Sociability

I thought that I'd write a blog post since I had some free time. I already wrote a post about my latest art project, so, I thought that rather than writing about process, I'd write about my life like I used to do.

I sometimes forget to reflect on my life. Personal reflection is one of the most important things to do. Most people don't really know who they are. They live life getting to know others, loving other people, but our selves sometimes get lost. Even looking in the mirror, sometimes you forget what you look like, and you know the person that exists in your mind. As an example, in my mind, I'm loud, but when I look at how I act, I'm exactly the opposite. When people catch me off guard and talk to me, I respond so softly that even I can't hear myself. It's this unconscious response, and it's one of those things that takes more than trying to consciously change it, it'll require a total change of personality on the subconsciously level. I recently watched a TED Talk on body language, and how it can change who you are. With all the acting lessons I've received in STAC, I was well aware of how it can change the way that people view you, and ever since I've been way more aware of how I move, but this TED Talk was something even more insightful. The main idea was "Fake it until you become it". If you're a more shy person, like myself, you can fake not being that person until eventually, the fake you becomes the real you. The speaker explained this through body language, and how changing your body language over time can change the way you interact with people. I really like this idea. I feel like I sometimes get so caught up with the fear of interaction that there is no hope for me to be more social. I take actions to try and change that, but sometimes I worry that it isn't doing anything to me, which is the major reason why I do things. The more I think about it, I have become much more social in the past few years because of this, but I'm still not where I'd like to be. I purposely do things that I wouldn't normally want to, I go places that are out of my way just to try and be more social, I talk to people that I normally wouldn't, just so that I can learn how to interact better. It's helped, but I been able to realize a big problem that I have when it comes to being more sociable. I fear guys. I don't what it is, but I can't talk to stranger guy without becoming the person that I don't like being. I've been able to make friends randomly out of girls, literally just be being more sociable and talking to them, but I have a weird trust issue with guys. I worry that they wont accept me, and even when they do, I still feel awkward and shy, so no real reason. I don't have crushes on these guys, but I can't seem to act normally around them. My new goal for now is create more guy friends, particularly straight guy friends, just to rule out any romantic affection. I miss having guy friends, I miss being able to talk about video games, and I hate all the drama that girls have. Guys do it too, but literally everyday I hear that someone hates another person, and I hear all this shit about backstabbing and it's just so stupid. I don't want to believe that this is the price for having friends of substance, but I hope to find some friends that aren't like that in the form of males. The period is going to end soon, so I'll end this blog post now.

New Piece

Recently I've been working on this extremely large painting. One of the things I've been looking forward to is working on a larger scale I don't have the opportunity to paint on such a large canvas, and even if I did buy one for myself at home, they're wouldn't even be space for it in my room. I've been tackling a lot of the problems that I've been neglecting for a a while because of this new project. With my 365, I find that I rarely ever think out the pieces I'm making. The composition of the pieces is more me putting the image on the left rather than right in the middle. Most of what I make isn't made with the idea that other people would see it as a finished piece. This piece that I'm working on now is very different.

Taping out where I wanted the stairs and door was very useful.
This was the product after the first day. The great thing about the tape is that you can move it. It it's an inch too far left, I can just pick it up and move it, while if I started with charcoal, it'd have to worry about erasing the line that i had, make a new one, and then keep doing that until I got a composition I enjoyed.

After the second day of working I started to add detail with the charcoal. One of the biggest problems that I was facing was the amount of empty space. The wall and ceiling were completely empty, I put a light on the ceiling so that there could be less empty space. 

The next day, I added even more detail, and then sprayed it, and started painting.

The next day, I started painting the face. I really don't like monster right now. The colors of the clothes confused me a lot, so I just put random colors for them but I'm going to go back and rethink that aspect, and I want her face to be brighter. 

I worked on the face more today. I wanted it to be more vibrant. I also got the stairs to look more like wood. That took a while, but what I ended up doing was smudging it with a paper towel

The big thing today was making the wall interesting

Didn't have much time today, but I worked on the feet.

The Evolution of This Thing

I've been slowly working on my STAC art project for about a week now. It's been an interesting process, and it's the first project I've even done where I completely changed everything.

The first day I got home with the canvas board I painted this in acrylic paint

I liked it at first. The idea of me as a slug creature really interested me, and I realized that one of my artistic issues is brains, because in the last STAC art piece i made I also focused on brains. What I liked about this piece was the face. It wasn't too detailed, but I liked the expression that I first got. I very much disliked the tail of the slug. I had it facing the wrong direction and it just looked weird. I knew I'd have to eventually do it over.

The next couple days I started to work on it more. 

Even though I did like the head and face, I didn't like the direction that it was facing, and once I started to look at it a lot, I thought it'd be better if the face were bigger. So, again with acrylic paint I tried to fix the face. I also worked on the tail a bit, trying to put it in a better place, but that was still not a success. I changed the color of the brain, but hated that. I stopped working on this because I got a bit frustrated, especially because the acrylic paint kept drying and wouldn't let me paint over the face the way i wanted to.

The next day I came back to the piece made big changes.

I painted the entire head and tail white. I painted the white in acrylic, and then waited for it to dry, and painted over the head and tail in oil paint. I made the head bigger and the tail look like a tail. I was satisfied with the face and the slug body so I stopped working for that day.

I didn't touch the piece for about four days, and came back to it today in STAC art.

I put in the grass and started to put some detail to the pond that I am running away from. I still need to paint the other slugs running away, and the creature that is eating us in the pond, but it looks a lot more finished. I also worked on the slug body a bit more, adding little slug arms and making parts of the body lighter.

Not a single thing from the original painting exists in this painting. I'm happy about that, I realize that working through fear is something that I'm pretty good at, not to say that I don't feel it, but I know how to just keep going. I know that I probably have avoided putting detail to the brain because of fear, but if I've gotten this far, making a brain shouldn't be so scary.  

UPDATE 5/27

I finished it!! I don't really love it, but I don't hate it either. I fell that if i had planned it better from the start it could have come out better, but I like it enough to be done and move on.