[Mad Hatter] Don’t squash the banana

[Harriet]

Fantastic!!! The dude in the hat is great.

Proper rest day sounds like the correct response to having difficult getting off the floor.

[Mad Hatter]

17 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Fantastic!!! The dude in the hat is great.

Proper rest day sounds like the correct response to having difficult getting off the floor.

The dude in the hat was so hard! I redid it, even tracing over the reference, and I still couldn’t get it remotely close. 😬I also took so long trying to fix it that I ran out of time to work on the shirt. Oh well. I might come back to it once I have a bit more practice under my belt. 🙂 At least this one looked like a person throughout the process, I spent forever trying to not make the girl look like a fish person or witch. 😄I almost gave in to the frustration at one point and started painting the fish woman instead haha. (I still might for fun!)

 

Indeed. Also my quads are suuuper sore for no good reason which didn’t help.

[Harriet]

9 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

The dude in the hat was so hard! I redid it, even tracing over the reference, and I still couldn’t get it remotely close. 😬I also took so long trying to fix it that I ran out of time to work on the shirt. Oh well. I might come back to it once I have a bit more practice under my belt. 🙂 At least this one looked like a person throughout the process, I spent forever trying to not make the girl look like a fish person or witch. 😄I almost gave in to the frustration at one point and started painting the fish woman instead haha. (I still might for fun!)e

 

It's very impressive given how few faces you've done in total. The reason, of course, is that we are incredibly visually sensitive to facial details and dedicate a lot of brain space to them because it's evolutionarily-socially important. Details off on a car? Only the car lover will notice. Details off on a face? Everyone will notice. Anyway, I think it's good they're pushing you to do these quicker sketches as well as the longer efforts.

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

13 hours ago, Harriet said:

It's very impressive given how few faces you've done in total. The reason, of course, is that we are incredibly visually sensitive to facial details and dedicate a lot of brain space to them because it's evolutionarily-socially important. Details off on a car? Only the car lover will notice. Details off on a face? Everyone will notice. Anyway, I think it's good they're pushing you to do these quicker sketches as well as the longer efforts.

Not that impressive if you'd seen the reference. 😛  But that wasn't the point of the exercise anyway, the point was to organize the value, not likeness. Once the faces started looking human enough to not be distracting I stopped and continued with the exercise.

[Harriet]

25 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Not that impressive if you'd seen the reference. 😛 

 

Ahahaha, I know the problem well.

 

25 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

But that wasn't the point of the exercise anyway, the point was to organize the value, not likeness. Once the faces started looking human enough to not be distracting I stopped and continued with the exercise.

 

Good work prioritising. I see you have your values sorted 😛

[Mad Hatter]

Today I had another one of those days where I'm bored and antsy and nothing seems to help. 

I did go for a morning swim and that was lovely as usual. And I spent a bunch of time painting.

 

Spoiler

 I should be happy but I got really annoyed, then disappointed. Annoyed because I still suck (I've done a week's worth of exercises already! 🙄), and annoyed that I don't know how to make a painting look polished/finished, and that my iPad screen is so bright and shiny and my computer monitor is dull and sad. Disappointed by all the mistakes I already spotted, and by how little return on investment I got from spending a so much more time working on it. I keep telling myself that it's ok to feel all those things (it only means that I care), and that I'm learning, and I should be happy because I finished a thing and now I can move on to the next which will hopefully be a little better. And if not the one after that. And that it will probably look better tomorrow anyway after I've slept on it. 😛 

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

4 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Ahahaha, I know the problem well.

 

 

Good work prioritising. I see you have your values sorted 😛

That's why I'm hiding the reference. 😄

 

Well not really. Had I had more time I would've gone back to it and fixed the left side of the shirt which is all a bit too glaringly black. 🤷‍♀️ I might just have to go back and redo it at some point.

[Scaly Freak]

I like your painting! I especially like how the bright colors and happy-looking lines and shapes create a powerful distraction away from how dark it is. 

[Harriet]

11 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Well not really. Had I had more time I would've gone back to it and fixed the left side of the shirt which is all a bit too glaringly black. 🤷‍♀️ I might just have to go back and redo it at some point.

 

It was a pun, my love

[Harriet]

16 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Today I had another one of those days where I'm bored and antsy and nothing seems to help. 

I did go for a morning swim and that was lovely as usual. And I spent a bunch of time painting.

 

  Hide contents

 I should be happy but I got really annoyed, then disappointed. Annoyed because I still suck (I've done a week's worth of exercises already! 🙄), and annoyed that I don't know how to make a painting look polished/finished, and that my iPad screen is so bright and shiny and my computer monitor is dull and sad. Disappointed by all the mistakes I already spotted, and by how little return on investment I got from spending a so much more time working on it. I keep telling myself that it's ok to feel all those things (it only means that I care), and that I'm learning, and I should be happy because I finished a thing and now I can move on to the next which will hopefully be a little better. And if not the one after that. And that it will probably look better tomorrow anyway after I've slept on it. 😛 

 

 

 

Oooh, how did I miss this! Awesome! It's definitely okay to feel the feelings. I really like the quality of the light on the monster's face (for example, you made the highlights warmer and the shadows cooler, which instantly adds beauty and convincingness), and the range of values from the dark foreground to the patch of light in which the pink squirrel thing is.

[Mad Hatter]

20 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

I like your painting! I especially like how the bright colors and happy-looking lines and shapes create a powerful distraction away from how dark it is. 

Thanks. 🙂 It's not supposed to be that dark though, at least not the center part. The combo of iPad brightness and large color range makes it a bit misleading to use...

 

10 minutes ago, Harriet said:

It was a pun, my love

🙈 Clearly I'm in a mood where I can only see all the things I did wrong. 😛 

 

3 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Oooh, how did I miss this! Awesome! It's definitely okay to feel the feelings. I really like the quality of the light on the monster's face (for example, you made the highlights warmer and the shadows cooler, which instantly adds beauty and convincingness), and the range of values from the dark foreground to the patch of light in which the pink squirrel thing is.

The light's really mixed up, I didn't plan it enough and different shadows have different temperature shifts, for entirely arbitrary reasons. Same with the highlights really. But thanks, appreciated. 🙂

[Scaly Freak]

29 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Thanks. 🙂 It's not supposed to be that dark though, at least not the center part. The combo of iPad brightness and large color range makes it a bit misleading to use...

 

Not literally dark, more that the monster is luring the adorable purplish cute creature towards its death and you've capture the moment right before attack and devouring.  

[KB Girl]

It's so great to see your art! I must have stared at the gif for 5 minutes. And your self-talk is spot on  

 

Do you do any cycle tracking btw? sometimes that explains the weird off/tired days. 

 

[WhiteGhost]

On 7/2/2021 at 1:41 AM, Mad Hatter said:

I wanted to do handstands afterwards but that was a bad call, my upper body was friiiied!

This is why I always (try to) do handstands first

 

On 7/4/2021 at 2:18 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Unfortunately in thirty minutes there were a lot of problem areas that I didn't have time to fix

To the untrained eye they look pretty darned good.  I couldn't find the problem areas

[KB Girl]

Alright?

[sarakingdom]

Have you squashed your banana?

 

 

It's all right. Sometimes we all need to squash a banana.

 

Step one to recover the situation:

 

 

Step two:

 

 

It is fika time. Bake your banana bread with your mashed bananas, come take a coffee break with us, have a breather, and get back in the saddle next week.

[Harriet]

Any more painting exercises for us?

[Mad Hatter]

On 7/4/2021 at 10:19 PM, Scaly Freak said:

Not literally dark, more that the monster is luring the adorable purplish cute creature towards its death and you've capture the moment right before attack and devouring.  

Perfect, that's exactly what I was going for! 

 

On 7/5/2021 at 11:21 PM, KB Girl said:

It's so great to see your art! I must have stared at the gif for 5 minutes. And your self-talk is spot on  

 

Do you do any cycle tracking btw? sometimes that explains the weird off/tired days. 

Well, trying to do the self talk. 😉

 

I'm on the Mirena and haven't had a period in years, which makes it a little tricky to track... I'm sure there is some hormonal weirdness, but right now it's almost certainly the light + heat combo that's doing a number on me.

 

On 7/6/2021 at 8:21 AM, WhiteGhost said:

This is why I always (try to) do handstands first

 

To the untrained eye they look pretty darned good.  I couldn't find the problem areas

I wouldn't wanna do a proper handstand session after climbing, but I'm usually good for a little messing about. 🙂 The movements are different enough in terms of muscle use. The biggest problem I tend to have is down regulating power. 😄

 

That's alright, I have notes for all of them. 😛 

 

14 hours ago, Harriet said:

Any more painting exercises for us?

Most of the week was a wash, but sure here are some of the exercises. The last two (first two in the gif were really hard, they took me a full hour instead of the half hour they're supposed to be. And that's just trying to pick colors and keep up! 

 

Spoiler

 

[Mad Hatter]

22 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Alright?

 

16 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

Have you squashed your banana?

 

 

It's all right. Sometimes we all need to squash a banana.

 

Step one to recover the situation:

 

 

Step two:

 

 

It is fika time. Bake your banana bread with your mashed bananas, come take a coffee break with us, have a breather, and get back in the saddle next week.

I squashed the banana. Practically disintegrated it. 

 

Work was a complete clusterfuck and it drove me absolutely bananas (hah! sorry). People's failure to communicate is truly mind boggling sometimes. There were emergency discussions left and right, but never with the right people at the right time. I kept getting third hand information, do this, do that, which of course was always wrong, or at least incomplete, and the instructions kept changing every five minutes. Eventually I also got dragged in to these discussions, which meant late hours because of time zone differences, and emergency releases. All this is for projects that I have nothing to do with and couldn't care less about, yet somehow I'm the one to save their butts. I just want to go back to what I was supposed to be working on, which I haven't been able to do for a month now. Again, because people can't plan even the simplest thing. Gaaah. The worst part that the frustration kept lingering and every tiny stupid little thing would cause a little spike of anger. A thing takes a second too long to load, a car was too red, people talking in the morning in my swimming spot... Actually swimming was probably the only thing keeping me somewhat sane. And also (over)aggressively purging of stuff. What has not been helping is my 5ish-hour sleep average. I realize that our idea of a heatwave is more like perfect summer temperatures for everyone else, but it's still a problem when the flat heats up to 28+C and doesn't go down much if anything at night. Combine that with it being light pretty much all night and you get some pretty shoddy sleep.

 

On Saturday I was supposed to climb and barbecue with some friends, but instead my brain went into emergency shut down mode. On Friday I built a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, on Saturday a 1500 piece. And I refused to talk to anyone. I also watched the first season of Kingdom, a climbing comp and a parkour comp*. I had turned into a vegetable. 

*Where men and women compete semi-together, how cool is that?

 

But! Last night I slept under a cold towel and got some almost good sleep in. And I took the bananas and baked a (literal) banana bread. It is delicious. And I took a nap. I also made myself do painting exercises in order to fight the resistance. It's something!

 

Next week I expect still more BS, but I refuse to let it take over my life. I'm going to try take a few hours off in the middle of the day when I can. And if the schedule allows take a whole day off (unofficially) to compensate for the late evenings. I had planned to do that on Friday but no I had to do an emergency fix and once the stream of people wanting stuff got unleashed there was no stopping. Next week, I won't care. People can wait, things can wait. I'll do what I can to fix the problems but not at the expense of my sanity.

[KB Girl]

That actually all sound like good recovery strategies successfully applied? and also great plans for next week  

 

[Elastigirl]

Glad you were able to get some sleep.It's so hard when it doesn't cool down at night.

[Harriet]

9 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Most of the week was a wash, but sure here are some of the exercises. The last two (first two in the gif were really hard, they took me a full hour instead of the half hour they're supposed to be. And that's just trying to pick colors and keep up!

 

I love them! My favourite, though, is the third one with the slightly heavier woman's face. It's a great portrait.

[Mad Hatter]

On 7/12/2021 at 1:08 AM, KB Girl said:

That actually all sound like good recovery strategies successfully applied? and also great plans for next week  

Hmm not really. I just didn’t have the mental capacity to do anything else, which is not the same thing.
 

On 7/12/2021 at 2:14 AM, Elastigirl said:

Glad you were able to get some sleep.It's so hard when it doesn't cool down at night.

It is. Finnish flats are really not made for summer, they’re built for retaining heat. This is the only time of year I’m quite happy with my east facing windows. 😛
 

On 7/12/2021 at 7:50 AM, Harriet said:

I love them! My favourite, though, is the third one with the slightly heavier woman's face. It's a great portrait.

Hmm you mean the second one with the pinks? Which is not a heavier woman at all but a chubby faced girl? If so it’s a terrible portrait. 😄It was SO hard to make a child/teenager with a really scrunched face look their age, especially when you only get two values. I stopped trying after she stopped looking like a troll haha. But that wasn’t the point of the exercise at all, none of them are about the portrait. This one was about separating the subject from the rest using value and color. I essentially stop tinkering with the face once it stops being awfully distracting. Though yesterday I gave up even on that. 😛

[Mad Hatter]

Yesterday I successed at having a chill work day. Coffee and swim by the sea before work, then the local climbing gym after my morning meetings. I spent the whole session trying to do one problem in different ways which was surprisingly fun! I tried to do a bit of strength training afterwards, but I got too bored trying to rest in between sets. 😛

 

Today was less of a success. I took a break midday, and sat outside a lot, but didn’t finish until 7pm because of a late meeting followed by distractions. On the plus side, the people who caused so much frustration last week were surprisingly chill and cooperative this week. I’m curious whether something happened behind the scenes… After work I got a surprise headache though, went for a swim to cool down but that’s about it. No art or training happened.

[Harriet]

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Hmm you mean the second one with the pinks? Which is not a heavier woman at all but a chubby faced girl? If so it’s a terrible portrait. 😄

 

Hehehehe. I mean the portrait with the black hair and people in the background.

 

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

It was SO hard to make a child/teenager with a really scrunched face look their age, especially when you only get two values. I stopped trying after she stopped looking like a troll haha.

 

Scrunched expressions are tricky. Nasolabial folds have a tendency to look very harsh when drawn or painted, and you've done her in high contrast with black, so that'll be fairly ageing.

 

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

But that wasn’t the point of the exercise at all, none of them are about the portrait. This one was about separating the subject from the rest using value and color. I essentially stop tinkering with the face once it stops being awfully distracting. Though yesterday I gave up even on that. 😛

 

Portraits are also largely about value, I think! Just a lot of bits of light and shadow.

 

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Yesterday I successed at having a chill work day. Coffee and swim by the sea before work, then the local climbing gym after my morning meetings. I spent the whole session trying to do one problem in different ways which was surprisingly fun! I tried to do a bit of strength training afterwards, but I got too bored trying to rest in between sets. 😛

 

Today was less of a success. I took a break midday, and sat outside a lot, but didn’t finish until 7pm because of a late meeting followed by distractions. On the plus side, the people who caused so much frustration last week were surprisingly chill and cooperative this week. I’m curious whether something happened behind the scenes… After work I got a surprise headache though, went for a swim to cool down but that’s about it. No art or training happened.

 

Swimming at the sea sounds nice.