Mammoth Cave

Hey everyone! 
It's officially Spring Break and it's been off to a good start! I had previously agreed to dogsit for my aunt during this week, which although that would provide lots of nice downtime and rest, it also wouldn't leave much room for adventuring and such. And it puts me in a weird spot where I won't be going home, but I won't really be going anywhere new either ... which I kinda see as the two main uses of a college spring break. All that said I'm still super grateful for the opportunity, especially since most of my friends were unavailable to do any big weeklong trip. But I wanted to do a little something special to give this week some spice before I retreat into Breath of the Wild, doughnuts, and dogwalking.

And thankfully the Lord provided some excitement! This Saturday was super packed - I took a friend to the airport in the morning (and she's hopefully in CHINA by now!!!) and then drove to Kentucky with some friends! My friend Parker had invited Aedan, Sam, and I to visit his hometown and Mammoth Cave. (THE Mammoth Cave!) Most of the tours were already fully booked, but we were able to buy a ticket to walk around in an entrance section of the caves, which was fine with me, since I figured that there would not be enough time to paint anything if we were on a formal tour. And paint I did! Sam & Aedan & Parker were very kind and waited for me as I did a few color keys of the caverns. We weren't allowed to see any crazy cave formations, not a single stalagmite OR stalactite, but the caverns were extremely large and warmly lit with comfortably warm-hued lighting. It was kinda difficult to accept it as not man-made - I'm much more used to seeing imitations of these wonders at Disney World and in video games than the actual thing. We saw one solitary bat while we were leaving the caves which caused much more panic in both our group and the general public than one bat ought to have caused...

The Ipad came in handy in the dim lighting, but it was a challenge to find a process that worked well to capture the dramatic darks & lights and the shape of the rock formations. And with the limited time I skewed more towards my Impressionist tendencies. I'm not sure if they clearly "read" to someone who hasn't seen the real thing. However, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, if only from a "souvenir" perspective. This was how these places felt/looked to me, and the Rafinesque Hall one has a softness that isn't quite there in the real thing, but looked a little like Tryus Wong's Bambi work and made me happy :)

I really pushed the greens on the cedar (not cypress) forest bit - even though it's March it still looked like the middle of winter in Kentucky. Everything was dormant, grey, and just a tad depressing (good thing the main attraction was underground). But in this particular glade there was just enough moss and evergreen branches that if I squinted I could kinda pick up on some extra color.

We finished the day with some time at Parker's house and then some really good pizza. Mine had barbecue, potato chips, and a soda-syrup-reduction on it, and then I drizzled habanero honey on it and dunked it in ranch cause it OBVIOUSLY didn't have enough going for it already... And then we (well, not Parker) drove back to Nashville. A full, adventurous day by most standards! And the good thing is that I'm now so tired from that day that I'm totally ready to sit down and rest for the remainder of the week. I made the leap and finally bought a Switch, which will hopefully arrive today. In college, with classwork and internships applications, it's hard for me to justify playing video games alone. But now that I have a open week with few better things to do, now feels like the right time... of course, I'll probably get myself busy by the end of the week: I want to enter this month's Character Design Challenge, I have a background to paint, and I still have one last studio I need to send an application to (Dreamworks). These internship applications have been time consuming, but I've gotten faster with each one and I always get excited about what future possibilities they may bring! Now I need to get back to the art side of things so I have some new things to show when the next application term comes around. But I'll worry about all that after break! I want to make sure I have a few days of very distinct rest so that I focus better during the remainder of the semester. In the immediate future, I plan on playing some Switch, learning to cook a few things, and maybe writing another blog post or two. Who knows? 

Thanks for reading! I often feel like these posts go out into the empty void, but I think they're helpful for my remembering and hopefully interesting to you! And I did know going into this whole thing that Blogspot "isn't especially hip with the kids nowadays." But I'm ok with that. And I don't want to go back to Tumblr.  

Have an amazing day, and explore some caves!
-dh