Jarric

Wednesday - W2D3

Wednesday was a good day. I forgot to mention that on Tuesday I bought myself a pocket sketchbook (thanks @Sea-to-sky for the idea) and a mechanical pencil that I can carry around with me. Art on Wednesday was a very quick sketch in that book of some holy symbols for the pantheon connected to my character designs so far. I had intended to do another full character in the evening, but ended up without the energy.

Kneehab was done at Crossfit. Crossfit was deadlifts, which always makes for a good day - I worked up to 145kg x5, and felt like I had more in the tank. Also practiced some hang power snatches and some lunges.

I ended up having a very chilled day, in which I found myself unable to get off the sofa and consequently late to bouldering. I had a good time, but it was a very short session.

I was late home in the evening, and well over calories thanks to leftover lamb for lunch and quite a lot of easter egg. WW was feeling really ill though, so in the end we didn't cook and I just had a Belgian bun and some tiny chocolate eggs for dinner. Still over calories, but not by as much as I could have been. Then I vegged on the sofa some more until bedtime.

22 hours ago, Sovalis said:

I have Procreate on my iPad for drawing and have much the same experience - it's very cool, but not fast because I'm still such a newb. Your drawings are great though and I'm glad you're making time for them and sharing the results here. 

I've been watching a bit of The Sketching Hour on YouTube/Twitch, and I cannot fathom how they create such amazing digital art inside an hour.

And thank you! It's nice to be making time for it.

20 hours ago, Laghail said:

 

Art time and chocolate and lamb???

 

I'm behind on my Jarric worldbuilding, who is WW? Is this the person that you thought would be upset if your French poetry recitations yielded a pile of panties? 

It was a good day

WW, short for Wonder Woman, is my fiancée. We've been together for 17 years, engaged for 14 of those, and one day we'll get round to organising the wedding!

Tuesday - W2D1

Tuesday was a good day. Art was done in the afternoon. I decided to try my hand at digital art on my drawing tablet for today's character design, which went well but took so long. I'm sure I'll get faster, but still won't be my main mode of daily arting.

Kneehab was done before my morning bike ride. I'm getting quicker on the bike still, which is encouraging.

The rest of the day was pretty chilled - played some Deus Ex, met my parents for lunch, ate a ton of chocolate. WW cooked leftover lamb with squash and chickpeas for dinner (late dinner, thanks to all of the art time), and we chilled on the sofa until bedtime.

20 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I think this is the most cautious D&D group I have ever been a part of.  Usually it is half-assed prep discussion and then LEEEEERRRRROOOOOOOOYYYYYYY...  

Clearly I've scared you all too much . It's quite nice though to see a group at least trying to plan.

On 4/3/2024 at 9:01 AM, Mad Hatter said:

*cough* torrents *cough*

Good for music and movies, not so good for books, pretty useless for merchandise (I can think of a series of books and films, for example, where I would buy plenty of merchandise for myself and friends if it wasn't paying royalties to the author).

23 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

been considering trying a mini work out several days a week. Breaking my main workout routine down into segments and just doing, say, the pressups or the squats that day. It wont burn the same calories or be as good cardio wise as the full thing, But right now i haven't managed to do the whole workout for weeks due to energy levels. Mini workouts seem manageable and achievable though. 

I think this is a great plan. The best exercise is the exercise you'll do week in, week out. Even if mini-workouts weren't as productive as full workouts, you'll get much further by doing all of your mini-workouts than skipping half of your full workouts. (Having said that, if you're doing all of the same movements over the course of a week, I doubt it makes much difference to your strength gains how you aplit them up anyway.)

On 3/31/2024 at 2:04 PM, Sea-to-sky said:

Will be so happy when i have a dotted notebook as anything with a graph will be so much easier. Right now i have to draw all the squares by hand. Very tedious. 

Dot grids are hands down the best way to journal #dotgridmasterrace

Sounds like a good, busy day today! Enjoy your crashing time.

On 3/29/2024 at 5:02 PM, Laghail said:

 

Suzi Ruffell is a blue collar slayer from Portsmouth and she spends her career on intra-class UK social commentary. High LPM, sky-high laughs per minute; Suzi sorta skips across her topics, keeping things light even while she sketches out a woman's life across the boundaries of income and orientation.

I've seen her twice in the last couple of months - absolutely fantastic comedian.

Congrats on the level up mate! Here's to many more to come 🍻

Monday - W2D1

Yesterday was a good day. Art was done in the evening - I started on a character drawing challenge I found online. I doubt I'll do the challenge every day, because it needs a good hour to flesh out a proper character, but it's a nice option to add to my arsenal. Here's day 1:

I went for a paladin/holy knight of a death god, armed with a sceptre and with a teardrop-shaped shield.

Kneehab was done at Crossfit. Crossfit was good, got 3 reps on bench at 75kg (failed my 4th rep), and then 2 x 5 @ 70kg. Then a workout of: 100m row, 10 handstand pushups, 200m row, 20 ring dips, 400m row, 40 pressups. It was supposed to be a running workout, but I can't run and rowing worked out ok.

The workout reminded me that I suck at pushups, so I've decided to do a pushup challenge this month. For day 1 I did 1 pressup, and I'll add one to the set every day for April until I'm doing 30 on the 30th (in theory).

In the afternoon WW did some gardening and I helped with the heavy lifting, including a trip to the garden centre. Then I roasted a lamb shoulder for dinner and we shilled out in front of the TV whilst I arted.

17 hours ago, ViperN7 said:

I don't know if this will work for your drawing, but might I suggest drawing at breakfast (or another fixed point in your day...breakfast is a good fixed point in my day). You have to eat everyday, therefore you will also have to draw *something* every day. This might look like keeping your sketchbook and drawing implement of choice on the table. 

I admit this strategy works better for quantity over quality. It will likely lead to drawing *something*, but might not work towards higher quality, detailed/ in-depth products. 

Alternatively, I suppose you could post your daily art here if you want accountability. Nice Flowery Dragon Parrot, btw 🙂  

Edit: For some reason my phone was not displaying your more recent posts. It seems like you've been getting quite a few drawings in! Nice portraits! 

Thank you! And yes, that's a good idea. Breakfast won't work - I eat breakfast whilst walking to work, so I'm out of spare hands, but if I can link it to another habit that would work well.

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Lol communication fail.  But if we look at the same principles it sounds like social pressure is a big thing for you as you mentioned friends and classes? Have you considered taking IRL art classes or going to life drawing sessions? 

Yeah, that's a good idea. I've had a quick look and there's actually a few different art classes available in my town - will have to investigate further.

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

 

No judgement, I loved getting totally obsessed with games, but now that obsessive tendency puts me off loading up the game at all if I let it.

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Hey I recognized the face!

Thanks! That's very pleasing  

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Such elegance, much wow.

5 hours ago, Artemis Prime said:

I did not notice when you posted on discord that one of the dragons has a pouch. I love marsupial dragon!

 

Excellent!

I know - kangaroo dragon is great! I'll have to remember it if I ever want to flesh out a dragon more fully.

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Ah missed the derpy dragons, they're super cute!

Thanks!

2 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

 

I too wish to enjoy the benefits of the all-chocolate-and-wine diet.

Ah yes, and I can confirm that there are two main benefits to that diet:

1. Chocolate
2. Wine

9 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

In the evening it was D&D and we are quickly coming up on the end of our campaign.  I was thinking we may finish everything up last night

You and me both  . It's all good though; no need to rush it.

17 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

the deductible (or excess or franchise or whatever it is you call it)

As someone who works in insurance, I could explain the difference, but I see no need to bore you with it 😅

17 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

To drive the "the art != the artist" point home, you've given me a good idea for a song to post.🙂

For me I can usually separate the art from the artist, but I really struggle with knowing that streaming a song or buying a book means I am in some way sending them money. Thus I'm much more likely to read/listen to that kind of artist after they're dead.

Hope the surgery goes well, thinking of you.

I'd be annoyed at an unexpected, uninvited house guest too. I'm sure the friend thinks they're doing a lovely thing surprising Dave, but it's not very considerate. Hopefully it'll end up being a fun visit though.

Sunday - W1D7

Yesterday was a good day. Did art in the evening, continuing the theme of charcoal pencils and hot stubbly guys apparently. This was a (not terribly accurate) attempt at Stephen Amell:

Kneehab was done late evening, after ⅔ of a bottle of wine - it was pretty challenging

Went for a bike ride first thing - 10.7 miles in a little over an hour. I pumped up the tyres on Saturday and it's amazing how much easier it makes things - who knew!

Are a ton of chocolate for Easter, slightly mitigated by having nothing but chocolate for lunch. Then a roast pheasant dinner with a bottle of Malbec, because we wanted to be fancy. We even used the fancy glasses.

Despite the chocolate and wine, which put me ~1,500kcal over target for the week, I lost 0.8lbs this week so I'm calling that a win.

Week 1 scores:

Art: 6/7

Kneehab: 7/7

More of this please.

On 3/26/2024 at 3:10 AM, titsworth said:

Goal 2: Find a Gym Buddy / Accountability Buddy

Haaave ya tried Crossfit? (As someone who does Crossfit I am of course obligated to try and get as many other people to do it as possible.)

In all seriousness though, it's really worked for me to have a consistent group of people that I meet at the gym and are doing the same things, without actually having to find a friend from outside of the gym who wants to lift together and do the same programming.

18/03 - 164.9lbs

25/03 -163.9lbs

01/03 - 163.1lbs

Was quite surprised to see a drop in the scale today. I did make an effort to be sensible last week, but I also ate a ton of chocolate yesterday and finished the week about 1,500kcal over target. I'll take it though!

This week should be a bit more back to normal, though I've still got a couple of Easter eggs to work through I'll just have to take it easy with them.

2 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

How do you deal with stress? I'm struggling in this department. I handle situations pretty well, and I am getting better about talking about my thoughts and feelings to family, but I'm still stressed out a lot. Is this something that requires practice, you think? Like practicing letting go of the "AUGH!"

From an eating point of view? I try to remind myself that eating won't make me feel any less stressed. When you're craving a release from stress, or a distraction from it, then your brain my tell you that this is a hunger craving, but eating doesn't solve it and doesn't resolve the things that are causing you stress.

If you mean how do you deal with stress in general, that's harder! Short of resolving the stressful situation, there's a whole raft of stress management techniques out there but what works is pretty specific to the person and situation.

19 hours ago, titsworth said:

Hey all! The NF Team recently did a pretty significant overhaul to the website. I know some of the plug-ins to the back end they used for XP and character quests were not working with some of the new changes. They were correcting a few things, like epic quests, and getting as much back up as possible. The academy may still work because it is on a slightly different configuration than the main site (I think). There's not an attempt to put some of these things behind a paywall or anything like that, rather just trying to move to some newer platforms/designs and losing a bit of older capabilities.  I'll reach out to see if there is an ETA for some of the character pages getting brought back.

Thanks for the update! Will wait to hear.

Glad you're son's ok mate. And well done on reaching Lothlórien!

Welcome back! Sounds like you've been through a lot recently; glad you got it all sorted in the end.

On 3/29/2024 at 12:11 PM, Mad Hatter said:

My first keystone goal is to care of my sanity. I'm staying with my grandma who has Alzheimer's and it gets tiring. Her mood swings make me tense and her behaviors make me sad.

Sorry to hear about your grandma, that sucks. My Dad has dementia - it's different in that I don't live with him, and everyone's situation is different anyway, but I sympathise. If you want to talk about it, feel free to drop me a line.

On 3/30/2024 at 6:10 PM, Mad Hatter said:

- I didn't come to a full stop before attempting the handstand, instead I was mindful of how I placed my hands down on the floor, moving softly and only pushing when I needed to push.

Most of the fun things you did would look really weird in my Crossfit gym, but I might have to have a play with this one.

3 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Her other carer is so good with her, and laughs off everything, and I feel like a complete asshole because I can't be like that. 

Your feelings are valid, and you can't help how you feel about this. Someone different reacting differently does not make your reaction any less reasonable.

I don't have any advice on how to stop being angry, if that's what you want to do. You're in a horrible situation and it's reasonable to be angry about that.

Hope that Wight's ok (and that you are able to send her home after a not stupid amount of time)

Congratulations on the new job mate (whichever one you pick), and the provisional wedding date!

Saturday - W1D6

Yesterday was a good day. I did a charcoal pencil drawing of Adam Jensen, the protagonist in the latter Deus Ex games, in the evening:

Kneehab was done first thing before a bike ride. It was a busy morning - a few miles on the bike, then a short bouldering session, drop off Easter flowers at my Grandma's, then home and get ready to go out to the ballet.

The ballet was good, but a bit weird. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream, but they did the entirety of the plot before the interval, and the second half was just dancing in costume but with no plot. It felt like a very odd choice.