Arca's Corner

No wisdom from me this week, I don't know WHAT MY ISSUE IS

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

Once you've got the hang of shaping your airflow through the straw you then put the straw into a glass of water to add resistance to the other end. You want the bubbles in the water to be coming out in a smooth and steady flow and not in big bursts or exploding with force. Start with the glass like 20% of the way full or less and work your way up to larger volumes.

As for why you do this:

The straw is there to help you learn to shape your airflow using just the front of your face instead of your whole mouth

The water helps you build up strength and control in parallel - the more water, the more force you have to exert to blow bubbles and the more control you have to have to keep it from splashing all over the place

HOWEVER, that's where lip trills come in! They help with a lot of the same fundamentals and require nothing more than your face and a total willingness to get spit all over whatever's in front of you. Start by making a motor boat sound with your lips, nice and relaxed and floppy, while simultaneously making an "ooooo" noise at a nice comfortable low pitch. Keep the trill going evenly as long as you can. Once you've got the basic technique down start making your lips vibrate tighter and tighter over the duration of the trill, which will naturally make the pitch of your "humming" sound rise. Start all the way down low, go all the way up as high as you can, and then bring it back down as low as you can go.

This helps with expiratory muscle strength in a similar way because your lips are acting as the water - as you tighten them it takes more air and force to vibrate them, and the tighter they are the more breath control you need to keep the vibration even and not starting/stopping in sputters. The "oooooo" noise you're making is to help you get used to engaging your vocal fold while doing all this stuff with your face+diaphragm.

linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)

Ok, first of all assume the worst and assume she needs the max amount of tampons possible for all days. Now lets count it up.

7 days? Better be safe and make it 10.

3 tampons a day at worst? Better be safe and make it 5.

So that gives us 50 tampons. Ok. Double it.

And that’s how you get 100.

really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

I saw this when running newpipe. But wait, it gets deeper. I clicked on the details buttons and it said as of today, we have 83 days left until Google rolls out this new requirement for apps inside and outside of the google play store. If any developer disagrees with their new terms and fees, they will be blocked!

I'll share some of the info below:

Looks like they're trying to nuke the remaining privacy and freedoms we have left on the internet.

What to do?

-Get your developer friends to not comply to their new guides

- Sign the open letter on the site and take action by checking out the full resources list on their website as well!

To summarize, this is all daunting especially when you feel all alone with unfair and inhumane regulations comming out faster than improvements but we got this working together!

Share the link with your friends, family and anyone who will listen!

Levi's said yes, actually. Assless chaps and a biker vest. Happy Pride.

I think it's mainly the fact that it's fucking Guilliman who's saying it.

(Lemme finish the Eisenhorn and Cain books first, and then I will attempt a crack at picking up a book in the Horus Heresy series; there are too goddamn many and I presume it best to start at the beginning.)

And you'll be like, "That sounds bad." And she'll be like, "No no. It's totally not that bad. It's just a meme. Men say it too. Like if a man does something silly he'll be like, 'I am like those women who do not deserve to vote.'" And you'll be like, "Does that make it better?" And she'll be like, "Well there was one guy who tried to make 'Men shouldn't vote' a popular meme. But it never caught on and also he got yelled at a lot."