vector art, stuff, and water

Whats up, Tom, Dick and Harry!?

I do look charming, dont I? Yes, its another self portrait, but a much older one, not quite like the last one. Entirely different style, too. The inital idea was to fade in the background orange colour into a sort of base hue for the skin, and then add some darker shadows and bright highligths. Kinda added lots of other shit along the way though. I always kind of liked how it turned out, so ive been using it for a profile picture for different websites ever since I made it, which was a little bit more than a year ago.

I actually used a pretty fucked up reference photo, which I hope is disappeared from cyberspace for all future. It wasnt nice. My face was kind of like spazzing out of control. Any finders or witnesses of this photo will be dealt with, it is of utmost importance that this bedazzling photo does not resurface.

Hm, something I notice now in retrospect (Retro meaning backwards-ish-kinda, spect meaning to look, eyes, some foszhille like that depending on context. Anyway, looking back is the meaning of "in retrospect".), the strength of the highlight sorta makes my skin look wet ._. Thats not nice. Its usually something I strive to achieve while painting, because it looks very professional, but in this case the specular area is simply too damn big. You know something interesting about water and wetness? Its about why water feels so cold on your skin. Its not simply because water releases and absorbs heat energy better than air, or because the water may be colder than your skin when it hits it, but also because of chemical bonds forming between water molecules, H2O, and oxygen, causing it to evaporize. A precondition for these bonds to form is energy, and heat, in essence, is energy, and will be used as such. That means that in the forming of the bond, energy is encapsulated into this bond, converted from heat. THIS MEANS NET HEAT ENERGY LOSS. It also means that when these bonds release, heat is also released. Theres heat in the top of the rainy clouds, bro.

The forming of these bonds also partly explains why you feel so much colder if its windy and youre wet. Since there are more oxygen particles to be bound, bonds are created faster. VERY MUCH COLD. But we all know that no water can be absorbed if the air is too humid, yeah? That means we dont feel that part of the cold at all, standing in the wind, if its raining, and the air is very humid. Lots of interesting chemistry here. I actually have no sources or factual texts to recite on the matter, just my own weird theories.

You might scoff and think that this whole phenomenon is rather peripheral, and while I admit it may not at all be the reason water is so damn cold, I can tell you that so called swamp coolers actually work entirely by this principle. They blow hot air through watery spongy material, evaporating it, converting heat into chemical bonds, cooling the air down. Thats how that big air-space-cooler-fan-box-thing you might have standing around works.

Anyhow, heres the same picture, greyscaled, and with less layers, just so that you may be able to picture the creation process more clearly. Basically what I did was use the curve (Line) select-tool, selected for example all my hair, and filled a layer mask with full opacity white. This is easier than using real transparency, which would be really unsmooth, layer masks are a must when doing this kind of thing. Then I filled the actual layer with a gradient, and moved on to the next area, for example the highligts on my face. Rinse and repeat, until the whole picture is finished. Easy shit, really. Anyone with just the slightest hint of familiarity with GIMP or Photoshop can do it, doesnt really matter which one you want to use.

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering what I meant by "Tom, Dick, and Harry", thats an english idiom. For those of you who have never been interested in learning about idioms, its short for idiomatic expression, which are, well, expressions. Dont interpret these phrases literally, theyre mostly metaphors (Metaphor being another kind of expressions. Very confusing.), or just common sayings. Tom, Dick, and Harry, is an old way of refering to everyone, all the average joes of the world, and in my case, all my dear readers, of course. Tom, Dick, and Harry have in history been some pretty common names, so someone sorta figured thatd cover all of us. In essence, I couldve just said HI EVERYONE, but then we wouldnt have learned anything new or interesting, would we?

boredom, shaggy and whining

If boredom was a disease, I would be terminally ill. Theres simply nothing to do. Even worse, ive fallen into a pit of uninsipration, and the little sliver of creativity I have left (Stored in my left pinky) is mercilessly blasted onto notebooks in school, during outrageously boring classes. In all desperation, I might even scan some of the notebook pages for the blog, just because I cant seem to accomplish anything drawing here at home. 

So yah. I forced myself into finishing this amazingly dull picture of this shaggy old dude, just because. I really seem to have nothing else to show you guys at this time. This dude actually looks alot like my old physics teacher... He had hair just like this. Greasy, thick and weirdly shaped. Anyhow, below are a few snapshots from the painting process, just like in my earliest blog entries. 

What a brilliantly attractive smile. Eyes are wildly unproportionate, though. Another thing I need to practise (It feels like the words "need" and "practise" have been worryingly abundant in the last few entries ._.)  is drawing expressions. I have no idea how to draw a person who genuinely looks happy, sad, angry, whatever. Even though it is a big part of drawing portraits, as I often do, I seem to have quite overlooked it in the past, and just drawn weirdly super-neutral faces. Bad, bad me. 

Ive been promising myself for some time now that I will read up on facial anatomy and musculature, but it hasnt just happened, even though it is vitally important! The face is made up of hundreds small muscle-groups, and I think learning where they are and which ones contract in for example smiling would be a relatively easy way to learn how to draw realistic expressions. It would also be really useful when drawing caricuatures, which I havent really done much in the past, but would like to start practising. It would be important because caricatures are all about playing with proportions, and this includes exaggerating for example human facial musculature, which I cant actually do properly without knowing where which muscles go.

Its just another thing I wish they taught us in school. Man, the art program has actually been a little bit of a disappointment. We dont learn anything about composition, lighting effects, anatomy, structuring, etc, all those classic artistic fundamentals you read about in books, which are all vital to becoming a successful artist. I think the past year ive learnt far more watching youtube videos about people talking about drawing, than ive learnt in this year in the art programme, in which ive accomplished nothing. All we do, day out and day in, is draw stuff. Just mindless drawing. We are expected to get better, but we would improve at the same rate just sitting at home drawing by ourselves. 

This whole thing just becomes nothing else than a huge waste of time. Im not saying I will quite the art programme, im just warning future generations, if youre interested in art, dont go för Vasa Övningsskola art programme. What do we get here? We get an art dimploma. Wtf do i do with that? It has nothing to do with how good an artist I am, all I need to do to get it is to finish one piece of art, as my art exam. Mneh, not going to whine anymore about that, I knew that was going to be useless at the moment I applied for the programme.

I was going to write a short text about the brushes I use, but as my rant grew so long, I think ill just spare that for some other time. Good night, fellow imagineers. Next time, I promise to write about something less whiny and more awesome.

Tortillas, an eye thing and nothing else.

Above you can see the very essence of culinary orgasm. Every ounce of the greatest pleasure of man, in a completely edible form. But is it art? I think not, as the food was created for the sole purpose of survival and my own personal gluttony, its not created with any sort of creative outletting in mind. How so art, if its not even the fruit of any creativity? The very definition of art demands, that it is the product of human creativity. Some would argue it may be beautiful, but that doesnt make it art. ANYHOW Here we see more traditional, visual art.

As my dear friend so graciously described it, it is an eye with a coral-reefish eye-thingy. Spent like 3 hours, sitting here in only my boxers, listening to Finnish 90:s pop music, drawing this kind of thing. The idea from the beginning was to draw something weird, obscure and abstract, and at first I was drawing a female head with a bite-mark in her forehead, but then I kinda drew this instead..?

I dont really know what its meant to be, the eyelashes were meant to look like tree trunks or something like that, but after a while they just became these weird fiddly stick thingies. Mweh, It still looks kinda cool. Not particularly proud of it, especially the iris is a very difficult thing to draw, and didnt turn out so nice ._.

What I think I should do is to create new brushes for myself. Theres simply no way of creating all the crevices and details in a real iris with the clunky brush I use. Ive never really been a fan of different digital brushes, so I really only use one, dont really know why i dont like brushes though.

Weird shit, really. But thats half the beauty of abstract art.

Gosh, modern society has no time for creative losers like me. I feel a dire lack of free time! The sun has already set, ive still got to prepare for a test, beyond that im supposed to do about an hours work of schoolwork, too. I feel flustered for not being able to handle my time correctly. How can I possibly pursue my creative goals, go to school, spend time with mates, do homework, cook for myself, and excerise all in the same day? Simply not possible without sacrificing sleep, which will only make me more flustered in the long run. Life is tough, man.

Nope, no scientific facts, no 1000-word random gibberish, no interesting stuff to read about today. Sorry.