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  • Rumination?

    December 16th, 2022

    I know I need to write; I’m not sure where to write. That is likely because I don’t know at this point, what is going to come out.

    It seems as though it’s always a struggle to be consistent about writing, though maybe that has to do more with personally disturbing content, and resistance to ritual, than anything else. There is also the fact that, as I stated above: I don’t necessarily know what is going through my sub- or unconscious that is saying, “Hey, let me out. Make me visible.” I just know that the urge to write, is there.

    And sometimes it can be difficult to really…sit down and do so, knowing that something may come out that I may not know what to do with. It is nice to be able to know, however, that if I see myself starting to spiral into rumination, I have the option — once I recognize what’s happening — to disengage, and do something else.

    Recently, I’ve had a tough time with sleep, which is being reflected in my daytime energy level…and my anxiety level. I’ve found myself ruminating about things that happened years ago, which don’t matter in the present. Should it really impact me now if one of my old co-workers meant to sabotage me or not, five years ago? I don’t see her anymore, I don’t want to work at that same site again, and — seriously, it’s over. At the time, I thought she was a “safe” person.

    But there is a repeated pattern in my life of my attempting to trust people who are unworthy of that trust. There is also a pattern of trusting barely anyone in my life, whatsoever. At this point, I recognize that just because someone is significantly older than me, or higher in the work hierarchy, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily, “good,” or trustworthy in any way. They may even be hostile. Even people who try to be mentors may have ulterior motives — some more apparently than others.

    Due to circumstances I had no control over or awareness of at the time, I have not always had the best judgment. That doesn’t mean that I lack responsibility for my past actions, but it does mean that my decision-making was impaired in ways I didn’t understand, and in ways I had not been made aware could even happen.

    Nor did I necessarily know how much others could (and would) amplify the effects of my mistakes.

    For at least three weeks, I’ve been having issues with being able to have an uninterrupted night’s sleep. I’d have to consult my planner, to be sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if this has been going on for a matter of months.

    I’m not totally sure what it’s related to, though I have trouble with anxiety at baseline. Of course, the entire situation with the ongoing pandemic + the flu, really can’t be helping.

    I suppose it also has been recently that I’ve realized the entire “Library” career thing may be misguided. However, there are ways that I can use my skills in ways that do not confine me to a specific job within the limits of the Library sphere.

    If I would like to read and comment on writing — and I’m able eventually to become comfortable dealing with people — becoming some type of Editor is possible. If I want to work with User Experience or Interaction Design, along with my Art skills, I may be able to utilize these within Front-End Web Design. My research skills would come in handy if I ever wanted to be a Fact-Checker…

    …though those are only my initial brainstormed entry points to a paying job, beyond being a Content Producer, Cataloger, Collection Development Librarian, Indexer, or Purchaser (for a bookstore). Given my own self-knowledge, I’ll have to be creative in order to avoid a day job spent dealing intensely with the general public, or with my other major personal bane…which should have contraindicated me from working in Circulation in the first place: lack of sanitation. Cleaning other peoples’ babies’ vomit off of picture book covers is not the thing you want to be doing with your life — especially if you have a choice about it, and especially if you aren’t being paid enough to compensate for it.

    In short, I need a job that is reasonably clean, and away from having to deal with people (and other people’s perceptions of me). This is why I had been looking forward to working with data; but working entirely with data is, seriously, very technical. Maybe a bit too technical, for me. And very much, not creative — unless you consider math and logic, creative. Some (particularly App Developers), may; but that’s not how I characterize creativity for myself. It’s the furthest thing from my own creativity, that I’ve recently experienced.

    If I could learn Computer Programming and SQL, in a low-pressure environment, that would be different…but I see that leading into a field wherein my main skill set (in the Arts and Humanities) is undervalued. If I did get further into Web Development, I could feasibly become a Technical Writer…

    …though there are decent options for learning this stuff online. Books really aren’t your best bet, here. They go obsolete too often, and the narrative quirks of the authors are too thorough (such as using homonyms at seemingly every available chance). Really…in the last technical class I took (on XML), the Web was more helpful than anything I was forced to read from a book.

    Maybe I should take that into consideration; that trying to acquire XML/XSLT/XQuery skills, didn’t have to be as difficult as it was. It seemed like the curriculum was made to be difficult, so it would look like one actually learned something if one passed the class. Unfortunately, passing the class may have meant little, and what was learned may largely have been self-taught.

    I don’t want to have that kind of experience, again. I didn’t pay tuition to teach myself.

    But it’s over, now. Rumination, right?

    And, I guess, if I could learn XML from the Web…it’s possible to learn other technologies from it, too.

  • Experiential learning

    December 14th, 2022

    There are some things that you can’t really learn without engaging. I’ve been told that, at least since University; but it hasn’t really cemented itself, until recently.

    There was the last coding class I took, which showed me that I didn’t want to program…that it might even be better, intentionally to avoid having programming responsibilities. I’ve learned that I don’t seek out dealing with people, and don’t always know what to do with them; I’ve also learned that working on the back end of computerized systems isn’t all that great, either. What I learned is that I’m very much a creative person, and match a creative personality type…which, I guess, was a surprise. I’m not sure it should have been, with my initial (intentional) degrees being in Creative Writing and Art.

    A little over a week ago, I began writing out a story with which…I am now, saturated. I’ve needed to take a break. The situation of the characters is so bleak, that I’m having a hard time re-engaging it — though I’ve got to remember that I am the master of the story, and I don’t have to make their lives (and my mind) so full of pathos. I have a tendency to focus on the negative, and I can see this trait coming out (big time) through my writing.

    Working visually helps me get out of negative self-talk (a lot of which was finding voice in my drafts; maybe I should save a copy for history’s sake, and then get to work dismantling and re-envisioning it). What I did the day before yesterday, to break out of that spiral, was to get into the acrylic gouache I hadn’t yet substantially tried to mix.

    Multicolored squares and rectangles on a white background.

    A lot of this…has me wondering why the hesitance, when I actually do what it was that I for some reason was afraid to do, and it turns out, fine. Or, better than fine. I have a tendency to focus on colors and what I can do with them, more than the ostensible subject matter of a painting.

    Late last month, I was on the verge of complex color mixing (then got derailed). Apparently, this color mixing is so complex, that…the computer doesn’t quite know how to read it? Or display it? I’m not sure. What I can tell, from having the above swatch next to me, and from looking at what I was able to capture by a scan…they appear different.

    There are subtle differences in color, that are not apparent in the above. Burgundy loses its violet and becomes practically indistinguishable from cherry-wood brown; two separate violets (one with a green tone that makes it just a hair less clear) appear nearly the same; a bluish green changes to a straight green; a ripened-lime green loses its yellow; straight Primary Yellow, looks duller and less orange; a bright red-orange, looks bluer and duller.

    So there are benefits to working with traditional media as versus digital media; specifically, the true WYSIWYG is physical. And there are actually reasons why hand-painted works can be superior to at least CMYK prints or born-digital artifacts. (There is the Pantone conversation to be had! It’s just that, to the best of my knowledge, Pantone inks require professional printing…)

    It’s possible that I might be able to tweak this image and try and figure out what the scanner is doing (or what my computer is doing) to dull these colors…of course, it would help if I knew what the adjustment layers actually did. That seems as though it might get into Computer Science — hence, math. I’m good at language (at least, written language, where I can think out my words and phrasing), I’m good at art; I’m not necessarily good at math, anymore!

    I think it would also help if I were editing in CMYK, rather than in RGB. I still can’t visualize in additive color.

    It’s kind of strange to see certain authors (I’m thinking specifically of Betty Edwards, here) consider color-mixing to be an analytical (and not an intuitive) task. I’ve had to implicitly let myself know that I do not have to create a full color wheel as my first task…for one thing, because there is seriously no reason to limit myself to analogous (adjacent) and complementary (diametrically opposed) mixes. The foregoing is basically an academic exercise: hence, a beginning, not an end.

    This is in the same way as I don’t have to adhere to the rule, “never mix black into a color, to darken it.” I mean, sometimes, one may want a greyed-out color (taking down the vibrancy without changing the lightness or darkness), or a color which is simply closer to black…while understanding that black is considered achromatic (at least in the Western tradition in which I was taught).

    That is, if you know how to darken a color while keeping (or enhancing) the chroma (intensity), then it probably becomes OK to darken it while reducing that chroma. I can see the issue with beginning artists mixing black into everything in order to establish value relations, which is likely not what an Art teacher wants to encourage. A lot of grayscale paintings with only hints of color, would likely result…

    There are other things I could get into: how it doesn’t seem acrylic gouache needs the same type of high-quality paper and high-quality brushes as transparent watercolor (though obviously, my experience is extremely limited!); that I’ve recently learned that tertiary colors are not colors in between secondary colors (like orange) and primary colors (like yellow: making yellow-orange or orangish-yellow), but colors which are made up of three primaries (like yellow-orange plus blue); that it’s fun just to take a secondary color (like violet, made up of blue and red in subtractive color) and add a third primary (yellow), and see what results (in this case, a range of beautiful muted violets and browns); how painting physically is an entirely different experience from painting digitally; how working with paints actually doesn’t have to be messy or dangerous…

    I’ll end on this note: I’ve realized that just because I write — a lot — and because I make art, this doesn’t mean that I have to mesh or integrate them into Sequential Art. Maybe I should just be doing the art for myself, not as a way to tell a story. Or, at least, not as a way to tell the story I’m currently working on. It’s actually a relief to get out of that headspace.

    What I’ve written — in fiction, over the last week, say — kind of distantly reminds me of Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates…just a kind of constant barrage of problems caused by culture and ideology, and how it impacts a person on an individual level. I really couldn’t stay with Between the World and Me; it was too painful. And, like I think I said at the beginning of this entry…I can see evidence/residue of my own mental troubles, coming through in my own text. I know they don’t make sense, but I’m not sure yet, exactly how to break out of them.

    Of course, that’s probably why I stopped writing, in the first place. But I have time and space to work on this, now. I also have an advisor, right now. So, it’s not too bad…

  • Joy

    December 10th, 2022

    I’m having a hard time understanding the joy of what has happened over this last week. I’ve gotten six pages into a rough draft on a new version of a story with unpublished characters who have been bumping around in my mind for decades.

    The main point of this: I get to write from the perspective of a narrator who happens to be a transgender man. It’s giving me a gigantic amount of catharsis, and it’s reminding me of why I started writing.

    I don’t find myself on the verge of chemical or social transition to masculine-of-center, at this point (though the latter might not be a bad idea). But just to be able to think through a situation from the viewpoint of a man (who is not me) — and not necessarily a cisgender man — helps me see where we differ. The commitment to a version of reality in his words, helps me see myself as the author, in contrast.

    In earlier versions, he was cisgender. The decades have developed him.

    I’ve been developing this character since I was around 14 or 15, and I imagined him to be 16 or 17. I’ve been exploring my own gender since I was about 19. Especially in early college, our identities were blurred; but hey, I was a teenager. I hadn’t had the chance to figure out who I was.

    I consider myself currently gender-nonbinary. I’m fine with my body — fine enough to avoid becoming dependent on outside hormones, for now — though I do wish I were a bit fitter (which I can work on). It is easier to be accepted as trans* masculine when you put effort into it…and maybe I could take a hint and move the dial just a little so that I’m faster, stronger, trimmer.

    I’m working on creative self-actualization, self-care, and health, in all areas of my life. It wouldn’t hurt to trial this.

    There is no reason why I need to support a feminine appearance for myself: especially as, my gender does not match, “woman”; and neither am I invested in heterosexuality where it comes to my own future. The major issue of breaking the rules of heteronormativity is stigma, but the alternative to stigma is invisibility, which — in the absence of self-assertion — leads to erasure.

    Truthfully, I still don’t know quite what to do with my gender. It’s a big part of the reason I’m still in therapy: there is no one right way to be nonbinary. And themes involving personally potent concepts like this, unavoidably come up in my writing. I then have to find some way to understand them, and reconcile them with my own self-concept: to recognize the fiction, as fiction, and yet learn what I can, from it.

    Luckily, I have had experience since I first became a Creative Writer…and I have some relatively clear ideas of where I’m coming from, now. The not-quite-self-aware identity at 19; the recent graduate in their early twenties who couldn’t cope with the implications of their stories; is meeting their own adult version, as I write through the problems and worlds I’ve experienced.

    I do need to stop telling myself the same stories as I have been. It’s uncreative. I can literally feel the difference between nonfiction and fiction, as I’m writing. One type of writing is reporting a dead story that has been repeating for decades. The other type is experiencing a new one.

    It’s much more refreshing to move on. To develop, and change. Right now, it’s very apparent that one of my characters is dealing with stagnation. I can see that. It makes me want to help both of us.

    And writing as this narrator is essentially being able to take on his character. For an asocial person, it feels like it would be close to my version of acting. In private. With many chances to get it right; to tweak the lines. To add needed support. What drives him? What part of myself that is him, drives me? Where does the boundary of authenticity lie, with me? With him?

    I get to take on the mindset of a person who is not me, but who may be born from me. And I haven’t experienced this, in years.

  • Afterward

    December 9th, 2022

    Jumping into writing the story I’m presently working on, turned out to be informative! (Maybe I am a “pantser”?)

    I learned a number of things, among which: it is nicer to pull a fresh story out of the air, than it is to recount old ones, or things that may have actually happened, that have rolled over in one’s mind, for 25 years. There are a number of things that I just don’t yet know about the project I’m working on, now.

    It’s funny that you really don’t realize what you don’t know, until you’re writing…and then the special rules of the world you’re creating, the scope of the narrator’s awareness, what he ever did for a job, did he go to college, what are his life experiences, how long ago did event N happen, how old are these people now, how close were they, what is the surrounding political climate; get called into question.

    We know the initial meeting of the two “main” characters happens at X place; but what brought Character C there in the first place? What is this person seeking? Why should Character B take any special interest?

    The really positive thing about creative writing, is that most of it is rewriting. There are statements the author can make in the first line of the first draft that can (and maybe should) be expanded into full scenes. Offhand comments made by the narrator can be edited out, if they impede flow. Their subjects can be inserted later as their own topics (and/or scenes).

    What I majorly found out, on trying to get this story out of my head and onto the page, is the extent to which this story is an internal one. It’s well-suited to be literature, that is, because all the thinking and questions and internal experience gone through by the characters doesn’t lend itself well to a Graphic format. That’s not to say that it can’t be adapted to a Graphic format, but — well — one step at a time!

  • Dreams and actualization

    December 8th, 2022

    The last week has been — to my mind — extremely productive. Unfortunately, that also means that the time I’ve spent here has been diverted to other passions. There are a limited number of hours in a day; not to mention, a life. I’ve started to realize that WordPress might be referred to as Social Media (where the user is the product), and so I’ve been pulling off of it a bit recently, in favor of my own projects and needs.

    I have still been writing a lot. Some of this is through self-directed study, and some of this is just in different places: electronic and not. I’ve restarted writing for at least 15 minutes per day (I can produce about one A5 page per 15 minutes), which is good. I’ve also found that writing by hand, in private, is much more…it’s freeing, you know. I don’t have to worry about whether my content is appropriate to share with the world, or what consequences could arise from putting my thoughts into writing.

    I’ve been working through the book, Creating a Life Worth Living, by Carol Lloyd — I’m about to start with Chapter 5. This book is essentially for creative types who wish to live lives centered around/honoring their creativity, and still live well. I had stalled for a number of weeks on two of the activities at the end of Chapter 2, then was amazed when it only took me 25 minutes to complete them…

    I’ve finished reading Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, by Daniel Nettle. I’m kind of sad it didn’t go on. Potential/”the dream” being more alluring than fulfillment/”the realization”, is a pattern with me: was it nicer when I had the rest of the book to look forward to? (Now that I think of it, that pattern has gone back at least to high school. In real life.) That’s very important to recognize, because it means that unless I do something about it, there is at least one inbuilt reason to stall.

    I also finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain — which was recommended to me a very long time ago. I had lost interest in it, until I got to the point in Nettle where I realized I have a personality profile common to artists. This is the same personality profile that Cain seems to be talking about under the term, “Introversion,” at least if you check the back of the book where she gives notes on her use of the term.

    Quiet is not really the most helpful book, however — at least, not in my life situation. It is important for historical reasons (it was one of the first recent books that got people talking about the value of introversion, was signal-boosted by Oprah, and is referenced both in Nettle, and in Me, Myself and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, by Brian R. Little).

    There are still a lot of other things I have to deal with…though not all of them are pressing, right now. I’ve gotten to the point where I now know that I can dream up more projects than I will ever have time to complete. This means that at some point, I’m going to have to select which ones I’d prefer to do, over others.

    And now that I see what I’ve just written, I can see that it looks pretty classically like it’s coming from a “Generator”-type place (Lloyd refers to “Generators” as people who are good at creating lots of new projects…but not necessarily motivated to complete them [granted that it’s pretty normal to be more than one “type”]). I do have some follow-through, but I’d like to work more on actualization of the dreams, as versus spend a lot more time, dreaming.

    I do recognize at this moment, that I am working on actualizing myself.

    Otherwise; well, there have been some other things going on. I’ve been able to start using a new text-editor. I’m really not sure how I like it, so far. It’s great for writing, well, text (!) — which in turn is excellent for pure writing — but not as great where it comes to comic scripting. It’s kind of like the format of this blog: it works very well if one’s text is the key attracting factor — but if we’re working with images? Where the images might be more important to communication than the words are?

    Yes, that’s different.

    I’m still not totally sure whether the next project I’ve laid out in front of myself, will be better written as a literary novel with accompanying concept art, or as a scripted comic. The first is definitely further within my own comfort zone, but the second is alluring — and may reach a wider audience. Either one of them would help me develop my art skills, and practice my writing skills.

    The major issue that I can see is that the project as it is now, contains “mature” content, and thus may be more likely to draw controversy if it’s illustrated — and thus seen as a, “children’s,” medium. (Granted that both the definition of “mature” and “children’s” are culturally dependent, from a subculture I don’t share, and don’t really make sense, anyway.) But, then, you don’t always base your decisions on fear of reprisal — especially if it’s going to come, regardless.

    And, to be honest, a lot of this may get shaken out far before I can say any of the drafts are presentable. I won’t know until I engage the process, first.

    Yeah, that sounds good! Maybe I’ll try and dive into this project (without an outline? Again without an outline)? I know outlines help, I’m just not incredibly motivated to take the time out to make them.

    It’s either this, or work on my daily free-write, or start reading Chapter 5 of Lloyd…

  • Not quite square-one

    November 30th, 2022

    I’ve gotten back into the gouache, and there are several things I can see. I won’t be able to cover them all in one post: I’m listing them out, here, mainly as a reminder to myself.

    One: it’s different to work with paints, than it is to work with drawing implements. I’m much more in-control with pen and pencil, than with brush. Controlling the amount of water in my brush is essential, if I want to make paintings without pools of water/paint at the end of every stroke. I think I’ll have to be more generous with the paint, and work with a drier brush.

    Two: I have some separation of fluid from pigment, in one of the paints I tried, earlier — some kind of a deep yellow (orange-yellow) with a pigment code I haven’t looked up. The fluid looks vaguely greenish. Painting it down, the yellow looks contaminated with green. But when it dries, it regains vibrancy, and is fine. No, I don’t know how that happens. And I’m only now recalling the (dull) greens that orange-yellow, produces.

    Three: Winsor & Newton gouache lids are much, much harder to remove after years of disuse, than are Holbein lids. This is because the Holbein lids give much more gripping surface. It may also be because I have less dried paint, inside the Holbein lids…maybe I should clean the tubes, tomorrow. In any case, I now have a blister on the side of my index finger from trying to get the Winsor & Newton lids, off.

    Four: I have confirmed that I have four basic earth tones in my traditional gouache (and a gorgeous glittery gold paint). Everything I have in acrylic gouache is incredibly vibrant, but will need to be mixed to create subdued colors. Which leads me into…

    Five: I really need to work on creating muted colors and chromatic greys, if I’m going to work with either the traditional or acrylic gouache. I have some beautiful full-strength colors…but not everything is yellow, red, or blue. I did find three different portfolios of my old work…which gives me the baseline footprint for a color wheel. I know that we did mixing of complementary colors in Color Dynamics…even the tertiary colors (like yellow-green) were crossed with their complements. If I can create that, it should help me figure out what I’m doing, here. It’s a topic unto itself, hence not addressed further, here.

    Six: Do I want to work on cold-press, rather than hot-press paper??? Hot-press Watercolor paper really shows brush strokes! (And I still need to try my Arches paper to see if it is functional after all this time.)


    As far back as I can remember, using too little paint and too much water has been an issue for me — though it’s particularly visible with acrylics. In the Art program, my instructor commented that my acrylic underpaintings looked like watercolors. Several years later, I learned that thinning paints out too much with water (as versus acrylic medium) can cause poor adhesion to the substrate (in that case, primed canvas).

    It’s better to use glazing medium or — I’ve heard — airbrush medium (though I’ve never tried airbrush medium) to thin acrylics (if you don’t want to add body, that is). There are also a lot of different media that can soften heavy-body paints, or dilute colors, though I’ve forgotten exactly which brands I saw, where. What was being sold was the acrylic emulsion used as the base for the paints, but without any pigment. Add that to a paint, and you get a diluted color without any loss of adhesion.

    Then there was the gorgeous transparent soft acrylic gel medium — which looks beautiful with transparent pigment. But yes, it is easy to permanently mess up a canvas, working dimensionally. I know.

    In transparent watercolors, as well — I only took one, “watercolor,” class, which was specifically, “watercolor” — my teacher said that it would save time if I were more direct with my application of color (instead of blocking everything in palely, before using full-strength paint). I’m pretty sure that that particular episode just had to do with timidity: it’s not great when you go in directly, and find out that your proportions are off. But I can see where I should be able to just go in, if my values match what I’m seeing.

    I’m pretty certain this was parallel to one of my first Community College Art instructors telling me to commit to a line, and not make sketchy drawings. The point would be to just go ahead and make the mark, or the color block, or whatever. I guess if it’s wrong, it’s confidently wrong? (Like how English teachers will say, “never use, ‘I think,’ or, ‘I feel,’ in an essay” — even if that’s what you mean?)

    That scenario might lead me down another rabbit hole (having to adjust the proportions of one object to another in an underlying drawing)…but I think I’ve noted the problem, in my process journal. I also have the memory of fixing the last drawing which led me to the realization that I was making things with (nearly) correct proportions within themselves, but wrong proportions between objects. It becomes visible at the places where objects intersect. It’s easy enough to think, “no one’s going to notice that,” but it did look better when I corrected it.


    I started this entry off talking about a common problem with watercolors (both transparent and opaque) and synthetic brushes: that is, a lack of control where it comes to the flow of paint from the brush to the paper. This would seem to be less of an issue with natural-hair brushes. Or, I should say, it’s a well-known issue with synthetic brushes, that they will tend to dump their fluid at the end of a stroke. Meaning to touch the loaded brush to a paper towel or sponge to get rid of the excess water, before going to the painting.

    Pigment dumping isn’t so much of an issue with gouache, because it’s opaque. You don’t necessarily see the additional pigment, and you can layer on top of it. It’s a pain with transparent watercolors, though…

    …which I have been itching to get back to. I’m not sure if my palette is even functional, right now; it has been so long since I’ve used it. The thing is, I believe that those watercolors contain some of the very few colors I have to use caution around (mainly through the inclusion of cobalt and chromium). But I may get back to them, soon. I filled the palette years ago, but I don’t know for sure that the colors will rehydrate properly, now.

    Even though transparent watercolors seem to require some kind of project planning, there is an undeniable draw to them for me…maybe because they’re so simple. And beautiful. They have their own kind of touch.

    I’ve found that natural hair paintbrushes glide over the paper, whereas a synthetic — at least, one of the more annoying ones — may chatter and wipe up pigment, in the same situation. But I have very few natural-hair brushes for watercolor. This is expressly because of the price of natural hair combined with quality craftsmanship.

    Hog bristle brushes for acrylics or oils are decently priced: that’s probably because they wear out, so often. Natural hair watercolor brushes are…nearly entirely different. But I do still see that even hog bristle, glides more easily than a synthetic — at least, a low-quality synthetic.

    I do have some sumi-e brushes which are natural hair (actually at least two different types of natural hair within the same brush), but I find that their (bamboo) handles tend to split with time and use. This is especially if they’re only bound together with glue and string. I’ve lost one, and am on the way to losing another. I haven’t tried the plastic-handled sumi-e brushes.

    I do know where I can get brushes which are different than the standard ubiquitous Yasutomo; but seriously, I don’t know what I’m doing where it comes to art supplies, in Asian stationery stores. I can’t read the packaging (it’s usually not in English, I can’t read any dialect of written Chinese, and I largely can only read phonetics in Japanese), and I’m not sure of the properties of the types of hair used — except that white is goat hair, soft and absorbent.

    I’m really not even certain the types of brushes I find in an Asian stationery store, are suitable for the type of work I do (neither Chinese brush painting nor sumi-e nor calligraphy). And paying $30+ for one brush, when I don’t know what I’m getting or how to use it, is a bit of a risk.

    The obvious thing to do, is ask someone who is knowledgeable about this to accompany me, or to ask a salesperson about the differences between the brushes. The thing is — I really don’t know how much salespeople know about the products (or how to use them), as versus just being there to enable financial transactions.


    I do have some Princeton Neptune brushes, though I didn’t use them with the traditional gouache, earlier. I’m not sure how they’ll fare with it. They’re extremely soft, and my gouache is so old that some of it has dried out. (I was wrong, by the way: it does seem that I have a few tubes left over from 2007; they’re just paint cakes in there, like the ones my teacher recovered. I believe I did throw out some which I couldn’t open, maybe five years ago, though.)

    That is, it takes some working of water into the paint, before the paint is usable…and I’m not sure the Neptunes are really stiff enough to handle it.

    That’s not at all to get into the thought of using the Neptunes with acrylic gouache. I’m thinking I’ll definitely need to use a firmer watercolor or all-media brush, for that. For one thing, I don’t want to gum up my Neptunes with acrylic; I’m intending to use them exclusively with transparent watercolor and Ecolines. Maybe traditional gouache, if they can handle it. Not Liquitex acrylic gouache.

    Neptunes are very soft and absorbent, made to mimic squirrel; maybe turning out better. The last time I used them (with the Ecoline, “transparent watercolors,” about a week ago), I could dip a loaded brush into a drop or two of yellow and not get a lot of color transfer, because the brush was sucking up the yellow and not discharging. That doesn’t happen if you mash the brush into the yellow to mix it; only if you touch the yellow and allow capillary action to draw it up.

    That was fairly amazing.

    The last thing I’ll mention…is that I’m very certain that my skill level with paints does not rival my skill with pencil or ink. But I can remedy that, with time and practice. It shouldn’t be drudgery; I love dense and fluid color, too much for that. Right now, I also have more books than I care to mention (?) on painting and color, that I haven’t read. I want to get to them. Maybe it will be more productive than reading about politics…

  • Looking forward

    November 26th, 2022

    At the risk of smelling myself, I think I’m actually good at this art thing. Below is a copy of the scan I made of the other night’s work. I’ve cranked up the brightness and the contrast, so what I did is visible:

    A ceramic goblet holds a number of brushes, in between a heat gun and a brush travel wallet. A recliner and arm of a sofa are visible in the background.

    The reason I’m even publishing this? Well, after last night’s post (which was originally image-less), I wanted to put up something more decipherable. I haven’t been able to get any artwork done today — there were other things I had to do. I’m hoping to get back to exploring my gouache, in the next day or two. It depends on how quickly I can get the last of my classwork, done.

    That class is nearly over (!), although when I get a burst of free time…I’m going to have to figure out what to do with it. I already have a good idea of what I want to do with it: reading, art, writing; but I feel like I work best with some structure — which is why I’ve been taking classes. Well, that, and the employable skills (if anyone learned anything). A plan for the upcoming days, would be nice.

    (Just like outlines for these projects I want to edge into writing, would be nice! Giving myself a place to start, makes it more approachable. Art Journaling will also help me develop source material for larger projects; so I probably shouldn’t write it off as just being for myself. After all, drawing on scrap paper could be my equivalent of the Art Journal: something I feel has less pressure, because it surely will never become an actual art piece [and then it turns out good]…)

    I’ve decided that I’m going to look into jobs that require art skill and/or writing skill. Getting into that, requires research. I’ve started in on it, but haven’t saved what I’ve found in my searches. It would make sense for me to actually note some of the things I find down, by hand. Handwritten notes seem foreign to working online, but they help. Compared to having nothing, they’re extremely superior.

    I’m not used to looking for jobs that use skills I’m both good at, and like!

    To get a job using writing or art skills, I’m going to need a portfolio (or two) to present to potential employers. I do have a backlog of work (although much of the lesser-quality stuff has been tossed). Unless I’m mistaken, I have an artwork portfolio already, though I may have to dig to find it. Or, I may have to reassemble it. I did just check, and I have a much reduced set of images from my Capstone class…I’ll probably want to fill that out. (Not to mention that I’ll eventually want to transfer my images off of last-generation jump drives.)

    Of course, I’ll be doing new work, as well. It doesn’t make sense not to, when I’m hoping to use similar skills in a job setting. If I don’t like the work, I might not like the job. Start now, baby!

    I’m thinking it will be easier, although much more tedious, to look at my writing output over the past decade: particularly, my journals. I may have stopped writing fiction after graduation, but my mid-twenties to mid-thirties were tough to get through — yet extremely imaginative. The hard part comes (largely) when you can’t distinguish fantasy from reality…which is also a large reason why I stopped writing: I would trigger myself, and it would seem real.

    Artwork is somewhat more recognizable as a creative product, than are the things one tells oneself, which then get transcribed into hard copy. The brain has the somewhat annoying (but looking back on it, obvious) habit of believing itself in almost everything, until it learns to question itself. In my experience, I’ve had to pay attention to my somatic sensations to be able to tell when I doubted something to be true. No one is right about everything, all the time; but plenty of people never think twice about it.

    I’m sure there is a lot of material I left behind which can be mined. I can spring off of it using fresh eyes and greater experience.

    The visual archives will be more challenging…but also, maybe, more engaging. I already know I have photo notations that I never worked up into final pieces. That’s before sourcing new images, drawing or painting in the field, digital editing, etc.

    How to balance these two things (the writing and the art), I’m unsure of, at the moment. It may become clearer, once I begin. I already have the writing practice of the blog, set up…but if I want to write professionally, I’ll need to both be reading and writing, creatively. Not just blog posts.

    Yeah; how to divide the time is a significant problem. As is the question of what writing project to begin, first; which to continue to develop first, etc. I suppose I could schedule in Writing time in the evenings, and Art time, in the mornings and afternoons…and then read when I’m so blasted from everything else, that I can’t think…maybe in the evenings, before bed? It could be part of my daily winding-down time…

  • Frankly…

    November 25th, 2022

    It would be safe to say that I was fairly anxious, yesterday. I started to write here, but I’m sure the undercurrent would have come through that I was writing out of anxiety: and not for any reason beyond my mood. My reasons for writing here, at all, might merit some reflection — because yesterday I did write in a Creative Process journal. Just, not in public.

    That was also a very good thing to do…it takes a great deal of pressure off, along with added anxiety. Sometimes, though, I’m thinking that writing is not the answer. Particularly where it comes to needing to deal with stress, working visually demands so much of my attention that I basically just can’t think for long enough to worry.

    I did start — and pretty much (nearly? there seems to be always more to do) finish a drawing of a still-life…which has me thinking that I really don’t need to work with a story or with cartooning, just because I want to work, visually. This is especially the case, if I’m working for emotional modulation and self-care.

    A ceramic goblet serves as a holder for many watercolor brushes. A recliner and couch rest behind, while a heat gun and brush wallet rest to either side of the goblet in the foreground.
    Apologies for the low quality; I haven’t gotten around to scanning this, yet.

    The issue I’m having now — now that I have the bare bones of the image — is how to move forward with color. What I can recall from Painting class, is the need to make thumbnail sketches which focus on value…before imagining color into the equation. (If I had been thinking ahead, I would have done more to set up an optimal still-life in the first place, and approached it from different angles, before settling on one. For that matter, I wouldn’t have drawn it on a piece of paper that already had notes on it!)

    The still-life does have color; the issue is that the color scheme in real life, is brown and black. I realize I don’t have to keep it.

    If I’m going to replace the color, or change the values of objects, however, I need to do thumbnail sketches, first. Once I have the values laid out, I should be able to swap in hues of similar value, without disturbing the overall image.

    It requires moving on to a different stage of design, which I’m a little uncomfortable with, at the moment. I’ll need to break out my “actual” (i.e. non-acrylic) gouache, which I haven’t used in years, even though it’s been sitting in front of me for months, and has been hanging out in my craft area, for years. I meant to do it today, but felt a little intimidated. This is the whole, “getting scared of getting dirty,” bit…but I don’t think I even have any hazardous colors in these paints.

    Gouache is essentially opaque watercolor. The ones I have are quality, mostly single-pigment colors. Or, at least the originals, were…I had to get them for a class in 2007. I can’t remember having touched the newer ones since a project in 2017…making the newer ones at least five years old. I’m fairly certain from what I see, that the 2007 ones have been cycled out.

    One of my teachers did tell me that gouache (without an acrylic binder) basically is usable unless it has been contaminated with mold. She had gotten a stash of old tubes from one of her friends. The paint itself had thickened inside the tubes to the point that it couldn’t be expressed from the neck, but my teacher was slicing the tubes open to get the dried paint out!

    “It’s perfectly good paint,” she said.

    I had a bit of deliberation last night, trying to figure out what medium to use. With all the highlights in my drawing, I’m thinking that the opacity of gouache would be best — especially if I’m more concerned about shapes, color, and value, than linework. Using gouache means I can paint light-over-dark, which is not something transparent watercolors are designed to do. Beyond that, I’d have to move to acrylics or oils, and this paper is sized for neither. (Granted that I don’t even use oils.)

    Because so many of the regular gouache tubes are single-pigment, they also will likely mix more predictably than convenience mixtures…which I suspect but have not confirmed, occur more in the acrylic gouache. Including the acrylic gouaches from Holbein — the company which makes my most beautiful and treasured traditional gouache.

    I spent too much time on my drawing, to color it with dyes and have it fade. And I pretty much don’t want to use masking fluid with transparent watercolors, due to sensitization issues (there’s no way I want to make myself allergic to latex, even if health care has shifted to nitrile gloves); so that leaves me with either gouache or acrylic gouache. I don’t have the earth tones in my more recently-acquired acrylic gouache (and I haven’t yet gotten to the point of experimenting to see if I can form earth tones with the colors I have)…but I may have earth tones, in traditional gouache.

    There: initial decision, made.

    What I’m basically talking about, where it comes to convenience mixtures as versus single-pigment paints, is the difference between, “Designer’s Gouache,” and, “Artist’s Gouache.” Do I really want to get into that here, now that I’ve mentioned it? It’s…it’s more than I have the energy right now, to explain. Let me just say for now, that the mixing methods are different. I know how to mix Artist’s Gouache; whereas I know of, but do not have intimate familiarity with, mixing Designer’s Gouache.

    In particular…I was never really taught to mix black into a color in order to darken it (Payne’s Grey, or a mixture of Ultramarine and Raw Umber, or a neighboring darker color [if I recall correctly]…that’s different), though that is commonplace when working with Designer’s Gouache. It may also preserve some brilliance, but it depends on the black. I had a surprise when mixing black Ecoline with magenta Ecoline, the other day: it turns mahogany!

    Clearly, I have a lot to go through before I’m going to run out of things to learn…which is, obviously enough, alluring. To me, that is. And yes, it would be weird if I eventually ended up being an Art Professor. Extremely weird. The reason I’ve chosen not to go for it so far, is the fact that I don’t want to crush little artist’s spirits. Many of my instructors could find constructive things to talk about, in anyone’s work. That’s not necessarily an easy thing to do!

    The other thing I wanted to mention is that the drawing from last night was on hot-press Fabriano Watercolor paper. By the time I was near-enough finished, however, I had roughed up the surface of the paper (using multiple foam erasers) to the point where it now feels closer to vellum — unless I’m mistaken.

    It’s still not rougher than Arches hot-press, to memory. The latter feels a lot drier and rougher. I need to test it to see if it’s still any good (watercolor paper does age out and get to the point where the sizing doesn’t work as intended).

    The Fabriano paper does allow very detailed drawings, which I appreciate at this point. (I’m not sure I’ll appreciate it forever, but that’s getting a bit ahead of myself.) I may want to stick with kneaded or gum erasers in the future, with the Fabriano paper; they would likely both be gentler on its surface. It’s only 25% cotton rag…so I really don’t know how it will perform. That’s the point of making the drawing, although using gouache as versus transparent watercolor or Ecolines, kind of misses my original point…it’s heading way more into a Fine Arts direction, than an Illustrative one.

    I’m following through with it, because sometimes the tangent ends up being the real story.

    An aside: I have several unread books which apply to what I’m doing, now. Although this is good where it comes to being able to study in this area in the future, it’s also a bit of a dilemma where it comes to what step to take, next. I can study, or I can work (knowing that I’m intellectually not as prepared as I could be).

    M advises me to just go ahead and work with the thumbnails, and look at the books, later. That sounds good. I should remember that the thumbnails don’t have to be of any kind of “presentable” quality.

    And hey, looking at what I was thinking of doing last night — painting everything in, in shades and tints of one color (Lamp Black) — I get the chance to do that, now! Just not on the surface I thought I would be using…no, I’ll have to draw it again. And again. But I will be looking for the differences in value, majorly…and I can experiment with the coloring.

  • Ecolines

    November 23rd, 2022

    I’ve been able to get back to the experimental illustration I started a little over a week ago. There were several points I was paying attention to:

    1. Do I enjoy this work? (Answer: yes)
    2. Am I capable of doing this work? (Answer: yes)
    3. How do my art materials work together in this instance? (This was made with Ecoline transparent watercolors, on Fabriano Mixed Media paper…I want to try hot-pressed Watercolor paper next, and there’s nothing stopping me)
    4. What does this look like when scanned and uploaded? (See below right)
    5. Is it feasible to work a comic on paper as versus making it born-digital? (Answer: probably, but it might be more stressful than it has to be)
    A female person with very short hair holds her left arm with her right hand. She appears to be skating in an ice rink.
    At the ice rink (check the knee skew)

    Right now I’m fairly fatigued. I’m writing this out because unless I push myself, I’ll probably miss out on recording my immediate experiences. I’ve probably already waited too long to catch all of them.

    Working with all of the materials I had to engage, was actually a nice thing. I did learn some things directly. One: adding color to lineart is going to be messy. It’s to my advantage not to overwork areas in an attempt to “fix” something which may become a serendipitous point of interest in the final image. Two: Layering colors, to an extent, can draw attention away from the mess. Three: the Ecolines look massively better when they’re mixed with each other! Four: I understand now why one of my teachers tried to encourage me to be messy (as versus perfectionist). There is no perfection in this. Only difference.

    And, of course, the more you try to correct a perceived mistake, the worse it may get. That would especially seem to be so, where it comes to watercolors — though I’d actually go a step further like someone here, and call Ecolines, “inks,” not, “watercolors.” The reason for this is that they’re dye-based, whereas most quality tube (i.e. not liquid) watercolors are pigment-based.

    (I probably shouldn’t get into Lake pigments…which are essentially precipitated insoluble dyes which act as pigments [but may fade], if I’m correct. But that essentially moves beyond the difference between solution [dyes] and mixture [paints], to more obviously Chemistry-centric thought that I have a hard time engaging after a couple of decades out of Chemistry class.)

    Dyes are great for illustration, where you don’t want to obscure your underlying linework; not-so-great for longevity, where you want, in a sense, to time-proof your work. Illustration media aren’t necessarily meant to last over centuries or millennia in the same way Fine Art media are. We should be happy that the original Astro Boy illustration boards even still exist…

    I have read that watercolor itself has only been considered seriously as a Fine Art medium, with the introduction of permanent, lightfast pigments. But that kind of begins to lead me down the road to discuss the use of commercial pigments as artist’s materials (e.g. the whole thing about Quinacridone Gold [PO49])…which I don’t have either the experience or education to talk about.

    Then there’s the obvious caveat that a very large number of old oil paintings really don’t convey the same experience as they did when they were new, due to the darkening of varnish and the use of fugitive colors. The term fugitive colors is applied to colorants which change in nature, over time — by UV exposure, exposure to air, exposure to microbes, etc.

    I’m not certain when the whole, “colored pencil drawings aren’t real art because they fade,” argument came into being, or, “watercolors aren’t real art because they fade,” similarly. It’s just extremely hypocritical when you have a bunch of brownish oil paintings in museums. I mean, seriously. No one knew they weren’t supposed to be like that, until they tried to clean them. I suppose one can cite naivete…

    Then there’s the whole gender issue at the Bauhaus (women could paint in watercolor but were discouraged from oils), which seems ridiculous to me, but I would have been supremely anachronistic in that time period, anyway.

    So you have dye-based colorants — which may change in character over time (though this isn’t an issue if they’re immediately scanned into an archival digital format like .TIFF: I went cheaper at a 1200 dpi .JPEG [much simplified for the Web]) — and pigment-based colorants, which are more permanent as a rule, but not necessarily totally permanent. Pigments are small particles, dyes are not: it’s harder to bleach a particle or oxidize a particle, for example.

    When one is working digitally, however — that’s a totally different ball game; and it is worth it to ask whether, when something is intended to be seen digitally, is it worth it just to create it first in a digital environment?

    I’m pretty sure that falls down to personal preference…there are aspects of working digitally that just do not compare to working by hand, on paper or canvas, instead of a tablet. The softness or snap of a brush, or the blossoming qualities of certain watercolor paints on certain papers (and not other papers)…I would not expect to be mirrored exactly in a digital environment.

    This is precisely because it varies so much in a real-world environment, and there are so many issues at play (such as the dampness and absorbency of the paper, the amount of water in [and characteristics of] the brush, the quality of touch, the quality of paint, etc.: I have four different Prussian Blues which perform four different ways on the same paper, despite using the same pigment [yes, I was nitpicky]).

    That’s not to even get into the differences in lead constitution between different brands of graphite pencil…(Derwents, as a class, are the most crumbly graphite pencils I own, for example…it’s kind of annoying.)

    But that’s edging beyond my level of knowledge. I did take a number of classes in Digital Art, but I’m still not experienced enough to really know what I’m talking about. In five years, I might have better insight.

    What I can say is that I don’t think digital art will ever fully replace the experience of making traditional art; but there are definite advantages to digital art. The ability to delete what you didn’t want to do: but did anyway, is one of them.

    Most of the work on the above scan — inking and coloring (by hand, obviously, from my errors) — was done on the 22nd. I’m much better (much more practiced) at monochrome drawing, than with colors; the thing is, I’m very into color. Much more so than one might be able to tell, from looking at this blog. I think that a fascination with color is an advantage from the start: especially, looking at how difficult it can be to use color effectively.

    I am not a professional Illustrator at this point; but given my current employment options, combined with my personal constitution, it’s attractive as a vocation. That’s if I can get my skills up to a professional level, which will not come without my believing in myself enough to devote time and presence of mind, among other resources, to practice.

    I am coming to the point of acknowledging that my imagination is probably one of my more extreme strengths…which can be a double-edged sword. I’ve mentioned before, some of what can go along with that — especially given the fact that I deal with mental configurations which include both a tendency to catastrophize, and a vulnerability to false beliefs (which…you know, those two things could be the same).

    This is the major reason that I veered away from Creative Writing after my Undergraduate degree was over. To a lesser extent, I got into Visual Arts when I realized how challenging it would be to have control over a world of my own making, when my mind had not been reined in.

    There does seem to be something to the analogy of trying to ride a wild horse, when it comes to mental health…

    …I say, never having ridden a horse. Not even once, neigh?

    (Now I’m unconsciously getting into polyglot humor. I’m sorry.)

    There’s a lot that changes in twenty years, including one’s self-knowledge, and ability to notice when one starts spiraling in a direction one does not want to spiral down. I’m sure it’s noticeable from the backlog of posts, here, that I can start to go off on a tangent and then, by surprise, maybe the post’s primary content ends up being that tangent. I’m not entirely sure why it happens…I’ve just been told to keep writing.

  • Sometimes you need experience to gain insight

    November 20th, 2022

    My XML class is in its final weeks. I remember having written some time ago that by the end of this class, I should have some idea whether I would want to go back for more intensive XML training. The answer to that question is unequivocally, “no.”

    This has been a good thing to realize, prior to attempting to get a job which deals heavily with XML. Markup is not a big deal — and I may want to pursue HTML and CSS, further — but Computer Programming, is a big deal, for me. A lot of the manipulation of XML for use cases is conducted within Programming and Query languages…which are not necessarily easy things to learn. I’ve gotten tripped up on both of them.

    Wend your way

    I have realized that I have other strengths that not everyone has, that I should not discount; and that possibly, my past training in both Writing and Art were not missteps. Possibly, neither was Social Science. Or, Ethnic Studies. Both of the latter help me better understand the people and world around me.

    Maybe, that is, I just did the best I could at the time, and my best wasn’t as bad as I had thought.

    Librarianship…is different. Librarianship was a choice offered to me by a vocational institution, out of a list of jobs they could prepare me for. I do not feel their “help” was all that helpful, at this point in my life. What they gave me was a 12-year detour and another diploma…in something I may not actually want to do.

    I am not certain at this point that Librarianship, as a field, even contains the type of work I primarily want to do — that is, the work that is my reason for living — though I see some subfields which could be tolerable as income streams (Cataloging). Problem is, I may have to relocate to get those jobs, and it seems most of those jobs are not even in my general region of the country — nor are they in regions I would want to move to.

    Maybe the people who had those jobs didn’t want to live there, either.

    As for the areas in which I find both ability and pleasure? These would be creativity, creative process, language, and literacy; writing, reading, and art.

    These things have pretty much nothing to do with being a front-line Civil Service worker, even in a Library setting; but that’s what I’ve done for the last ten years of my employment. I realized over the course of those jobs, that I’m not psychologically suited for public service. I’m just very much, too sensitive; and I ruminate for too long. I can change the latter, but probably not the former.

    I just tried working with “people” because I thought I had to do it. I thought that if I did it instead of avoiding it, it would get easier. Unfortunately, anxiety in dealing with people isn’t necessarily subject to exposure therapy. It’s not the same thing as a phobia.

    The only way this gets easier is that people stop trying to test you so much, when they have seen you before. Whereas people throw all kinds of mind games at you, if they think you’re new.

    That kind of interaction, I can very well live without.

    Time

    I also realize that my time is precious: this last semester, I could have been taking a class in Speculative Fiction instead of XML. That would have put me into a good position for many of the projects I could be dealing with now, which I didn’t realize I might deal with until the 18th of November, when I listed them out.

    For that matter, I could have been reading things I wanted to read, rather than reading poorly-written technical books on a topic I may never utilize.

    I think I’ve realized why M keeps asking me to prioritize what I really want to do: because she recognizes that — in my trying to make Librarianship work as a career for 12 years now — I haven’t been doing what I’ve wanted, and I seem a bit lost. It’s possible she feels a little responsible for this, having supported me through Library School and having pushed me to complete the program (but not expecting I would choose to work as much as I did, in my last position).

    Genre

    I am still uncertain what genre my work falls into; though if the answer to that is, “none,” I know I’m writing Literature. (There are some in-jokes about this, where it comes to authors who publish in Science Fiction and Fantasy [SF/F] journals.) Of course, it would heed me to actually do the work before trying to figure out my genre. It would likely clarify much more than I can understand from a theoretical standpoint.

    In turn, it helps to read if you want to write. Fiction authorship works best if it is first modeled, in my case; and I haven’t really read any Fiction, recently. That kind of thing, will make it hard to begin.

    Most of the reading I’ve been attracted to on my own, has been Speculative Fiction — from way back with Dragonriders of Pern and Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, moving forward into The Vampire Lestat and Violin, most lately in The Left Hand of Darkness, etc. That doesn’t at all mean that I’m a writer of Speculative Fiction; only that I’m influenced by it. I was trained into Literature and tend not to base my writing around a setting or world; I’m more engrossed in character.

    It gets to the point where I question just why some of the alienating — and seemingly unnecessary — elements of SF/F recur: sometimes they just seem to be distractions from the quality of the text. (That includes Hugo and Nebula Award winners.) I wouldn’t be surprised if this is precisely why Literature people tend to look askance on this particular genre.

    Where the text is precisely an exploration of the world it portrays, that is an entirely different motive for writing than being led first by an exploration of character or an exploration of the art possible in the language, itself (the latter of which, I’ve heard is expressed maximally in Ulysses; but I haven’t read it yet, to confirm).

    And then…there is the fact that SF/F elements can occur in Literature. As regards what makes something Speculative Fiction as versus Literature; I’ll just have to continue research on it, now — and keep reading.

    What I know is that I’m not totally into Worldbuilding, because the question arises: Worldbuilding, to what end? For me, that really is the crux of the matter. If my characters’ relations to their world/setting are irrelevant to the central question that the writing engages, it may be the case that I’m not writing within the Speculative Fiction genre…but I’m really not sure. I know for a fact that I have not studied it: I never got the chance to (and just blew my last one).

    Blogging versus Authorship?

    Something that came up over the past few days, is realizing that blogging is likely a form of Social Media, for me. It’s relatively easy, therefore, to pour a lot of time into it…when I could be using that time to do work which could be publishable in a way which is not just short-term self-publishing, online.

    There’s also the fact that when I’m writing on my blog, it inherently pushes away the topics which are still relevant and need to be worked out; but which are not suitable for consumption by the public, at their present stage of development. Either this, or it helps generate a record of these topics — but then I have to excise them from what I post. They’re generally off-topic obsessions, or so undeveloped as to be risky to publish (either due to misunderstanding, or to being explored by someone else before I can get to them).

    If I want to publish traditionally, I need to keep my work relatively private until I can get a contract. This is one of those things that I learned in Undergrad. Much of the time, a Publisher seeks First Publishing Rights, which I won’t be able to give them if I’ve already published to the Web, on my own. 50 Shades of Grey is not the norm, that is. Nor is My Milk Toof.

    There are many benefits to publishing traditionally — including serving as a prerequisite to being accepted into a Creative Writing MFA program. Again, though: the MFA is valuable if you want to teach. If you don’t want to teach, is it also that important? It depends on how much focused attention you want or need on your own work — kind of like an Art MFA.

    Prestige is also a factor, though it may only matter in Academia — or from within the Publishing industry, itself. Looking at my CV, however, it’s fairly obvious that I haven’t particularly ever been after prestige.

    Contracting with a Publisher means that there will be a lot of work other than the writing portion which they will take care of, particularly in Marketing, but also in Graphic Design, Printing, Distribution, etc. I’d also likely get my own group of Editors to work with.

    The major issue with traditional Publishing is that I have to be prepared to face a vast majority of rejections — as any author (especially a previously unpublished author) would. I have heard that if you send out 100 queries and three of them aren’t a straight “no”, you’re doing good. That’s assumed to be with a Creative Writing degree; I was told this in Undergrad.

    There are also the time and response components. Blogging has a fairly immediate turnaround between posting and seeing people’s responses — even if it takes me two or three days to write a quality post, and one to three days to have everyone see it. I can’t expect that kind of immediate response, if I’m writing for myself. That means I need to be able to handle delayed gratification, or essentially working on my project for my own pleasure, and be able to tolerate the fact that other people don’t know about it.

    Of course, this could be mitigated with a Writing Group/Writer’s Circle…but there’s also the question of whether I even want to try that, outside of a University setting. (It’s hard enough to share, in a class; let alone where it’s solid that I can’t trust anyone and there is really no recourse to “off” or immoral behavior other than leaving, or legal action.)

    Yeah, the “people” factor may be the most difficult issue in Writing, too…

    Illustration

    The other things I wish to develop — outside of this class, which should end in a matter of weeks — are my Drawing and Painting skills. At this point, I’m confronting some inertia in getting back into them, as I’ve been doing “official” (i.e. XML) work during the daytime, and am not yet used to having the possibility of free time while I have natural light. Daylight is acting like a countdown timer for me, which is kind of disconcerting.

    I can’t exclusively depend on the idea of Art as, “play,” or, “reward,” because that decentralizes it in my life. Though, granted, when I was using Art as a reward, I was getting much more work done than when I wasn’t. I was trying to squeeze all the reward possible out of that time, that is.

    For that matter, I’m not used to the option of working with my Art materials, at all. Both Writing and Art have kind of been shoved off to the side, as things one does in their leisure time. My society supports this view by the fact that most artists and writers have to have, “day jobs,” to survive.

    But if I want to become a professional Writer or Illustrator…I really need to work, to hone my skills and to further develop a portfolio — in addition to seeing if I really want to do this. I already know that I really want to write. The question here is whether to split my time between Writing and Art…because I can do both, but I don’t have the time, necessarily, to fully pursue both (unless I’m able to remain unemployed and still survive, which in turn is dependent upon my support network).

    The fact is that there is a lot of reading I want to do, and Art requires a substantial time (and energy, and money) commitment. However, if it keeps me sane while I’m working on my writing — which it does — that is a reason to keep doing it, and integrate it into my workflow. Even if it doesn’t end up being particularly important as regards my career.

    When I went back to Community College and decided to focus on Art…it was partially to see if I even really liked it anymore. Or, at least, liked it enough to make a Graphic Novel, as versus a literary novel. I was still working out issues of medium, that is — and it’s fair to say that I still am.

    I apparently liked Art enough to follow the courses through to an AA…though how anyone uses their skills after training, is really up to them. I’m still trying to fight against the bias that says that if I can do my own work, it must also be easy for everyone else, too.

    That’s not how it works, okay.

    Establishing priorities

    I did smell a couple of my Ecolines, and the most I smelled was just a relatively mild vinegar scent. (I wasn’t able to identify it until after I smelled a bottle of pen cleaner to remind myself of what ammonia smelled like. It is certainly not ammonia.) I hadn’t been using the Ecolines because it has been so incredibly cold that I hadn’t wanted to even take the risk of having to vent the house. But vinegar should not bother me.

    Maybe I can bring in some intention. If I wake up around 5:30 AM tomorrow again, instead of checking my phone, I can do my 15 minutes of free-writing and then go and experiment with the Ecolines. I mean, I can just start my day early, instead of going back to sleep. I should then be up for dawn, which hits at about 7 AM. Sunset hits at about 5 PM, which should give me 10 hours of work — though I know for a fact that I won’t be able to work the entire day through.

    That means to get to bed at a decent time, tonight; further, this means to get ready for bed early enough so that I can go to sleep, if I want to.

    This also means, maybe, to slip in some time to write by hand, in between dinner and bed. It would allow me to stay away from screens late at night…although that point has been surpassed at this time, obviously.

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