hufflepuff leia

New research led by Kazuo Fujita of Kyoto University has found that your dog is the best wing man/woman. The researchers tested three groups of 18 dogs by putting them in rooms with their owners as well as two strangers. The owners were tasked with opening a box, and solicited help from the two other people in the room (sometimes they would help and sometimes they would refuse). After watching their owners either be rebuffed or aided, the dogs were offered food by the strangers — and were much more likely to ignore the stranger who had been unkind to their owner.

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. 

And after like three seconds, where we’re all trying to figure out the punchline because the story clearly hadn’t ended, and John Mulaney quietly says, “Has there been tinfoil on my buttons the whole goddamn show?”

She was, in fact, with him, and she did tell him her date’s name. John Mulaney considered this, looked around, and unplugged his microphone. Leaning in to us, he told us that we were going to trick this guy so fuckin hard. He said, “At some point during the show, I am going to stop and say, ‘Well, you guys know what they say here in Ft. Lauderdale,’ and then you guys are all going to scream back ‘WE LOVE MILKSHAKES!’ He’ll be so confused.”

He then continued on with the show as normal, the drinks guy returned to his seat, and that was that for quite a long time. We thought he had forgotten about it until, at some point during what I believe was his McDonald’s drive-thru bit, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “You guys know what they say here in Ft. Lauderdale…”

1. It makes no fucking sense to sketch out a bouquet before you make it.  Every individual flower is different in a way that cannot really be adjusted the way other building materials can be adjusted, and each individual bouquet is unique.  Just put the fucking flowers together.

2. No one — in months and months of working at the flower shop — has ever cared what the flower/color of the flower means.  No one’s ever asked.  It’s just not something people tend to care about outside of fiction and it’s certainly not something most florists know.  You know what florists know?  What looks good and is thematically appropriate.

Here’s an actual list of the symbology of flowers, as professionals use it:

Yellow – for friends, hospitals Pink – girls, girlfriends, babies, bridesmaids Red – love Purple – queens White – marriage and death (DO NOT SEND TO HOSPITALS) Pink and purple – ur mum Red, orange, and yellow – ur mum if she’s stylish Red, yellow, blue – dudes and small children Blue and white – rare, probably a wedding Red and white – love for fancy bitches

Here are what the flowers actually mean to a florist:

The Fill It Out flowers:

Carnations – fuck u these are meaningless filler-flowers, not even your administrative assistant likes them, show some creativity Alstroemeria – by and large very similar to carnations but I like them better Tea roses – cute and lil and come several to a stalk, a classy filler flower Moluccella laevis – filler flower but CHOICE Delphinium – not as interesting as moluccella but purple so okay I guess Blue thistle – FUCK YEAH, some fucking textural variety at last!  you’re getting this for a dude, aren’t you? Chrysanthemums – barely better than carnations but better is still better Gladiolus – ooh, risky business, someone understands the use of the Y-axis, very good

Focal points:

Long-stem roses – yeah whatever Lilies – LBD, looks good with everything, get used as often as possible Hydrangeas – thirsty fuckers, divas of the flower world and rightly so, treat them right and they make you look good Gerbera daisies – the rose’s hippie cousin, hotter but no one admits it Peonies – CHA-CHING, everybody’s absolute favorite but you need guap Orchids – if this isn’t for a wedding you’re probably trying too hard but they’re expensive so keep ordering them

You know what matters?  THE CUSTOMER’S BUDGET.  THAT’S TELLING.

-$20 – if you’re not under 12, fuck off, get your sugar something else $30 – good for bouquets but an arrangement will be lame $40 – getting there, there’s something that can be done with that.  you can get some gerbs or roses with that and not have them look stupidly solo. $50 to $70 – tolerable $80 – FINALLY.  It sounds elitist but this really is the basic amount of money you should expect to spend on an arrangement that matters.  That’s your Mother’s Day arrangement.  You’re probably not going to spend $80 on a bouquet. $90 to $130 – THE GOOD SHIT, you’re likely to get some orchids $130+  – Weddings and death.  This amount of money gets you a memorial arrangement or a handmade bridal bouquet.  Don’t spend this on a Mother’s Day or a Babe I Love You arrangement, buy whosits a massage or something.

Miscellaneous:

Everything needs greening and if you don’t think that you’re an idiot. 

As a new employee, when you start making arrangements, you can’t see the mistakes you’re making because you’re brand new and you’re learning an art form from the ground up.

With a few exceptions customers don’t have a clear plan in mind.  They want you to develop the bouquet for them.  They want something that will delight their little sweetbread but you’re lucky if they know that person’s favorite color, let alone flower.

Flower shops don’t typically have every kind of flower in every kind of color.  Customers generally aren’t assed about that.  Most people don’t care about the precise shade of the rose or having daffodils in July, because they’re not boning up on flower language before they buy.  That would imply that they’ve got a clear bouquet in mind and, again, they don’t.

Being a florist is essentially a lot like what I imagine being a mortician is about.  You’re basically keeping dead things looking good for as long as possible.  You keep the product in the fridge so it doesn’t rot and look horrible by the time the family gets a whack at it, and in the meanwhile you put it in a nice container.