Update 15 February
Played This Week:
I took on a new themed challenge for adventure games from another group. Ran into a performance issue with my pick right off the bat though; the game would only recognize my integrated GPU on my laptop in its options, so I had to manually force it through the Nvidia control panel. Still getting poor FPS but since it’s only a point n click anyways it’s not really a gamebreaker.
- Gray Matter
10.5 hours playtime
no achievements
Otherwise played a bit of:
- Beat Hazard 2
7.9 hours playtime
no achievements
- Conan Exiles
195.2 hours playtime
24 of 25 achievements
As I was asked to post an update about my “Bob Ross at home” Valentine’s date, here it is!
We followed a very beginner-friendly video, because we were both non-artists. It’s called Grey Winter and only uses three colors. You can watch it free on Youtube here. Mine’s on the left but as you can see, everyone interprets a scene differently.
Did not use the right supplies, Bob uses oil paints and we used acrylics and the cheapest art supplies possible. Also had to pause the video frequently as Bob moves quickly - though it was only a 27 minute tutorial, we were actually at it for about 2 hours lol.
But it was a blast and I highly recommend it for anyone considering trying something like this, especially if you’re willing to just roll with however it turns out. We had a great time laughing at our mistakes and attempts to blend away clumsy globs of paint. Knew we wouldn’t be making any masterpieces, so without that pressure it was just a cheap, fun time and Bob himself is a pleasure to listen to.
10/10 would do again if my date is up for a round two. :)
EDIT:
Oops. I totally forgot to add this and it’s a significant bit of info here.
With all the scams/hijackings going around, I decided I was going to reduce my Steam footprint. I marked my SteamGifts account for deletion as part of that. My account is over 7 years old but frankly I’m not a particularly active member.
Hopefully this won’t affect my BLAEO site membership and library, but if something happens then I’ll just say thank you all for having me now. Just in case. Cheers!
I honestly thought your painting was by Boss Ross. Love the red sky as well, reminded me of Firewatch. They both turned out great, sounds like the perfect date idea. Craftsy stuff is so much fun with company!
Oh no, I’m not sure I could ever touch The Master’s skill haha. But thanks all the same, the main thing was just having some fun doing something new.
Hey! Great paintings. Sounds like a lot of fun, and I think, as you say, it’s very interesting to see both side by side. Each has their merits and paint (haha) different atmospheres.
I see you are almost finished with the achievements in Conan Exiles. Is the last one hard to get? And how’s your reading going? Looking forward to you next update :)
Thank you!
I did skip over talking about Conan because I thought I’d droned on about it a lot before, and now have one huge wrap up post to do at month’s end. The last achievement is pretty easy assuming you’re playing with at least one other person - you just have to kill another player by dropping down on top of them weighed down by like a million rocks lol. We’ve just been lazy arses about it and there’s other fun stuff to do. :P
Reading is going slowly. Not because it’s bad, in fact it’s a lot more literate than I had expected it to be - the author even adds excellent poetry to his stories like Tolkien and overall his descriptions are vivid without being verbose. It’s just that I’ve been trying to fairly process some of the questionable undercurrents to his writing in context of the writer’s time and living/working environment, even spending a bit of time looking into his life (which was fairly tragic in itself.) I did watch the newer of the Conan movies this month, but I don’t think it was helpful in that respect just being Hollywood fuzz.
I get that. I’m not talking about Dungeon Siege too much either, because it’s in my currently playing category for so long and there is still the review to write in 1 or 2 updates… The last Conan achievement does sound manageable with a friend. Good luck nonetheless!
That sounds interesting, I only know the Schwarzenegger movie and, well, it’s not exactly high prose. Looking forward to your final summary and verdict of the book!
Your painting looks better :D It’s clearer and I like the bloody sky ;) But for beginners, both are great.
Btw, let Mandrill know you’re deleting SG. Nothing should happen, but in case of some minor unpredictable glitches he’ll be able to sort you out. I’ve deleted my account October last year, and there were some hiccups. Mandrill patched some of it, and I think he future-proofed BLAEO in case other people deleted as well, but still, let him know just in case. The one thing that will change is your profile url, from /users/your_user_name to /users/+a_lot_of_numbers (you can see how mine looks now), so if you had any links to your BLAEO profile elsewhere (or inside your posts here), then you will need to change them if you want them to work.
I will never, ever tell my date that. Theirs is definitely better and we should do this again. Wink wink. :)
Hey thanks for the heads up on the SG deletion. I wasn’t sure what happens and preferred staying in this group with all you great folks (seriously, I really enjoy it here) but I have to cut the dead weight. What’s the best way to message Mandrill? The Steam group?
Try adding him to friends and message him directly on Steam, or you can post in Steam group as well, the website section.
I didn’t want to leave BLAEO community either, really nice place :)
I also am very impressed by your paintings! Painting and blending colors has always been very difficult for me, so these look like valuable resources to learn!
I’m glad you had a fun date and wish you many more in the future c:
Oh man the blending was awful for us. Bob makes it looks so fluid and easy. We were just plastering huge globs of paint everywhere - that’s why my sky is so red, just plopped a big red glob right in the middle of the canvas and I never was able to blend it to the pale pink Bob did lol. My date had a thing for the black paint :P
Do you paint? Have any tips in case there’s a next time?
Oh, but the effect is SO COOL! It looks like the sky right before - or right after - a storm at sunset or sunrise. It’s striking!
Also oh god no, just in a few classes in college. My comfort level is linework/charcoal. I WANT to get better at painting/colors/shading, but it’s… hard n scary.
The only Cool Art Tipz is just do whatever you want to get better at a bunch of times. (Now I just need to do my own advice)
the red sky looks like in-coming apocalyptic weather, it’s really awesome. you can construct an entire story in your head just looking at it.
Haha, yeah after we painted we decided that the sun in mine exploded and this was earth right before it was vaporized :P
Both paintings are really great! I just silently envy you your art skill. ;)
Also, have you watched each other when you were painting it? Or have you seen the other painting only after it was completed?
Thank you! We sat next to each other while we followed along with the video, just propped our canvases up on a long table with cardboard boxes. No highbrow artistry here lol
Very, very nice paintings. Both of them.
How was Beat Hazard 2? BH1 was one of my faves.
There is literally only one group I’m a member of that keeps me on SG. Otherwise, it would be a fairly useless site for me. But, that group is awesome and filled with awesome people, so I stick around.
Thanks!
I never played BH1 though I own it, was an Audiosurf fan originally. I like BH2 even though it’s EA, it’s totally playable though I feel it still needs a bit of polish yet as far as menus, game options (I’d like more variety) and some tightening on the Open Mic feature (can have tiny pauses while it’s ‘listening’ for music.) I’ve heard that it’s pretty much just like BH1 except prettier and that now you can use streaming music instead of MP3s. FWIW I don’t play for leaderboards, just casually bang out a few songs to chill out.
I love both your paintings better than the final result of Bob Ross tbh (with a preference to yours because of the dramatic red skies). Also amazing idea for a date. I’ll keep that in my bag for a future use.
Thanks kindly for the compliment. Hope you get a chance to try it sometime. :)
You’re painting is amazing! I like how red the sky is. I’d be hopeless at something like that. Not that I wouldn’t try, but I lack any date to try it with :(.
Thanks kindly. It’s really not bad even if you’re not artistic, was just a fun and relaxing thing to do. Just grab a mate, a neighbor, your grandma, whoever, my friend!