Grids

Today I came home and I decided to paint. The other day in stress management, we were asked what do we do to relieve stress, and the first thing that came to my mind was to paint. I've been having a couple of stressful days recently, so I thought that maybe painting could help. It did. I feel more comfortable with a brush rather than a pencil.
To keep with learning the technical side, I did this piece on a grid. I did it pretty quickly, in total it took about an hour and a half, and I still need to finish the jacket, and fix the face a little. I am happy with how it came out, especially because this is my fifth time trying to draw or paint Julian Casablancas, and this piece is the most recognizable out of all of the now six attempts. I can't wait for it to dry. I want to hang it up in my room. The grid I used for this piece was much larger than the one we used in class. There were fewer boxes, and it actually felt like I was painting. I couldn't get to the level of detail that the David Sedarius I'm doing in class is going to be, but the whole thing just felt so much easier. Julian Casablancas has a very distinct jaw line. I think it makes him look even more beautiful, but i've always had trouble drawing or painting it, but once I put the grid on, the whole thing became easier. I saw it better. That's really all the grid does, it let's you see things better. It's about tricking your mind into seeing things the way they really are, not the way your brain interprets them. I know what I made today wasn't perfect, but it's the kind of thing that I can show my parents and they'd be impressed. That's the other thing, art is expensive, and my parents have money, so a factor in what materials I'd be able to buy for myself, and what art classes I'm allowed to take, very much depends on how well I can make things look real. I know that there is more to art than making things look realistic, but I have to admit there is something extremely fun about getting something on a piece of paper look like what exists in real life. As kids, that's what we all tried to do a couple of time (or more for certain people), but quickly gave up and went back to drawing neckless dogs, or stop drawing completely, like what happened to me.
I remember my sister got into grid drawing. She found this huge piece of cardboard and transferred a portrait of our grandmother onto it. She never finished it, and the detail was limited, but that was the push that made her become interested in art. She tells me she wants to do it, and I think that part of the reason is that drawing with a grid is easy and it's a thing that's very show-offy. Show-offy is important. What's the fun of getting really really good at something if you had to keep it to yourself? What if The Beatles just decided to lock themselves in a garage and only make music for themselves? And show offy skills always get the most respect. Athletes, musicians, painters. For the most part, people will think you're cool for being able to these things, but no says "wow, you're good at math? that's so cool" we'd have a million more kids studying math if it all of a sudden became cool to whip out a calculator at a party and solve equations.

Time

Since today is my first day back at school, and back into routine, I thought I talk about time. Time is something that every human needs to deal with for every second they live. It's scary and exciting. Time is the only thing I have absolute faith in. I know that no matter what I do, or what anyone else does (excluding Daleks and The Doctor) time will keep on ticking.

I came home from school and found it to be extremely difficult to start working. I was tired and just done. But I pushed myself to run on my treadmill for ten minutes before my body collapsed and then I really felt tired. I took one of those half-naps, where you are kinda asleep, but then half an hour passes and something wakes you up, and you remember you have shit to do. I still didn't want to start my homework, so I fiddled with my guitar for an hour. After, I did my english. I needed a break between my english homework and my spanish and french, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to get day 43 done during that time. I still need to take a picture of it for my blog, but I filmed myself drawing a shoe, and the video should be up by the time I finish writing this. This is also part of my language procrastination. Really, I'm just too lazy to walk all the way upstairs to try and get my printer to work so I can do my french, and my spanish homework is online, and normally online homeworks don't take me too long. People think the class should be easy for me, given my knowledge of the language, but it really isn't. Most of what we do is work, that would be time consuming even if it were in english. It is easier to understand in class, and I speak better than most, but but's not like I have some secret edge that allows to finish my homework twice as fast as anybody else. It's time consuming, which isn't a bad thing at all, but it goes back to the idea of time. I know that if I were giving spanish the same effort I give towards art, I'd be a scholar of the language by now, just because I know what I need to de to get better at the language, and it's not really that hard, but it's annoying. I used to watch spanish tv, and during that time my vocabulary, pronunciation, understanding all went up at a rate I'd never seen before. I know that if I picked up a book in Spanish and read it cover to cover I'd come out much smarter, but to do that would require time that I don't have.

I am passionate right now. I am very interested in a lot things, and I'm going through a period of self motivation that I've never experienced before, and sometimes I feel that school gets in the way. I don't feel smarter after this school day. You give that day to me, to let me do what I wanted to, and I'd have painted, drawn, practiced my guitar, learn more coding, and probably write a blog post twice the size of this one. It's not that I don't like school, it's just that I don't want to be limited by what the school would make me do. If my days could be longer, school could be more tolerable, but now it feels like a huge, annoying obligation, like having to visit that side of the family, whose names you can't even remember because you see them once a year. My time feels precious, especially since my youth makes every second feel longer than it actually is.

I want to got to a precollege art program this summer. It's something I've wanted to do for a while now. Really, I just want a time where I dedicate myself to only art for a few weeks. I learned basically all of French 1 in a two week intensive at FIAF. It's incredible what one can do with their time. I want to have a similar experience with art. It's been forty-three days since I got serious with art, and I sometimes scroll through my work and am surprised with how far I've gone in just a month and a half. But I know for a fact that I'm still not devoting the same amount of time that I could be. At FIAF it was a three hour daily class, with about an hour of homework/review a night. That's four hours a day doing something. Today I spend exactly 32 minutes drawing(I know because I was filming myself). Imagine where I could get if I could spend four hours a day drawing and painting.

My Week, My Art, My Community

This has been a very productive week for me. I sometimes wish that I could document everything I do, but having an hour long video of me practicing guitar isn't entertaining, which is why I was reluctant to post the first video of me painting. I like watching it, which is reason enough for me to do it, but at the same time it's cool to have it there for everybody else to watch. I don't have any illusions of getting an audience beyond the people that see it on my facebook page, but I like having it there. If I'm ever at a party or meeting a new person, I could whip out my phone and scroll through pages of my work. And when I have to inevitably apply for colleges, I can have this huge edge because I have so much work, or at least it could make up for the fact that I don't really do any clubs. I've been trying to learn JavaScript, which is very hard, and sometimes I just get up from my desk and leave so that I don't have to deal with the fact that I don't get it. I don't think anyone can get good at it in a day, so I'm not ever truly angry when I don't get it, but it doesn't bring the same satisfaction when I do get it. I've been playing my guitar a lot lately, and when I can't do something, which is most things, in half an hour when I can do that thing, I'm like "THIS IS AWESOME, IT SOUNDS LIKE THE SOUND THAT'S COMING FROM MY COMPUTER!", and when I finally get something in Java, I don't get that same reaction. Maybe it's because I'm still at a really basic level, and when I start to actually make things, maybe I'll get the response I'm looking for.

I've been getting better at painting. I've noticed that it is very different from drawing. I feel comfortable with charcoal, and after a week of only painting with oil paint, I feel comfortable with it. I make things faster, which is weird, but I strive for that sometimes. I started to read the book on Egon Schiele, in addition to looking at the pictures, and his art life was a lot about speed. At my age, he had already been accepted into the Vienna Art School, and by the time he was twenty he left and started his own career. And his paintings reflect that speed of his life. Some paintings he made were just faces and the outline of a body, and he produced so much work that if you hadn't told me he died in his late twenties, I probably wouldn't have come to that conclusion on my own. I don't want to die young, but working fast keeps you working. I make a painting in an hour, then I more on. I sometimes go back to it, but for the most part, it's done, onto the next day. It's not that I don't put effort into the pieces, but I only spend as much time as I feel that the piece needs. If I'm not liking what it's coming out as, I'll finish it early. My first fast forward video of me painting, was probably one of my least favourite days and that's why I stopped after forty-five minutes of working. I loved today's painting, so I spent more time on it, and I even plan to go back to it so that I can add it to the portfolio I'm planning on building. That's the other thing; I have nine oil painting with me, I can go back and fix them if I want to, so if the day comes where I am told I need ten paintings for an application, I have a place to start. I'm not scrambling to look for ideas, I can just pull out something I have, work on it another couple hours, and I'm good. \

I had sent Mr. Ganes an email about what art class to take next year and he responded with his recommendation. I'm really glad that I am taking drawing and painting III. I didn't think that I could be at that level a month ago. I'm exciting about being part of a class with people who have been drawing and painting for years, and I come in all "I started last year". I aspire to be like Michelle Li, and it might be awkward for her to read it, and I don't want to insult any other art STACies, but Michelle, in my mind, is one of the most talented people I've ever meet. And I know that her skill comes from years of work because I've seen what she has posted on Facebook. I also admire her internet use. Her website is gorgeous, and the image she has forged for herself is something I aspire to. I love her photography 365 that she has embarked on, and photography is something that I plan on exploring, probably this summer. I'm mostly admiring her because I need positive role models for my work. I feel it is important to have abstract ones, like Egon Schiele and Julian Casablancas, but it's just as important to admire your peers. As much as I love Julian and Egon, there is a ver small chance that I can talk to them about what they do. Unless time travel is invented, or I get famous, I'll probably never be able to have a conversation with them about their work, or have them look at mine. With Julian, it's nice because I can watch Youtube videos of his interviews, and it's moments like that have been persuading me to practice my guitar more, and even record my voice and try to make that sound better, but imagine if the distance between us were less. I'd be a guitar master and have an acceptable voice, just because I'd have this feeling of wanting to be at the same level. That's the reason I've been trying to branch out again. For the past couple months I've spent most of my time alone, working on my art, but now I've come to the level where a community is essential for my growth. I need that community to push me. I've been trying to spend more time with other painters and artists outside of my friend group, like Sarah and Michelle Marin, two people I also admire, just because I like to hear them talk about their work and art in general. My close friends are artists, but most don't do fine art, and focus more on the art I used to be interested in. But it's also very important to surround myself with all types of artists, because really all art is the same, it's just certain people prefer a certain medium, like acting vs. painting, you can get the same message across using either, but some people are better painters while others are better actors. I'm planning on holding off on finding computer friends until college. I'm not at the level where I could even understand the lingo of that community, and I don't think I will for a while.

The Web

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my future. I've decided that I have to do something that I actually enjoy. After watching about two hours of the Dali Lama talk about how money corrupts and about happiness, I think it's important that I do something that makes me happy. At the same time I also want to do something that makes enough money to survive. I believe that I could live as a starving artist, but why should I if I have the opportunity to not? Looking at the future, it's easy to see where the world is going, on a broad level. The internet is where the money is, so I know that I need to learn how to use this thing to work for me. I have never been anti-internet, but I've never really spent hours browsing through Tumblr or Youtube watching silly videos of cats, or looking at memes. It's not me. But I think that it's actually more helpful to not do that because it's wasting my time on something that doesn't teach me much. I'd rather spend my time on CodeCadmey. I've decided that I am going to write every blog post from now on in HTML, just to get better.

I want to be an artist. So many people think that artists can't survive in the new information world, but the truth is just that certain mediums of art have become less popular. The internet is one of the greatest mediums for art. It can literally be anything you make, and just like every other type of art, there is good internet and bad internet. My goal now is to reinvent myself on the internet. I want to learn as much as I can about it and use it to my advantage so that the art that I'm doing now can be more easily displayed. This blog is a bug accomplishment because I've been posting here for the past three years, but I could never advertise it. The biggest road block is my extended family. They can't know about my personal life. My sexuality is easy to hide in real life, but not on the internet. If I have a blog where I talk about my life, it has to include my sexuality. I'm thinking of starting a second "kosher" blog, where I post the same blog posts as I have on this blog, but only not mention anything about my sexuality.

I want my image on the internet to be divided up into three different types of art. The first is my writing. I never realized it, but the fact that I blog so much, actually makes me a better writer, and I never considered this art, but it could be. The second is my 365 blog. Fine art is extremely easy for the internet world. I get more traffic to my 365 blog than anything else, and the reason why is because it is low commitment. Reading a page long blog post about my life requires time. You can look at my art for thirty seconds and then leave. It's attractive. The last is my vlogs. I am not comfortable in front of the camera, at least not when I have to talk about my life. Vlogs are extremely popular now. There are so many people that get paid for vlogging, and we've never heard of them. Have twenty thousand followers is just a drop in the population of the internet world, but it's enough to get paid. I made my first STAC vlog yesterday and it wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. I finished the entire thing in four hours. Katherine came to my house at three, and I was done editing at seven. This vacation is a huge opportunity to vlog, because I can easily squeeze them out. I plan to make another by the end of the week.

The biggest thing I realized about the people who become internet successful is that they are always producing. There is a vlogger named Charlie McDonnell, and I used to watch his videos religiously, but I haven't in a while. The problem he faced was something that so many artists face. He decided to pick quality over quantity. He sometimes goes for months without posting, when his full time job is to make Youtube videos. He took advantage of his popularity to support himself. I stopped watching him. Now he makes bigger movies and doesn't vlog as often. Now you compare him to another vlogger, WheezyWaiter, who posts about two or three times a week every week. This guy, Craig, knows what he's doing. Charlie has more subscribers, a lot more actually, 2 million, but his viewership has declined. Charlie manages to have a loyal fan base, even though he produces less because he is a cute British boy. Wheezy is a chubby man who looks like he could be your dad when you were a toddler. Wheezy has about 500,000 subscribers, but last month, if you add up all the views of Wheezy's videos, you get about 900,000 view. Last month, Charlie's three new videos got about 1.1 million views. The people you are selling your product to are mostly girls ages 8-16, which is why Charlie is still more "successful", but Wheezy is able to get close to what Charlie gets through hard work and a lot of videos. Wheezy's fan base is constantly growing, while Charlie's is shrinking. If Wheezy posted like Charlie does, he hardly have any views. Each video he makes gets about 50-60,000 views, but because he makes so many, he can compete with Charlie's 300,00 views per video. Charlie's main argument is that he wants to make videos he likes, and doesn't like the pressure of fighting for views, but what he forgets is that if he did have a pretty face and a cute accent, he'd be waiting tables and living with his mother because he has no college education and really no skills other than his self-taught film skills. Charlie get's to do the things he likes because he's attractive, but the things he likes to do aren't what sells on the internet. Ten minute films can only be so popular. They're not bad films, he's made two now, but if it was any other person doing that, they'd be poor. Vloggers or anyone who wants to be successful on youtube should all learn from Wheezy. His videos are of good quality, and he talks about many thought provoking topics, and still manages to be funny enough to keep the attention of the internet. I think that I'm pretty attractive, and gays are hot right now, so I could get internet famous in the way that Charlie did, but there are so many attractive people that eventually beauty can only get you so far on the internet. The VlogBrothers are probably the greatest Youtubers, and they are always posting. John Green (a VlogBrother) is probably the greatest story of an artist who uses the internet to sell himself. John is a writer, and his books are fantastic, but he sells because of this connection he has with his readers. If i didn't watch the VlogBrothers I probably wouldn't have bought The Fault in Our Stars and it probably wouldn't have been made into a movie now. The main message is simple, the internet is growing up. Kids making silly videos don't sell. Charlie is a big kid making professional silly videos. Wheezy, and John and Hank are making the videos of the future, and in the end, they'll be the ones who will rule the internet.

Vlogging and Oil Paint

I made a vlog! It was actually a pretty easy and fun experience. Kat came over because I asked her to help me film and she was a huge help. Not only did she bring her camera, which is very good cause it doesn't shake, but she guided me so that I could make a better overall video.
We managed to film the entire thing, which was twelve minutes of footage, in about forty minutes. It wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. I've filmed vlogs before, but I realized that the key for me is having another person in the room. I get nervous when I talk alone to a camera. Here, I was talking to Kat. Also my parents don't barge into my room asking why I'm talking to myself if I have another person with me.
I torrented Final Cut Pro this morning because I though the vlog could be a good opportunity to try it out. It took me about half an hour to get used to it, but after that it was pretty easy and I managed to finish editing completely in about an hour and a half. I know that a lot of vloggers like to take out their "ums" and pauses, so for the most part I did. Only in some places I left them because they felt natural, and didn't make me sound completely stupid.
In the vlog I mentioned the oil paint I bought. Yesterday I went to blick for the first time and my original intention was to buy more white acrylic and more canvas paper. I ended up convinced my mom to get me oil paint. She said I should get a started pack with a bunch of colors, but I really just wanted the Payne's Grey and white. I also bought walnut oil and palette paper. Today and yesterday I played with my new paint. The main problem I have is that I'm out of space. My room is overloaded with art, and there is absolutely no where I could let any more oil painting dry. I could put them in my sister's room, but if I end up oil painting everyday I could very well end up in a sea of drying paint.

We Should Learn More About Computers

We should learn more about computers. Most of us live our lives watching what is happening on them, but most of us don't really get how they work, or how to work them. Since the world is basically going to be completely computerized by the time I'm an adult, I thought it'd be important for me to start learning a little something now. That's why I joined this website called Code Cademy
The cool thing is that I'm writing this entire blog post in HTML. Look.

The whole thing isn't really fun in the way that painting is to me, but learning this was actually really simple, and if i do a little everyday then I'll get good and be able to navigate the new world better than most.

Update on Me Then a Rant on Women

I've gone a month with my 365! I was checking out some old STAC 365s and I've made it further than most of the blogs I've seen. I never missed a day, and the only times that I have posted late have just been that I forget to post, not to draw, and that's only happened twice. I'm proud and I feel accomplished. 30 days was my original goal, but it's already day 33 and I could go for the other 327 days after.
I realize that I don't talk as much as I think I do. I never considered myself talkative, but I always have an inner dialog going on. I wrote a cross examination of JP Morgan for my social studies class yesterday and I realized that I liked it more than I should have. It's basically planning out an argument so that you can win. The person just has to sit there and answer your questions, he can't start debating. In my head that's how I talk, I argue with myself, but I never have the complete opposite side arguing with me. I also realized I like to be alone more than I thought I did. I haven't been going out much, or as much as I did a couple months ago, and I'm find with it. I spend my Friday nights watching 30 Rock and drawing. It's not that I dont like hanging out, but so often it ends up being a chore. If I'm somewhere and I get bored or tired I have to stay until it is socially acceptable to leave. I'm also convinced that my peak years will be in college, so why bother being high school spirited? Even college spirit I don't get. It's a building where you take classes, not throw a party. Back to my antisocial stuff, I hate planning outings. My friends are awful with responding, and they know this. I want a best friend, but in the attached-at-the-hip sort of way. This isn't because I don't like my friends, it's because I just want someone that if I text "my house" he or she is there without me having to arrange a ride or set a time, and have this person come so often that I wouldn't have to tell my parents I was having guests.
I spent about four hours yesterday and two the day before fiddling with my guitar. I haven't in a couple months so my fingers kinda hurt, and the cold from shoveling mixed with the guitar has given this blister that looked like an unnamed bug from Africa released its poison into my finger. It went away this morning when I woke up, but it was pretty gross before. I've listened to the Strokes almost exclusively for the past two days, and that's why I've been drawing julian Casablancas and playing the guitar. It's fun to get better at things. I found a French sketch comedy show called Vous Les Femmes and I've been watching it to try and increase my own understanding of French. It's fun because the show is a lot of physical comedy, so even when I don't get most of what they're saying, I still get the joke. And the French helps train my ear. I like getting better at languages because it feels like a skill. I look a at skills the way they're looked at in the Sims. I imagine a little bar over my head,
 slowing filling up as I do things that'll improve my skill. In the Sims, going to school doesn't increase your skill and in real life I don't feel it does either. I learn things in class, but knowing formulas and history isn't a skill you can show off as easily. Music and painting are easy skills to show off, but there's nothing special about knowing precalc. I would like to learn some computer programming stuff, and that seems like a skill to me, but in the sims I normally only train one skill at a time, so that's what I'll do in real life because my sims seem pretty happy with the system I have.

Women are kinda annoying. I realized this after yesterday when my mother and I shoveled. Women are overemotional. Men are too, everyone is really, but women turn their emotion into something gross. Men hit; women torture. I was raised by a group of strong women. The only make figure in my life was my father but other than that most if my family is women. On weekends I'd be dragged to the mall with my sister, aunt, grandmother and mother. My father refused to go, and for good reason. It was a series of boring trips where I'd sit and wait while all these women tried on hundreds of pieces of clothing. A lot of the things that make the stereotypical woman are taught. My sister only enjoyed those trips because she was too trying on clothes and she was being groomed to become a woman. I sat and watched, but she learned the joy of shopping for hours from my mother. If I got to try on all the clothes and dance around looking pretty, and have people ask for my opinion on what I was wearing than i'd probably enjoy shopping now, but I hate going to the mall. I love clothes, but I hate the process of getting them. Women also have this maternal instinct, that I also believe to be taught. I love children, I love the idea of having kids way more than my sister does. The difference is that I would only protect my child to the extent that my natural instinct dictates, not to what my mother does for me, or how my sister will eventually treat her children. Little girls are given baby dolls to love and care for. Am I the only one who see how fucked up that is? You give a five year old baby a two year old baby and say "feed her and wash her and take car of her". What kind of twisted game is that? No wonder women are crazy now, overprotecting their children, they grew up learning to smother the future babies. I don't want children so that I can change their diapers and pack their lunches, I want children so that I can teach them how to be awesome people. That should be the goal with parenting, let's make an awesome person, not let's take every precaution on the off chance that our person might trip on the side walk. Your child will trip on the sidewalk, and nothing you can do will stop that. It might scare you to know but more people have died from tripping on the sidewalk than have died from terrorist attacks. That number isn't going to change. Your child might die, everyone might die, but that shouldn't dictate how you raise your child. Men aren't any better, some don't feel any obligation at all to protect their children and the general idea is mom puts on your helmet and dad  teaches you to pedal. As gender roles die I am in a unique position where my children will have me doing both. I think it is in doing both that you find the best parents. Anyways, women are annoying.

Capote

The news has been talking a lot about how Phillip Seymour Hoffman is an amazing actor now that he died. The only thing that I ever saw him in was The Big Lebowski. I decided to watch Capote because I've heard great things about it. I honestly wasn't expecting that the movie would be as good as it was, and Hoffman's performance was something beyond spectacular. I plan to read In Cold Blood and watch more movies with Hoffman because his ability to become the character in Capote was so fantastic that I want to see how he becomes other characters.

City Fun

I went to the city today with Sarah. We went to the Neue Galerie which pretty cool. Sarah said that there weren't as many Schieles there as she saw last time, but I still enjoyed it. Expressionism is my favourite art movement. I don't like happy art. I don't think someone can do a lot with happy. There is more complexity in the other emotions. I never paint or draw anything smiling.
After the Neue we went to Central Park and watched ducks slip on the ice in the pond.
After we went to eat food, and meet up with Caitlin who came down from Purchase to see a concert with Sarah later that night.
My parents picked me up in the city, and my grandmother was with them. She had gotten very drunk on sangria. My parents had bought a pitcher in a restaurant, but only had two glasses and took the rest home. My grandmother drank the rest in the car on the way to pick me up. Once I got in the car she started to go on about how I never visit her.

It was a pretty cool day. I painted today after all of that. Michelle Marin was teaching me a little about blending colors on Thursday, and I decided that I'd try painting now, using some of what I learned even though I am far from mastery. I normally just paint an entire section a certain color, but now I'm trying to blend and shade and stuff. I like bodies. A body tells a story in a way a face can't. Also, I don't like drawing still life objects. It's fun, because all of this art is fun to me, but drawing my computer or phone doesn't really show anything interesting to me. They're things in life, and a naked body is something totally mysterious and beautiful. I also realized that I am much better at drawing women. I have gotten much better at drawing bodies, but the majority of models that I have seen are women, so I know how to draw them better. Women's bodies are more visually beautiful, mostly because of the curves. Men are square-ish.

Learning

So my pursuit for artistic excellence is one of the most independent things that I've ever done. At the same time, it's probably one of the few things that I willing want help with. I want people to teach me about things that never even crossed my mind, and I'm happy that today I a good lesson. 

I was chatting up with my friend and former STACie, Michelle. She's applying for a bunch of art schools and she's become my personal mentor. We spent a little over an hour drawing a a cup, stapler and tape dispenser she put on the table. This was the second thing that I've drawn that wasn't from my computer. Even the self portrait I made yesterday was using the camera on my computer as a mirror. I always see what I draw as a two dimension image on my laptop, but drawing from actual things ends up being easier and better. I can see what I'm drawing, and I move closer and further and turn my head to look at the thing from different angles.

Michelle had a lesson planned. I honestly believe she should start a school or something because she explains really well. She talked to me about my composition. Because she reads my blog, Michelle as an awesome sense of where I am at with my art. She gave me a lesson on my composition because most of what I've done is very boring in terms of where I put things. When you're drawing things, they shouldn't be on the same plane, they should be spread out enough so that the picture doesn't looks flat. Also, being able to move what the pieces and my own view helps. The first try I had at drawing the tape dispenser was a major failure because I kept looking at it from different angles and drew what I saw, and the whole thing ended up looking awful. I needed that failure so that for the next one I drew I could understand my own influence on my view of the object. 

When I got home I continued and drew more. 

Growth

Today is the twenty-first day of my three-six-five. I've learned more in the past twenty-one days than I have in the rest of my sixteen years. My goal is to gain skill, really. But approaching this with documentation is probably the smartest thing I've ever done. I can literally see my growth. I've never been able to do that before. Even when I get taller I just assume I'm standing straight, but now, with art, I can see it.

This was the BEST I could do exactly THIRTEEN days ago. 

Some of what I did today...

Is it wrong to feel proud? Because right now that's what I feel. This entire journey has been almost entirely me. There were no classes or tutors. The guidance I've gotten was mainly "check this guy out" or today I was told to practice blind contour drawing (I've decided that that'll be the next thing I devout my time to). 

I have an idea of what I'm doing. I'm not drawing abstract figures with distorted bodies anymore, not because I don't want to, but because I genuinely find growth more exciting. It's more fun to see that I'm actually learning something than it is actually making the thing. I love making the thing, but the fire that has kept me going for the past week was that everyday I sit down to draw, I'm better at it. Tomorrow I'll be better, and the next day I'll be even better, and by before I know it I'll be great. There is nothing more fun to me than that. Imagine if school felt like that? I'd be a super genius right now if everyday I came into class significantly better at the class than the day before. Most of the time the next day feels the same as the last. You learn, but a month later you don't all of a sudden have what feels like a new super power.  

I've never been more productive in my life. What makes me so productive is that I feel like I'm producing. I could get into writing like this because if I spend a hour typing I don't feel that I am a better writer after that hour. If I spend an hour drawing thirty second figures then I can physically see that I am better at drawing. 

I have taken a break from painting at home. I like it, but I feel like it's a wast of time and resources right now because I end up spending over an hour painting a single thing. In that same time I could have drawn 120 figures. I want to learn painting, but I won't be spending much of my at home time painting because I am trying to master the basics. Most artists, like Min and Ashley and Sarah and Michelle have been doing this for years, and they initially gained their skill from doing exactly what I'm doing, but spread out over years in their childhoods with doodles of anime and other stuff, so they pick up a paintbrush and they already understand how to draw a face and a body and hands. At the same time, there are things to learn about painting, that aren't learnable with a pencil. My plan is to paint during STAC and draw at home. If I spend my STAC time painting and home time drawing I can learn about the technical side of painting at school, while at home I can learn the technical side of making things I see appear on paper. This way, I can successfully utilize my time, and grow. 

I also have abandoned the idea of quitting because I don't find it fun. I want to commit to this, and I don't care if it's fun. I don't see how it could be not fun. Even when I'm doing what should be boring drills, I still keep going. I've moved past the point where this is just a phase. A phase doesn't consume most of my day. I went through poetry phase in middle school. But in middle school I never spend hours researching how to hone the skill. In middle school I never sat down for three hours and wrote non-stop. I've seen so many females naked. A gay boy doesn't put himself in front of over two hundred sets of boobs because of a phase (the website i use for figure drawing doesn't have many male models, the ratio is about 8:1, and 90% of the time the guy is this old asian dude). This isn't a phase. 

I was told it takes twenty days to create a habit, and my 365 has been going on for twenty one. I don't worry about missing a day anymore because in my mind that sounds impossible. To miss a day would mean that for an entire day I didn't touch my sketch book. That sounds insane to me. I dedicate a lot time to art than just the physical drawing. I spend hours researching, and more recently I've devoted a lot of my time to finding programs/classes for the summer. To not draw anything would mean more than just not drawing, it would mean that for an entire day I didn't do anything. 

My 365 is very popular. Because I post on Facebook and Instagram, I end up with an incredible amount of traffic to my site. An average of 34 people stop by my site a day. Sometimes you get fake people going to you blog, but I'm sure they're actual people because my stat tracker on blogger tells my they came from facebook. My STAC blog gets two or three for every post. I don't advertise it at all, because my extended family should not see this, but if I were getting 34 people a day reading my posts, I'd post way more often. If I were to actually forget a day people would notice. I love that. 

I want to get to the level of the artists in STAC that I admire most. I doubt that I'll get there soon, but I am sure that if I continue my 365 with the passion I have for it now, I'll be as incredible as they are by the end.