Merry Childermas/Christmas/Solstice?!

Merry christmas, too.

But is it really? In biblical times, there happened a great massacre, where tons of innocent people were killed. This, they called the Massacre of the Innocents. The name kinda makes sense, doesnt it? To commemorate this day, we started celebrating Holy Innocents day on the 28th dec, also know as Childermas.

On childermas, Saint Nicholas was rumored to walk around, dressed up as a goat. This is generally accepted as truth. The goat, as we already know, symbolises the devil. You know, the horns, the snout, the hooves. Its how the devil is depicted in art. For Nicholas, the goat dress symbolised his "control" over the devil. Yeah, he was that naive.

Generally, in our western culture, we dont really regard Christmas as something christian, do we? Its turned into this sort of just cultural tradition. We dont pray, nor do most of us go to church. Actually, christmas has become more of a symbol for western consumerism than anything else.

But yes, It is told Jesus was born... Some time of the year. We just celebrate it on the 24th dec. Whats interesting is, its conspicuously close to the winter solstice. Which is the date of the shortest day, marking the onset of days starting to get longer... Does anyone else sense some funky symbolism here? Rising light, Jesus Christ, erh... Our sun? Ill leave it to you as free spirits to adhere to any religion you want, but as a Christian, I definitely worship the sun. Wait, what?

These dates seem to have kinda merged... Saint Nicholas is now our Santa Claus, thats where we think we got it from. But he wasnt merrily dressed in red and white. He ran around, pranking people, demanding gifts, dressed up as an evil goat.

Left my drawing tablet in Vasa, so I had to improvise. 

Red was always the liturgical colour adorned in connection to Holy Innocents day, and eventually and inevitably the goat turned into a red-clothed straw-man, and finally into the jolly old pervert we all know and love, Santa Claus. In Finnish, Santa Claus is still called "Joulupukki", Pukki meaning some kind of goat. The Yule goat, as it was called, was known and kind of worshipped especially in Scandinavia, and germanic culture. As close as a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as Santa, there was only the Yule Goat.

So thats the story of Christmas. Full of wonderful archetypes and great symbolisism. Have a good one! Im not going to tell you whether or not you should believe in Jesus and all that, but this tradition is born out of historical fact. Saint Nicholas did exist, even if what he believed in may or may not have.

Women and the 21st dec.

First off, MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY LOVELY READERS!!

Im going to nicely splice this up into 2 parts. Part one is about drawing women. And part 2 is for all you confused souls wondering why the world didnt collapse upon itself yesterday.

Ugh, no, Im not going to write about any woman in particular, if thats what you were expecting. Though I do have one problem with women in general; I cant draw them. Drawing women is like rocket-science, and I dont know why. For most young artists I know, Ive noticed drawing their own sex seems most natural. Girls draw women, boys draw men. 

Why? I guess there are 2 possible reasons. Either we scrutinize and view our own kind more, and know it better. Which I think could be the case, because I can perfectly well imagine a male face in 3 dimensions, as spatially correct as I could possibly muster, while just imagining a generic womans face in 3D is kinda difficult. I guess this is attributable to the fact that every one of us look at ourselves more carefully than we look at other people, making our own gender seem more familiar. Just think of all those hours you spend infront of the mirror!

Either that, or were simply more used to drawing one gender than another. At first, I guess most artists draw themselves, or their own kind. And after that, it just sticks. We notice we have more experience drawing our own sex than the other, and so we just keep doing that, and end up being unused to drawing the opposite gender. I feel this could also be true, because I know myself I suffer this phenomenon. I dont want to draw technically nasty pictures, with proportions all over the place, so I do what I do best, draw men. Its an evil spiral.

Myeah. Anyhow, I need practise in drawing women. One thing in particular that bugs me is that I dont know what the outline of the face should look like. Every time, the jawline ends up looking weird. Or like a dudes. Bad stuff.

So I drew a woman without a jaw. Fucking genius.

Oh, yes, and she has two right eyes. I just felt it looked too boring.



The 21st, right. Well, what really happened yesterday? According to the mayans, we are now in a new baktun. So... What does that mean? Nothing, really. A baktun is like a really fucking gargantuan year. We count our days in years, months, days, right? Well, the mayans count days in K'in. After that, things get more complicated. 20 K'in make one Winal, and 18 winals make a Tun. 20 times 18 equals 360, so thats their closest measurement of time compared to our year.

Anyhow, the mayans measurements of time go further than a year. 20 years, or tun, as they call it, make a K'atun, and that finally brings us to the Baktun, which is compromised of 20 k'atun.

So. Lets make an example, shall we? The 20th of december, 2012. Europeans would write this as 20.12.2012. dd/mm/yy. Similarly, albeit weirdly to me, Americans would write 12.20.2012. mm/dd/yy.

How does that translate to the mayan calendar? Their dates look more like this:
baktun/katun/tun/winal/kin, which means the 20th december would look like this:
12.19.19.17.19. in the mayan calendar.

To familiarise ourselves further with the system, we can also apply the same way of thinking to our calendar.
Its the 2nd milennium, 0th century, 1st decade, 12th month, 20th day. That would mean today is 2.0.1.12.20, in a mayan gregorian calendar, or whatever one would call it.

This seems quite reasonable, doesnt it? So whats all this fuzz about? Well, after 12.19.19.17.19., we pass into the next baktun. Well well well, isnt that a great opportunity for making doomsday predictions!? It only occurs once every 394 years, after all! Wait, what? Yes, the earth was similarly scorched to a crisp and pelted by meteors as recently as Tue, Sep 18, 1618!!! WHOAH

I hope you learned something. The world doesnt end because a number on a calendar switches. Its like saying the world ends at new years eve, or at the next milennium (Funnily enough, we kinda did believe that before the year 2000. Look up Y2K, if i tickled your interest.).

Yeah. Once you understand the system, its not all that prophetic anymore. In about 2700 years, were going to pass into the next Piktun, which is 20 baktun. Great stuff, right? Well, just as little will change on that day. What really happened on the 21st, yesterday, was that the mayan date changed to 13.0.0.0.0. Cool. Who knows, 13 being the unlucky number it is, 
WHAT IF THE WORLD ENDS AFTER ALL.?!?!

Hobbits and hexagons-

I AM ALL RECOVERED

Kinda. Glandular fever does linger in your body, and Im not for taking more blood samples (woman sucked me dry, jesus christ), so ill not be knowing exactly when ill be technically all good. No symptoms though, so practically, im fit as a fiddle. Though I do still feel that tardy fatigue that Im sure ive already written about, and thats not expected to vane before a couple months after ive recovered.

SO

Its been too long! The scientosaurus painting is already about a thousand years old, and I felt a longing for more digital art! So I drew a hobbit, of course, in honour of the movie about that hobbit, called... The Hobbit..! Uh.

I havent actually seen it, and its been years since I last watched LOTR... So I cant rightfully claim I depicted the hobbit from the movie. I just kinda drew a short man with no neck and short stubbly arms. Its almost more like a regular short person than an actual hobbit... Not that I actually know the difference.

Yuruhhh.. Fierce, so fierce. Ive grown a fancy for GIFs lately (If you havent noticed, the recently written about Mosaic actually moves.), so I wanted to make a kind of lazy walkthrough thingy. If anyone actually watched my youtube videos, might that I would have made a real video, but alas, youll have to make do with this.

Basic stuff. I kinda neglected the feet. I dont really like drawing feet. Just like with drawing hands, it takes a lot of practice. Quite frankly, its not really my favourite motive anyway.

A friend of mine told me to write about snow... Quite poignant, I guess. Were practically forced to wade through it. I figured the most fascinating thing about snow must be snowflakes.

Why are snowflakes so beautiful? And why are they symmetrical?

Well well well. Theyre beautiful BECAUSE theyre symmetrical. The human eye finds it appealing. So why is it that they form in this way? Why doesnt it always hail, as someone who never saw snow would naturally assume?

There some quite basic particle physics involved here... We know that snow consists of 3 different atoms, 2 Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom, creating a water molecule. Hydrogen atoms in one molecule naturally form hydrogen bonds with oxygen from other molecules. This is why phenomenons like surface tension and viscosity can exist. 

Right, so, because of the way they connect to each other, the natural structure for a crystal will be a ring. More specifically, a hexagonal ring. A large quanity of hexagonal rings together create a hexagonal crystal, and as the molecular rings lie flatly upon each other, it creates a flat hexagon, with 8 facets.

At the edge between every facet, there is a natural affinity for attaching more water, as it forms into crystals in the atmosphere. For crystallization to even occur, it needs a base to happen on, like dust initally, or the snowflake itself.

As the hexagon has 6 edges, it sprouts 6 arms. The six arms will all grow in the same fashion, because they are all formed in virtually the same conditions, as these flakes are so small. Hexagonal structures are again formed, as the flake descends through the atmosphere and meets different layers with different conditions. These new hexagons form at the end of these arms, and the process begins anew, arms shooting out left and right, creating these beautiful formations of 6-way symmetrical ice.

Thats kind of a myth, though. Most snowflakes arent actually all that symmetrical, as conditions arent always perfect. And at the point they have reached the ground, and you, theyve already collided with other snowflakes, bunching up.

Why's snow white? Thats another natural question when it comes to snow in general. Its not white, actually. Its blue, really. Just not by much. Snow does absorb some red light, giving it a blue hue in certain conditions. Its the same with ice. And water, just not to the same extent. Anyhow, it appears white for the same reason a layer of  crushed glass may appear white; Light hitting snow it is mostly reflected. It may be reflected once, twice, thrice, or even four times, without losing much of its energy. Eventually, the light is bound to scatter back up, into someones eyes, making the snow look white. Theres also a refractive component, meaning light will pass through it. That might hit our eyes, making us see white, but reflection is more likely the main element at work here. 

So thats great to know if youre writing an essay on snow... I hope. 

GOOD DAY AND HAVE A NICE WEEKEND

Betterment for battered-! incl. stuff

So yeah. That title almost sounds like a political slogan, but as im sure those of you who have been following the blog the past week, or month, already know, Ive been sick. But ive good news, for I am recuperated, ill no more! I still feel some last vestige of that horrendous pain in the throat, and my lymph nodes are still swollen, but the tonsillitis is almost all better! I can  eat again! And I can go back to school!

I may have been a tad too confident in my vitality, though, earlier today, when chose to go outside ._. Came back from the blistering cold an hour later, and then I slept in fever for about 2 hours... A poignant reminder, I am still sick in glandular fever, even though I am not suffering the symptoms and do feel better. Eating is nice, though. It really is.

Art reminiscent of the past week is what you may view below. I drew it about a week ago, when truly I felt  myself being at the apex of the illness, the very worst point. And yep, after that, albeit slowly, I got better.

Rather fetching, is it not? I like how it looks as if though the lower part of the picture was drawn by a six year old, and the mushroom cloud looks quite well rendered. I do that sometimes, I just fail to focus on .. erh, the bigger picture, rather than the details. Thats why its important that we should strive to always draw iteratively, as ive written more about in an earlier entry. It makes you focus on things like composition, overall flow of the shapes, and qualitative misfits... Like that shirt. If you narrow your scope to just the figurative punchline of the drawing, then its easy to remain constricted to that smaller perspective.

Drawing iteratively is still only one of many ways to ensure that your artwork is consistent and works as a whole. Take painters, for example. Painters ideally work at arms length from their canvas, not hunched over it, scrutinizing every stroke into perfection. They do this because it gives them a better view of the wholeness, which is essentially what makes for a good painting. Another thing that they always should do is take ten steps back from their painting. This really lets you see things that you wouldnt notice up close. Always drawing up close gives you a false impression of what your artwork looks like, which isnt necessarily true to life. Its always beneficial to change your perspective.

Digital artists have tons of ways to do this. Some people like to flip their canvas about, left to right. What looks natural one way may not at all look natural when you flip it horizontally. If you can make it look nice both ways, then the result is guaranteed to look mighty fine. 

Another thing that we digital artists should keep in mind is to always strive to work in the same dimensions as the art is supposed to be viewed. If its A4 size, work in A4. Pixel count is irrelevant to what im talking about here, you need to make sure you make the art the size its supposed to be viewed in. What you dont want to be doing is when youre finished, scroll out a couple thousand percent, because working at a zoomed perspective is baad. What looks nice at 800% zoom might look awful at 100%, and as you cant possibly hope to cover all of it with that sort of detail anyway, it creates these inconsistencies in your art, where one area looks better than the other.

Regular graphite drawings are not suitable for viewing at long range. That just one of the natural drawbacks you get with such a pale and relatively bland medium. While you may get fine lines, you often lack the necessary depth of shades to create sufficient contrasts for far viewing. Unless, of course, you mash that 9b pencil like there was no tomorrow, then im sure you can do it. Im just saying, though, itd be easier with charcoal. 

Which brings me to somewhat of a conclusion; The last and maybe most important thing to keep in mind when ensuring your artwork looks good as an entirety is figuring out what medium is best suited for the job. Graphite pencils dont fit every motive, you cant paint a wall with it. Just as you wouldnt venture out drawing manga with oil-pastels. Sometimes its just better for the art to for a moment let go of your favorite set of tools, and pick up ones that are better suited for the task at hand. 

Same goes for digital. Some work, like design work for example, is best done in applications that work in curves and vectors rather than brushes and strokes. Its always nice to widen your scope.

Well, shoot, thats a nice big block of text. Sorry!

MOSAICS and more illness-

I MADE A MOSAIC..-THING!!!

Its quite grotesque, isnt it? As a piece of art, though, I think its quite interesting. Not because it carries any kind of specific meaning or anything, it just has a piquant but yet slightly bizarre appeal. I saw something quite like this a while ago, that some I know had made. It was quite a regular photo of this posing man, zoomed on his face, and especially on his glasses. The glasses themselves were of a quaint round design, but onto the lenses they had glued pieces of another photo, of an eye. Wearing these fake glasses made you look... Weird. But that was the point, the bizarreness of it was also the very appeal it had.

Now, there werent really any deep thoughts, or grand schemes behind this mosaic. Im still sick, still gravely ill in my terrible bout of glandular fever. I still have problems eating, although the pain seems to have transferred from a terrible pain when swallowing into a almost terrible pain that I feel all the time.

And you know how they say, im supposed to sleep when im sick? Well, thats a problem, because every time I lie down in one place for too long, I start sweating. Like a pig. Its sick. The other night, I switched beds 3 times, because every bed would get soaked in sweat, and would be impossible to rest in. And I really mean soaked! The first time it happened, when I had my fevers a couple weeks ago, I woke up thinking I, Victor, soon to be 18, had wet my own bed. Thats the first thing I thought. But no, it turns out, it was all actually sweat. Fucking nasty. And its been like this, more or less, ever since I had those fevers. Its bullcrap, man! Let me sleep, douche-glands!

I have more good news for you guys though. Almost 50% of infants have had or have glandular fever! Either, theyre born with antibodies, or they get it from all that fucking kissing that babies endure! So youre like, half covered! And as we know, you only get mononucleosis once! Babies have it easy, too. Some extra crying on the night, or some shit like that. No seemingly lifelong fatigue, no fevers on steroids, and no throat problems. The younger you are, the more likely you are to not have any symptoms. Bah, I should have kissed more girls when I was a kid, then I wouldnt have to suffer this bullshit!


Oh YEAH! The mosaic is a gif, i hope you noticed. I used Gimps innate GIFfing ability to make it. Its not a very smooth or intuitive setup, but its very straightforward. You simply stack the layers in the order you like, and add a number in milliseconds to the layers name, which corresponds to the lenght of time which that frame will be shown, and save it in GIF format! Easy as pie. As a matter of fact, I am eating pie in this moment. Also, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY, FINLAND, 95 YEARSS YOU GO GIRLL--.:!

Merry mono, chaps-

Such a nice Little Christmas were having, arent we? Not I. Because Im badly ill. I have the kissing disease, mononucleosis. Its probably just another phase of what I had 2 weeks ago, when I wrote about the fever, only this time, I have some beautiful tonsillitis to go with that fever. And swollen spleen, muscle tone, lack of appetite and an infected liver. It means I cant exercise, drink alcohol, be hit in the spleen area for risk of rupturing it, for a whole month. More, even if I wish to be extra careful.

If I exercise or work myself up, it is expected to be closely followed by a high fever. If I drink, my liver is expected to explode, or god knows what. Life, at this point, feels extremely bad.

But you know, 90% of adults carry the virus (Oh, and being a virus, antibiotics arent likely to help. At all.), so most of us will get it at some point in our lives. Its a little bit like Finnish conscription for men. Its something that everyone deals with at some point in their lives. For some, its worse, for some, its not even that bad. Some people only have a slightly sore throat, others get high fever and a ruined throat. Some people never knew they had it, and others carry it from birth, and have no symptoms whatsoever.

And for me, its bad. Right now, tonsillitis like a bitch. The swollenness of those things almost fill up the whole throat. I dare barely swallow for the pain. Ive a fever, and im sweating like a pig. My entire face hurts. My ears feel like theyre filled with shit, longing to burst from the pressure. Even opening my mouth hurts. My legs and arms feel heavy, like theyre made out of lead, and I barely sleep at night.

And Im taking penicillin for the throat. It doesnt help against mono, just the tonsillitis. Problem is, I can never swallow those things. Anyone who has ever taken penicillin knows, that it tastes like the devils arse. It is, by far, the nastiest taste ive ever experienced.

Oh, mononucleosis. Period of incubation can be up to 7 weeks, and symptoms may last well over a month if youre unlucky. The fatigue is expected to linger almost half a year. Its hell, im telling you. I dont wish it upon my worst enemy. Good thing for you people is, its not a very contageous virus. You have to be under rigorous exposure to catch it, and it mainly contracts through contact with saliva, hence kissing disease. If i would only feel up to it, I can go back to school and being with people without any risk of anyone catching it, luckily enough. But youre likely to catch it from one of your future girl- or boyfriends, there really is no way of avoiding it. All you can do is hope it wont be so bad for you. Please, do not fret over it. There are worse diseases out there, after all.

Scientosaurus rex on centrifugal effect-

What do you mean, "Dinosaurs dont make good scientists"?

I PROMISED to write a further explanation on the forces of nature, so here we go. What i really want to do here, is just clear up a few definitions and statements that I used in an earlier entry about the equator and sky and stuff... Yeah. In retrospect, this blog is pretty weird.



Anyway, I said earlier that the centrifugal force does not exist. This is both true and false, its a matter of perspective. We all know that there is something that seems to grab hold of us, pulling us outwards, when we e.g. make a turn in a car, or speed about in a curvy rollercoaster. Or use centrifuges, but thats not an example I want to use right now, it would detract from the point.

So centrifugal force is how we most often refer to this force, this pulling sensation, present in your whole body when speed changes direction. Yes, speed changing direction. Thats how youre supposed to think about this, because thats what it is. There is no such force in existance as centrifugal force, its like a virtual force. It can be observed in some circumstances, but its not actually real.

What the centrifugal... effect, as it should be called, actually is composed of, is a combination of centripetal force making our movement change direction, while Newtons first law of motion makes our bodies strive to keep going in the same direction as we used to. Thats a long sentence. Ill state an example;

Youre speeding about, in a car, and make a left turn. The movement starts from the wheels, which are solidly connected to the car. The car changes direction, but as you are not mechanically bound to the car (You should be, though. Seatbelts save lives.), your body will keep moving without turning. Now begins a strife between the force turning the car, dragging your ass or whatever part of you is most connected to the vehicle to the left, while newtons first law wants you keep going forward. The centrifugal effect manifests itself as a feeling that you are being pulled to the right! Trippy, right.

How large this virtual force will be depends on speed, and how steep the curve is. You might recognize yourself sitting in a rollercoaster, going over a huge arching hill-thing. Here, the same happens when the fluids of your stomach come rushing up your throat, as when youre in the turning car. Only difference is that in a rollercoaster, your body is firmly attached to the ride, and the only loose part of you seems to be your half-digested popcorn, which will very much be the victim of centrifugal effect.

Oh yeah, the feeling of weightlessness is also all because of centrifugal effect. I just think vomit is more fascinating.

What is this centripetal force im talking about then? I didnt clear that up very well... Centripetal force is just a word for a force that pulls you toward a center of some sort. We are always being subjected to centripetal force, as gravity pulls us to the sun, for example. Here, again, in the movement of planets, the centrifugal effect equals out the centripetal force, and thats why we dont go crashing into the sun.

One thing worth mentioning about newtons first law of motion, and centrifugal effect for that matter, is that the momentum increases by a factor of 4 every time the speed of the movement doubles. This means that youll feel 9 times as much centrifugal force when youre moving 60km/h as when youre moving 20km/h. Think about that, the next time you blow a corner with your car, and wonder why there was no traction and why you are now in the ditch. You got fucked by centrifugal effect!

Wingardium Videosa?

AT LONG LAST

Our glorious project takes flight. Hopefully. If its not brought down for some kind of copyright-infringement again. Here is for everyone to see our poor acting performances, our bad writing, our shoddy compositional skills, and our general being bad at filmmaking. Ill make no bones of this, film is not my business.

The music in this video does not belong to me; All copyright belongs to EMI.


Anyhow, we were moderately pleased with our video, even though it had its shortcomings. We managed to make everyone laugh with the clown-costume, the horror-scene wasnt all bad, and we found some fitting sound effects. The tune playing in the end gave us some problems on Youtube... The video was made unavailible to watch in some 214 countries, and was now only viewable in like... Switzerland or such, so thats why it took so long for us to make it viewable to you.

Incase this actually does work, that is. Google, being the supercompany it is, owns both Blogger and Youtube, so I wouldnt be surprised if they were to have the same policies for this kind of thing.


For those wondering what the video is actually all about... Well, dramatically enough its about a pair of sunglasses. Which make you dream. Pretty cool, huh. So you dont really know whats going on with the first one, hes kinda just like, clowns and shit. The other guy was supposed to be this kind of deeper character, who on the surface, before the dream, seemed just fine. But, when he put on these glasses, they would sort of act as a scope into what hes really thinking, and hes actually all alone in this nightmare of his.

So he would just as the first guy send the glasses on. This third actor was supposed to be acting all depressed, but she kinda couldnt stop laughing while we were filming, so we had some issues shooting that :P I think we got it pretty good in the end though, 73rd try or so. So she was this outcast-person, sad and lonely, but then these glasses would take her to a better place, where she could be happy! So she keeps the glasses, and the happy music keeps rolling. End of story.


While we were writing the script I actually wanted this last person to get run over and die... Yeah! Think about it! How dramatic! Shes sad, she finds glasses, shes entranced in happiness, she gets run over in a terrible accident. I thought thatd be nice, since then shed get to die happy, and the glasses would go with her. It would give way to a flood of thoughts in the viewer. But alas, my dear co-writers didnt approve of my sterling visions. I think this was a really good ending too, so you know, maybe it was for the best.



All the people who helped in making this or acted in the movie, my thanks to you. Splendid work! Most of you. Well, some of you.

feeling feverish and shit-

Urgh, I havent eaten in 10 hours, ive drunk wayy too much coffee, and I feel like complete shit. Im trying to force myself into eating an omelette sandwich, but I have no appetite.

What is Fever?

Fever is the bodys reaction to viral or bacterial attack. By raising the temperature in your body, you kill off weak cells. How does that work? Well, we know for a fact that all animal or bacterial or whateverial cells have a ideal temperature to work and thrive in. And so do the enzymes that these bacteria and cells make use of. All cells also have an ideal acidity, pH-value, that is. For those of you who have basic biological knowledge, you should be able to make a connection to how fever works right about here.

By raising the temperature, the body forces these bacteria out of their comfort-zones, and theyll cease to multiply, or just start dying faster. This ideal pH and temperature range is very strict, a change by just a couple degrees can make all the difference. Then again, some bacteria are more resistant than others, and simple fever may not bite.

It causes discomfort in humans, as we are all familiar with. Just like bacteria, the cells in our bodies have ideal temperatures to work in, and of course, it affects us just like it affects the bacteria attacking us. Why doesnt it kill us like it kills bacteria? Well, were used to it. The people whose fever tends to be too high quickly died away in the natural selection. Atleast thats one theory. Fever does make us feel like utter shit though.

Im sure fever also does other things to the body, like stimulate certain organs which produce a certain kind of anticells, which directly attack bacteria. Antibodies, that is. Antibodies are the immune systems way of tracking down certain illicit cells and locking them down, so that other parts of the immune system eventually can latch on to these bacteria or viruses and be rid of them. I remember what my Biology teacher in school told us when we were studying up on these kinds of things. Antibodies are like a ball and chain, but the lock on the chain only fits a certain foot. If the guards dont know what ball and chain are right for this particular inmate, then theyll have to try out every damn ball and chain in the whole prison, until they find the right one. Only after that, the inmate can be properly dealt with. The guards are clever, though, and theyll remember what ball and chain belong to which prisoner.

Basically, antibodies are the bodys way to tackle bacteria and uphold our immune system. Im sure its related to fever in one way or another.

Update: Day 2 of bad fever. Still alive.

Update: Went a whole week like this. its a painful life.

So yeah. While were on the topic of me, heres a cute picture of me.

Oh yeah. Such a player, man. That face! No idea how old I was. I remember that sweater, though. It may have been a terrible crime against fashion, but that sweater was baws. It was deep olive green on the outside, and motherfuhhin orange on the inside, phooaah, fuck yeahh.


Oh, here I am. Talking about myself and posting pictures of a younger self. Tssk, tssk, tssk. I better stop writing right n-

artist-stuff, lead and lazy-

Hum di da dum, la-li-lo. You know, im probably the laziest person on the earth. I really do need to get a life, right. And barely do I maintain my blog, shame on me! Im sorry, I should pay more attention to you guys!

Kind of a caricature thing going on here, the proportions are not in any way intended to be true to life. The important thing for me with this drawing was to incorporate some kind of emotion. Disgust maybe?

Today, dear boys and girls, I used a technique that is a little bit different from what im used to doing. I drew the base picture with a regular, traditional graphite pen (0.3mm HB mechanical, SHEESH 0.3mm HOW COOL IS THAT) and photographed that, slapped it into my PC, and drew over it digitally! Nothing fancy, just a few overlay layers for the colouring, and some extra stuff like adding highlights and just touching up the shading a bit.

Ive actually never tried this before, and that goes back to my initial statement about laziness. I prefer it all in one medium, no fiddling. Yes, 2 minutes of moving it over to the PC is way too much for me to handle on a regular basis. But it turned out nice, though. Sketching with traditional medium and a real pen is much easier than sketching with the drawing tablet. I cant tell why that is, I might just be more used to drawing on real paper. But who knows, maybe the tide will turn and ill get really good at sketching on the tablet down the line?

Anyhow, one thing that bothered me about this picture in particular was the skin tone. Man, I could just aswell be trying to... I dont even know, but this is like fucking rocket science! How can it be that hard, just getting the right colour for a face? I know a lot of digital artists use palettes, but Im not into that whole "download someone elses brushes/palette--> win"-mentality which surrounds digital painting, Photoshop in particular. If ill ever make use of a palette, I sure hope its a palette I composed on my own.



Myeah. I figured id make a more art-specific entry for today. I was supposed to make a second continuation on centrifugal force and the like, but ill just have to do that some other time...


Oh yeah, 0.3mm mechanical graphite pencil. Erh, no, thats not a lead pencil, btw. Lead is toxic, and not suitable for use in pencils. Its a common misconception, in swedish we say we theres "Bly" in our pencils, but im afraid thats not entirely correct... Its a sort of carbon, not lead.

Anyways, one thing I remember from when I applied for the art programme at Vasa Övningsskola is how everyone used some shitty 4b wooden pencils provided to us when we were doing our entry-exams-things-pass-juju. This meant everyone made smeary drawings. The graphite was all over the place for some of the applicants. Its like some people didnt sharpen their pens even once in those 2 hours we drew. I scrapped the  miserable excuse for an artists tool early on, and used my own mechanical 0.5mm pen instead. While favoring mechanical pens over traditional wooden pencils for drawing might seem an add choice, it was the pen I was best used to, and I knew exactly what to expect from it. No smeary edges, no blurry drawing, and my drawing turned out relatively cool, all things considered.

My point here is; You need to not only use soft edges, but also hard edges. Neither can be neglected. Many seem to have the belief that a painting consisting of thousands of gradiented shadings and not a single sharp line nor contour is a realistic painting. Well, its not. The real world around us consists of more lines than youd think. One thing that I believe is key to learning how to be a great artist is learning when to use hard and soft edges. You can go alot deeper with this subject than youd think, and there are many great tutorials and podcasts about this stuff that I can recommend you watch, if youre interested in art.



So yeah, another days work and a big block of text. Oh, and a jolly good day I wish you.

Mostly equator and not acrylics!

Not acrylics? It looks like acrylics. Is it acrylics? 

Well, yes. In a sense. I aquired this quite amazing piece of drawing software, called Corel Painter 12. How is it different from what im using, which is Opencanvas? First off, Painter has a really robust brush-engine. It can handle acrylics. On PC. The paint blends, leaves strokes of paint, has adjustable wetness, the brush will eventually run dry of colour, etc. etc...! 

And it really works! They pulled it off! Its smooth, too! Almost no lag when working with a 100p brush on a 3000x2000 canvas! And its not a normal digital picture, no, its really a canvas with a prespecified texture which affects the way all brushes work on it!

Acrylics is not the end of it, Corel Painter comes preloaded with like hundreds of different brushes, ranging from airbrushing tools to canvas knives, from soft 2b to wet simulated watercolour! Its quite fascinating. It does take some getting used to, though, and the stuff you draw in Painter will look very different from the stuff youre used to in Photoshop, GIMP or OpenCanvas.





OH, AND THE EQUATOR! I came to an amazing realization today, when, in art class, we were talking about how kids from India almost always depict the sky as being orange or pink when painting. It came to me that this must have something to do with Rayleigh scattering, so its a perfect continuation on subjects previously discussed! If you havent read my rather lengthy entry about Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere, go do it now, or take the venture of reading on and probably not understanding what this has to do with anything.

So, Rayleigh scattering makes the sky red, right? Yeah. Is the sky different in India? Yeah. Is the atmosphere different in India? Uh... YES, thats what I realized. Its not groundbreaking, jesus, get off my back about it. The atmosphere is actually alot thicker around the equator! Why did I never think about that? Its for the same reason as the coriolis-effect occurs, or the reason why sattelites dont come crashing down on us, namely the centrifugal force.

Well, that last statement is not really true. Coriolis effect happens because of simple rotation of the earth, and thats a separate phenomenon. Sattelites dont come down because of inertia, not centrifugal force, and also have nothing to do with the rotation of the earth, but instead with the motion of the sattelite around the earth. In truth, theres really not much at all true about what I said. Not even the atmosphere is thicker at the equator because of centrifugal force (It may contain more dense particles, though, but thats not what matters here.).

It is infact the much less heard of Centripetal force that acts here. Not the entire story, but I promise to explain. Centripetal force is the force that draws something towards the centre of a circular path. It occurs in all circular movement, and is in fact what keeps that movement being circular, when the laws of inertia says the path wants to be straight.

So in the case of the atmosphere, the centripetal force would naturally be earths gravitational pull. If not for gravity, atmosphere would FLYYYY AWAY because of preservation of motion. One important thing to note about the momentous force of the atmosphere (The force that wants to be preserved, in short.), is that it is naturally larger at the equator, because as the air moves around earths circle of rotation along with the surface of the earth. It also moves faster the farther away it is from the axis of rotation, as does the surface of the earth, because it still needs to complete a full revolution in the same timeframe as the rest of the earth.

Inertia is in this case the force which in effect is applied upwards, away from the earth. Since its stronger at the equator, the particles of the atmosphere will flock to the equator. That has to do with the balance between our centripetal force and our reactive centrifugal force (Im introducing a new term, get used to it.), which is the same as the force exerted by our preservation of motion. That doesnt really make a whole lot of sense when you say it, but thats the way it is.

In other words, the balance is tipped in the favour of preservation of motion near the equator, relative to near the poles, where there isnt much circular movement, but the gravitational pull, centripetal force, stays the same, squatting the atmosphere up top, elongating it at the sides. YEP. Thats a lengthy explanation for a simple problem. I like to tell the whole story though, and no one seems to be complaing (Which would be totally ok, im shitballs mad at you people for not ever commenting on my entries).

Oh, lets not wander astray here. Since the atmosphere is thicker at the equator, more Rayleigh scattering will naturally occur the nearer you are to the equator, AND THUS, REDDER SKY. WOOP WOOP. So basically, because of preservation of motion, the indians get to have much redder and more beautiful skies than we do, and the indian kids in my art class will draw pinkish skies.


DAMNN RAYLEIGH, You make for long-ass entries. Im sorry guys, I just had to try to explain this.


I have an extra treat for you. Its a really ugly faux-acrylic painting of a blue guy. It doesnt really make much sense, and it doesnt really have artistic value, so im going to make the picture as small as blogger can make it. ANYWAY TOO MUCH TEXT TOO LITTLE PICTURE. I mean, some balance has to be had, right?

Okay, just to avoid confusion, Inertia, or preservation of motion as i weirdly enough decided to call it, or simply newtons first law combined with momentum, is actually not A FORCE being exerted, its rather FORCE which is contained, in motion... Damn, ill have to make another entry about that.

Halloween, bad puns and more stuff!

Im sorry guys, my blogging has been bone idle for the past week. I should know better.



I hope you chaps had a good halloween, because I did! Good night in good company. ANYHOW Heres how I was dressed up (Of course I was dressed up, fool, its halloween. Quite frankly, I worked my fingers to the bone painting my face.)

SKULL-FACE THING

I am actually very pleased with myself! I "drew" it all myself, standing infront of the mirror! The eye-hand coordination may not be quite as good as when you draw on paper, but it was great fun anyways!

Wearing that wasnt such great fun though. It was like perspirative madness. My eyes sweated to hell and back, and the white parts which used another kind of colour-thing were bone-dry.

So after wearing it for a while I changed it a little to what my friends could only describe as a ukranian male prostitute. Yeah, imagine that, it mightve been more scary than the skull-face. But then again the skull outfit was great all in all! I managed to totally scare my friend out of his skin!

Im actually a little bit embarrassed uploading these here, theyre almost better fit on facebook or something. Photos of me that ive asked people to take... Ill make no bones of it, thats not the kind of blog this is supposed to be, im sorry!

The cane and the hat from the first photo werent actually mine, I borrowed them from a friend of mine who is also the photographer. My own outfit was actually quite...

Barebones.

BONE-GLOSSARY

Bone idle; Lazy, not prolific*.

Work your fingers to the bone: Work very hard.

Bone-dry: Simply really fucking dry, alright.

Scare/(make one jump) Out of his skin: An idiomatic and more poetic way of saying you scared the shit out of someone.

Make no bones of: To speak frankly. Which means plainly, or truthfully.

Barebones: stripped to its essentials.

*(Prolific: adj. for one who makes alot of stuff. I love words.)

Im dreadfully sorry for all the terrible puns I made this day. I really am!

By the way, I changed the layout slightly. I added a soft blue spacing under every post to increase readability and help you tell one entry apart from another. The entries being so melded together kinda got under my skin.

pencil (and pen!) sketches-

Pencil... And pen? Whats the difference, you ask. Well, pencils traditionally use a kind of lead or graphite, whilst pens use ink. Mixing the 2, especially when the ink is coloured, can create quite fancy effects! I used my trusty red pen to clearly mark that brain out, and create a nice contrast. It does pull the eyes, though. Theres only 2 things you pay attention to while looking at the picture below, and that is the dark red brainy stuff, and the eyes.

Thats because those are the greatest contrasts, and naturally they will pull your attention. Artists classically use this in especially landscape paintings and large depictions of crowds for example, wherein something is supposed to catch your attention. A couple ways beyond just creating large contrast in brightness is using contrasting colours, like Yellow and Black. Yellow and black almost sting your eyes when used together, and most certainly pull your eyes and attention to them.

Now, now, dont go sploshing your pictures with yellow and black. Those 2 are bad. Kinda taboo. Dont use them. Something that is more acceptable, and that ive written about before in my entry about colour theory, is the blue-orange contrast. Its used almost everywhere. Take your favourite 3 action movies, and look up the cover arts. Youre bound to find atleast one in which they use orange-blue contrast. If this does pique your interest, go look up my entry about colour theory.

Religion notebook! It has absolutely no meaning behind it!

History notebook! Almost political, man!

So yeah, school notebooks. I draw ALL the time. My education may suffer from it. Thats ok, though, right?! I get to impress people!

Rayleigh, and a pencil sketch-

PROPER TRADITIONAL ART

ERMAHGERD, FINARRY

I've been promising to show you guys traditional hand drawn graphite-based art for like, what, half a year now? Mh, finally got around to it. Its not really much to show though, I was just drawing for the sake of the blog entry. Its just a regular three-quarter view face, with no reference to speak of. Holy mother of hairshits, though, that is one baller haircut. I guess im biased though, I have a certain affection for large mops. On heads, exclusively.

Myeah. In critique of myself, the back of his head is kinda... Missing. I mean, this guy really does have no cranium. Ive gotten too used to drawing people in this pespective, and I do it wrong. The back of his head should extend further. Its not really a difficult fix, but its something I dont realize when im drawing, because ive always done it like that. Anyway, in this particular drawing, the disproportionality of his hair in general accentuates the issue, normally it wouldnt have been a problem in this drawing, if only he didnt wear his quiff with such swagger.

Yeah, Quiff. Thats what that kind of hairstyle is called. I wear my own with great pride, like a beautiful lions mane. Haters will hate. And no, its not the same thing as or even remotely comparable to a queef.



OH YEAH

RAYLEIGH.

Rayleigh was an old english fellow. A lord, actually. Thats about all I know of him as a person, but I do know he came up with what is known as Rayleigh scattering.

Rayleigh scattering is, in short, what makes the sky blue. The principle is based upon elastic scattering, which in essence means light is scattered without any loss of energy. Elastic scattering occurs when radiation of long wavelength crosses particles of a smaller size, and the ray is redirected. This also means that different parts of the visible spectrum of radiation will react differently to the same matter.

Thanks,  Wikipedia.

As you can see, blue light is affected wayy much more than red light. Aha, do you know why the sky is blue yet? No? So, the small particles in our atmosphere catch and scatter the blue light, which is part of the white light our beautiful sun graces us with. While the other wavelenghts of light go straight from the sun to our eyes, the blue, shorter and more energetic wavelengths are instead splattered all over the sky. This means the sun will look orangeish, and the rest of the sky will be blue. 

Well, what happens at sunset then? The sky turns bloody red! Yes, very fascinating, is it not?! Why? Well, it goes red, because the length of atmosphere that the rays have to pass through increases exponentially when the angle increases. I can actually provide you with a peripheral but fairly simple and versatile mathematical formula for that. Its smaller because its less important.

h/Cos(α)= L, where h stands for the height of the atmosphere, α is the angle between the incoming ray and the surface normal, and L is a measure of the lenght of atmosphere in which the ray will have to travel to reach the surface of the earth. The formula can be explained as such; 

The value of Cosinus of angles nearing 90 degrees will go towards 0. Cosinus of an angle of 0 degrees is equal to one. This means the height will be divided by a value between one and zero. Dividing by values lower than one will multiply the divided value. 

Example; 10m/cos (60)  --> 10m/0,5, because cos (60) gives a value of 0,5. This means that passing through something that is 10 meters thick at an angle of 60 degrees from the normal vector (which is equal to 30 degrees between the incoming path and the surface itself.), will force you to pass through (10/0,5 =) 20 metres of said area/matter! If the angle were 90 degrees, go fuck yourself, because we cant divide by zero, and logically the path would become infinitely long. If the angle is perfectly perpendicular to the surface, we would only have to pass through 10 meters of matter, because cos (0) is one.

Well, to be perfectly honest with you, the formula not applicable in this case. For a range of different reasons. I just think its an interesting formula, because it can be used as a shortcut in a range of different geometric situations. ANYWAY

Since the path which the ray will travel through atmosphere increases (Into infinity), so does the amount of scattering which occurs. When more and more blue light is discarded, for example back into space (which is why we can see the earths atmosphere as a bluish light from space.), only longer wavelengths of radiation persist. That means we have a shortage of blue, and a fair amount of green and yellow light, and an abundance of red photons --> BAM, REDDISH* ORANGE* BEAUTIFUL SUNSET. 

*(I coloured the words so you know which colours im talking about..!)

Rayleigh- and elastic scattering also explain why a bunch of lonely lightrays or sunshafts can be visible hanging in the air, if in an otherwise dark environment. Think discolights and lasers. In a disco theres often more than the components of normal atmosphere in the air though, so the scattering will be different.

Theres also something called Mie scattering that occurs in the atmosphere, which is a refractive phenomenom that has to do with how light is refracted in water droplets and dust particles in the air. But more about that on someone elses blog, I think thats enough sky-science for today.

Myep, some of you who lack base knowledge of how electromagnetic radiation works may experience difficulties grasping all of this, but atleast you now know that the sky is blue because some old english fart named Rayleigh came up with a theory about elastic scattering in the atmosphere.

I implore you to research further, and subscribe to this blog, because theres a whole world of stuff that you dont yet know about!

(ERMAHGERD TYP TUSEN ORD)

elvis, hitler and base values-

Hrn, I believe it is every artists deepest wish (Artistically?) to be able to churn out high quality like some factory-ish treadband. Always something cool, something badass, something completely tubular (Surfer slang is interesting stuff). Nah, we cant do that. Every once in a while, we succeed, but everything inbetween that feels kinda drab. Atleast thats the way I often feel. Especially when theres little feedback.

On the topic of feedback and killing time, I just want to say something about just that. 

I dont care much if my grandmother, who ive never seen wield a pen, thinks im a great artist. The most common piece of feedback I hear is; "Whoah, youre way better than me.", or "Shit, when I try to draw, I often end up with feces smeared all over my face and body.". No, that doesnt really mean alot. For anyone who is ever in the position to support an artist, just tell this person: Gee, youre really good. 

Its better that way, ok? Telling someone theyre better than you might appeal to the most competetive bastards in the universe, but really? Id rather just hear im great at drawing. And what the hell do I respond to something like "whoah, i could never do that"? Im supposed to tell him -"Well, you suck at drawing so go figure"..? Is that what im supposed to reply? Because it certainly is what im thinking.

Yeah, I suck at taking compliments.

ANYWOU

I drew this dude, and hes totally wearing a leather jacket. Whooah. Elvis or something? Im not quite sure. I just felt its been a long time since I drew a regular painting of a regular dude standing in a regular pose.

PRE SCRIPTUM: A VALUE IS THE SAME THING AS BRIGHTNESS FOR A SPECIFIC THANG

As you can see from this (holistic) sketch, I often like to establish good base values before I start adding details. A base value is, I guess you could say, the mean brightness of a certain area. For those of you not so well versed in English vocabulary, a mean is MEDELVÄRDE. Once youve established this mean value for selected area, e.g. that jacket over there, you can easily go on about drawing as usual. Ive seen artists who draw everything in this monotone weird kinda porridgeoey mess, which is entirely compromised of one very simple range of brightnesses. 

Its not cool.

Heres an example. As you can see, the darkest value in the mouth-thingy, is about the same value as in the crevice above the eye. Its not cool. The range of values is not nearly large enough. Its completely weird. In order to make that look ok, back when I drew it, I had to overlay-layer the fuck out of it. I mean seriously, that was a mess. That is why I want you people who are just getting into digital drawing to establish those damn contrasts BEFOREHAND. Its easier to do it sooner rather than later.

I also recommend starting out your paintings greyscale, and then later on working colour into them. It helps you see how the lighting is supposed to work. A possible side effect might be that you start drawing greyscales exclusively, as sadly has already happened in my case...

TAKE COVER

HITLERTANK IS HERE

Huhuh, yuh, I drew a tank, with a hitler-ish face planted on the grill. What the hell is wrong with me? Oh, right. Civil Science quiz on political ideologies tomorrow. About that, I need to start reading...

Anyway, yeah. It looks quite interesting. Im just going to say right now, its just a drawing of a battletank, with a strange face on it, and it just so happens to have that infamous mustache. I do not support fascism in any way or of any sort, I do not condone hitler-stuff. Although the earth is becoming quite overpopulated as of lately...


ERHHM YEP. Quick sketchdumpish writing-release entry. Keep reading, people! Also keep commenting, keep subscribing, keep doing your thing.

neighbouresis and definitely not stuff

Guh, stuff just hasnt seemed to go my way recently, not at all. When I came home today, I found a letter of complaint from my fellow neighbours and the flats booker. It seems that, even after trying to be quieter, I still am making too much noise. Guests in the night, and music too loud. Living a bachelors apartment life is simply not as glamorous as people seem to believe, I cant listen to music after 10, it seems I cannot bring friends over, as if that werent bad enough, its not like my neighbours are a great joy to talk to regardless.

What will a man do? Besides the music, I dont see what I could change in order to be quieter. What bugs me the most is that I havent heard any complaints from any of my neighbours for months and months, and all of a sudden, I get a warning? Please, take my phone number, or come talk to me, knock on the door, hell, knock on the wall, just tell me when I am making too much noise so I know what I shouldnt do, and so I can improve. Its not much to ask, the neighbours obviously have no interest in making me shut up better, theyd rather just have me expelled from my own apartment, never to return.

Thatd mean id most likely be forced to move back to my parents place, switch schools, and go back to all those halfwit fucks I knew back there. Yeah, that doesnt sound very appealing to me. Ill simply have to stop the noise. Oh gueh, these kinds of things can be so fucking frustrating.


For today, I drew this caricature. It doesnt portray anyone in particular, is it then really called a caricature? Its actually not, caricatures are portraits in which you exaggerate certain essential features and defining visual elements of certain individuals. I cant label my own portrait a caricature, because I exaggerated the features of an imaginary person, so in truth it is not a caricature, but simply a picture of a man with an anvil chin and weird creepy features. Its just inspired by and drawn in accordance with caricature style.

It kind of reminds me of myself in this dire moment. I spent the night at a lan party, im afraid I didnt get very much sleep. It feels like I havent showered in weeks (The reality is almost as grim).

egopics, beauty and stuff

Huh, whos that sodding knucklehead?

HAHAHA

Oh, puns, how much fun you can be sometimes. A knucklehead is the same thing as a blockhead, a nincompoop, a schmuck, a plonker, a pillock, a gobshite, a deficient, a cretin, a plank, a dork, a twit, a dolt, a tool, a prat, a jerk, or an oaf, might be an ass. Yeah, im quite clever for knowing all these words for stupid person, arent I?

holism, facewalls and stuff-

Whoah whoah hoea hoe, holism? Yes, holism. Holism is a psychological term which caters to totals, groups of smaller parts, general entities, as opposed to, well, I dont really know. Some would call it reductionism, but that sounds pretty stupid.  None of this actually makes a lot of sense, but I will try to explain it as best I can.

In essence, the difference between the kind of holism im referring to and its counterpart, whatever we label it, can best be explained with an example. When I first learned about holistic approach in psychology class, we used learning as an example.

A holistic approach to learning something new, say, how a sequentially structured 3 part object with a certain function works; A holistic person would learn as much as possible about how it works as a whole, would learn about the objects basic function. Once he has a solid grasp of how it works as a whole, he will start refining his knowledge in all areas, and he may start researching about how the 3 advanced parts that together compose it work on an individual level.

A person who does not learn holistically will instead find out the sequence, and then he will research about the first part. Once he has learned all there is to know about the first part, he will move on to the second part, and after that the third part.

Both ways of learning eventually lead to the same result, they are merely different ways of approaching the issue and aquiring the knowledge. In a nutshell, holistic learning is highly iterative; it starts out by sketching out a little bit of everything, then refining this information time after time. Reductional learning would break the subject into many different parts, then go through them one by one. Its difficult to say which one is "better", and I dont think theres a definite answer to that question. Both have their advantages and disadvatages, but how they affect your learning depends on what you are trying to learn.

This example I gave also shows only pure holistic process or not at all. People are not strictly holistic, they adapt the level of holism in their thought processes automatically depending on the task before you. Sometimes a holistic approach is right, sometimes is definitely wrong. Imagine, for example, reading 2000 random sentences in a book. This would give you a very vague overview of what the book is about, and this is the holistic approach to reading a book. Once you have read these 2000 sentences, you would keep on reading random sentences until you will eventually have read every sentence in the whole book. Gee, wtf, thats not how were supposed to read books, we read them word by word, chapter by chapter! Holistic reading sucks!

Well then, why is this holism-gibberish important?


That is because its important to think holistically when you are drawing. Im not saying your art will be shit if you draw systematically from the top to the bottom, some people do that, but it is easier to make great art if you at first establish a good base, mark out where everything will be, and create a structure. This is easier because a) it gives you a good idea of where everything should go, proportions etc will be easier to get right. b) its easier to plan composition this way. c) you get a good idea of how it will look way before it is done.

Lets imagine we interrupt 2 people in the middle of their portrait drawing sessions. One is purely holistic, and one does not have a single holistic atom in his whole body.
The holistic guy will have already drawn the whole face, whats seen of the body, the background, and nose, ears, mouth and eyes are all clearly distinguishable. It does look a little rough around the edges though.
On the other hand, the other man will have drawn exactly half the face, in all its full glory and splendor. It cuts off right at the nose, though. Hes drawing left to right, scanline style. The holistic guy is sketching out ALL THE THINGS, just not very precisely, and thats the difference.


I draw holistically. First, I sketch out all the contours, then I shade everything in an approximate manner, then I start drawing all the details, and I think this is the right approach to drawing, most skilled artists draw like this. Beginners tend to get stuck on certain things. If you want to make progress, read some more about holistic approach, and start drawing this way. It especially applies to digital art, since its very easy to go back and redraw stuff.

If I do draw systematically, I often face problems such as the different parts dont fit together right, and I cant make the transitions between areas smooth. This is one of the reasons i have for shunning a systematic approach. Not saying it might not work for you though, some pull it off.


ANYWAY


mandatory art stuff

ITS A FACE STUCK ON A WALL AND THE GLASSES MAKE IT RESEMBLE A FRIEND OF MINE.

So yeah. Holist sketched everything, beginner drew the nose first.

Much text, little art. I havent been drawing alot lately :/ It appears i have fallen into a phase of not being able to motivate myself enough, but fear not, there cannot be cycles if there are no phases. Take world litterature for an appropriate example. Read holistically, its the right approach for this subject.

maths-class-madness and guestises

 TODAY WHAT I HAVE TO SHOW YOU IS AN EXPLODING SKULL OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. It may be magical. It may be a strange rock formation. It may be some smoke formed as a skull. But thats all up to you guys, because the motive of abstract art is up to the beholder, and depends on how he interprets it. Even the artist himself may not know what the motive is, hence, abstract. Abstract as an english word means untangible, not palpable, not consisting of real or physical matter. For example feelings are abstract, while physical matter is not.

Yeah. Well. This isnt really all that abstract. Real pure abstract art often looks like complete turdshit, a clusterfuck of colours, formed in seemingly random but somehow interpretable forms. The winning point of abstract art is that its completely subjective, people interpret it differently, and see different things in it. What ive drawn is simply a normal drawing with some abstract elements.

Why did I draw this? I found a red pen. Fuck yes, I love this pen.

I actually drew it in my maths notebook. I always draw something on the cover pages, its quite nice. The texture of the cover paper is tougher and rougher, which makes it a nicer surface to draw on than the rest of the pages. And I actually have no sketching paper whatsoever at home, so yeah...


GUESS WHAT I BOUGHT THE OTHER DAY? My first ever Stabilo pen. I bought just one. It was black. Myeh. Most of the artistic fellows I know kinda grew up using Stabilo markers, but I never had any! So sad, so sad. I was never quite a fan of pens or  markers, though. My art throughout my life has kind of been dominated by graphite pencils, up until the point where I bought my drawing tablet.

I also bought myself a white covering marker, which is of epic use e.g. when adding highlights to coloured paper, or, which was my main incentive in buying the white marker, it can be used to add amazing contrast to watercolour paintings, which can create a quite dramatic result. Ive found quality white covering markers to be quite hard to find around here. Such a shame we dont have any local artists shops where I live, atleast not that I know of.


ALSO GUESTISES

Below, you see the first painting, that isnt drawn by me, on my blog. Yeah. Yeah no, i didnt draw it. Wish I did though, my dear artist friend really nailed it with that... umbrella... and sun... and stuff... Yeah...

Its quite amazing, is it not? I quite admire the artist. Not just anyone makes it onto my blog (Though I would appreciate it if anyone actually asked..).



MIDDLE OF TEST WEEK. Thats my excuse for not having posted anything in what feels like one and a half eternities. Right back to playing videoga-... I MEAN STUDYING