Scribblings

[Taylor514ce]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

A scribbling of my own ... done long ago.

Why "long ago"? Do you still draw? I've decided to learn, and chart my progress here. Heh, graph paper, chart... never mind. Don't explain jokes. And stop talking to yourself.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Why "long ago"? Do you still draw? I've decided to learn, and chart my progress here. Heh, graph paper, chart... never mind. Don't explain jokes. And stop talking to yourself.

I still draw, although 3D rendering has sort of taken over as my most frequently used tool. Now, I mostly draw (in the traditional sense) just to create textures for my computer models.

And, even my drawings are no longer done on paper. I purchased a nice sized Wacom tablet a few years ago and never looked back.

However, that said, I don't draw as much as I used to. I've always been the sort of person that does things in spurts. Creative mood swings of a sort ... which means there are always a few million projects around the house (or the studio or the office) that just don't seem to get done.

Half finished quilts, a three story enclosed cat condo with only the first two stories complete, several partially written books, a short film for which I haven't been able to get the music rights, so I gave up on that ... it's the curse of the polymath with a short attention span.

The last complete drawings I did were for a children's book -- that was last year. Four or five drawings in, I just ran out of inspiration or maybe I got busy with other things. I don't remember.

The teachers I always did best with in school were the ones that didn't mind me wandering off and doing whatever I wanted to do at the time. So, if I was deep in a math problem and the rest of the class was doing history, I was generally left to do math. I have very effective tunnel vision ... once something has my attention, everything else just fades away.

I also sleep like a stone. Once I'm out, I'm out for the next several hours (barring something that even my deepest subconscious acknowledges as an emergency). I slept through the 1971 Los Angeles earthquake (7.1 I believe), I once slept quite well standing up in the Pisa train station (and missed my train), I slept through straight line winds that ripped up trees all around my house (this was just last month). So -- don't ask me what the depths of my tiny mind considers an emergency -- I've never entirely figured that one out.

Man, am I wandering off topic or what?? What was the question again?? Oh, drawing. Sorry if I'm a bit dense today ... I was up very late reading in my new Kindle. Now, I feel a bit woozy. May have to take a nap sometime today.

Yawn ......

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Sorry if I'm a bit dense today ... I was up very late reading in my new Kindle. Now, I feel a bit woozy. May have to take a nap sometime today.

Yawn ......

That's exactly the reaction we expect from any new ebook reader!

[vivaldirules]

Okay, Planet Head. I'm a student of learning and personal change - how it is that some people are particularly effective at learning new ways of thinking. So, in just the past few weeks, you've gone from drawing like this:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pic...&pictureid=155
to drawing like this:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pic...&pictureid=287
and this:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pic...&pictureid=281
What gives? You must tell. Please.

[Taylor514ce]

I have no idea. I also learned to play "Sweet Baby James" note by note within one week of picking up a guitar. I was hired as a salesperson at a printing company and 3 months later was lead programmer. Like Ricky says, intense but short bursts of total concentration, followed by a period of satisfaction and contentment, which slides down the bell curve toward boredom and looking for new things to try. I'm thinking, origami.

I have done a lot of personal research and study on how the brain works. I have a vested interest, having suffered a head trauma some years ago, and now going through a possibly related neurological condition. One of the books I read considered the concept of memory from the viewpoint of several different researchers. One of the things that stuck with me was a neurochemist who thought he'd found a chemical that caused physical changes in the neurons, and was researching the hypothesis that they could be the mechanism for forming new memories. Then he very humbly admitted that his life's work could all be on the wrong track. What chemical reactions in the brain make memories vs, something else entirely? Who knows?

He gave the example of aliens trying to understand human technology and engineering. The first thing they come across is a child's solar toy in the window, which spins because one side of the toy's pieces are painted white, the other black. AH! Human technology works because of COLORS! Then they go off and study John Deere tractors (green), etc. A complete wrong track based on an, as it turns out, unfortunate initial observation.

My point: don't ask me how memory and learning work. No one knows.

[vivaldirules]

Okay, fair enough that you don't know the mechanisms involved. But how about the mechanics of it? How much time have you spent drawing in the last month? Have you been reading or asking advice about it or have you just been experimenting? Do you find yourself thinking about images and how you might draw them when you're doing something completely unrelated? If so, how often does that happen? I take it that a number of skills have came to you quickly (e.g., programming, guitar, poetry?, etc.). Is that true of most things you pick up (lets exclude girls for the moment)? Are there things that you've tried to pick up (again, no girls) that you've felt came particularly slowly for you? I'm just trying to learn here and appreciate your indulgence.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Okay, Planet Head. I'm a student of learning and personal change - how it is that some people are particularly effective at learning new ways of thinking. So, in just the past few weeks, you've gone from drawing like this:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pic...&pictureid=155
to drawing like this:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pic...&pictureid=287
and this:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pic...&pictureid=281
What gives? You must tell. Please.

Obviously practice and a mentor in the background egging him on...
Otherwise he's a genius in waiting, slowly emerging from a dream-like state of whatsit, transmorgiphying into - well we shall have to see, won't we...

[Taylor514ce]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Okay, fair enough that you don't know the mechanisms involved. But how about the mechanics of it? How much time have you spent drawing in the last month? Have you been reading or asking advice about it or have you just been experimenting? Do you find yourself thinking about images and how you might draw them when you're doing something completely unrelated? If so, how often does that happen? I take it that a number of skills have came to you quickly (e.g., programming, guitar, poetry?, etc.). Is that true of most things you pick up (lets exclude girls for the moment)? Are there things that you've tried to pick up (again, no girls) that you've felt came particularly slowly for you? I'm just trying to learn here and appreciate your indulgence.

Well, shucks. I get totally absorbed, to the point of merely "going through the motions" in everything else (work, eating, sleeping). So with guitar, I bought one and played about 6 hours a day, day after day, until I could play the few songs I set out to play. No lessons, no books, just me and a guitar and some basic instruction on how to form specific chords.

Drawing, yes, I draw morning, noon, and night lately. Zelda's given me some good advice and pointed me to specific techniques. My daughter draws and has some books, but I haven't had the patience to force myself through them. I read through them, don't do the work, then go off with pencils and pads and doodle and sketch through lunch and during work breaks and in the evenings. When I look at things now I'm semi-consciously noting shapes and lines and shadows. It's cool - you don't see something, you see the voids around it that give it shape and substance.

It's "ok, got it. People are basically made out of cylinders. Draw the main body line, pay attention to the shadows, then make the bare minimum of marks to capture the shapes... go".

Learning has always come easily for me, to the woe of many teachers. I never did schoolwork... going through the rote of answering the same questions over and over seemed more like punishment for learning than a technique for doing so. However, I don't have "stick-to-it-tivness", as I've heard it described. Once I know I can do something, I don't feel the need to do it. I stopped writing for a few years because I was publishing everything I wrote, so, what was the point? Same with guitar. I reached a certain point, knew that I could dedicate more time and improve, so why do it, when I could spend that time doing something NEW? I'm sure I'll reach an "ok, that's good enough, I get it" point in drawing so will stop drawing.

I look forward to a point in my life when I don't have to work and can spend my time doing a number of things at which I'm reasonably proficient and enjoy doing.

@Geoff: Oh, I AM a genius, if you want to go by completely flawed, out-of-date, Anglo- and Western-centric "standards" of measure. I bet most of us here are as well.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Okay, fair enough that you don't know the mechanisms involved. But how about the mechanics of it? How much time have you spent drawing in the last month? Have you been reading or asking advice about it or have you just been experimenting? Do you find yourself thinking about images and how you might draw them when you're doing something completely unrelated? If so, how often does that happen? I take it that a number of skills have came to you quickly (e.g., programming, guitar, poetry?, etc.). Is that true of most things you pick up (lets exclude girls for the moment)? Are there things that you've tried to pick up (again, no girls) that you've felt came particularly slowly for you? I'm just trying to learn here and appreciate your indulgence.

you may be asking too much of him there.

however the discussion about how the brain functions is fascinating (if purely theoretical). also the mechanics of learning. do go on...

[vivaldirules]

Thanks, PH. I'm looking to learn more about this from you, if you don't mind. I find this stuff more fascinating than almost anything. Many of us slog through day after day and pick up a bit here and bit there and change marginally over time. I'm roughly the same person I was thirty years ago and I'm sure there are many who are in that same boat. In fact, I'd argue that most everyone is: incremental progress (or decline). Then there are a few people who, seemingly at the flip of a switch, become somebody different. Either they've picked up some significant skill or made some truly transforming change in their thinking.

Gandhi is the ultimate example for me and a total mystery that just drives me nuts. Here's a guy, a pretty poor and passive student, who went to London for a couple of years in his teens to attend some blow-off schooling and pass an exam so that he could return home and become a well-paid nobody in order to support his family and relatives. He blew wads of his brother's precious cash on fancy clothes and even took violin lessons solely for the purpose of fitting in with and appearing as an upper-class citizen. Fast-forward just a few short years and the guy is sacrificing his mind, body, and soul in a foreign country (South Africa) to help people he's never met before in fundamentally uncharted ways. He then went on for several more decades continually surmounting new challenges and carving out new ground. What happened? What was the spark, the mechanism, the mechanics of the change? There are events you can point to and a background from his childhood. But there seems to be little there that you could have used as a predictor of the changes that were to come for him. It's a total mystery to me and yet if regular people could harness just a tiny bit of that ability, the mind fairly boggles at the possibilities.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Drawing, yes, I draw morning, noon, and night lately. Zelda's given me some good advice and pointed me to specific techniques. My daughter draws and has some books, but I haven't had the patience to force myself through them. I read through them, don't do the work, then go off with pencils and pads and doodle and sketch through lunch and during work breaks and in the evenings. When I look at things now I'm semi-consciously noting shapes and lines and shadows. It's cool - you don't see something, you see the voids around it that give it shape and substance.

It's "ok, got it. People are basically made out of cylinders. Draw the main body line, pay attention to the shadows, then make the bare minimum of marks to capture the shapes... go".

You've got it right, practice can be anything, even doodling...
Move back a stage and do simpler subjects, such as an egg, apple, pear, kangeroo, elephant...

I look forward to a point in my life when I don't have to work and can spend my time doing a number of things at which I'm reasonably proficient and enjoy doing.

So,...,,, that'll include....what?

@Geoff: Oh, I AM a genius, if you want to go by completely flawed, out-of-date, Anglo- and Western-centric "standards" of measure. I bet most of us here are as well.

Of course, glad you noticed...

[Taylor514ce]

I'm happy to discuss the topic, but as I've stated repeatedly, to any who feel this might be fodder for a diagnosis of some type: I don't want to discuss my issues, you might CURE me.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

I'm happy to discuss the topic, but as I've stated repeatedly, to any who feel this might be fodder for a diagnosis of some type: I don't want to discuss my issues, you might CURE me.

Fodder!!!
Fodder!!!
come on now, don't get all paranoid with us...
why should you not be the only curable being here?

[Taylor514ce]

Because I'm comfortable with my compulsions, and my undiagnosed mild autism and/or brain damage works just fine for me, thank you very much.

[vivaldirules]

Let's first discuss your...umm, head. Have you had visions of polygons recently? Do you have strong feelings for polygons? Were your parents polygon haters? (I was going to ask about wet dreams and polygons but this is a family-friendly show, so I think I'll pass on that one).