HOW TO DO SHIT

| Short guide on how to be a happier person |

Math is not changing, it is what it is - two numbers when you add them will always result in the same number. Find comfort in that. 

Compare it to things you already love - like cooking or languages. Math doesn’t involve luck nor guesswork like a recipe, nor does it have words that can mean a lot of things depending on their intonation like a foreign language… but if you use the ingredients and the process, you will always get perfect cupcakes. And it IS a language because symbols mean things and you put them together to have a certain result just like you would a sentence.

Fearing math is one of the main killers of math skill, I promise you, you already understand and know more than you think. I’ve been a math teacher in adult education and so many of my students have struggled with math for 20-30 years before they reached my classroom. But once they looked at math differently, once they stopped fearing it as the enemy, they were surprised to find it was easier to see the logic in things and face new concepts in ways that allowed them to understand them so that they were not terrifying.

Also, know that if something truly just makes no sense to you - we all have things we don’t understand, we all have things that make no sense - there are tricks to get around these things (even in exams, doing well in the things that you do understand limits the harm of things that you don’t), and most importantly: it’s not the end of the world. 

Math is useful, it is important in some contexts even, but it’s not the most important thing in the world and as you grow up and you get into the branches of life that truly matter to you - if you did not manage to befriend math, it’s okay. There are calculators and there are tax guides and there are hundreds of thousands of things you can do that don’t need you to solve equations, no matter what school says.

Then, like someone commented, look up lessons on youtube, this site is pretty cool: https://www.mathsisfun.com/ 

Often, school books etc are directly copied and solved online. Do not try to find your homework solutions like that, look for the exercise ones, or examples the teacher gave and didn’t explain properly. Look at the laid out explanations and go part by part - understand very very well each section before going to the next and eventually you’ll get to the very end of the whole problem and you will understand it all! It’s like learning a song on piano, or analyzing a poem, or even drawing - you have to do a bit of it first and then you do the next part and then you can do it all from start to finish :) 

Once you have understood the examples, modify them - use different numbers in them and try to solve them - go bit by bit and compare the process, you won’t have someone telling you it’s right or wrong, you will be able to KNOW that it’s right or wrong because you know the process is right or wrong :) and if it’s wrong, just try again. 

This tool can also help you verify it: http://www.cymath.com/

Finally, once you’ve felt confident in the process, you can apply it to your homework, read the problems, translate them to the steps that you know well and can follow - and you’ll know you’re doing it well.

A lot of schools are very hung up on the exact process that they taught you, so be mindful of that, but know that you can also do it in the way that you understand and then just translate it to their method once you’re sure. 

Math is not the most important thing, but while they make you learn it, don’t let them scare you with it. Math is not a monster, it’s an Ikea table, it’s a savings project to get a ticket to see your fave artist, it’s a dance routine… and you can do it at your own pace and in your own way and they won’t notice.

hey yall its me the Art Mom™ to help you shade pretty

rule 1: DO NOT SHADE WITH BLACK. EVER. IT NEVER LOOKS GOOD. 

red- shade with a slightly darker shade of purple

orange- slightly darker and more saturated shade of red

yellow- i think like..a peach could work but make it a really light peach

green- shade with darker and less saturated shade of blue or teal

blue- shade with purple

purple- a shade thats darker than the purple you’re using and maybe a little pink (MAYBE blue)

pink- darker shade of red

white- a really light lavender or blue..or i guess any really light colour??

black- okay listen dont use pure black to colour anything unless you want to leave it with flat colours because you cant really shade black lol

grey- a slightly darker shade of purple or blue (less saturated)

brown- slightly darker and less saturated shade of purple or red

I made some Balls of Colour to go with Art Mom™’s post:

SandStorm Photoshop by sevenstyles.

This is so cool, I can’t imagine some many details can be packed on one single Photoshop action.

I see this kinda advice passed around all the time here is the thing: shading with black will indeed look bad if you don’t know what you are doing. However, telling people not to do things without explaining why is terrible advice.

Shadows are the opposite of light, this includes in colour.

This means that if you have light in one colour, the shadow will be of the opposing hue, saturation, and value.

Unless the object is white, it has its own local colour -  the object’s true colour, how it would appear if the light were pure white.

The colour of the light influences the local colour of the object. so if you had yourself a brown cube and a blue light, the colours would get bluer and pinker.

now the reason shadows do not tend to be black is because pure white light is hard to find in nature.

the closest you will get to pure white light is during a really overcast day and the sun is filtering through the clouds, but even then it’ll lean towards yellow so the shadows will be slightly blue.

During a clear day, the shadows will pick up a lot of bounce light from the blue sky and have a blue tinge. You can learn more about this in this tutorial: [http://artbyriana.deviantart.com/art/Why-shadows-aren-t-gray-321656856]

But! None of this means you are never allowed to use black.

realistically shadows will have a hint of a colour to them, but stylistically you might be going for, say, a film noir look and deep black shadows are needed for impact for example.

The more you know about how light works, the more informed decisions you can make about shading and the more options you have.

If someone tells you that you can’t do something, they’re wrong! you can do what you like!

yes, black is hard to use and if you just mix a colour with black it’ll get muddy, but thats easily resolved by choosing your colours manually - which ideally you want to do regardless bc the computer doesnt have your eyes & cant choose the colours you like

basically if someone gives you some art advice and says you can’t do something, they’re wrong! you can, you just might need to study a little to figure out how to make things work.

I mean for example, people will say you must make your composition follow the rule of thirds and never align centrally, but while the rule of thirds makes it easy to create visual interest, Mad Max Fury Road is a testament to the fact that central composition can and will work if you experiment.

there are no rules in art! there are theories based on reality, this has been a post on colour theory & light theory, but they exist to inform you, not to restrict you.

Do what you like! Trust your eyes, if you think something looks good, then great! If you don’t, then research & experiment until you do.

original storyboards for the title sequence from ‘Batman: the Animated Series’, by Bruce Timm. this won Bruce Timm an Emmy Award.

click this link

draw whomever you get

don’t worry about making it super-accurate, just focus on the characteristic parts of the face and have fun

the outcome might not look like the ref, but it will be different and more varied than faces you draw out of your head, an dprobably pretty rad on its own right!