Ethnic Food

Hmm. so... My spouse and I were going to have veggie burgers for dinner except she didn't really buy any veggie burger mix like she said we did... She did go shopping though and there was some dublin port and cheddar cheese in the fridge and guiness (Okay, the guiness came a little later) Irish cheese and irish beer... There was only one thing to do... Make ethnic food night... So I put some sausages in a skillet with a bit of water and some bacon grease, boiled up some potatos and mashed them, and made a heavy oily brown gravy.... Stacey was ecstatic. I never cook this sort of stuff. ... And now I know why...

YOU WEIRD BRITIZENS! HOW DO YOU LIVE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Two black and tans, a sausage, a pile of mash and gravy and cheese so sharp it makes your jaw clench and you break out in a cold sweat... Sure I'm in cheese bliss but I think I've taken 10 years off my life.

Good grief! Are you people mad? This stuff will kill you, or at the very least cause smaller bodies (Like Saturn) to fall into your orbit. Here I thought american food was bad. At least fried okra contains something green. Oy.

I'm going to lay on my back and sweat and breath heavily for a while. I think all my notions of british accents as attractive has been quashed by this night of debauchery.

Studying for Style

Well. After all my whining this weekend, I thought I'd mention that I'm trying to move forward. I talked to a couple of people about the style thing and mostly got an answer of 'study more' which was frustrating, as I study a lot. Finally I approached someone that I sort of look up to artwise about elements of style and she made the same suggestion but in a slightly different way, and somehow that made it click. Such works a mind of brillance, I suppose.

I guess it wasn't so much that I wasn't studying enough but rather the way I had been approaching a study of style. She too suggested more study and studying the work of people whose art interested me, but she added the key phrase, "Don't be afraid to blatantly copy." This is something I've always been shy about. I think in part because I'm a bit of an exhibitionist and copy work would be stuff I wouldn't be comfortable showing (though I've been told it's okay if properly annotated)

Of course, I'd heard before that it was okay to study other people's work and take parts you liked, I guess it wasn't much new, but for some reason it made it click. The _way_ I had studied other people's work in the past was to spend an evening looking at their work and then drawing from my memories of it at a later time. Since my visual memory is less than stellar, this resulted in me drawing the same way I had before and being very frustrated with the results. My new strategy is to study interactively. Spend a few evenings studying and drawing from the art that interests me, while it is in direct view, then going off on my own once I feel I have foudn the rhythm and natural flow of the parts that attracted me. In short, I was trying to incorporate it into my use too quickly. I need to do a bit more gruntwork first.

She also suggested I study Preston Blair (which was convenient because I alreadyhad a copy of his cartoon animation book for my animation class) I had read the book cover to cover, but I guess I hadn't really spent enough time paying attention to the simplicity and elegance of his character designs. All I had absorbed was the information about timing. So now I'm rereading it, making a close and detailed study of his character designs. I am also re-reading Burne Hoggarth's book, "Dynamic Anatomy" in paralell with Blair's book to keep some balance between realism and stylized. Hoggath's book is the opposite. I learned more reading it than I did looking at the pictures, yet I feel I've learned his rules fairly well and now it's time to study Blair and learn how to (successfully) break those rules.

Anyhow. More on this topic later I wanna get back to drawing.