Locomotoring

This is my third ink and second art. The first two are from the fourth decade of my life and form a contiguous piece of art. The very first ink is cherry blossom. The second ink extends the first with a young playful elephant playing amidst the cherry blossoms. The style of the first art is a rather non-traditional tattoo and more like a watercolor sketch. I have been going after my spirit animals. The land animal is the elephant. The water animal is the humpback whale. If I were Anyanwu from Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, I would shape shift into these animals. My first art is showing signs of fading. I could get it touched up, but I am embracing the wabi-sabi. I still have a decade to find my wind animal spirit. My tattooist, Dawei Zhang is semi-retired now. The whale showcases Dawei’s skills as a photo-realistic artist.

My pumpkin carving journey continues – this is the third year. Following last year’s debacle with Ravana and the stupendous effort of carving 10 pumpkins, I decided to stick to one pumpkin this year. I had chosen Goddess Kali as the theme. She is one angry Goddess with skull and sword vibe and she had felt very apt for Halloween. I thought I was being clever when I had chatGPT generate the template. Only when I printed the template on the day of Halloween, I realized it was too small and carving skills needed for the template far exceeded what I had to offer. So, I shaved the pumpkin instead. Not that shaving is any easier than carving, but it was either shaving the pumpkin or quit. And I wasn’t going to quit. I decided that I was going to be wiser next year. For this year, I was simply going to be grateful if my sharp instruments didn’t slip and I didn’t accidentally chop of Goddess’s eye or nose or tongue.