Paintings, and a Hiatus Explanation

Hi everyone. First, as I have done often (at least a few times) on this blog, I am posting a few of my recent paintings. This first one I did a few months ago. It's with my recent obsession of fractals and trying to incorporate them into paintings. I took a black and white image from a book on fractals (Mandelbrodt: "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" if you are interested) and traced it onto paper, added some color and a sun and stuff.

Fractal II:

This one is similar to some paintings I have done in the past, but with the inclusion of five different vanishing points. can you find them all?

Wormhole:

As hinted at in the title of this post, I'm going to consider February as somewhat of a hiatus. I know that readers of this blog are disappointed with the amount of posting lately, but I just need a little break. I have ideas for posts coming up so I plan to resume regular updates in March. Check back then for more travel adventures, paintings, and school children debauchery!

I've "Made It"

This is kind of a weird post. In my classroom I have a bag of loaner pencils, and while sharpening a few of them I found this work of graffiti art:

One of my students had taken the time to write the words "Brad teacher very bad" on the conical sharpened section of a pencil. In a way I find this really flattering that a student would take the time to do this. I have this problem, that has been addressed by my boss, that I'm not strict enough. In light of that I consider this pencil a victory.

My Japanese Stuff

This is finally the last post about the recent trip to Japan with my family. I ended up spending the majority of my money that I brought on a bunch of Japanese junk that I kept for myself instead of giving away as presents or whatever. I'm going to run through the pictures that I have, but prices are not included because they are ridiculous.

On of the first days we visited the Matsuya Ginza department store and they had a shop with a whole bunch of prints and pictures. This is a print I picked up for pretty cheap:

A sweatshirt I picked up in Harajuku which is quickly becoming one of my favorites ever. BTW, the Japanese characters mean pretty rabbit:

I bought this small Buddha picture on New Year's day at the temple:

While at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, I picked up these postcards which are copies of famous Ukiyo-e prints. The ones with Mt. Fuji and the one with the tidal wave are from Hokusai in his 36 views of Mt. Fuji series:

I picked up a set of blow up paper spheres which are really cool but don't serve a lot of purpose. This one is of an octopus:

I bought a pair of sumo slippers on my last day. I saw a picture that said they are supposed to be worn at a small size so your foot hangs over the back, but these are really small. Someone may end up with them for a souvenier.

Another last day purchase of a strange ladder toy. This cylindrical block with a groove in the opposite sides is placed on the top rung and falls down each step. It's really cool.

By far my most important purchase in Japan, I picked up a stock of coffee flavored KitKats. These things are amazing. Nestle NEEDS to start making these everywhere. I picked up a bunch but I ate them pretty fast.

Well, this is definitely my last post about Japan. I did manage to milk about 11 blog posts out of it which came in hand due to the fact that I'm running out of new things to talk about. I do have a few more posts I plan to put up soon, so you know, check back soon.