: Paper.

All my plates are done on A5 paper, small to help ensure completion of a project within a day. I use a variety of sketchbooks of 90 grams/square meter (gsm) to watercolor paper of 310 gsm, hot press and cold press, white, gray-, black- or blue-toned, and capuccino. I use the heavier papers (250 gsm at least) for water-based media and the lighter ones for quick sketches with pen or brushpen.

Materials: Medium and brushes

I started with watercolor pencils then transitioned to watercolor, gouache, and acrylic, the latter two being my favorites. Brands include Pebeo, Sakura, Reeves and Prang. I use Staedtler pencils 4B, HB, and 2H, Tombow and Arteza watercolor brush pens, gel pens, fountain pens, a Tori brush, and others. I have also tried digital art, but it’s not to my liking.

I use brushes with different shapes and sizes, the same brushes for all the media, making sure to clean them between projects.

I usually begin by making quick, light pencil marks with a 4B pencil because marks easily with the lightest of touches. I pay close attention to lengths and angles but not to details such as windows or tiles. I do not draw perspective lines. I’m not so much copying exactly but rather letting the pencil “play” over the page. I then draw the definitive lines using stronger pressure on the pencil or a water soluble gel pen.

Then I color, painting from the top to bottom, background to foreground. I paint the blocks first. Then I paint in from dark to light usually. Then I put the tones; I may or may not ink the lines again.

I do “cheat”. I add textures and adjust shades using watercolor pencils that I may or may not wet later. I never shade a painting with a pencil. I add white details with a gel pen. My favorite technique is using brush pens (Tombow) to add shades. The gray brush pens for toning make colors look more realistic.

Subject selection

Most of my subjects are photographs downloaded from Instagram. I prefer architectural subjects; I do figure drawing from time to time. I browse IG then save what I may want to paint later. I use photos for two reasons: first, unlimited subjects; second, I’m not really good with composition. I follow especially good photographers.

I work in batches. I first decide on the paper and how many plates of that paper. Say, 10 hot pressed white paper for one batch, and 10 black for the next. Then I select from my collection of photos and save images in the order in which I will paint them. That way, I put all the agony of choosing what to draw outside of the drawing process itself.

But I leave the room open for inspiration. Quick sketches are part of this; they are not planned. I sketch while waiting in line or while waiting for my order in a restaurant. I draw from life, from IG photos, or make quick sketch versions of other projects. In my ideal world, I do not take photos.

I do not take commissions.

Posting and metrics

I use two metrics to track performance. First, the number of plates completed per day; aim is one (1) per day. Second, the number of original plates posted on IG, also 1/day. I overshoot those goals: more than 60 completed plates right now are in line to be posted.

Since I post on IG, one might ask how I consider the number of “likes”. My goal is to draw and not to get “likes”. Followers span the spectrum of taste; as a marketing rule of thumb if the number is at least 5% of the number of followers then the art work was “liked” by the general audience. But a “like” says nothing about aesthetic merits unless it came from a real art critic. The number of such followers can be as small as 1; the number of “likes” one gets from them are few.

Who gets them

This activity is a hobby. I have freely given out works to a few friends and family and I certainly will be giving out more. Painting could be a source of living for me, but it isn’t for one reason: priorities. One makes a big jump when converting a hobby into a business, that jump is called “gaining traction”. The marketing and administrative tasks represent a significant investment in time and effort that I do not want to make right now.

But, why not, if opportune, I’ll sell.

LR: Sculpture by Jose Ismael Fernandez; album cover of Prince (1977)

I think it was Covey who wrote that it is better to be in the top 25% in any two areas rather than at the top 1% or 2% of one area. It’s very hard to be the best in one field, far more realistic to be very good in two. Extremely rare is one at the top 1% in several fields, like Prince (1958-2016) who was a virtuoso at multiple musical instruments and considered one of the best singer-composers of his time.

You can define these fields, but it could lead to bizarre results.

Sir Henry Wickham (1846-1928) was bad at business, but very good at adventure and at spinning tales. His only success was to smuggle a batch of rubber seeds out of Brazil. He quietly collected about 70,000 seeds from growers, falsely declared them “academic specimens”, then shipped them to London, The descendants of these seeds gave rise to industrial scale rubber production in British Asia, breaking the South American monopoly on rubber, a very valuable material in the Industrial Age. That he “stole” them and that he was “chased” by gunboats were added by himself 30 years after the events. Finally and grudgingly knighted at the age of 74, he died poor and separated from his wife, who had left him years before because of his obsession with rubber.

My guess is that one is more likely to achieve some success if one is good in two fields regardless of what these fields are. Though I said Wickham’s was a bizarre case, I give him credit for his achievement. That he died poor and unhappy does not detract from the fact that he did succeed at something.

Many will disagree. Many will say that true success makes one happy and makes others happy. Some would say that this is excellence rather than success.

I prefer to judge success this way. A sculptor makes a statue, that is success. The statue makes the sculptor a better artist, that is success. The sculptor’s work ethic then carries over into other areas of his life and in the life of others, that is excellence.

Now, a sculptor who was also a good guitarist without being a virtuoso with clay or notes produces art and is produced by his art, and carries over a creative and productive work ethic in a way that is unique to him.

Because people have unique combinations of talents, it makes little sense to compare one’s achievements with those of others. That is, outside of benchmarking, where one compares oneself with another on some aspect only. But parity is psychologically unhealth and sometimes physically dangerous: the frog who tried to be as big as the bull blew itself to pieces. Of course, parity can be reached on some measure, say on the size of one’s bank account. But that is never all there is. I would rather think of achievement as “contribution”, which I feel captures one’s unique role in the world of work.

LR: Bookshelf in Russia; Cure of Ars room in Ars, France; Left Bank Books in New York City

A type of ad that keeps coming up in Instagram and Youtube tries to sell the idea that one could read 52 books in a year. A variation tries to sell summaries so that one can read in minutes what would normally take a week. These ads claim that Elon Musk, Warren Buffett or some big name reads lots of books and so can you. I own many books, I recognize their value, and I love to read, but not at that level. Reading is like pressing pause on life, and one does not make such choices lightly.

I just came across a Youtube video on German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s The Art of Not Reading (6 Rules for Reading). Since I’ve been a fan after The Art of Being Right I took a look and confirmed that Schopenhauer is not against reading itself, which would be incomprehensible.

The video begins with a quote from the man: “It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.”

Here are the 6 Rules:

Rule 1: Don’t read too much. Reading takes time and much reading suggests one has much time on one’s hands, or as Schopenhauer wrote, “If a man does not want to think, the safest plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.”

Rule 2: Think about what you’ve read. Don’t just stuff your brain. “Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.”

Rule 3: Focus on the classics. Most people want only what’s hot off the press, but much of it is trash. Instead, choose the company of books that have stood the test of time, the classics.

Rule 4: Read primary texts. Most people read books about authors. Schopenhauer says to go to the original sources. I thank my college teachers who taught us to read Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in the original Spanish. Guy de Maupassant is best in French as Roald Dahl is in English; even ghosts and murderers sound better in their native language.

Rule 5: Good books should be read twice. A subsequent reading adds the light of hindsight, a different mood and a different perspective.

Rule 6: Bad books are poison. Simply, don’t waste time on them.

Unfortunately, there is no Rule #7 on Schopenhauer’s Recommended Reading List.

One way I judge quality has to do with secondhand books: I look for traces left by their previous owners: underlines, highlights and marginal notes.

One of my favorite shops is the San Francisco Book Co. on 17 Rue Monsieur Le Prince in Paris. Apart from the excellent titles, the previous book owners’ marginal notes suggest most were highly intelligent — diplomats, executives or professors — who lived in Paris for a few years. In my last trip I sought out a biography of Louis Pasteur by Darmon and found a secondhand copy in the Latin Quarter chez Gibert Joseph, a favorite for French language books. How about Amazon? I once paid good money for a copy of Guitton’s Le Nouvel Art de Penser, secondhand. You can’t count on Amazon to tell you about marginal notes, but I had read this book before.

Seek out these little shops in whatever major city.

How about Philippine bookstores? None compare to those above, but Fully Booked is the most decent. From here I’ve gotten new non-fiction titles that I’ve used in classes: several on biology and on cognitive biases; and Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence that I have used in my technical writing class. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel was just the first of several books of his that I have. I got my first copy of Wellman’s The Art of Cross Examination in an academic bookstore that has since closed, a book I lost, then replaced with a second from National Bookstore, which otherwise I go to only for art supplies. Finally, a word on the ubiquitous secondhand store Booksale. A dump with air conditioning, Booksale has some good fiction, but I only choose from four or five authors and not often. But true modern classics, e.g., from Winston Churchill, are hard to find there.

I should’ve taken Schopenhauer more seriously, for only 1 in 10 of my books is worth reading twice.

St. Jean Marie Vianney (1786-1859) owned no books personally and read little outside of what he needed for his work; but what he read got into sermons that made him famous throughout Europe. A little book fasting would do so much good in these times.

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Like many, I see myself as healthy or sick. But maybe I’m neither; maybe I’m both.

I first dived into Zen Buddhism and Taoism more than 20 years ago. I practiced taichi every day for a few years until I developed lower back issues and I’ve been practicing zazen (zen meditation) a little more regularly. Taoism on the surface looks like alchemy, but I prefer to think of it as scientific theorizing using 3,000-year old vocabulary. Zen is not a religion. British philosopher Alan Watts (1915-1973) suggests it is a mental practice, more psychotherapy than creed. I practice Zen as such. I haven’t been inside the Mahayana Buddhist temple next door to my house (see above) but I haven’t been inside. I have the impression that Mahayana is closer to religion than is Zen.

So I’m not a religious Buddhist. I don’t read the scriptures nor use buddha beads. I do not adopt their view that black is the same as non-black as both are part of one reality. Readers familiar with the Taoist yin-yang symbol, which fans of Koreanovelas will recognize, might understand that black is inside white, and vice versa, and that each manifests in cycles. Western philosophers might see in yin-yang an apparent rejection of the law of non-contradiction.

There are benefits to stretching that law a little. In matters like health, it is indeed possible to say that one is healthy and not healthy while asserting that one is either SARSCoV2-positive or negative. The benefit of saying that one is healthy and not healthy is the attitude that it does not really matter. Health is accidental, but being present and real is essential.

I am not my achievements, I am not my failures either. I can cycle between winning and losing as I cycle between flu and feeling great. One’s life at the center is what matters, and even that life cycles through an even large circle. That’s not exactly reincarnation — which I do not buy. However, I do think of sleeping and waking as a kind of death and life cycle. Buddhists and Taoists think that past, present, and future are one reality that cycles, denying cause-and-effect as a result. But in reality everyone acts to bring about some effects. Karma or retribution at the core of Buddhist ethics is cause-and-effect on the moral sphere.

Changes occur all around me. But am I aware that I am a rock in a stream that could either stay put or tumble about? Most people are “caught up” in so many things and end up defining their worth by what they have, do, or achieve. They apply practices such as kaizen to achieve great goals and become rich, while others do the same and stay poor. Yet, whether one is rich or poor, the question that most matters is whether I could trust that rock enough to lay my foot on it. In other words, are you happy? Do you make others happy? Central to the practice of zazen is not to focus on one thing, not even a thought, to be aware of everything including the chaos and not be captured by it. That’s the beginning of being centered. The best thing I got from zazen was a heightened ability to concentrate without being obsessed about any one thing. Some would call this detachment, which is not the same as indifference.

I said earlier that one can deny causality when one believes in cycles. The problem as I see it is that the yin-yang symbol appears flat; but, one can spiral rather than circle around a spot. Still, I could use this flatness as a tool. I can refuse to give myself too much credit for anything, to feel excessively guilty or ashamed.

Readers may recall the Pepsi 349 scandal of 1992. Briefly, cash value printed on bottlecaps could be exchanged for real money if a number on the cap was drawn from a controlled pool. The problem was Pepsi printed hundreds of thousands of P1M bottlecaps with the uncontrolled number 349, and announced that number by mistake. Suddenly thousands of people were claiming P1 million each! Some poor people from the provinces were known to have sold all their property to buy air tickets to Manila in order to claim their prize. Riots, lawsuits, even bombings of Pepsi trucks were in and out of the headlines for the next 14 years. Although Pepsi eventually won in court, in the Philippines the brand remains far behind Coca Cola to this day.

What would I have done had I gotten a 349 bottlecap? Would I feel entitled to the full reward as many people did? Would I hold on to the bottlecap then join a class action suit? Or would I have settled for a P500 goodwill compensation offered by Pepsi? I asked myself that question in 1992. It was obvious that a genuine error was committed, the payouts were too large, the cause-and-effect picture was too complicated, and I believed Pepsi would eventually win in court, which it finally did in 2006.

The people who sued believed Pepsi was the cause of their misery. They gave the company too much credit for what they felt, and then promised themselves shame and guilt if they did not fight.

Most causes and effects connect as a web rather than a linear chain. We simplify to linear by ignoring minor causes or making assumptions to avoid information overload. The slippery slope is dangerous because it depends on assumptions about unseen causes. Indeed, all cause-and-effect relationships are incomplete. Obsession over “getting it right” may be behind anxiety, despair over it leads to depression. Imagine a ball on the sea calmly bobbing up and down over the waves. The ball is not a fatalist; it is not indifferent or unaffected, but its acceptance of chaos allows it to act calmly. A calm mind is better able to solve problems.

The fact that my thinking is part of the web always makes me a part of any problem relevant to me. If I died tonight all my current problems would cease to be a problem. Sometimes, sleeping over it opens a new angle on a problem. That’s one way to see sleep as death and waking up as reincarnation.

When things normalize in this part of the world I might pay a visit to the Buddhist temple next door.

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I recently read Deep Work by Cal Newport. He wrote that a few hours of deep work a day is enough to be very productive. Deep work, tough on the brain, is focused and completely undistracted; a few hours is 1.5 to 4 hours. Newport, an academic, wrote to intellectuals. Skill workers who might have read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and his theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert will appreciate Newport’s practical ideas.

Many will find it hard to find undistracted time, what with social media, work and family. But I think that what makes finding such time hard is the belief that one needs to set aside large blocks of it. The idea of kaizen (see my previous blog) is that only a small effort every day is all that’s needed. I remember this book Baby Steps by the fictional psychiatrist Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss) in the 1991 movie What About Bob. Baby Steps is also the idea behind the painting I made based on a photo by a friend, @scenebymelinda (left-most image above), which is now my cellphone’s wallpaper. Whoever has climbed a mountain knows what we’re talking about.

A typical intellectual schedule, for example, may consist of 2 hours of writing and/or data analysis and another 1 to 2 hours of reading scholarly journals. Other work such as meetings, editing manuscripts, writing letters, networking, and gathering data don’t usually involve the creativity and hard thinking that goes into deep work.

Many feel that their job makes it impossible to achieve much with little; they feel they need 16 hours of work a day to get results. Newport has this advice: block out time as “scheduled productivity” during the day, then protect them, respect them. Scheduled productivity allows him to leave work at 5:30 pm to devote himself to his family. This schedule did not stop him from publishing up to 9 papers in one year, and that was his tenure year.

Newport is a computer scientist; other professions might require a different kind of schedule. I do not imagine an entrepreneur, for example, as having a mathematician’s schedule. Yet, even entrepreneurs will benefit from 1 to 2 hours of undistracted strategic thinking.

One can eliminate distraction in many ways. My favorite is to switch off the Wifi. Others find a secret place or instruct their secretaries not to schedule any meetings between such and such hour. Some people have focused times every day, others have one focused day per week. I have a friend who escaped into a countryside retreat for a few weeks to write up his dissertation.

Concentration is tiring, but it can be relaxing. A book read with leisure, or practicing jazz improvisation are cognitively demanding but in a way different from doing math. I think that activities on one side of the brain are rest with respect to those on the other side. A painter can rest by solving math problems. Rest activities are also relaxing because they are not the “main thing”: they do take perhaps half an hour at most. Yet even kaizen will apply to them.

All other activities outside of deep work are rest, distraction, or what Franklin Covey in The Four Disciplines of Execution calls the “whirlwind”: meetings, phonecalls, firefighting, all the necessary and urgent matters that we have to address. Because the whirlwind is part of our job, Covey suggests to get the most concentrated work done early.

Some people wake up every day at 5:00 a.m. and get something important done by 9:00 a.m. before the whirlwind begins. What you might achieve in those early hours is often all the deep work you will need.

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My meeting today went well. The people were supportive as lapses were recognized. I, the moderator, prepared my speech beforehand, but it wasn’t all that necessary. However, just writing it made clear what I wanted out of this meeting.

As if to endorse this benefit of writing, Isa P had gifted me earlier that day with a fountain pen (she’s on her way out to pursue advanced studies). If she had gifted me with a Les Paul guitar she would never have gone wrong either. There’s a link: I often write never to read again what I wrote, like musical notes that once played dissolve into the air and are not repeated.

Writing and music are two of many ways I arrange things in my mind especially in an anxious situation. Prayer, written out, is the best. Breathing works, the kind called zazen which, if practiced regularly, could change one’s character. Zen Buddhism hinges on that process. Art, requiring concentration and skill, calms if at the moment of creation one has no emotions, though one may have strong ones before, after, and during breaks. That’s what they do, painting, zazen, and writing. Smoking does it also (I gave up smoking CIGARETTES).

Some things that look soothing are not. After the first few images, browsing Instagram is no longer calming for me. That’s because I select samples for study, and decision making is taxing. Now tired I fall into an easy “maybe” habit — maybe the next, maybe the next. In time I will turn into a couch potato. Or a ranter, more hotwired but no less miserable.

Small efforts lead to big effects over time — kaizen. (Interestingly, the practice was employed in American industries during WWII, then popularized by Japanese enterprises who gave it the Japanese name by which it is known everywhere.) Small things done everyday like IG don’t look catastrophic because they are small, but writing two paragraphs or playing one song daily don’t look awesome either. Kaizen needs faith seen from the point of launch, but it is as inevitable when seen from the point of arrival.

So, here’s the plan to achieve immense growth with very little effort done daily: do what you love.

On March 15, 2020, the Philippine government announced a nationwide lockdown in response to the Covid pandemic. All schools, malls, restaurants, most offices, and public transportation within and between cities were closed. Today, August 24, schools are still closed but classes are online, and most offices and public transport have begun operating.

The lockdown has been good for my art. Much of the improvement came from daily practice over the last 6 months. New materials brought changes as well. Gouache and toned paper were discoveries for me.

The drawings above are from the first few days of the lockdown. I preferred pen and ink up to this point because I felt it was easier and took less time out of a busy schedule. The lockdown gave me a bit more time to experiment with color. Below are some work from the early part of the lockdown in March:

Most of these pictures were done using watercolor and Tombow brush pens. I experimented with water-soluble and permanent pens, with inking before or after coloring, and with watercolor graphite.

The picture on the lower right was of my favorite bossa nova album: La Fusa (1974) featuring Vinicius De Moraes, Maria Creuza, and Toquinho. I have not discovered black paper yet, so the painting was awful.

Other watercolors for the month include:

I “discovered” gray-toned paper In the middle of April 2020. These were the early trials:

The advantage of toned paper is that the base color is in the middle of a spectrum, in contrast with white paper. Strong light and snow come out easily. Watercolor, however, was not a good idea, for me unless I did not aim at brilliance.

Colored pencil are opaque and let little of the gray through; however, they are cumbersome for large areas. I considered gouache, an opaque water-based medium also called poster color.

And why not use black paper? I did, of course, but I did not work on a new La Fusa painting on black paper until more than a year later. And it was with acrylic, not gouache.