A new release PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.0 of PicoTurtle is out. This is the seventh in the recent series of weekly releases. It is also the first release with a windows 64-bit installer. There are several minor changes and bug-fixes in this release. You can read all about it on the release page.

The windows installer can be downloaded here -> PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.0 for Win/64-bit

A new source-only release PicoTurtle v0.1.0-alpha.5 of PicoTurtle is out. This release has minor bug fixes, better documentation and an improved docs viewer, and a new about dialog. The release page contains detailed release notes.

Few changes in the CMake build to support a windows installer are added to the release. These will be used to publish a binary installer for Windows starting next release.

The first source-only release c-color-names v0.1.0-alpha.0 of c-color-names is out. It is an ANSI C API for the excellent collection of colors in the color-names NodeJS package. I use this for some my experiments and projects.

For further details check the project page c-color-names.

We recently moved to a new place in Bangalore. And I’ve been busy with one thing or another for the past 3 months. However, we’ve settled down now.

My son and I were taking a walk a few weeks ago on a beautiful late Sunday morning. I had taken a camera along to take photos if we spotted something interesting. And we did…

This is a trio rudra-palash flowers - and I really liked the symmetry of these three. I like the way the photo turned out - hope you like it as well.

That’s it for now… Hope …

A new source-only release PicoTurtle v0.1.0-alpha.4 of PicoTurtle is out. The release page contains detailed release notes. However here are a few highlights:

1. Turtle Lua Console - allowing turtle run in an interactive lua console widget. This is similar to the browser developer console functionality - although with fewer features.
2. Find/replace - is enabled in the Turtle Lua editor.
3. LUA_PATH - The path of the currently run lua file is added to the LUA_PATH.

I've been working on a C++/Lua version of PicoTurtle for the last year on and off. This last week I've stretched myself to work on it and make a release. This is a full rewrite of the turtle application that I had earlier built in nodejs and electron. The previous version was slow and it was harder to add features given the tech choices I'd made.

The new version is written in C++. The turtle drawing is done on a skia surface, and the GUI is built using Qt6. Developing with Qt6 was a positive experience - espescially because of …

I got irregular in Apr-May, and then did not post at all in June when I got a mild case of covid. I’m fully recovered now, and thought I would post an update on what I’ve been reading and what I’ve been drawing.

Learning art is a continuous process - but improvements in your own skill are discrete in nature. If you are consistent in practice then all of a sudden one fine day you will notice that you are much better in a particular way.

I practice figure drawing every day for a few minutes - and last …

A lot of my sketching practice is based on reference pictures. Let’s say I’m practicing drawing figures. Then I go onto pinterest look for pictures with interesting poses - and then simplify them and try to draw the pose. I try to do this in a few minutes so that I can practice many of them. However there are challenges - looking for unique poses to draw, finding the tougher angles which are harder to draw, and also finding poses in clothing where the anatomy is clear, and more…

And so I recently tried drawing not from picture reference but …