#decided to start posting my silly little doodles here too instead of just full finished things | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brokenmusicboxwolfe · 5 years

Text

On a photo of a not exactly human face I sculpted....

labratbren said: What do you do with them when they are done? Do you ever post pictures of the finished product?

Ah, well, um....short answer? Nothing.

Here’s the longer answer (VERY long)....

While I was always drawn to sculpting, I really didn’t sculpt growing up.

I mean, I tried to use clay I dug out of the ground, drying it in the sun, when I was tiny. Naturally it crumbled except for this lump of a head I still have. In Kindergarden the art teacher had his own kiln and let us use the scraps left over from the pots he had us make. I still have a loop armed alien and creature head I made, but he left with his kiln the next year. The dough art they had us make in second grade was gone by the next year, ‘cause this buggy and humid climate doesn’t agree with it. My parents gave me modling clay, but I hated it. I wanted something that would “stay”.

But everyone acted like sculpting was hard, so maybe I wasn’t missing out.

Then one day, when I was 19 or so, my hands got bored. Anyone would have laughed if I’d said I was bored right then. I had a book open to one side of me, a magazine on the other, as I went back and forth reading both. I was also listening to music AND watching the movie The Brothers Karamazov at the same time. I have this problem where I always feel like I should be doing more, and when I am doing something I get itchy to be doing something else. Like my brain isn’t fully occupied even if I’m really enjoying whatever. That day my hands needed something to do, and there was this block of clay left over from a project one of Pop’s projects (a river system display, I think) It was just sittin’ there on the porch so....

And it turned out sculpting was easy! I mean, maybe not art bit doodling around having fun making faces. Do NOT be intimidated by sculpting! It comes so much more easiy than trying to convert our 3D world into some 2D drawing. Seriously, try drawing a nose head on! But toss on any wedge on a sculpted face and you have a nose...

Ok, maybe I just am bad at drawing! But I really do wish more people would try sculpting.

Anyway, the clay was another dead end, but it did inspire me to hunt for something I could “make stay”. And that something was sculpey.

Whenever I was certain I would have the place completely to myself for a full hour I’d go stand out on the ramp behind the house and sculpt. It wasn’t too often, what with the house also being the office of the family business and my family being the sort of close one that did everything together. I couldn’t sculpt and be watched. All I needed was an our because I sculpted quickly. In an hour I’d have a little bust, rough as heck but with some detail I liked.

But then I ran out of places to put my busts in my already overstuffed bedroom. I solved this by just slicing the faces off and just baking them. I could glue magnets to them and line all the edges of my metal bookcases.

I did dabble in other things. I tried a full figure and made a few little stick figures. I sculpted something from Babylon 5 for my brother, mixed my box painting (I used to paint boxes when I had a table) with sculpting for a Discworld box for Mom, Easter bunnies for my parents, magnets for everyone, Christmas ornaments...

When she saw the Christmas tree ornaments my cousin Katharine, dollhouse collector, roped my into making her a doll. She had specific requirements for a 6″ tall Beast in what I gathered were Regency era clothes from her decription. In my ignorance I assumed the doll would have to have a jointed body, fabric clothes and furry fur, which kinda drove me nuts! But somehow I pulled it off! I sculpted a few more of those little dolls (no sewing on these!) as gifts for my parents and brother, as well as a bit of goofing around for myself (I liked my little Sleestack a couple decades late for little me). But that was that.

Then the weirdest darn thing happened: I was suddenly stricken with a full imaginative block!

I stopped sculpting. I stopped painting boxes. I stopped writing stories. Worst of all I stopped dreaming! I still remember how upsetting that was, this sense of loss. It was like having a part of me paralyzed.

It lasted years. Terrible years.

When my father became sick right after my irreparable rift with my brother, as I was facing the most terrible external loss of my life, something woke back up in me. Constant, vivid dreams, elaborate epics spiraling through night after night, images and stories that writing didn’t full satisfy the need to express. I started painting miniature boxes again. Box after box after box....

But no sculpting.

I dunno why I still didn’t sculpt. I just didn’t.

Then my father died.

Pop’s death was a devistating moment. My father. My best friend. When Pop was sick I told him he couldn’t die because I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to. There is a lot of truth in that. I love Mom dearly, but our brains work very differently. Pop might have been smarter, and his depth of knowledge was certainly mind blowing, but our mental wiring followed a similar eccentric pattern. That said, somewhere along the line my parents and I had become a sort of unit, functioning as one. Think one of those anime giant robots made of smaller ships, Voltron or something. Then imagine it functioning with the head section missing. Five years later we still feel that void.

So anyway, Pop was dead, the family business gone with him, and I was unemployed with no qualifications in a rural area with few job opportunities anyway. This was, and frankly still is, not a good situation. And my cousin Katharine thought she had a solution.

Katharine sent me a letter suggesting I make dolls. She’d shown the doll I’d made her to a dealer who said I had talent, and she sent me a copy of Art Doll Quarterly to show me that my “weird” stuff might have a market...

Honestly I felt inspired by this. I immediately seriously considered it. I’d work a bit bigger than 6″ scale, sculpt the clothes instead of the stress and tedium of sewing, and figure out a way to do ball joints. Because each thing would be unique (until I could teach myself mold making) and letting go of something I make is soooo hard for me, I decided to use the story of one of my painted boxes as inspiration. I’d make wolf people, which I figured would create enough sameness to help me let go, but enough variety to keep me from being bored. I quickly sketched out a reasonable design and got to work.

Obviously things didn’t turn out to be so simple. Sculpting ball joints by hand is fiddly to manage. It would need a bit of experimenting. I could do a head on day, casually. I could do the upper body, arms and waist joint with a lot of effort another day. A third day would be waist and legs. Fourth day was the hellish threading. I wasn’t set up for safely storing unbaked work in progress, so I had to do these marathon one sitting sculptings on the bodies. Then I’d rest up a few days and just sculpt a few heads.

The ball jointing drove me nuts. So I gave myself permission to not worry about wolfheads, but just sculpt whatever head happened. From the backlog of heads I’d just pick one to experiment with body making. In just a couple months I was making progress.

The first discouragement came with an art show. The county has a sort of art society and they were having a sculpture show. I was scared silly to show my work to anyone, since at that point it was 2014 and I wasn’t even on Tumblr. No one had seen them. Still, when I went to see about entering the lady there was encouraging. I was soooo nervous and tentatively hopeful when I went to the grand opening with Mom amd my cousin Shirley. I was soon deflated. No one seemed to notice my figures. My work was the odd one out anyway in a sea of found object sculptures, colored paper masks and ceramics abstractly suggesting the figural. Also, everyone there knew each other and so no one was talking to me. At one point I did this really sad thing of hovering near my figures in case anyone came near so I could sorta maybe get them to notice them....

When the show ended a few weeks later the lady very nicely said at least a couple school children had liked weird figures, ‘cause, you know, kids like that fantasy stuff. I definitely should sculpt a lot bigger and maybe use terra cotta instead....

Yeah. I felt my stuff was crap. I was crap. Why had I ever thought anyone would like my crap? Heck, I’d thought I’d at least find a club I could join, belonging, friends....

But, I kept at the doll making experimenting, crap or not. That winter it was too cold for much sculpting in my unheated house, but I could work on trying to figure out how to paint them....

Then life happened don’t ya know. At first I thought it was a temporary break while I dealt with crisis after another. I kept sculpting heads, strictly sculpting a head a day (still just an hour each)....until the spreading collapsed floor situation forced me to move the box I’d made for storing the bodiless heads out. And that was that for doll making.

Still, I kept sculpting. I went back to just the faces....

And that’s where I am now. I gave up sculpting every day, because I no longer have time. I watch a movie and sculpt. I bake the face and take pics I post on here. I wrap ‘em in tissue and put them in a storage container....

And that’s it.

I don’t do anything with them. I’m not entirely convinced there is any point anymore. My life isn’t going to include free time. Or tables to work on. It has been years after all, and it gets less and less likely I’ll make anything more than a few boxes full of chipped up sculpey faces for the nephews to find when I die. Well, unless they follow my brother’s advice and throw them out unopened! LOL

I sculpt just ‘cause I sculpt. I post pics of them on Tumblr, ‘cause Mom isn’t really all that interested in looking at them. They aren’t ever going to be anything, but I guess if I enjoy making them and someone out there likes looking at them that’s okay. They may be nothing, but that’s something.

#comments #art #sculpting #artists on tumblr

3 notes · View notes

knitmeapony · 6 years

Text

My new radical method for motivating myself.

Brought to you by therapy. Thanks therapy!

This is what is working for me for exercise, and I'm delighted by it. If you got something that is really killing you to do, something you need to form a habit around that bothers you tremendously, here is a thought.

DON'T push yourself.

I know, it's so crazy that it just might work.

Now here is what I don't mean by that: I do not mean don't try. I mean break it down into such miniscule bite-sized chunks that it almost feels silly at first, and reward yourself for every tiny little painstaking step of the way.

For me, for exercise, the idea of suddenly throwing myself into some kind of weight lifting routine was terrifying. I want to be stronger, I really really do. But there was so much stuff all looped in around getting into a weight lifting routine that I just kept stalling out, because I was convincing myself I wasn't doing anything, even when I was making baby steps there.

It has literally taken me two months to get to this point, but recently I set foot inside a gym for the first time. Note that I didn't say I worked out. Here has been what I've done so far.

I knew I needed some decent shoes, so I found a nice but inexpensive pair of sneakers. Then I let myself doodle fun little things all over them as a reward for buying new shoes. Next, I knew I needed a bag to put some gym clothes in. I really love going to the thrift store, so I let myself play around at thrift stores until I found a bag I liked. Then I bought it. That was its own reward.

Next, I found a gym that would be easy to go to. I bookmarked the page where I would sign up. I literally rewarded myself for getting that far, and took a couple days break.

A week or two ago, I purchased a membership to that gym. I did not feel the need to go immediately. It's okay to not attend the gym everyday, even when I'm paying for it. Even when I have good habits, I won't be going every day.

A couple days after that, I was on my way home and I drove past the gym and decided to stop in and get my membership tag and have a tour. I wasn't ready to work out yet. I didn't push myself to take a huge leap all at once. I literally visited the place in my work clothes and high heels, and then rewarded myself with a coffee to keep that nice warm successful feeling associated with this stuff.

On my way home tonight, with the bag of workout shoes and clothes already in my car, I passed the gym. It looked too scary and too full of people to go into right then. But I reminded myself I was having a good day, and it would be much emptier in a couple hours. I came home, did something fun with a friend, and then a couple hours later when I was ready I went there and did a very short half an hour walk around of the machines, trying them all out and getting a baseline for my strength.

Right now, despite me having huge complex relationships with my physical shape, my personal strengths, and my weight, I have more good feelings about that gym then I do bad. I got myself a diet strawberry soda at the Burger King on the way home and mentally high-fived myself a million times.

Each time I managed one of these steps, instead of thinking about how much more there was to do, I reminded myself that I was awesome.

The culture around working out is so exhausting. The culture around exercise is always about pushing yourself further and harder. Even when folks are reminding you not to overdo it, and that everyone's best is different, they still tell you that you should do your absolute best and most every single day. It's not just exercise, at least in America this is the kind of thing we tell ourselves all the time.

My new official attitude toward that is fuck that. Especially with executive dysfunction, my new attitude is do a thing, then decide what's next. Don't do what's next, not unless you are really ready for it. Just decide what you're going to do when you are ready for it. Every once in awhile ask yourself "hey, can we do the thing?" When your brain gives you a green light, go.

I am like 80% sure I'm going to get some troll bullshit calling me lazy or something, but I just wanted to write this post to celebrate the fact that as a former chronic overachiever, I'm finally learning how to take things one step at a time.

It's probably not radical for some of you guys, but teaching myself that I don't have to do a thing from start to finish in record time every single time, that's pretty fucking amazing. And teaching myself that it's okay to stop, not give up but stop, that's been really fucking hard. But I feel like I'm finally making some progress. I don't know maybe it'll help someone else out there too.

198 notes · View notes

narellenuzlockes-blog · 7 years

Text

Black 2 Nuzlocke - Update 1

BW2 is my least favorite set of games in the entire pokemon franchise. I really hate Unova in general, but the sequels are SO much worse than the originals.

But I have this game, since I collect all of the games, and should really try to get through it at least once. Maybe I’ll like it more than I expected if I get past the dumb parts. Or maybe the whole thing is dumb. We’ll see. This is my second go at nuzlocking it.

RULES:

1. Only catch the first encounter per route/area. 1A. Cheatiest dupes clause in the world. If I encounter a pokemon from an evolutionary line I’ve caught before, I can ignore it every time I encounter it. The first pokemon I’ve never caught before becomes the first encounter. If a route only has pokemon I’ve encountered before, I can catch the first dupe I encounter. 1B. Shiny clause. If a shiny is encountered I MUST try to catch it, regardless of dupes or if I’ve caught anyone else. If I want to use it and I’ve already got a pokemon from that route/area, I have to move that mon to the DEAD box. And nobody leaves the DEAD box. 2. If a pokemon faints, it’s DEAD and must be forever stored in the PC’s DEAD box. 2A. If a shiny dies, its dead for this run, but can be traded to regular games because who would ever get rid of a shiny for real? 3. All pokemon must be nicknamed with Highly Suspect song names (or shortened versions that fit in the allotted space). If I run out of songs, I can use the band members’ names or reuse names from dead pokemon. Or some alternative naming convention I’ll have to figure out later. 4. Learn to use stat moves and stuff! All pokemon must have their moveset used to the best of my ability, not just overleveling and spamming attacks. No cop out movesets. 5??? Pokemon can only be leveled up to the gym leader’s highest level pokemon (unless they get an accidental extra level or so). They can be as overleveled as I want for every other battle ever. (This might mean overleveling is allowed for E4 etc.) If this is too hard for me while learning to better use stat moves and such, I might give up on it.

So I started out the game with a female Oshawott. I named her Lydia, after the Highly Suspect song. I’m going to name everyone in this locke after their songs, until I run out of songs. (They are a somewhat newer band, there are only so many to choose from.)

Lydia, female Oshawott. Ability Torrent. Met at Lv. 5 in Aspertia City. Rash Nature. Alert to Sounds.

I restarted the intro a few times trying to get through the rival battle, because I was having terrible luck with it, but Lydia was the one to make it through.

On Route 19, the only possible encounters were Patrat and Purrloin. Purrloin is pretty terrible, so I was really hoping for a Patrat. I got:

Claudeland, male Purrloin. Ability Unburden. Met at Lv. 2 on Route 19. Hardy Nature. Sturdy body.

I wasn’t super excited about Claude, but I need teammates, so I’ll make the most of it. I gave him a good name, hopefully it will be lucky for him. Ground him up to Lv. 5, Lydia up to 7.

Cut through Floccesy to Route 20. Didn’t look ahead at who I could meet here. I caught:

Vanity, male Sunkern. Ability Solarpower. Met at Lv. 2 on Route 20. Quirky Nature. Thoroughly cunning.

Not the strongest pokemon in the world, but nice to have a type that helps add some balance to the team. I like knocking out the main 3 as early as possible. I was pretty upset with all the Sewaddle encounters afterwards though - I love the Sewaddle line, its an overall better pokemon, and it would have given me that grass type coverage as well. Oh well.

Got Vanity and Claude up to Lv. 7, Lydia to Lv. 10 (switch training keeps her way ahead). Moved on to Floccesy Ranch, where I met:

Chicago, female Lillipup. Ability Pickup. Met at Lv. 6 at Floccesy Ranch. Brave Nature. Good perserverance.

I wasn’t excited about this catch. Can’t stand Stoutland, and I know there’s plenty more interesting pokemon available to catch here. But at least I got something a little more sturdy on this team full of softies. I can’t expect Lydia to carry them all.

I knew I was supposed to be looking for the rival character, which would probably mean a battle, but didn’t expect anything difficult so I didn’t bother to look ahead. I went into it leading with Chicago, still at Lv. 6, and also had Claude at Lv.7, Vanity at Lv.7, and Lydia at Lv.10.

The rival still only had a Snivy, but it was up to level 8. I knew based on Lydia’s level ups that it should have a grass type move by that point, and that Claude and Vanity were too weak to take it on underleveled, so I stuck with Chicago. She got in a tackle or two? I don’t remember, I’m going from memory here. But pretty sure she got OHKOed. My only hope was to switch in Lydia and cross my fingers that she’d make it out alive. I lucked out in that the rival spammed tackles the rest of the fight till Lydia finished off his Snivy.

There went my only decent catch.

Chicago, Lillipup. Lv. 6 - 6. Death Count: 1

After that, I trained everyone up a ton and went through all the silly Floccesy Ranch plot stuff. While training, I practiced some strategies for the upcoming gym battle (that I DID look ahead at). I have always just overleveled and went in blazing with my strongest type advantage moves. In this run, I’m trying to teach myself to make use of the moves I’ve always dismissed and learn to use real strategies in pokemon games. Which means I decided to only level up to Cheren’s highest level pokemon. (Not sure if this will be a real rule?)

I was actually pretty impressed with Vanity? He still can’t take a hit, but his movepool does a good job of compensating for that. By the time I got him to Lv. 13 (and had finished beating up those small children for Alder and the gym trainers keeping me from my Cheren battle), he had Grasswhistle, Growth, Leech Seed, and Mega Drain. I usually finished my training battles with him at full health. I was feeling pretty good about him.

Claude...not so much. He lagged behind everyone else, and took a bunch of extra (super tedious) grinding to get him up to Lv. 13 with the other kids. But I did figure out a decent strategy for him. He ended up with Sand Attack, Growl, Assist, and Fury Swipes. So I sand attacked my opponents like crazy so that they would rarely even get the chance to hit me, then growled at them a ton so any hits that got through barely did a thing, then I could assist (because the rest of my team had better moves) or fury swipe them to death without worrying about him dying in the time it took him to finish them off. Takes forever, but it works.

Lydia is just a tank and doesn’t really need the help. She has Tackle, Tail Whip, Water Gun, and Focus Energy.

VS. Aspertia City Gym Leader Cheren

So my plan for the gym was to lead with Vanity against Cheren’s Lv. 11 Patrat, and use my sweet bullet-proof sleep-heal-fight strategy, then have Claudeland lead against the Lv. 13 Lillipup to set up as many sand attacks and growls as I could get in until he got hit, at which point I would switch to Lydia. I figured if Vanity struggled, Lydia could be his backup too, but I wasn’t too worried about him.

The Patrat fight started out great. It outsped my slow little Sunkern and got in a Work Up, but then my Grasswhistle put it right to sleep. I threw out a Leech Seed and then a Growth, then hit it with Mega Drain. It woke up after that, which I wasn’t too worried about. It only had a couple HP left, but my plan was to immediately put it back to sleep to be safe and then finish up with another Mega Drain.

Except it OHKO’d Vanity with a single Tackle.

Vanity, Sunkern. Lv. 2 - 13. Death Count: 2

I was pretty stunned, but had a plan for this so I threw in Lydia who finished off the last couple HP with an overkill Water Gun.

Cheren switched to Lillipup, so I switched to Claude. I was 100% convinced I was sending him to his death, but I wanted to stick to the plan and keep trying this whole ~strategy~ thing.

Claude was faster, so I got a sand attack in off the bat. Cheren used work up, though, and I knew better than to let that fly, so I responded with growl. Which turned into something like nearly 10 turns back and forth of workup and growl? Finally he hit me with a tackle instead. That was supposed to be the point that I switch in Lydia, but I knew Claude could take one more hit as long as it wasn’t a crit. So I left him in and tried to fit in one more Sand Attack.

He got tackled again right after, but no crit, so he survived and I switched to Lydia. Her watergun did surprisingly little damage, but the sand attacks worked and Cheren’s Lillipup missed a ton, so I was able to use a tail whip and a couple more tackles to finish it off.

I won, so I got the Basic Badge. I expected that to go much smoother, but I guess that’s how it goes when you use weak pokemon that aren’t overleveled. Impressed with Claude, though - maybe if he sticks it out I’ll try to drag him all the way to the E4. We’ll see.

I think that’s enough of an update for now, though I’ll probably keep playing. I’ll likely doodle up my team and maybe add in some doodles to this post, or reblog with some, at some point. Assuming I keep up with this blog. ^^;;

#nuzlocke #basic badge #black 2

0 notes