Manipulators Are The Ones Who Are Weak

UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 1 – Explore figure sketching techniques/simplification

I’ve been actively avoiding working on this challenge all day. I feel like it is because it is so damn overwhelming. It took so much for me to even just sit down and start working on this.

But now that I have sat down and am working on this, I want to create a mini lesson plan for today.

Since today is about exploring figure sketching techniques and simplification, I shall design a lesson plan to make it impossible not to get good at those things. As I’ve said before, lesson plans let me connect to the present moment, on one task at a time. This in turn helps me work through the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Mini syllabus for: explore figure sketching techniques/simplification

Total time: 90 minutes (est 30 min per unit, 10 min per part)

Mini unit 1: Research

• Part 1: OpenAI and Bing
• Part 2: Google
• Part 3: Youtube

Mini unit 2: Experiment

• Part 1: School of thought 1
• Part 2: School of thought 2
• Part 3: School of thought 3

Mini unit 3: Practice

• Part 1: Simple poses
• Part 2: Dynamic poses
• Part 3: Foreshortened and perspective poses

Mini unit 1: Research

Part 1: OpenAI and Bing

Part 2: Google

Why You Should Start with Armatures When Learning to Draw Figures (artistsnetwork.com)

How to draw figures without a model – Artists & Illustrators (artistsandillustrators.co.uk)

Draw Heads On Any Angle, From Your Imagination (howtodrawcomics.net)

Part 3: Youtube

Main school of thought to try out:

• Basic armature
  • Circle head, half for nose line, half of that for mouth line
  • line for neck
  • line for spine
  • line for hips perpendicular to spine
  • line for shoulders perpendicular to spine
• Head shapes
  • circle with lopped side for skull
  • cut cube for face
• Sketchy woodwork for finding pose
  • Keep scratching until a form emerges
  • Erase or lighten then refine
• Advanced shapes
  • triangle tricep
  • triangle forearm
  • teardrop thighs
  • diamond calf
  • box pecs
  • triangle delts
  • pen tip torso

Mini unit 2: Experiment

Part 1: School of thought 1

I practiced basic armature and it looked pretty bad. I think I started to improve when I moved the hips a little higher.

Part 2: School of thought 2

Things started to improve a little here. I really like the method of simple shapes for the head. I felt like I understood the geometry much better.

Part 3: School of thought 3

This is when I used the sketchy woodwork carving out a pose and when I refined it, I used the advanced shaped coupled with everything else I learned. I really really like this method. Gives me dynamic poses without losing the anatomy.

I didn’t get to Unit 3 because I feel complete and it is 2AM and I want to go to bed.

Very happy with today’s progress. I feel like I killed it at the figure drawings and I feel much more confident drawing figures.

Prompt: How good are you waiting for what you really want?

I remember the psychological test where they said that they could predict the success of children in later in life, just by how much self control they have for delayed gratification, and I wonder what child I am. Am I the type of child who grabbed the marshmallow, despite being told to wait by the researchers the minute they left the room? Probably not, when I was a child I was a stickler for the rules. But what if they gave the choice to me? What if there were no rules? Well I suppose it would feel like a cruel test, to believe internally that I would get two marshmallows if I waited long enough but one would never come.

I think now that I’m not good at waiting for what I want at all. But really what I am, is not good at avoiding distractions when I feel extreme discomfort. Am I running from discomfort? Or do I really want something and are not willing to wait for it? The answer isn’t clear to me.

Sleep has always been the beast I had to conquer.

Ever since I left my house and went off to college, it has been increasingly hard to go to bed on time.

It’s killing me. I don’t recover from workouts, my mind is foggy, and my memory mists away. My moods feel erratic and neurotic. Energy during the day is a thing of the past.

And yet I cannot stop.

2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am. I keep going to bed late. And sometimes later and later.

I tried so many times to go to be at a reasonable time. I try for a few days, and then I relapse. But we aren’t giving up. We are trying it one more time.

And I didn’t do it alone. My good friend Edgar gave me this kick in the butt:

So what is my gameplan this time? How am I going to succeed when I failed so many times before?

A couple of things:

1. I will not try to control how much sleep I get
2. I will not try to control my screen habits
3. I will not control anything but one single factor, which is my bedtime
4. At the same time, I will figure out what needs I am meeting by going to bed late and how to meet those needs earlier in the day
5. I will commit to this bedtime long enough to form a habit

I made a list of reasons why I love staying up late at night:

• Completely alone
• Lots of time – no rush
• Sense of accomplishment (if I feel I haven’t accomplished anything yet it gives me more time to get things done)
• Consume art
• Nighttime magical vibes
• Dread of the next day
• More time to eat and digest

I realized that not sleeping is incredibly compelling to me. It is far more challenging for me to go to sleep on time than most people. So as a result, I need to keep it simple. Bedtime at 11 PM for the next 66 days, no exceptions. The challenge will end on December 12th. I am two days into this challenge already.

What does this mean?

• I can eat right before bed
• I can watch videos in my bed after 11
• I can get back up, stretch if I cannot fall asleep, then go back to bed
• I can toss and turn at 11
• I can get up at 6 am if I have work that needs to be done but I don’t have the time to finish it

In the meantime, in an attempt to meet all my needs before bed:

• I will silence notifications and try to find some alone time every day
• I will work to identify a task that is feasible to do and will give me a strong sense of accomplishment every day
  • I will try to get this done early so that I will have larger open times during the day where I don’t feel rushed
• I will pursue more art and magical vibes
• I will try to leave gifts for myself the next day so I have positive anticipation(ex: a clean empty sink, plans for something fun)
• I will try to eat at 8 pm at the latest so I have time to digest before 11

In terms of how to structure the next 66 days, I have not decided yet, but perhaps I will try to focus on each of the needs and strategies every week.

Some additional strategies/thoughts:

• Turning off all the lights
• Melatonin gummies

So far, finding a way to feel accomplished/ready for the next day has been a game-changer in wanting to go to sleep. Also, it is easier to go to sleep when bedtime is a hard boundary that is very strict and everything else is quite relaxed (I can still get less sleep and wake up super earlier if I feel I’m not prepared for the next day, I don’t have to go to sleep as long as I’m in bed). Nothing is tempting as a valid excuse/difficult decision anymore.

So tentatively I feel this time will be different. My hope is that after 66 days, I will no longer have to try to go to bed at 11, it will just be automatic, and I will start to cherish my sleep and life in general!

I’ve been doing pretty well on the social front of the Sales conference, keeping in touch with myself and keeping my boundaries. But the same problems that plague me at home, plague me here.

Specifically, sleep, or lack thereof. I’ve been exploring the feelings that keep me distracting myself with games, videos, and other things. I’m trying to understand this desire, this hunger for stimulation that I have within myself.

It feels like a hunger, and hunger comes from emptiness. I wonder what I am missing in my life. I feel that it might be blood flow. I want to feel like this amazing warmth and flow to my body where my mind and body is open and stimulated.

Meditation has been a great boon to me, I’ve used it to calm down, to get answers and to reduce the inflammation I feel from lack of sleep.

I’ve also explored other physical avenues such as stretching, warmups and self massage.

My feeling is that self-massage comes first, then, mobility exercises and finally stretching.

Here are some of the videos I did today that were pretty good:

But my journey in this has just begun.

I really feel the need to understand what is the appeal of gaming and watching interesting videos internally. Perhaps that isn’t even the key. Perhaps the key is to give myself more freedom and permission. Perhaps this is a trigger for caging myself in and shaming myself so I’m not fully in touch with myself.

I’ll at least give it a shot. I realize there is a big fear in me that if I let myself do what I want, my life will go off the rails. I am going to face that fear and feel it and see where it leads me.