Women and the 21st dec.

First off, MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY LOVELY READERS!!

Im going to nicely splice this up into 2 parts. Part one is about drawing women. And part 2 is for all you confused souls wondering why the world didnt collapse upon itself yesterday.

Ugh, no, Im not going to write about any woman in particular, if thats what you were expecting. Though I do have one problem with women in general; I cant draw them. Drawing women is like rocket-science, and I dont know why. For most young artists I know, Ive noticed drawing their own sex seems most natural. Girls draw women, boys draw men. 

Why? I guess there are 2 possible reasons. Either we scrutinize and view our own kind more, and know it better. Which I think could be the case, because I can perfectly well imagine a male face in 3 dimensions, as spatially correct as I could possibly muster, while just imagining a generic womans face in 3D is kinda difficult. I guess this is attributable to the fact that every one of us look at ourselves more carefully than we look at other people, making our own gender seem more familiar. Just think of all those hours you spend infront of the mirror!

Either that, or were simply more used to drawing one gender than another. At first, I guess most artists draw themselves, or their own kind. And after that, it just sticks. We notice we have more experience drawing our own sex than the other, and so we just keep doing that, and end up being unused to drawing the opposite gender. I feel this could also be true, because I know myself I suffer this phenomenon. I dont want to draw technically nasty pictures, with proportions all over the place, so I do what I do best, draw men. Its an evil spiral.

Myeah. Anyhow, I need practise in drawing women. One thing in particular that bugs me is that I dont know what the outline of the face should look like. Every time, the jawline ends up looking weird. Or like a dudes. Bad stuff.

So I drew a woman without a jaw. Fucking genius.

Oh, yes, and she has two right eyes. I just felt it looked too boring.



The 21st, right. Well, what really happened yesterday? According to the mayans, we are now in a new baktun. So... What does that mean? Nothing, really. A baktun is like a really fucking gargantuan year. We count our days in years, months, days, right? Well, the mayans count days in K'in. After that, things get more complicated. 20 K'in make one Winal, and 18 winals make a Tun. 20 times 18 equals 360, so thats their closest measurement of time compared to our year.

Anyhow, the mayans measurements of time go further than a year. 20 years, or tun, as they call it, make a K'atun, and that finally brings us to the Baktun, which is compromised of 20 k'atun.

So. Lets make an example, shall we? The 20th of december, 2012. Europeans would write this as 20.12.2012. dd/mm/yy. Similarly, albeit weirdly to me, Americans would write 12.20.2012. mm/dd/yy.

How does that translate to the mayan calendar? Their dates look more like this:
baktun/katun/tun/winal/kin, which means the 20th december would look like this:
12.19.19.17.19. in the mayan calendar.

To familiarise ourselves further with the system, we can also apply the same way of thinking to our calendar.
Its the 2nd milennium, 0th century, 1st decade, 12th month, 20th day. That would mean today is 2.0.1.12.20, in a mayan gregorian calendar, or whatever one would call it.

This seems quite reasonable, doesnt it? So whats all this fuzz about? Well, after 12.19.19.17.19., we pass into the next baktun. Well well well, isnt that a great opportunity for making doomsday predictions!? It only occurs once every 394 years, after all! Wait, what? Yes, the earth was similarly scorched to a crisp and pelted by meteors as recently as Tue, Sep 18, 1618!!! WHOAH

I hope you learned something. The world doesnt end because a number on a calendar switches. Its like saying the world ends at new years eve, or at the next milennium (Funnily enough, we kinda did believe that before the year 2000. Look up Y2K, if i tickled your interest.).

Yeah. Once you understand the system, its not all that prophetic anymore. In about 2700 years, were going to pass into the next Piktun, which is 20 baktun. Great stuff, right? Well, just as little will change on that day. What really happened on the 21st, yesterday, was that the mayan date changed to 13.0.0.0.0. Cool. Who knows, 13 being the unlucky number it is, 
WHAT IF THE WORLD ENDS AFTER ALL.?!?!