a sketch-related post

I've been wanting to write a blog about my hobby for quite a while now, and I suppose this is as good a time as any. I've been having trouble challenging myself since I've been practicing the basics for a long time- anatomy and shading (light sources, ambient light, negative space.) I generally learn independently about these things by studying photographs, the work of great artists, and of course, my surroundings. But there are some things I have difficulty with and the most prominent of these is dynamics. Dynamic poses and settings elude me, but I value them greatly. A piece which not only attracts attention with detail but also with a fresh setting and perspective.

I drew this picture this week during class. I know I should pay attention, especially in geometry, but my thoughts are errant. I had to force myself not to jump headfirst into adding dark shadow and I'm really satisfied with the result. I know the picture quality is terrible, but I'll scan it and post a link when I get home. Hopefully the picture gives an idea of the time I put into shading it and developing the pose.

It isn't very dynamic-it's calm, I think, somber... yet restless, which is kind of how I feel. The picture reflects my attitude. Usually I don't have trouble deciding what to name my images, but this is an exception. It puzzles me. The subject looks limp, but not tired. He reminds me of autumn and I'm glad, because autumn was the theme. I kind of wish I could apply the time I put into stuff at school on some kind of canvas... I wish I was in an art class, too.

I'm not one to critique my own artwork though, so I'll ask for critique here. Be as brutal as you see fit.

I totally want to write about what we discussed today but instead I'll wait until I've heard the meeting and do some more research and post it as my next blog. This was a pretty fun week! I'm looking forward to pyjamas day. Also, I didn't know pyjamas was pajamas in American English. If you're thinking pyjamas is an odd word like I am, here's an easy-access etymology link:

pajamas

1800, pai jamahs "loose trousers tied at the waist," worn by Muslims in India and adopted by Europeans there, especially for nightwear, from Hindi pajama, probably from Pers. paejamah, lit. "leg clothing," from pae "leg" (from PIE *ped- "foot," see foot) + jamah "clothing." Modern spelling (U.S.) is from 1845. British spelling tends toward pyjamas.

Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Just a bit of an odd root. Like skosh, meaning a little bit, comes from the Japanese sukoshi, also meaning a little bit. There's a bit of everything in English!

I felt like writing

Recently my classmates and I began character study, and with it, discovered our Myers-Briggs personality type. First of all character study is, for me, probably the most interesting part of a book. In a well written book, the character is hard to analyze, which makes it pleasantly confusing. All I can ask for in a book is that it initally confuses me. I do enjoy being confused, and it does happen noticably often. Rather than complain about my confusion, I like to work things out in my head.

That's one of the best parts of reading; unlike television or other electronic media, it leaves gaps for your mind to fill. How complex is an image or audio compared to the expertise of the human mind? I don't need a character depicted for me if I can interpret as much (probably more) from a written passage. It's one of the reasons I'm partial to reading. Sometimes I wonder how little the future generations will read. Looking at reading texts from as late as the 50's, it's apparant that we're expected to read less and less.

Perhaps there's nothing wrong with that, perhaps reading is ultimatley going to be only as complex as the common spoken word. The other day, I asked my dad "why, if we are required to go to school anyway, don't they teach us the vocabulary and grammar of English like we see in Shakespeare? It's not like we have peasants anymore, all kids must go to school, and although a disturbing abundance of Americans are illiterate the majority of youths in schools are not. So, why is all this vocabulary being discarded?"

You could say that the meaning of our language hasn't changed, because new meanings have been added to words like "programme" very recently. Is it a good thing to pack more meanings into words in favour of using the 'right' word for the situation? All languages become simpler with time. It can make them easier to understand, and thus learn, and also more efficient. For instance, the invention of the Korean alphabet gave rise to a healthy burst of literacy in Korea, since it was a lot simpler than the Chinese system. Look at Latin, the language of the Romans. It's overtly complex, yet, surprisingly efficient. Where's the medium? Is there one? In the scheme of things the human race is relativley new. I suppose we can't be expected to develop a language that's efficient, easy to learn, as well as boundlessley expressive.

I prefer the complex English, left unmarred by nonsense words added to the dictionary in the newest century like "grrrl." Yes, that is a word in the dictionary. No, I will never shame myself by using it. Another new word in the dictionary is "muggle," which is acceptable, since words get added to the dictionary based on literature all the time (i.e. "ravenous" and "utopian.") I digress.

It seems my digression is becoming more frequent the more I blog. I think that's a good thing. When I started this blog, I was going to talk about the personality types Briggs and Myers categorized, yet I went off on a spiel on something remarkably unrelated. I hope it's still interesting..?

fall/winter

Today, it rained. It rained a little, it rained a lot, but by 3:00 the sidewalks were caught in a dwarf deluge, the water steaming and lapping, obscured with millions of coin-shaped imperfections. A lingering group of students amassed at the school entrance, impatient. I walked home alone, on an empty street, with no umbrella, just me and the rain and clothes quickly giving way to cold saturation.

The rain dominates the streets, but as soon as it comes it goes, leaving a hemisphere of dampened sound and air in its' wake.

I love the rain. I spent my childhood in Swindon, which was consistently obscured by passing rainclouds. Of course, this is England. You can bet it rains everywhere. We also had a forest there. Have you ever been in a forest when it rains? There is no greater gift.

Seasonal Affective Disorder, a kind of depression (abreviated SAD, ) inflicts some people I know. In a breif description it's a major depressive disorder occuring in the winter months, sometimes extending into spring or fall. It comes with the rain and leaves with it, in our case. And it has a lot to do with light.

There is so little we know about the brain, so little that people care to notice. And a noticable percent (9%) in the northern US, compared to 1.5% in the south is compromising. It baffles me how something as small as a routine loss of light can inflict so many with anxiety and suicidal thoughts that may even lead to hospitalisation.

And it's true that we can relate all of it to serotonin, which produces healthy, happy minds.

It's possible to manipulate levels of serotonin and that's mildly unsettling. Bioscientists are working on unlocking the secrets to cell reproduction, and perhaps in my lifetime it will be possible to regrow limbs just like a fetus might. Biology is terrifying.

But, I digress.

My point is that while you'd assume something as routine as the changing of seasons leaves human minds unaffected, you'd be wrong.

wading in troubled waters

After reviewing a few things I realize I'm quite scatter brained. Also, I hate my last post. I just noticed how much I hated it. It fills me with emotions like shame and disappointment.

I've forgotten how much blogs excite me, and how much I want to interest people with things I write about. Thinking about that makes me truly happy.

So, this week I'm going to comb the matted hair of my blog and try hard to make my blog reflect my true thoughts.

I know I'm supposed to write in paragraphs... However, in the nature of the blog, I prefer to sort my thoughts in segments. I suppose, as long as it's not a wall of text it's fine.

I'm sort of in a writing slump right now, and I'm not sure what to write about. I'm in the school library during lunch time. Am I antisocial? I just feel less than interesting and kind of sick, l-lol.

Yesterday, my sister told me she was getting up early to bake cookies. When I asked her why, she told me it was because she had spread some rumors about a girl in her school and felt terrible, so even though she was sick she was going to school to give her the cookies and apologize. I wish everyone were like my sister, since everyone can be cruel-it's human nature. Apologies are also human, but a higher level of human. Apologies are great.

I wish that I had more things to be interested in. I mean, it seems like everyone has something passionate to blog about, but there's nothing I like which I can really elaborate on. I guess I could review more, but that's bound to get boring after a while. Basically I feel quite empty-minded about things. I'm not a very interesting person.

I guess I could blog about religion since I don't really have one, and writing about it might help me define, or redefine my stance.

My most recent event concerning religion was, well, my stepmother's death. A lot of people flooded into the house during that time for known reasons, as well as the fact that she'd left behind my half-sister who was only two weeks old. Some nuns and stuff came over to the house, and as I was standing around being a heathen, I heard them discuss that religion was the most important at times like this. I don't agree with Catholoisism at all-most monotheistic religions for that matter-and these people think they can come in and tell the people in my family that in this time of crisis we should direct our attention towards some god? How do they know anyone in my family is catholic? Nobody in our family practices catholosism or belongs to it. Preachers.

Perhaps what most annoys me about the vocal, preaching catholic is the fact that religion is at all times, directed towards oneself. To talk about your beleif is to talk about yourself. I don't like listening to people talk about themselves and ask others to "find it in themselves" to look towards "god."

For if god truly existed, as it's name suggests, he should at least set some common interest for people.

I'm not alone if I assume that there is more "good" than "bad" in this world, i.e. even dolphins kill for fun.

If religion could help me, I would thank it. I don't thank dieties for my recurring depression. And all I can think about when it's suggested to me that I need to follow some centuries-old guidelines which may well have been written by drunkards is that I'm very angry at people for preaching to me about themselves.

[escape]

I don't have a daily schedule except to go to school. I don't like to label the things that I do as being routine, because then they will be. It's true that things get repetitive. It's true that I'm less likely to do something the more I have to do it. I don't expect much from my life, there isn't much I can do as I have no money, power, or status. What if I could create these things for myself? Everyone is telling me that I can, but I don' t think those things are important, unless there's an ulterior motive for doing these things. I don't think I can do them. It's not in my annoyance capacity.

I'm well aware most of my classes don't teach me anything of worth. Just look at PE. Physical Education my ass. I'm not learning anything about how to keep myself fit and the tests we're periodically given are so elementary they have virtually nothing of benefit to teach. Pacers, in my opinion, are a lazy teacher's way of making sure he works his kids into the ground. It's not even creative. Running is instinct. Basic cardio, no effort. Not to mention effort means nothing if you can't complete 40 laps or 20 curl-ups. Repulsive. A disgusting degradation of fitness.
Perhaps PE is a bad example. Nobody expects you to learn anything in PE, anyway (which might be why it's so bad.) Let me use another.
Geometry. You will never, ever use geometry in life unless you want to manually hang picture frames without a bubble gauge. My dad's a computer programmer, you bet he uses math, and none of it is geometry. So why would they make it a requirement? Do they want me to learn to think a certain way? I've heard numerous theories about geometry. People who are good at algebra hate geometry, even though it's really just algebra on a grid. Geometry is confusing, it's less math than it is bullshit, especially today when our textbooks for math are packed tight with just that. I'm willing to bet 70% of what they'll teach me this year is bullshit they invented so that they could sell another round of textbooks to California schools and make more money which they certainly don't deserve. People who write these textbooks must be fat and pompous. Perhaps I'm letting my emotions get ahead of me-either way, imo, it's a valid opinion to keep.

It's not even that I hate geometry... I just hate how it's taught and what it's become. Even though it is useless. I'm pretty enraged today.

(Written on Wednesday. Today, Thursday, I'm editing.)

Possibly the worst part about my despondent mentality is that I understand that in my mind I'm perfectly capable of completing each task I'm assigned. It might be easier for me if I had an idea of things I wanted to learn. Or things to actively learn. I wish the majority of the 6 hours I spend in school daily was learning, but it's not. I wish I had a plethora of interesting things to read and talk about with my peers, but their general lack of interest leaves me depressed. I love discussing things. I think it's the best way for me to learn something, because there are always other opinions which I would like to be brought up.
It's not really like that, though... I don't think anyone has offered to tell me or show me what they've written or drawn for school unless we have to present it. Am I asking too much? Am I bored? I must be the worst kind of bored because I'm prone to failing as well.

I did well in middle school... perhaps it's all my mentality.

[Tatum Annotation]

In class we were asked to annotate ab excerpt from Beverly Daniel Tatum's "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?".
I felt strongly about some of the points she made and so I'll be choosing to write about those. This whole day has been full of rage, but I'll try to tone it down a bit.

Tatum starts right off assuming that racial hate-crimes occur everywhere and fails to prove to me why it's relevant. Hate crimes may or may not be the product of prejudice, and it could be that we record hate crimes incorrectly. Let's say a white guy robs a black guy-it's not always hate. Maybe they just had a good prosecutor. In any case, not all racial hate crimes are directed at "people of colour," of course, and she doesn't try to prove that they are. She just throws it down in a list as if trying to overwhelm me with her "facts and expertise."

I felt uninformed while reading practically the whole article because Tatum doesn't elaborate on points of interest. I couldn't care less about her students' poll at young children, because I distinctly remember being a child in a similar situation. I lived in Europe until I was 8 years old. I lived in a white community in Swindon. It was England, and we just didn't have black people in our community. So, I'd never seen a black person outside of the media. Maybe I did draw conclusions about them, it didn't matter. What people showed me didn't breed any hatred or contempt for black people. I really didn't care, and I don't think any kids do. To say all kids are free of prejudice is a stretch, but I wasn't equipped with enough examples or experiences to draw any conclusion, and thus, any prejudiced opinion. Perhaps a drawing I would have done at 5 might have come out looking "racist." That didn't mean all my thoughts were racist. It just meant that's how it was shown to me. Children are to an extent independent and free to make or not make conclusions based on the ideas around them. So Tatum, I'd prefer it if you didn't accuse me, and all people, of being ignorant and angry enough to draw those kinds of conclusions JUST BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T GROW UP IN AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD. It wasn't a good thing or a bad thing.

Also, who says "Indian" is an offensive term for Native American? I have cousins who live up on a reservation in Washington state. Everyone just calls them Indian, and they don't mind. It may be "politically incorrect," but it isn't hurting anyone. I don't feel comfortable using the term myself, but I don' t think it's right to say kids have the wrong idea by associating Native Americans with the word "Indian."

About this paragraph, which I will now paste:

"What had this woman learned about who in our society is considered beautiful and who is not? Had she imagined Elizabeth Taylor when she thought of Cleopatra? The new information her classmate had shared and her own deeply ingrained assumptions about who is beautiful and who is not were too incongruous to allow her to take in this new information at that moment."

I think this whole paragraph, or rather, essay, is assumption. I'm bored with her assumptions. I'm bored with her assuming racism can be cleaned like air, that since I'm white I'm racist, that I must breed harmful prejudice in order to be normal, that that's not my fault, etc.

As far as I'm concerned if I am racist, it's my own fault. I have a think called FREE WILL and even without that, I have freedom of thought. I've always had the responsibility to stand up to racist ideas that are flung at me just because I live in 2009's USA. I have no idea who Tatum is trying to appeal to, but it's not going to be me. I know I'll probably have to analyze more of her work later on-I can only hope that it doesn't disagree with me like this did.