Painting with Unusual Substances

Steve Spazuk paints with fire, using the soot to create beautiful art.

I just came across this post about artists who paint "with everything (but paint)", and wanted to share it with you! The original post is in German, but you can read the Google translated version here. I particularly like the fire and blood ones - there's just something so esoteric about them. (The coffee, sugar, and wine ones are also wonderful, though!)

Fac Ut Ardeat Cormeum

Yesterday at choir practice I just couldn't get this song out of my head. Fac ut ardeat cormeum, part of the Stabat Mater by Pergolesi, is a beautiful piece I learned years ago and never forgot.

You can view the sheet music here - I sang the second voice, and it continues to lie beautifully in my range.

Tax Return for Foreign Income

I'm a dual citizen of Germany and the United States of America, and to my eternal joy, that means that I get to file tax returns in both countries. I have yet to deal with the German one (keep forgetting), but the US one has been dealt with - and thank goodness I've already gone through it once and it'll all seem much simpler next time.

I hope.

This blog post is basically going to be about what I did to get this done, and I wanted to write it right after I filed my tax return so that I wouldn't forget any details, but... oops? Here we are, about three weeks later, and I've forgotten all the numbers of the various forms I had to fill out. However, I still have a LOT of tabs open as reminders! Joy.


So. Over the IRS website I chose the free online filing service taxactonline, and found that service extremely well-chosen. It takes you through the steps one by one, basically putting you through a questionnaire instead of making you fill out the dry forms yourself. Also, the customer service was very prompt, genial, and helpful - so, thank you, taxactonline!

The big, BIG point I struggled with was Form W-2. As in 2014 I was employed in Germany by a German institution, I did not receive a Form W-2 from my employer, and for a long time it seemed as though I couldn't file my return without one. After many struggles and internet searches and conversations with customer service at taxactonline, I realized I could indeed file my return without one.

I went through the Step-by-Step Guidance and simply skipped all the questions concerning the Form W-2. More interesting than this, however, is the feature "Forms & Topics" near the top of the page - which lets you find the precise forms you need. Let's see if I can get together which forms I needed, and why.

Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Review - the basic form that everyone has to fill out.

Form 2555, Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. I had to fill this out because I earned all my income in a foreign country. IMPORTANT: You'll need to enter all your earnings in US dollars, and you have to use the yearly average currency exchange rate. Find it on the IRS website here, and figure out all your sums up-front!

Form 1116, Foreign Tax Credit - this was the important one for showing that I was taxed for my foreign income!

FinCEN Form 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts - for the obvious reason.

There are a few forms I think I was led through as part of the quiz that ended up being unimportant, such as Form 5405 (Repayment of the First-Time Homebuyer Credit), Form 6251 (Alternative Minimum Tax), and Form 8960 (Net Investment Income Tax). I did, however, have to fill out Schedules B and D (Interest and Ordinary Dividends, Capital Gains and Losses) because of the stock I have in the US. Those were easily dealt with - my investment management company, Vanguard, sent me the information up-front and I just had to enter the sums. Easy!


I think those are all the forms I had to fill out - but you wouldn't believe how difficult it was to figure that out! Seriously, check out all these links I went through before somehow figuring out what I needed. (And there were many more; those are just the ones I still have open. *sigh*)

Hopefully, though, this can help others with the same problem - I certainly wished, while dealing with it, that there was one simple blog post explaining it! So, here it is.

Oh! One last thing - deadlines. The general deadline is April 15th, but according to the IRS website, "If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien residing overseas, or are in the military on duty outside the U.S., on the regular due date of your return, you are allowed an automatic 2-month extension to file your return and pay any amount due without requesting an extension.  For a calendar year return, the automatic 2-month extension is to June 15." Handy!

Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to help. I don't anticipate this being a problem till next year, though! Good luck.

Catullus - Carmen 5

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us judge all the rumors of the old men
to be worth just one penny!
The suns are able to fall and rise:
When that brief light has fallen for us,
we must sleep a never ending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.
Then, when we have made many thousands,
we will mix them all up so that we don't know,
and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out
how many kisses we have shared.

Been a bit under the weather these past few days with a very persistent headache, so I'm afraid this post doesn't have much thought behind it. I simply came across this poem today and rather liked it.
Hope you're all doing well!

Enhanced Illustration - Pencil, Pen, Paint and Pixels

Last week I was in London for a short course at Central Saint Martins. Part of the University of the Arts London, CSM is best known for its fashion department, having helped to prominence notable alumni such as Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton, John Galliano, and Zac Posen (among many other notable fashion designers). But far from preferring the fashion department over all others, CSM has a huge variety of courses - and a truly excellent selection of short courses.

Tempted by several of their offers, I finally settled on a course titled "Enhanced Illustration - Pencil, Pen, Paint and Pixels". The course description promises to teach students to manipulate and combine hand-drawn elements in Photoshop, "all the while mantaining a personal, hand-crafted look to your resulting illustrations". As you'll have noticed from previous blog entries, I enjoy combining traditional and digital elements (the Japanese Tea Ceremony illustration comes to mind), but I booked this course when I hadn't yet started fiddling around with things much on my own, and had hoped to learn from this course the best methods to clean up a sketch and combine elements.

Now, I had learned a fair amount of this during my studies at the IADE Madrid, but I felt I was still lacking in professionalism. Unfortunately(?), in the months between booking the course and taking it, I played around a lot with Photoshop and my own drawings, finding that cleaning up my sketches tended to work better with ctrl+M (Curves) than fiddling with Brightness and Contrast, and that layering colors over lineart worked really well with a layer style called Multiply. (I spent quite some time playing around with all the layer styles to find out how they'd react - time well spent!) Imagine my dismay when the only Photoshop things the course really focused on were Brightness and Contrast, Hue/Saturation (ctrl+U), and Multiply! The rest was all taking scanned traditional elements and rearranging them in Photoshop.

So I didn't learn anything about Photoshop during the course - but I still found the course immensely interesting, and at times quite illuminating. The instructor, Bill Wright, was an excellent lecturer, bringing in videos, examples of previous students' work, and even other people to help and inspire us. While I didn't learn anything new about Photoshop, I learned about a professional illustrator's work, what different types of illustration there are, and tried out forms of illustration I had never tried previously - such as newspaper illustration.

For that project, we were each allowed to choose a newspaper article from a selection Bill brought along, and then had to present him with a concept before moving on to create a fitting illustration. He approved my concept for this tennis-themed article with little discussion, but gave me a lot of useful feedback during the process of creating the final illustration. The most valuable advice was to crop the image, zooming in and focusing on the action - and it really pulled it together. Before I cropped it, it looked something like this:

Still cute, but... nowhere near as good. (I also did away with the clouds.)

Then, there were all the other students. All female but for one lone male, we all came from different professions and walks of life, with people hailing from the UK, Germany, Chile, Jordan, and other countries. Twice during the week we printed out the work we'd done that far and gave each other feedback, saying what we thought turned out well and, sometimes, what we thought wasn't so great. For many pieces I found my tastes didn't quite match those of most others, but that made it quite interesting, actually.

I asked my two favorite artists there to let me share their projects on my blog, so check this out: Our first assignment was to take the concept 'kitchen' and draw objects, later assembling those into a colorful composition in Photoshop. Here's my end result, followed by the work of Dina Fawakhiri (from Jordan) and Bernardita Errázuriz (from Chile).

Sophie-Therese Lupas

Dina Fawakhiri

Bernardita Errázuriz

Aren't theirs gorgeous? Mine pales in comparison, though the image is refreshing when on its own. Dina and Bernie used such vibrant colors and powerful compositions - and I love the bold lineart.

They also gave me permission to post their final projects, for which we were to create at least two illustrations with a common theme and present them on the final day of the course. I chose to illustrate the hostel I was staying at (click on the images to see them bigger):

Dina did three beautiful illustrations with a theme of finding one's way to a woman's heart:

And Bernardita did a lovely collection of illustrations based on her family.

Lovely, aren't they? Thank you, Dina and Bernie, for letting me put them up here. And a reminder to everyone reading this: Just click on any photo (in the blog post) to see it bigger! The details are really worth looking at.

In conclusion, the trip to London decidedly was worth it! I hope the other participants feel that way, too.

Alice's Adventures Underground

On Friday the 17^th I went to an immersive theater event in London called ‘Alice’s Adventures Underground’, having been thoroughly intrigued by the posters in the London underground. Check out the website here – it’s worth it! The event took place in The Vaults, a large underground space underneath a train station.

The show started out simply enough: I (and at least thirty other people) was led into a studio strewn with antiques and loose sheets of paper, a slightly chaotic look to the room despite it being big enough for all of us to fit in. Then attention is called to a mirror and the woman trapped within, her voice too faint to catch more than a few phrases – and then we’re off to Wonderland. 

Walking down a winding, cramped corridor completely covered in pieces of paper, we enter a circular room with a spinning, spinning ceiling, Alice’s voice clearly audible as a black shadow of her form runs around and around, slowing gradually to a stop before we are led on into a trompe l’oeil room where we are given the choice: Eat Me, or Drink Me? Depending on our choice we either shrink and file out through a door that is far larger than us, or grow in size and duck through a door that only reaches our shoulders. The group is halved, and from here on out our paths are different, experiencing four separate versions of the same play as we are halved again, the original large group split into suits: Spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. (S.U.I.T = Sanctioned Ultrasensible Identifying Travel Permit. Anyone caught without a suit and number is assured by her Majesty, either they or their head shall be off.)

For the duration of the play I am given a card designating me as the nine of hearts, and with my fellow hearts I am briefed on the more elite status of my suit, all of us charged with the task of finding out just who has committed the heinous crime of planting white roses and disguising them with red paint. 

The subsequent voyage is cleverly done – we pass by other suits, each on their own tour, but these glimpses are brief as we travel through Wonderland and imaginatively arranged rooms, led by a white-faced, short card of hearts. We see Alice struggling to figure out her identity in a mirror room, babysit a rambunctious Tweedledee and Tweedledum as they spin around the room reciting ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, even hear the Mock Turtle sing a lament under the full moon. 

Just sketches - I apologize that they don't quite do the madness of the show justice! See a few photos here.

Finally we enter a large hall – and the Tea Party begins, several actors gamboling around the room as we spectators sit along the long table. More than once we are roused, the Mad Hatter commanding us energetically to move down one space while the Dormouse sleeps in a metal bathtub in the middle of the table. 

At one point the March Hare runs down the length of the table to offer the Dormouse some butter, for lack of tea, and a squeak sounds from the audience as a glob of butter goes flying. “Oh,” the March Hare looks down from the table in consternation. “Don’t worry; it really is the finest butter!” With that reassurance she runs back down the length of the table to continue the skit, involving a tale of three sisters (three audience members are chosen to illustrate the point; two are male), a riddle (“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”), and other follies before we are all summoned to the Queen’s court.

We find ourselves sorted back into our suits – such distinctions having been briefly forgotten during the tea party – and witnessing a court hearing led by the King and Queen of Hearts. The villain of the piece – the Knave of Hearts – is exposed as being guilty of planting white roses, and his severed head is presented to the room on a platter; the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse are called upon as witnesses to discover the person who stole the Queen’s tarts, and the court hearing begins to take on nonsensical overtones despite the Queen’s best attempts to quell all nonsense, culminating in the return of Alice through a large mirror and the Red Queen’s banishment through the same mirror, all of us cards lead victorious through the halls by Alice and into the final room – a large bar area with a live band, pies and drinks. 

Having greatly enjoyed the trip that far, I was personally disappointed by the bar (which resembled a barn more than anything else) and left after only cursory exploration of the area, turning over the events in Wonderland in my mind as I stepped out into the crisp and cool night air. Truly, it was a magical experience. 

So, should you find yourself in London before the 31^st of August, and should you find yourself in a Wonderland ruled by the Queen of Hearts, always remember: “All hail the Queen! Coo!”

Butterfly Paintings - Behance!

Just a short post to let you know that my best butterfly paintings can now be viewed on my Behance page! I think I'm done painting butterflies for the time being; there are other things to attend to! Check them out, and let me know what you think. I'm particularly pleased with these ones you haven't seen yet:

Hot Chocolate

I recently tried out something new when making chocolate milk, and Anastasia and I took the opportunity to do a little photoshoot!

Yummmmm. Isn't the mug cute? It's actually a little sugar container, but shhh, that's irrelevant.
The chocolate milk is regular (German) milk (Haltbare Vollmilch ultrahocherhitzt! Von Milbona!) mixed with a cheaper ripoff of Nesquick (I'm classy, I know), plus butter-vanilla aroma and rum aroma of the brand Dr. Oetker. This was then topped off with whipped cream from a can, caramel-hot-chocolate-chips, and a stick of cinnamon! (Drinking the chocolate through the cinnamon like a straw was delicious.)

After that - Photoshop, and this very handy 30 second tutorial on how to create a bokeh (circle lights) effect. Ta-dah! Now I want another mug of this...

Pentatonix WIP

Today I spent a considerable number of hours working on some fanart of Pentatonix, my favorite a cappella group. They do wonderful covers of popular songs, and both I and Mom love them! If you don't know them yet, a good place to start would be these two videos:

Evolution of Music by Pentatonix

Pentatonix on Sesame Street!

Now, the fanart is still a work in progress (WIP), but here's how it's coming along! I've done most of the line work, so the next step will be to even out the skin color that I just slapped down. It's too late to continue working on it now, and I'm away for the weekend (seeing as it's Easter and all!), so I'm not sure when I'll continue working on this! Haven't decided yet whether I'm taking along my laptop or not.

Scott looks kinda creepy as a floating head. Sorry, Scott! I'm working off a promotional photo of theirs, but might rearrange them a little bit further on. I'm not planning on painting the rest of their bodies, so this set-up isn't optimal!

Just realized that I never did finish that turtle rider I started painting some time ago. Hmmm...

Anywho, have a happy Easter!

Elspeth McLean

Today I discovered a Canadian artist on the previously featured website Adme, and boy, does she make beautiful art! Apparently her newest project, colorful mandala stones, has gone viral, so her etsy shop is completely sold out, but she does a lot of neat things with her art.

Like leggings! Find these here.

Elspeth McLean does a lot of dot-based painting (an art style called Pointillism), and has some truly gorgeous pieces in her gallery. Check out her website for the huge variety of things she sells - from kids' building blocks to shower curtains, with clocks and laptop cases along the way.

You can check out the Adme article here! There are a lot of gorgeous photos of her stones if you follow that link. Am I the only one who's reminded of aboriginal Australian art when I see her work?

Paper Trash Collection

Yesterday (March 31st) Anastasia and I helped collect paper trash to raise funds for TüMo (Tübinger Modell), the club we're a part of due to our volleyball activities! We spent nearly two hours tossing paper and cardboard into a big trash truck, braving wind and rain to do so. It was a lot of fun! We also got to ride on the back of the truck, which was a novel experience. Here are some photos!

We were six people in total - not counting the driver and the young boy visible in the second photo - with the other members in our group being a volleyball coach, a teacher, a lady affiliated with our high school, and our former principal. It was the latter who snapped these shots of us!

So that was a fun experience, despite including some serious winds (and let me tell you, paper trash and wind don't really mesh well) and rain (again, not nice when gathering paper). Everyone was in good cheer, and we got a lot done! Anastasia and Sophie Lupas, the trash collectors for a day.