these happen every week, I just happen to go to them much less often. you might think ‘matt, these are serious draw-ers to go and do this every week’ and you couldn’t be more wrong. some of them are very good at their own style and have a lot of ability, I would never describe it as a serious endeavor. more like a social hour with some strongly encouraged creativity.
Each week, there’s a sheet that goes around as people arrive, and everyone writes down at least one thing to draw; things like ‘mystery liquids’ or ‘how math makes you feel’ or ‘feelin puffy’. I personally am pretty bad at drawing, but it’s fun to try to think of something within my abilities to fulfill the prompts.
Also, and this can’t be overstated, everyone there is just really rad? like encouraging and nice and strange in the best ways. Kawan, Kevin, Akhil, Auguste, uh… everyone else who’s names I don’t know or remember because my mind is like a collander that doesn’t hold names until I’ve heard them 50 times or can look them up online…
This one was the first night I had my new-ish 105 1.4 for the Z. Technically it’s for an F mount, but with the FTZ adapter it’s great on my Z too. I think all of these were with it? Snappy focus, very shallow depth of field, but sharp as hell too. Really dig this lens. It also helps that I figured out some of the AF on the Z8; letting face detect do its thing is super helpful most of the time. It even works in manual focus if you set the camera right, who knew?
I went in to see the woman singing at one point, and the person singing was just puring their heart into it. Just really emoting to a room of like, 10 people, only half of whom were watching. I took a few photos, and showed them to Kawan; he said something along the lines of “How did you see that? I was just there standing next to you, and I didn’t see that.” I mean, part of it is the lens for sure, but part of it is choosing the right moments. And, not to toot my own horn too much, but I’ve been doing this in some capacity for more than a quarter century at this point. If I couldn’t pull a rabbit out of my hat at least some of the time, it’d be time to hang that hat up.
Speaking of rabbits out of hats… I need to go to bed. I should figure out how to do these during the day, maybe I’d find that easier? When I’m not so exhausted? Nah, I always write best when I’m fighting to stay awake. It’s like a natural deadline, just means I have to push a bit.
