I Want to Learn How to Ask Questions

I have been obsessively watching two Youtube series: Ask Hank Anything, and 100 Questions with Tom Simmons. They both strike me because the questions asked are so good and how they create such interesting discussions. It is a genuine skill that baffles me and I want to learn it so bad. 

This has also been driven by looking over my years at uni now that I've reached the end; I've come to realise that I just did not have any questions. So many seminars, so many lectures, and they always end with 'If there's any questions my student hours are open', and not once did I utilise that time. It's meant I've always just slightly accepted things and whilst I did disagree, it wasn't enough to them inspire questions that could be taken to lecturers. 

I've also noticed it in my day-to-day conversations. Questions are a large part of the conversation format and they have been something I have had to manually and consciously do when speaking to people. I first realised this actively when I was in about Year 8 (12/13) and we were doing a Spanish speaking exam. You had to maintain a conversation with the teacher with the format 'statement, follow up question', where you lost marks if you failed to ask a question. I am quite frankly piss poor at language and so there was only one question floating around my brain: ¿y tu? This has led me, nearly ten years later, to mentally scream 'Y TU' whenever I am in a conversation that becomes rather stagnated. 

But I will be (hopefully) in a new place by September and that means new people. Not only that but maintaining the friendships that I've made in undergrad, as I do not want a repeat of sixth form. Previously, the strategy was blindly believing that people were interested in my day to day life, if something happened I would just tell them. Except that makes you look self absorbed. So now I need to learn how to ask proper questions outside of 'how was your day' or 'any plans coming up' to ensure that my current friends know that I care about them and their thoughts. 

Let me leave you with some questions:

• Have you been watching anything recently, if so how does it measure to your favourite show?
• When was the last time you bought flowers?
• Has your coffee order changed over time?

Finding a Semblance of a Story

I've been yearning for my own story to tell. 

My friends are wonderfully creative people and they inspire me daily. But there is this nagging feeling that they can all attune themselves to this creative frequency that I cannot access myself. This is partly why I've found pursuing art properly difficult: I rarely have much to say. 

That doesn't mean things don't interest or drive me. Just the moment the pen is in my hand, or my fingers are at the keyboard, I find there's no shapes or words. It even affected my dissertation quite heavily at the beginning, where I knew the topic of what I wanted to cover but finally expressing it using my own words felt impossible. But I persevered (I haven't written as much as I would like for it yet, but the largest hurdles have been overcome). 

It was this small victory that pushed me to now, wanting to once again try and build on the skill that is creativity. Though, a muscle may be a more fitting term, as I have the skills needed for creativity, I just lack strength in the muscle that uses these skills. 

The key is small and often.

It sounds obvious, but you would be suprised how often I ignore this one rule. My usual approach to things creative tends to be throwing myself in the deep end, either I will learn to swim or be forced to drown. This meant, whilst I rushed to make the things I wanted to make, I missed the fundamentals of the discipline, something I'm having to put a lot of time in to fix. Now, I'm having to actually learn anatomy and perspective in drawing, basic seams in sewing, and the rules of writing. 

So what has this to do with a story?

I wouldn't say I'm aiming towards a novel: that would be absurd. All I wanted was to have characters in a world of my own, so when I am learning these artistic fundamentals I can apply them to something that isn't fanart. That way, if people do follow my socials, then they follow it for me instead of my interests. It's quite selfish, I realise. 

Luckily there's been this one idea brewing for quite a while. But I cannot just build it all at once, I need to stretch this muscle out, learn how to do things the proper way! So, I've been reintroduced to the beauty that is a drabble. A story written in exactly 100 words. It feels similar to limiting yourself to only 10 or 20 strokes in a painting. Because of the limited size, you have to learn how to be purposeful and exact with your words. You cannot physcially babble on about something unless you want the drabble to be about that one specific thing. 

What would be fun, when I am not drowning in essay writing, would be to do a month challenge. Something like inktober, where each day you have a prompt, and just write a drabble using that prompt. Using this, I could see if I could flesh out this idea I have running around my brain and make something of it. The random words would mean I would have to question things I wouldn't think to tackle. And, not to speak too soon, but 100 words seems much easier than an entire drawing. 

(PS. I have not forgotten my Sherlock project, I just cannot engage with the victorian period when I have to be focusing on the 1300-1400s. My brain works only with one time period at a time)

Turning my Dissertation into a Challenge

I've been falling down the rabbit holes of 'filling a sketchbook in a week' videos and you would think that it would have inspired me to draw more (which you would be right, but that's not the topic of today's blog) no, instead, I've decided to apply this to my dissertation.

By the end of Easter break I will need to have a completed first draft, that is 8000 legible and cohesive words. This is a daunting feat. I am the type of person who, the second they reach the minimum word count will immedietely submit their paper, so padding it out to 8000 is scary. This is made worse by the fact that I also will not start writing until I've done all the reading (quite a substantial amount I left at uni). 

The answer to this is merging the two: writing my dissertation in a week (but not quite)

You see, 8000 becomes quite managable once you start thinking about things in terms of 8 x 1000. All I need to do is write 1000 words in 8 days. Except 1000 is still an intimidating goal, instead make it 600. This number was chosen because it is just over half, that way it tricks my brain into pushing the extra 400. 

As well as this, I do not need to limit myself to a singular topic/chapter. 

What was stopping me before was that I didn't have enough quotes or citations to handle the entire chapter at once, findind that starting the chapter was especially difficult. But, similar to skipping the first page of the sketchbook, I start somewhere random, simply commenting on another historian's argument and fitting it into my own, that creates a building block that can be fitted into a wider paragraph in the future. 

This way I can see the argument start to form and how it flows. I'm covering a surprisingly large topic that has to balance a lot of factors (techincally multi-discipline as well) and so simply word-vomiting everything and neatening it later means that more can be said in an easier manner. 

Hopefully by the end of this week, I will have something that I can frankenstein into a first draft... technically a pre-draft as I will then use these building blocks to form better structured and articulated paragraphs. 

Overall, I aim to take as much pressure out of the process, as each day a substantial amount of progress will be made. 

Starting a Sketchbook (with spreads)

I've been learning how to paint for the past year now, and that was thanks to a sketchbook specifically made for paint. It was pricy enough that not painting in it would feel like a waste. Because of this, I have essentially lost a year of sketching and studies.

That isn't to say I didn't draw. No, quite the opposite. The problem is that they were all doodles. I wasn't experimenting or learning, it was just a load of indulgent slop. 

Now that we're reaching the final month of teaching at uni, and the pressure has ramped up, I would like to expell this energy through drawing. But I still want to learn. So, I finally bit the bullet and opened up a sketchbook I hadn't touched yet. 

Thanks to my dissertation, I've worked out a rotation system for the easter break. By switching between academic writing and reading, anatomy studies, and playing pokemon on my 2ds, I'm learning 2/3 of the time. That way, whether I'm having a breather, or procrastinating, I'm not on my phone. 

The best part of all this is that the book I'm doing my anatomy studies from is in Italian. Which is a language I do not speak. But that way I really need to pay attention to the drawings and analyse them whilst copying them to work out how this builds up the structure of the human body. It's also been fun to work on it in pen, meaning I have to be purposeful with my lines and can't run from mistakes. 

Honestly it's felt like coming home in a way. By being able to whip out a few spreads in a day reminds me of my younger days, where I felt I could be an artist. Maybe I can still can someday. There's still hope. 

Experimenting with Limited Colour Palettes

Limited colour palettes are there to help you control colours with purpose. With less choice comes less confusion (until you have to work out how to make blue without a blue paint). This is why I am working out the Zorn limited colour palette: it relies on ivory black, titanium white, vermillion and yellow ochre. In having strong warmer saturation it becomes perfect for skin tones... it's not the best for nature but I have a lot of learning ahead of me. I was inspired by an artist on instagram discussing using grey in skin to draw attention to the more interesting colour use of the piece. 

For my experiment, I thought it best to stick to a subject fitting with the colour palette, and who was better than Edith Cushing from Crimson Peak. To fully grasp the colour theory I would like to do two pieces - one warm and one cool. This is the warmer one. Here, I found yellow extraordinarily difficult to appear as yellow as it was also trying to be every other colour. The blonde hair was the most difficult step and I'm still not entirely happy with it - or the hat for that matter. Working with the skin should have been the easy bit since that was what the colour palette was made for, and yet it was a struggle, since it was harder to create the right colour undertones as well as the darkness (the black cools the colours). Out of everything, the background ended up being the easiest bit! Even with the colour palette not really suiting the greens of nature. Overall, it produces something relatively convincing that I can be proud of... as long as I don't think about how other people can ustilise the colours. It really is a matter about purposeful brushstrokes, maybe I have to do exercises with the least amount of strokes to get a better readable piece.

After this I plan to do a cooler version, with the focus of getting as many colours out of black paint. Not only will it be cooler, it would be paler, so that I can also experiment with the white. Though it appears this is not happening for a while so stay tuned!

 

Fighting Phone Addiction

I've stated many a time that this is the year I fight my phone addiction, it is absurd how much time I spend simply on twitter (even after I deleted the app). So this reading week (basically half term) I'm challenging myself to keep my phone turned OFF and in a drawer. This is also to help myself focus on uni stuff. 

It's been suprisingly productive and easy. My laptop has remained firmly on my desk which has meant I'm not in bed all weekend, I've done housework, I've spoken to friends. I've found it odd not being as easily contactable, I've missed texts, but on the other hand that's offered its own level of freedom. Trying to make the internet into a place I choose to enter as opposed to 24hr surveillance. 

After I had finished the uni work I had wanted to get done, I had the rest of my evening to kill and it was so much fun. I had realised I had not touched my sketchbook in nearly three months (which is absurd) and so I just plonked myself down to do some painting! 

Recently, I had finished Twin Peaks and it is one of those shows/films that is just so well made. Most of the media I tend to enjoy tend to be sub-par and thats what makes them fun, that is the space that allows fandoms to florish. A character didn't get enough development? Why not write 20 fanfics to fix that! Whereas here, all of my critiques can honestly be answered with the fact that it was a product of the 90s (most women did get watered down to their relationship with men, ESPECIALLY Audrey). It felt nice to be in safe hands and just enjoy something. So naturally, after finishing Fire Walk With Me (the prequel movie) I did a painting of Laura Palmer. All I have left to watch is the 2017 sequel series, but I'm struggling with it: most of what made Twin Peaks charming has been removed.

In other news, after putting the phone down I picked up my ancient Nintendo 2DS (now a whopping 10 years old) to finally finish Pokemon Moon. Admitedly, I played 10 hours of it in one day. It was a new file but I'm sticking with my original choice of starter: Rowlet! Decidueye is genuinely my favourite pokemon so there was no way I'm picking Litten or Popplio. Four Gyms down and I believe I've reached the area that caused me to quit the game for a decade: the Grass/Bug Gym. It's caused me to collect an all fire team and I've had to level them up which altogether is a grind and a slog. But I'm having fun! It really is a better altenative to doomscrolling as there is a semblance of progress being made. In the future I think it would be fun to bring my 2DS to places and play that in the meantime. 

I must say, there is a feeling of emptiness within my day, but I'm sure with practice that I'll be able to fill it. My current sewing project is in the naughty corner, hopefully this week, I will unpick my mistakes and start afresh, with a clearer mind than before. Do not fret, eventually you will get a post of my sewing struggles, just let me work out the outer ruffle... and inner ruffle. I'm not enjoying the ruffles. 

Overall, it's been a relative success! 

Too much of an artist to be a historian, too much a historian to be an artist

No, do not make me take Art History.

I had this problem pointed out to me in sixth-form where I was trying to do too much history in my Fine Art course (apparently it was supposed to be focusing on contemporary art, I didn't do that). It caused neither my art or history teacher to like me, both thinking I didn't care about either subject. The problem was that I cared too much about both.

This should have been the last I thought about it. 

I'm now in my final year where the words of my old art teacher start echoing in my mind. I should not be a historian. Yet, if I never chose this degree I would regret it for the rest of my life, most likely having the same experience if I were an artist. 

This manifested again when I was locking in the topic of my dissertation, realising how much of historial research I was only interested in if it incorporated doing something. A lot of my enjoyment of history is experienced-based through clothes, buildings or art. Having to do a solely text-based research project, no matter how close it is to my heart, doesn't have that same level of understanding. A lot of feedback from essays tends to be that I take a very emphatic and narrative approach which is awful for research but perfect for creativity. Themes take a storytelling role, analysing characters and actors instead of people. If my outcome was something that did not need to be an essay I would be fine. My best work, in fact, was creating a recourse for a local museum for a public history module. 

This just makes me feel like I'm not a 'true' historian. Nothing I produce will ever be publishable in a journal, instead be marked as 'pop history' as my lecturers love to complain about. 

That being said, I now have three years where I haven't worked on my art. This is why I am so determined to work on it even more than ever. It would be wonderful to build on a portfolio and open commissions but I now lack this education that I could have pursued. It's akin to grief. 

Grieving for two degrees I can never truly claim.