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Life changing, it's true!

To follow up on my last post, Spend Lite is doing a mighty fine job of keeping track of my expenses. Well, let's be clear, I am doing a fine job of using the tool to keep track of my expenses, and it's working. The action of having to track my expenditures does keep me on top of how much cash I actually have, and I am becoming more realistic about how I spend my money.

Seems to be an easier habit to form than Drawing Every Day, but we will keep trying!

The iPhone will change my life

I am sure of it! As you may or may not know, I am a bit obsessed by my new lil friend, my iPhone, otherwise known as Molly. Noted life improvements:

I can actually receive phone calls. My previous phone was faulty and would not pick up signals all the time from Fido. Not so great for the social life, though not a bad excuse when you are avoiding someone. Not that I avoided any of you!!!

I can make plans when I am away from my computer. I did not have a synced calendar in my last phone and I was forever telling people I would get back to them once I had checked my sched. Not so great as I would forget to call people back. Doh!

I can keep track of my expenditures with my new app, Spend Lite. Spend Lite is a free budget tracker, something I was sorely needing. If you know me, you know that money haemorrages fromy wallet. I know, you'd think I'd be able to keep track, but somehow all sense of reason and restraint disappears when I'm "in the moment". Be in the Now suddenly becomes I Want. I'm hoping this cool little tool will help bring me into reality before I spend frivilously. Here's a little pic of the interface, and it's really easy to enter expenses.

wtf i thought kathleen was drawing everyday?

yeah, so did i. there are no excuses. i am not making time for it, but if you knew how exciting and busy my life is, you would take pity and not be so hard on me. seriously, birthday celebrations with family, concerts at gm place, indian weddings, weekend naps, they just take time people!

let's see if i can get something sketched tonight, i know there are some ideas in there...

:p

Drawing Mendhi

I wasn't able to do a drawing yesterday, but I think I have a good excuse. Some one was drawing on me!



My friend, Kiran, is getting married on Sunday, and one of the traditions in her culture is a mendhi party. Mendhi is henna, and it is applied to the skin in beautiful patterns and allowed to dry. I slept with mine overnight, and look at the results in the morning!



It was really fun in yoga class this morning too. We do a lot of intricate hand movements, and the mendhi designs just felt right. They added an element of beauty to my morning practice. Fun times!

Scooter crash graph

Scooter crash graph
another day, another drawing. This one inspired by Tufte, feelings and transience, and real life. A bit analytical, I'll admit. I've been working with ideas around cognitive analysis lately and it's fun to visualize this stuff.

Now only if I could snap my fingers and create the application I see generating this graphic. I can see it, but oh to be able to build it!

Headache 2.0

I managed to make some time for drawing today, but it is challenging to make it a priority. I took the easy way and decided to fill out my drawing from yesterday in Illustrator. I could work on this for hours!

The fun part was going free stylee and playing around with the headache part. I used the Flare Tool and messed around with the settings a bit, and then put a Zig Zag effect on the whole thing. that's why there are the luminous bits around the face, Flare tool takes advantage of Layering effects to make things transparent and glowey.

There are so many options to try out, I can see how much time it takes to build a personal style and really become skillful and meaningful with these tools.