A duck in February

In the past few years, I have gotten used to the advantages of digital doodling. To change it up, I tried my hand at (cheap) watercolors last year. I was not too impressed with the outcome. A few days ago, the duck spotted a mystery pouch among my art supplies and reminded me that I was once obsessed with Copic Ciao markers. They are considered the “affordable” version of the professional markers serious artists like to use. Still, the sheer amount of colors the duck discovered must have cost me half a fortune back when I was much younger (and apparently not yet super cheap). Delighted by my shock and excitement, the duck, possibly inspired by the “Duck in January” photo from last December, demanded I practice drawing the most important artistic subject of them all: ducks! So, here is “duck in the cold – February edition” (unfortunately, the scanner ate some of the lighter colors, so some of the subtler shadows got lost):
I hadn’t touched my old Copic Markers in a very long time; using them again made me wonder why because they were so fun to doodle with! I’ll definitely try to work with them more, now that I remember how much money I must have invested in them all those years ago. And who knows, maybe the duck will allow me to draw non-duck-related pictures someday…

Winter walks

After having spent a bit too much time inside in the past few months the duck and I decided that it was time we explore the outside world a bit more (while still keeping our distance from other people and ducks). Usually, something warm to wear (at least wearing masks to keep warm is acceptable now) and a podcast is everything we need for a successful winter stroll. Sometimes we take our camera friend with us so that we can document what we come across. Here are a few examples:

Tokyo! Snow us what you’ve got!

Snow. It happens about once a year in Tokyo and then lasts for about a day or two, if the duck and I believe the accounts of the people we’ve been talking to. This year, however, seems to have been colder and whiter, at least than the past four (or 48). And, because Tokyo has an efficiently interlinked railroad network, things can get a bit crazy if it snows.

Monday, January 21st, Chiyoda City: The sun has set but the snow has kept on falling.

On Monday, the fateful day of all that snow, for example, the duck and I sat on a stopped train for almost an hour. Let me give you some of the backstory first:
It had started to snow in the late morning and kept on snowing until the evening.
Because of that lots of companies sent their employees home early to avoid any potential snow chaos due to worsening of the weather (and, at the same time, they created their own chaos that manifested itself in jam-packed stations in the afternoon with station staff having to turn people away for a few minutes because the platforms had hit capacity). Because of that, when we got on our first train out of three, hours after the advanced rush hour, we were pretty optimistic (there were some delays, but no long-term halts on our lines). However, somewhere close to our destination things slowed down a lot and finally ceased to move at all…