2026.2.20-21. Color pencil with Sarah Bixler

2/20-21 Fri-Saturday 1-4pm. I went to yet another art class. Day one, first we pick 4 color panels, and 3 color pencils to recreate the 4 colors. See the right side of the photo. Next, we picked a photo or a picture in one of Sarah's books, and using only 3 color pencils. She did a demo: shapes, put down the main colors, then adjust the values. I settled on one painting in Robh Ruppel Graphic L.A. book: a large rock on the beach. I settled on the same 3 colors: orange, yellow and blue. The left top is my target, and left bottom is the sketch at the end of first day.

2nd day, we started on a color wheel, before going back to our drawing. Sarah walked around, answer questions and making suggestions. She just draw on a different piece of paper to illustrate her point. This is at the end of my 2nd day, and the 4 pencils I used: had to add a 4th, brown.

Last, we put all our drawings together, and Sarah did a review. Most of my classmates use smaller paper sizes, many did 2 drawings.

I like these classes. Drawing/painting is quite meditative. The instructors all play some soothing music in the background. This is my 2nd class with Sarah. According to her, she's signed up to do one class per month here.

2026.2.20. Lunar New Year community concert at Seattle Steinway Gallery

2/20, Friday. A Lunar New Year Concert. Every piece is played by different musicians.

彩雲追月 Silver Clouds Chase the Moon  -- Victoria
Li Huanzhi, Spring Festival Overture -- Piano: Melody, Violin: John Shieh
Cecile Chaminade, Caprice Impromptu Op153 - Jiayi

George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue   -- Oliver
Philip Glass: Etudes: No. 6         -- Jess
越人歌 The song of Yue Boatman       -- Finnie and Aimee
Butterfly lovers concerto 1st mvt : Adagio cantabile -- Annie and Justin

Unfortunately I had to leave at intermission. I quite enjoyed the first half.

2026.2.15. Twin Falls

2/15, Sunday, cloudy. Went for a short hike at Twin Falls. Quite a lot of people. But we know a secret spot above the upper falls, which we always visit. This time, we also followed a faint trail going up to the top of the hill. Too many trees to get a good view below. Saw a fixed rope on a tree. Very tempting to hang on it. But I have no experience to tell how secure this rope is, so gave up.

Today, we also stopped at the lower falls. The recent rain made it very pretty. It's also possible to scramble over onto rocks in the middle of the river. Fun.

2026.2.14. Iris Unveiled - Seattle Symphony

2/14, Saturday. Xian introduces Iris Unveiled. It's an interesting, not a new composition.

Qigang Chen          Iris Dévoilée (Iris Unveiled)
Dmitri Shostakovich  Symphony No. 5

I like big orchestra. This is it. 5 people on percussion! 10 cellos, 8 basses. For Iris Unveiled, other than the Peking Opera singer Meng Meng, 2 supranos (Mei Gui Zhang and Tess Altiveros), Yang Jin on pipa, Cathy Yang on Erhu and banhu, Lucina Yue on guzheng. It's interesting to hear the difference between Peking Opera's voice and classical suprano's voice. Big sound. Glad to watch and listen. However, neither these 2 works I'd revisit.

The preconcert lecture today was advertised at 90 minutes before curtain. But the auditorium was closed and had to wait for the usual lecture 60 min prior. What a screw-up. In the lobby, there was a screen playing videos on Peking Opera. Today's lecture is on female characters in Peking Opera, by Jeremy Jolley of the education side of the symphony and Shuang-Chiu Wang, of Hwa Sheng Chinese Opera Club (華聲社）. She's also a professor at Bellevue College. She articulates and explains well. I enjoyed it.

While we were inside the auditorium for the lecture, Seattle Chinese Orchestra ensemble played in the lobby. Not sure what we missed. It was a nice performance using traditional Chinese instruments, I especially liked the lady on Er Hu. She's so good.

2026.2.13-14 Oil Painting with Riley Doyle + Christal Baschet

2/13-14, 1-3:30pm. Another salon studio: 2 sessions of oil painting with Riley Doyle, and my result at the end. Everyone has these colors: red, blue, yellow, black and white. We started with sketching blocks of color. Let the painting dry overnight. Then adjust the colors and add details. I painted Riley's cat. My lesson is that I should have sketched all the components, including the cat.

On Wednesday this week, during the salon social, bassist Keith Lowe and brother Bryan Lowe played downstairs. Bryan brought a rare and remarkable instrument: Cristal Baschet, a sculptural French instrument of glass rods and resonant metal. He was proud and kind enough to let me (and others) slide my fingers with water on some rods. I could feel the vibration. He said just the shipping costed him $5000.

2026.2.10. Tiger 2-3

2/10, weather is too good to stay indoors. Went to Tiger again. This time, I didn't wear the weighted vest, because I had a talk to go to in the evening.
Saw paragliders today from Tiger 3.
View is very good thanks to the clear sky. Continued to Tiger 2. Always better view.
Very lucky today. The bus arrived just as I was crossing the street to the bus stop.

5:30pm, an AWS user group event on Kiro, an agentic IDE, at Slalom Hawk tower 18th floor. Great view of the Safeco Field. Seems you don't need to buy game tickets! Can see the preping for tomorrow's parade to welcome SeaHawk home. We won the SuperBowl.

2026.2.9. Super Bowl ads analysis

2/9, Monday after the Super Bowl Sunday, where Seattle Seahawk won the championship. Seattle University hosts an annual Super Bowl ads analysis. This time it was co-organized by AAF Seattle. Despite of being a marketing and ad agency, and plenty images and slogans were displayed, I had to Google AAF to find out what it is: so bad! It also pretty much hijacked the event. I like SeattleU's original format better, even though I did enjoy this one too. This time, they also collected audience's reaction. These ads were talked about: Search Party from Ring, Last Harvest from LAY's, Bet on Kendall from Fanatics Sportsbook, Shake Your Bots Off from SVEDKA, OpenAI, Gemini, Instacart.

2026.2.6-7 Color workshop with Larine Chung

2/6-7, Thur+Friday 2-4pm. Another art workshop at Art Love Salon. Today's teacher is Larine Chung, and we got to use gouache, a medium that I only heard of once (also from here), let alone used. It's interesting. Feels like watercolor, but thicker, so can layer.

First, she talked about value and the perceived brightness. We each made a color wheel.
Next, we picked one of the ~10 prints, and tried to duplicate the color, under 20 mixes. The top right photo is Larine doing the demo. Left photo is my attempt. Apparently, I'm not able to get the colors right.

This class was held on 4th floor in a separate room. So we could leave our stuff here, and come back the next day. Dried Gouache paint can still be revived by adding water. So, need to be careful, not to drop water onto your painting.

2026.2.1. REI run club - party pace

2/1, Sunday. Drizzle. I signed up REI's weekly >party pace run at 10am. The main reason is that this partical event promises a brunch and a documentary film The Life We Have after the run. Also, I could get out of bed at a reasonable hour and get some excercise, when the weather is lousy for a hike.

I arrived on time, a lot of people already. This series of event is capped at 99. But no one is checking registration. Need to sign a waiver (but no one is checking), and they want your birthday (no idea why, so I told them that I put down a fake birthday). A table from Brooks Running (see photo), we were encouraged to try their running shoes. So I put one pair on, and left mine on Brooks' shelf. There's another table recruting members. I forgot which organization it is. Julia told us the route, and we were supposed to turn around at Julie's Landing, and the screening will start at 11am. She and a few others in REI labeled running vests were employees who would herd us. We were not given any label. All kinds of people, including parents pushing strollers with baby onboard. It was in a party mood.

We started running. The Brooks shoes feel very good running (very cushy), but a bit strange standing and walking (the thick sole thins out towards the toes, so I feel that I'm wearing a wide platform heel). Once on WestLake ave, I was lagging behind. On streets with traffic lights, I could catch up with the front, where they waited for red light. Soon, I took off my shell. It was still drizzling, but I was generating more steam than the sky. Walking at times, running at times. I realized that I'm really out of shape. At some point, seeing runners running towards me (turned around), but I never saw where Julie's Landing was. There were still runner going forward, so I followed. All the way wondering where is my turn-around point. But my phone is in my shell pocket, now in my backpack (under a rain cover), so I didn't check sooner. I ran over Fremont Bridge, and down to the north side of Lake Union. There, I think I definitely ran too far. Got out my phone to check where Julie's Landing is. By then, I probably already did 5K one way. I really didn't expect so many runners out on a drizzling day. Yes, all along, both directions, I saw runners.

I returned to REI at 11:20pm. The guy from Brooks was packing up. I asked him for my shoes, and he said he gave them to REI. So someone knows one person is missing. Do they think I stole the shoes? We both went into the stores and inquire about my shoes. No one knew about it. We went to the classroom where the movie was screening, and dragged an employee out. He went to some employee-only area, and I waited. The Brooks guy returned to his shoes. He and Julia showed up with my shoes. Julia didn't seem to care, didn't say anything at all. The guy commented that I did a good run. Now that I put on my own shoes, I could feel that Brooks shoes had a lot more support. Returned the shoes to the Brooks guy. He was so apologetic. It was 11:30 now, and the store feels too hot, especially the screening classroom (full of people). No more food.

Some take-aways:

• I need to track my location always, cannot depend on the organizers. They may not care, and it's difficult for them to tell which runners are in their group, which ones are not, without giving us labels.
• I may need to run more to get in shape. I will try my new On shoes: bought over a year ago but never used. Now that I know their 5k route, I may join again, or I can just run in the gym of my building (which I never went in).
• Hikers/runners eat a lot. If you are late, there'll be no food left.