#self critique

[aranea-skape]

Self criticism

[paperandportraiture]

Little practice using potters pink (maimeriblu), smalt, titanium buff, and Florentine green ( from poems about you) in a Paul Rubens cold press sketchbook. @adorkastock pose reference.

There's a lot of issues in this sketch, but I kind of want to iterate on it and make a larger finished piece from it? Though now I'm realizing that I was using the adorkastock sketch app, which serves you random poses, and have navigated away from that page, so I might never be able to find the reference again. Going off of this sketch might not be good enough though. Oops.

Babbling about process, materials, things I want to practice, paper, etc under the cut.

Colors:

I've traditionally stuck to very clean paints (m graham and Sennelier are my usuals) on hot press paper but I'm in my texture era I guess.

I wanted to use my lapis lazuli Baikal from poems about you, but it's expensive and I've been using it a lot in these little sketches lately so I used smalt instead, which also granulates like mad but is a much brighter blue than I was in the mood for, which I think you can tell. The overall colors don't hang together that great. This isn't helped by the random green willowy stuff I added at the end. I just wanted to make it more of a scene for some reason, and then because the green was so different in both color and texture I had to make her dress at least reflect some of that green. And then I had to add green into her shadows. Admittedly the shadows until that point were way too blue and the green probably helped some - if I had either wanted to spend a lot more time tying it together or had started with the green as part of the vision, it'd probably actually be pretty good.

Underlying sketch/drawing:

The sketch here turned out looking okay, but I have to admit that I sat down with the intention of practicing getting a sketch scaled to the page correctly. It's a full body pose and I wanted the entire thing in there, and positioned in the rectangle of the page nicely. Clearly I did not succeed - she doesn't even have the bottom half of her legs. I think my main issue with doing this is that I always want heads to be bigger than they are. If I lay down shapes focusing on the body first, when I start in on facial and skull details I end up going way too big with them and then adjust everything else to fit, which often puts half their limbs off the page. Maybe I should try starting with a head that feels super small, putting in a higher degree of detail than feels safe, and then blocking in the body.

I mean the actual thing I should do is just more quick figure practice. Do the actual timed ones and everything.

I also struggled a lot with the drawing of the book and mug. I'm happy with where they landed (the mug is too small but at least it's recognizable) but it was a major struggle. Objects just have much harder angles than people. More practice needed in just getting the form down of made objects.

I should also work on putting clothes on the pose reference models. @adorkastock is such an amazing resource and when I'm just practicing I don't usually try to add outfits, but I think that's something I should work on. I also feel like I used to be a lot better at this - I think the fact that I haven't worn a skirt since 2018 means I have forgotten how fabric drapes.

Painting technique:

I might say that I overworked the painting here, but I think the actual issue is handling the extreme granulation. These paints reactivate a lot more than I'm used to, so I ended up pushing pigment around super carefully a lot, so that contributes to a sort of "overdefined" look. It'd be possible to balance it out by building up midtones, but with how re-workable everything was, that felt very risky and like... I'm not going to that much work for this kind of practice. I think in my enthusiasm to play with granulation, I am using too heavy of a hand.

The tacked-on green willow stuff is just funny to me, I know it doesn't fit in well.

Paper:

Okay this $10 watercolor journal from Paul Rubens is shockingly good. I don't like perforated pages but I know a lot of people do and I guess if I ever really want to take any of these out, its easy. I just like a sketchbook to come with the emotional security of "nah dont worry, this is for practicing and you can hide it away forever if you'd like". Not to mention since I don't usually tape the edges in a sketchbook, when paint bleeds into the perforations its just so ugly.

But it's 100% cotton that behaves exactly how I would expect (side eyeing you, bee paper). And so comparatively cheap! It works! It does the thing!

When I got into watercolor (2019? ish) I feel like there just weren't decent cheap paper options, especially not in a bound sketchbook, but maybe it just took me a while to find them. I literally learned basic bookbinding to make my own sketchbooks with paper I liked.

Student grade cellulose paper just doesn't work - paint literally does not behave in the same way so if you are trying to practice watercolor technique, you kind of...can't actually do that on "student-grade" cellulose paper. But you totally can on this stuff, it's great.

The binding is a little weak, but that's small potatoes at this price.

I don't love how regular the grain is, I feel like it makes too much of a pattern and I can't un-see it. Then again, since I'm way more used to hot-pressed, maybe this is just me being picky. Is there cold pressed paper that has a texture that is enough to give granulation something to play around on but subtle enough not to bug me?

Anyway, if I can find that pose again I might try a full piece. Maybe put in an actual planned willow or plant stuff background. Put actual thought into the whole composition.

Probably wouldn't use the same palette - I think I'd actually build it around the florentine green and potters pink, but maybe bring in a warmer yellow? Not sure what blue though - I want to keep messing with heavy granulation but I think the smalt is the wrong temperature, and the baikal lapis lazuli might constrain the available values too much. With the green maybe I don't need to worry about it though. Also the mug in the reference is a bright aqua color and tbh I like that in the overall color impression, which actually suggests that the lapis I have is too grey. Really I think this mean there will be multiple blues involved (reader, did you know that you are not actually limited to using at most 4 paints at a time?). I might have a cobalt teal that granulates a little.

I think I would have an easier time with the colors if I weren't also trying to get a lot of granulation. Maybe I should scale back that desire and just use potters pink to get that effect in there?

Side note - I do really like potters pink for its hue, which I'm surprised by because its such a soft color. It's known for having a super weak tinting strength and essentially being a way to sneak granulation into warmer colors, but I think I've been mixing this hue at a weak strength often enough in portraits that it's actually a really convenient color for me.

[screentonetv]

I made cards for the new year! Shh - don't tell my friends. Just wanted to record my thoughts on how the prints came out:

Fluorescent pink mixes great with everything but it's not very good as lineart. The border came out great but I should have just done it solid 100% instead of half at 50%.

Similarly I should have written "2026" in solid BLUE only. I think I did like 50% blue, 50% pink. It's too blurry, hard to read. Maybe would have worked with red?

Skin tone and all the color mixes are GREAT. The black lineart looks GREAT. I'm glad I did the low-color background. Everything came out perfect there.

I should do more straight-up old fashioned faux-CMYK with the hot pink and the black lines. The grass looks so good here...

What's this weird shadow on the sky? It seems like my file had a 1% black tone!?!?! How the hell... this was an error. I can barely detect it with my eyes looking on the file now, but it's there. This is a pretty weird defect. I wish the printer had caught this.... It's not awful. The print is still fun. Makes a nice circle shape. I wonder when this happened in my process...

I'm doing this thing where I draw a border on the back of the card with room to spare around the edges. This is because the USPS sometimes prints a little code on the edge and that seems like a bad thing when it's overlaid on a print. Like maybe they don't get delivered. I'm not sure. Anyway: this looks good but I should have drawn a green bar around the outside of the border artwork, not just the inside.

The very simple rainbow etxt looks great. The blue shadow around the lettering (with the screentone) looks great.

The blue shadow under river's shirt looks great. Shoe color looks great.

Japanese text isn't artful enough... should have made it more interesting.

My son is so cute. I love him. This is a good picture of him IMO.

In conclusion: fun simple stuff, bad complicated stuff. Fun print for my friends this year.

[marxistlesbianist]

I want to learn how to do research properly, especially wrt political economy. I know that I can write well, and that I'm good at analyzing/critiquing arguments, but it feels like my general cluelessness on investigating data is holding me back from writing anything really substantive. My education in English Literature didn't help me learn to investigate any type of question beyond "what did so and so think about such and such?", and now I really want to engage in actual research and I feel lost

[midwestaesthetics]

¿hntennek, ycneuqerf eht s'tahw

I looked to you, the ditty of my first desire

You were my Lorca in the morning made green You were my Khalil to get me through midday My Bukowski, when all I needed was a dirty night

And now to my disgust, what I thought was prophecy— someone singing straight to me— was born in today’s crossword

All your haikus, your Plath confessionals slips of the tongue you won’t hear from me yet you managed to disarm me

Tears stained your looseleaf on the first read

You’ve slipped into the arm’s crook, a mainline to my heart

You’re supposed to be my Mozart

Every verse a stiletto meets sonata

There’s that hideous laugh of yours like suspended chords on my spine

[dancerdiaries]

Cupid variation progress: Week 2

This is from last week, actually 🙃

(Sorry for the weird angle and for wandering out of frame)

Notes:

Straighten that standing leg on those opening attitudes, omg 😆

We'll get those turns eventually. A larger space would be helpful.

Decide on what arms I'm doing for each step so it's consistent

I'm proud of my balance at the end

[battybattybattybat]

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

Serious Post For Once. MAJOR trigger warning for some fully-mask-off discussions of (mostly my own internal) racism, generally Actually Talking Abt Real Shit For Once.

ok, so..hm

I don't have the energy to try to write this academically rn so I'm just going to word-vomit it out.

I am really having....Feelings... about the characters of Grendel and Grendel's Mother, specifically re: race and BIPOC identities.

I personally am white as the driven snow (though Jewish, whatever that counts for in 2023. still 'wtf' abt all that personally).

I have been putting my heart and soul into a story centering modern/reincarnated versions of Grendel and Grendel's Mother for about three years now. they are some form of shapeshifter, usually take animalistic/monstrous/hybrid forms, often eat humans, and are canonically descended from Cain (kinda. its complicated but basically they are). they are also both EXTREMELY white.

I'd actually made this choice with an intentional eye on race, way back when this story started outgrowing its roots as a supernatural fanfiction (please dont ask). no longer limited to spn's Genuinely Concerningly White Actor Pool, I had to really look at these characters re: race and decide what I was doing going forward. At the time, I was already looking into Maria Dahvana Headley's "The Mere Wife", and its centering of race both intrigued and really repelled me. At first, the (lbr) graphic depictions of how this story's Grendel's nonwhiteness informs the violence against him shocked me in the way I think they were "supposed" to, and made me really take a step back and reconsider the entire narrative of Beowulf (though to b clear I was already pro-Grendel's side of things at this point) in terms of how closely it matched more modern treatments of BIPOC and specifically young men.

...and then I went "wait. isn't Maria Dahvana Headley white???"

after a LOT of research failed to provide any contradicting evidence, my self-reflection and serious though turned to genuine strong disgust. It felt, and still feels, VERY weird that a white woman with (afaik) white kids wrote a lot of the sentiments in this novel. if you've read it, you know the ones that I mean.

I attempted to research racial themes re: Grendel further and ended up in a rabbit hole about Cain, Ham, Mormons & Bigfoot (seriously.) and all of this, along with some other research, eventually led to the following conclusions:

narratives placing Grendel and His Mother as victims of racialized violence/heroic or sympathetic figures in a racially- and/or socially-conscious work are both amazing and necessary

not if they're written by white people. there's probably some exceptions but honestly that's just weird and makes my hair stand up(derogatory).

I am White People. I should not try to do this.

given the association (certain modern media almost bafflingly aside) between Cain/Ham and justifications for SLAVERY, I, a white author, should not only NOT make these characters BIPOC, but should lean pretty damn hard into their whiteness- it's not "reclaiming" exactly, it's like... "reclaiming"(derogatory)(ironic)

given the current political movements around Viking Shit, and SPECIFICALLY pseudopagan, christian-based anglo-saxon warrior male social orders, the figures of Grendel & His Mother can and maybe even SHOULD serve as symbols of active and violent resistance from within the communities (White As Shit) that the current alt-right claims to represent.

given ALL of that, the best way for me to write these characters is how I'm currently writing them- very white, very monstrous, would probably state their race as "fae" if asked and "white" and/or "european" if specified for human racial terms, explicitly monstrous, symbolic of both (my own) queer/disabled/neurodivergent rage, feeling of incompatibility with most/all friend groups or communities, as well as a larger theme of a "KILL ALL VIKINGS" fantasy enabled by them being Big Scary Creature Beasts.

However... its been a few years. I've been drowing myself in Anglo-Saxon Everything but fully ignoring racial and diversity issues, a huge part of this admittedly being irl stressors in my life that, shall we say, EXTREMELY reduced my capacity for basic empathy & Current Events Awareness to a degree that I'm only starting to repair. as part of this repair, I'm really questioning this. I've read some super fascinating stuff about Grendel & race recently, and yet.

...and yet

I can't shake the feeling that

as a white author, making this a race-centric narrative isn't just not my job/not my turft, its actually kinda pretty racist

however, refusing to write these characters for that reason then involves (at least internally) saying that "this kind of archetype" is ONLY "meant" to be written by BIPOC ppl, because "they're the only ones who really Get The Experience", and HOO BOY. THAT IS RACIST. that is me doing a great big racism right there.

...so what do I do? I really love my take on these characters. I've grown really attached to them. It seems like everything is actually pretty well in order for me in terms of why I made the choices I did- I've looked at the other things I could have done with these themes and they're Extremely Problematic At Best...

but I can't shake the feeling that I'm still missing something, fucking up somehow.

I'd genuinely welcome discussion on this, I'm not going to be offended or defensive about ANYTHING, legit if you want to tear this whole post apart via critique re: art or just my own biases, please do. I'm just trying to figure this shit out.

and possibly overthinking it. that is also definitely a possiblity.

*to be clear I don't hate or dislike Headley. I just don't GET her. I'm not sure WHAT to think.