July 8 - Windsock

“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.”

~ Native American Proverb

Drills you run on a team, finger exercises for an instrument, it doesn't matter the discipline - they all start with a series of practice exercises designed to help train your mind and muscle memory.  I was told at one point as a kid that a ninja had string and unstring his bow 10000 times before he was allowed to pick up an arrow.

Chun-Lin, Sung taught a good number of weaving lessons in his Hahow series and just recently released a new one on distortion (available here).   I was looking back through some images and realized I hadn't shared one of his practice pieces from his weaving series.

Practice, practice, .... practice x 10000!

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Other balloons by and inspired by the Mr. Sung:

July 7 - Box Chain

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

~ Heraclitus

There is a certain ... mathematical satisfaction(?) that comes with building a weave or a repeated pattern.  It speaks to my inner nerd, and this balloon was a bit of a research project.

I followed a set of instructions I found for weaving a box chain and built a few of them using the similar sized rings to the jewelry (Lagenda 1.6), but I never really felt things were right - constantly adjusting to expose the pattern only to have one thing fall out of shape.

Isopresso recently released a tutorial on a balloon box chain so I tried then following his instructions and figured out where I was going wrong.  Firstly his box chain was slightly different in that it uses three rings, but more significantly - he sized things properly (L1.0) so that they would fit snugly - you could throw this thing like a football.

Made a rainbow -- I really need to level up my color combo skill if I'm going to make more patterns...

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Other balloons inspired by Isopresso:

July 6 - Jewelry

Who will save your soul when it comes to the flower?
Who will save your soul after all the lies that you told, boy?
Who will save your soul if you won't save your own?

~ Jewel, Who Will Save Your Soul?

While looking around at Celtic chain patterns I saw a piece of jewelry made up of links that looked like it would be a fun exercise.

... and it was, up until the final 10-15 minutes of minor tweaks and adjustments to try and get some symmetry (and I see more places I want to smoosh around).    These are the kind of things you would avoid if you made this with actual metal rings ... or balloon nozzles .. hmmmm ....

July 5 - Buko96

“Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20–20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination—“unstuckness,” in other words—are completely outside its domain.”

~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Buko96 is a long time DeviantArtist from Argentina.

I sometimes I feel like I stumble through my explanation of what I'm looking for in this exercise, so it's fantastic when I see something like that that gets the concept fully and approaches everything from their own style.

This motorcycle helmet and gloves combo is a brilliant idea and use of inspiration!  

Instagram: @abigail_coccaro

July 4 - m-idlifecrisis

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America."

~ Bill Clinton

m-idlifecrisis is a DeviantArtist from the United States that offered to show us what that can do with our pig and Kid Pix - I thought the result was perfect for the 4th of July.

I remember using Kid Pix oh so long ago, I'm glad to know it's still around - it seemed to be the perfect kid creativity spark.  A fairly basic set of drawing tools, but enough effect buttons to make it exciting and keep your attention.  This is no small feat to create this, imagine creating this post in HTML just using notepad.  

July 3 - Celtic Chain

“A society that has no respect, no regard for its bards, its historians, its storytellers, is a society in steep decline, a society that has lost its very soul and may never find its way.”

― Laurence Overmire

Celtic chain weaving is an artform that I feel I could spend some time exploring with balloons, there are really some beautiful and amazing artwork and patterns out there.

With this balloon I am attempting to use the technique with similarly sized rings, and ended up with something of a pendant.  I like what I got but it was not what I was going for.

I am wondering if I should have made the colors go in the opposite direction though, shouldn't the rainbow colors be clockwise? 

July 2 - Triskele & Triquetra

“Men brave and generous live the best lives, seldom will they sorrow; then there are fools, afraid of everything, who grumble instead of giving.”

~ Anonymous, The Poetic Edda

I was still thinking God of War when making these...

These are two Celtic Knots, the green one is known as a Triskele and the white is a Triquetra, sometimes referred to as a "Trinity Knot".

The number three being significant here, it represents stages in life;  mother, maiden and crone.  Mother symbolizing creation, the maiden innocence and the crone wisdom - all interlocking and part of each other. 

July 1 - Dog of War

Dogs of war and men of hate
With no cause, we don't discriminate
Discovery is to be disowned
Our currency is flesh and bone

~ Pink Floyd, Dogs of War

PlayStation is the better console.  I say this having been a die hard early adopter of all XBOX consoles, but they have rolled over and completely given up on the console exclusive content war.   It wasn't even a good fight, it was a rout.   So with PS5 looming on the horizon (zero dawn), I bit the bullet and bought a used PS4 to catch up on some of what I missed.

God of War was in a word - Epic.  In more words it was a Dark Souls-like journey into Nordic Folklore, the story of Kratos and his son Atreus taking the boys mother's ashes to the highest peak in Jotunheim.    

Game of the Year 2018 - well earned.