Fall is in the Air

Fall used to be in the air, but now it seems to be winter. Anyway, this maple leaf was drawn from one of those cutout things schoolteachers put up on their bulletin boards. I see the symmetry is off. Other than that, I think it looks pretty good.

I am having trouble getting the scanned images to look right. They do look much better in person. Case in point would be the shading and veins on this leaf. They barely show up on the computer screen, but on the original drawing, they look fairly decent.

Now, just to show you that I can draw better than this if I take my time, I've added one of my other drawings. I was never really pleased with how the apples turned out, but I like the pot.



Ok, one of the "and more" subjects of this blog is my karate. We have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it is really hard to write about what we do in class because it seems I just write the same things over and over again. We did basics, and kata, and some drills. However, this class was a bit different. I was promoted to Ik-kyu, which is the rank just below black belt. I also started learning my next kata, kusanku. Sometimes I get frustrated with sensei because he only teaches me a little bit at a time. Sometime it is just right, but this time I think I could have learned more. But I will get him to teach me some more Tuesday. This was after class. During class, we learned something called Two-man Basics. It is a pretty nifty little routine in which the basics are done with a partner--almost like kata with bunkai. It is really fun to do, and impressive to watch.