Dr. February

Hi everyone! Lately I’ve been getting out of bed singing…

But Jack sent me this absolutely fire album below, so Arigarnon Friends get to be this week’s soundtrack. Sorry, Nikki!

On today’s menu we have:

• February drawings

• A tearful goodbye

• Some light detective work

Thanks for tuning in!

Weary Weary February

At the beginning of this year, I set out to do a diaristic painting for every single day of the year, minus Saturdays. And… I have bad news…

The very short version is that I stopped having fun. I may try and do this again, but for now I’m pretty happy with about 50 days of continuous diary drawings. Let’s take a look at what I did in February!

Right: Shan’s swing dancing birthday party. I had a lot of fun but dancing takes like 900% of my brain power lol. Here I’m using a paint marker with an interchangeable tip, with this one being a hard plastic nib (like a PN for all you Micron users). I titled this one “This feels like a baseball bat!” because the size of the nib was really big for the size of the paper. We also encounter one of the major challenges for this endeavor: as I start reaching for a higher level of detail in my drawings, it’s harder and harder to record events and socialize with people at the same time.

Here we have two still lifes, a jar of kimchi I made on the left and some houseplants that I’ve almost killed on the right. This exercise was originally meant to level up my watercolor skills, and my watercolor setup is just clunky enough that I usually leave it at home. Here I’m back to the fine-point tip.

Left: Trump standing at a “Nazi Party of America” podium. Right: an illustration based on pictures by Jack Iwata of Manzanar and Lake Tule.

Left: The doughnut shop I go to after work on Fridays. On this particular Friday I got so engrossed in a book about Miles Davis that I only had about five minutes to try and draw the counter. I’ve been meaning to finish this but two hours before Shabbat is a tricky time to finish a piece.

A spread from Dave Chisholm’s Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound depicting the recording session (singular) for Kind of Blue. Davis had a stroke later in life and was prescribed drawing to bring his all-important right hand back to life. By the time he could play trumpet again, he was painting 5-6 hours today. Chisholm is both a professor of jazz trumpet and a graphic novelist, so I wasn’t surprised when The Search was the first book to play music in my mind.

Left: I don’t remember! Right: The desk of one of the branch libraries, plus a cool building I saw on my way there. The stupid pen tip dried up because I was using acrylic ink so I had to switch to my Pilot Precise V5. I was originally hoping to do this whole sketchbook with the same pen so I was a little sad, but this is a fun drawing. The thing on the left is our self-checkout machine.

Left: The desk at another one of the branch libraries. Right: The hydra is a well-documented beast in world mythology. However, its biological nature is less understood, and given the creature’s ill-logical biologic, its investigation will likely be of great interest to naturalists the world over. After braving many extreme conditions and horrible dangers, we…

Left: I don’t remember! Right: the break room at the main branch. The room is underground and everyone eats in complete silence, making the space incredibly liminal. You might be able to tell here that I’m really stressing about continuing to draw each day and trying to finish my now 40-image-long backlog.

Thanks to our one rainstorm a year here in Long Beach, I ended up accidentally leaving my sketchbook at the library. At first I was sad to break my streak, but I figured that the big H was telling me to stop if I wasn’t having fun. Alas, I learned a lot! Left: Two games I played at the Wicked Wolf, Mind MGMT and Robo Quest Arena.

In the spirit of taking it easy, I’ve been working on a bigger piece during my breaks at the branch library in Bay Shore. I add to this in short bursts, so it kind of feels like watching a plant grow.

Here’s the view. It really is on the shore of the bay!

Jack and my parents are coming in town for a CNBLUE concert in April, so I offered to design shirts for us. Here’s the front.

And here’s the back. I’ll probably do a deep dive on this one once the shirts are done since there was a little more “process” behind it. Also… I really popped off. We may be doing a small print run, so let me know if you're interested in a shirt at halenwmasaki@gmail.com.

That’s it! Thank you, Dr. February!

Goodbye, Joann

Joann’s is closing for good. Alex is very sad. We spent like a million dollars on fabric. I’ll miss you, Joann.

Now, you may be wondering…

These are all great questions. Let’s try and find out.

Here we see Sela inside a takoyaki maker. Takoyaki (たこ焼き or 蛸焼) is a ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan. It is typically filled with minced or diced octopus (tako), tempura scraps (tenkasu), pickled ginger (beni shoga), and green onion (negi).^[1][2] The balls are brushed with takoyaki sauce (similar to Worcestershire sauce) and mayonnaise, and then sprinkled with green laver (aonori) and shavings of dried bonito (katsuobushi).

Here we see Sela at Deer Island. Kashima (鹿島) is a small island off the coast of Hōjō, Matsuyama, in Ehime Prefecture, Japan. Aptly named "Deer Island," Kashima is home to a flourishing population of Sika deer. The island is about 1.5 km in circumference and 114 meters high at its peak with a 400-meter long white sand beach.^[1] Having inhabited the island for thousands of years, Kashima's deer are a designated "natural treasure of Ehime Prefecture."^[1] They are accessible for feeding and photos in an enclosure on the east end of the island, north of the ferry pier.^[2]

Here we see Sela at Osaka-jo (maybe). Osaka Castle (大坂城 or 大阪城, Ōsaka-jō) is a Japanese castle in Chūō-ku, Osaka, Japan. The castle is one of Japan's most famous landmarks and played a major role in the unification of Japan during the sixteenth century of the Azuchi–Momoyama period.^[1]

Here we see Sela in the bamboo forest. Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae.^[3][4][5] Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in the case of Dendrocalamus sinicus having individual stalks (culms) reaching a length of 46 meters (151 ft), up to 36 centimeters (14 in) in thickness and a weight of up to 450 kilograms (1,000 lb).^[6] The internodes of bamboos can also be of great length. Kinabaluchloa wrayi has internodes up to 2.5 meters (8 ft) in length.^[7] and Arthrostylidium schomburgkii has internodes up to 5 meters (16 ft) in length,^[8] exceeded in length only by papyrus. By contrast, the stalks of the tiny bamboo Raddiella vanessiae of the savannas of French Guiana measure only 10–20 millimeters (0.4–0.8 in) in length by about 2 millimeters (0.08 in) in width.^[9] The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada.^[5][10][11]

Sela is nowhere to be seen. Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches from cereal grain—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. The grain is mashed to convert starch in the grain to sugars, which dissolve in water to form wort. Fermentation of the wort by yeast produces ethanol and carbonation in the beer. Beer is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks in the world, the most widely consumed, and the third most popular drink after water and tea. Most modern beer is brewed with hops, which add bitterness and other flavours and act as a natural preservative and stabilising agent. Other flavouring agents, such as gruit, herbs, or fruits, may be included or used instead of hops. In commercial brewing, natural carbonation is often replaced with forced carbonation.

Here we see Sela being attacked by Elphaba. Elphaba Thropp (/ˈɛlfəbə ˈθrɒp/) is the protagonist in the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, its musical theatre adaptation, and the musical's two-part film adaptation, Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). Elphaba is a reimagining of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Here we see Sela in Laputa. Laputa /ləˈpuːtə/ is a flying island described in the 1726 book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.^[1] It is about 4½ miles (7¼ km) in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its inhabitants can manoeuvre in any direction using magnetic levitation. The island is the home of the king of Balnibarbi and his court, and is used by the king to enforce his rule over the lands below.

That’s right, I found that shit.

Sela is nowhere to be seen. Koi (鯉, Japanese: [koꜜi], literally "carp"), or more specifically nishikigoi (錦鯉, Japanese: [ɲiɕi̥kiꜜɡoi], literally "brocaded carp"), are colored varieties of carp (Cyprinus sp.) that are kept for decorative purposes in outdoor koi ponds or water gardens.

Sela is nowhere to be seen. Snow consists of individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes.^[2] It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout its life cycle, starting when, under suitable conditions, the ice crystals form in the atmosphere, increase to millimeter size, precipitate and accumulate on surfaces, then metamorphose in place, and ultimately melt, slide, or sublimate away.

I have no idea where this is but since there’s a giant crab in the background I’m guessing it’s Tokyo. Tokyo,^[a] officially the Tokyo Metropolis,^[b] is the capital city of Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is one of the most populous urban areas in the world. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and parts of six neighboring prefectures, is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with 41 million residents as of 2024.

Sela is nowhere to be seen. Okonomiyaki (Japanese: お好み焼き, listen^ⓘ) is a Japanese teppanyaki savory pancake dish consisting of wheat flour batter and other ingredients (mixed, or as toppings) cooked on a teppan (flat griddle). Common additions include cabbage, meat, and seafood, and toppings include okonomiyaki sauce (made with Worcestershire sauce), aonori (dried seaweed flakes), katsuobushi (bonito flakes), Japanese mayonnaise, and pickled ginger.

Sela is nowhere to be seen. A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.

Sela is nowhere to be seen. Lawson, Inc. (株式会社ローソン, Kabushiki gaisha Rōson) is a convenience store franchise chain in Japan. The store originated in the United States in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, but exists today as a Japanese company based in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The company has its headquarters in East Tower of Gate City Ohsaki in Ōsaki, Shinagawa, Tokyo.^[3]

Sela is nowhere to be seen. I’m guessing this picture was taken because they’re eating wagyu beef? Wagyu (Japanese: 和牛, Hepburn: wagyū, lit. 'Japanese cattle') is the collective name for the four principal Japanese breeds of beef cattle. All wagyū cattle originate from early twentieth-century cross-breeding between native Japanese cattle and imported stock, mostly from Europe.^[1]: 5

And finally, here we see Sela with absolutely enormous nostrils. The Hakone Ropeway (箱根ロープウェイ, Hakone Rōpuwei) is the name of an aerial lift, as well as its operator. The funitel line links between Sōunzan and Tōgendai via Ōwakudani, all within Hakone, Kanagawa, Japan. The line became funitel in 2002, the second of its kind in the nation, after Hashikurasan Ropeway. It makes a part of the sightseeing route between Odawara and Lake Ashi. The company belongs to the Odakyū Group.

That’s it! Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll see you next week!

BONUS MANGA