Animal art – Jasmine Collins

My birthday is coming up at the end of the month, so that’s exciting. I’ll be thirty one! I suspect it’ll feel very much like being thirty.

I finally got a treadmill last week, and I’m actually surprised by how much I love it. I really like walking, and I already spend a truly excessive amount of time listening to audiobooks and watching youtube videos about weird stuff, so now those activities can be combined. This makes me feel much less useless and floppy.

I’ve been iron deficient for quite a while, and I found out that the supplementation I’ve been doing hasn’t actually been working all that well, so that’s fun. Having shitty blood really saps energy and focus, and the things required to make me absorb iron better are all also things that throw my potentially very painful stomach issues into overdrive. It’s a wee bit frustrating.

On the bright side, though, I did some vital houseplant maintenance and drew some tropical fish.

A moorish idol (top) and banggai cardinalfish (bottom) that I got to see at the Seattle aquarium recently, drawn in black pen and colored pencils. Sorry about the lighting on this pic. It’s always hard to find enough light to show the colors without washing out the black a bit.

One of my African violets was looking pretty sad, so I trimmed and repotted it.

For those who don’t know, inktober is an event where people try to finish at least one pen and ink sketch every day in October. I didn’t get a sketch done every single day, but I aimed for most days and didn’t stress about it. Here are the ones I deem decent and complete enough for sharing.

Since I knew I was gonna miss days anyway, I focused more on picking a variety of subjects, including some things I hadn’t really done before, like the ferns and the leaf insect. It was fun, and I’m glad I stuck with it!