Yoga Butt

Tonight felt like a bit more of a thinking kind of night.

I did some yoga (breath work only - though I may have gotten a bit too relaxed. I think I fell asleep at the end). I'm checking out Yogaglo.com right now. I like the organization of their classes better than myyogaworks.com (you can browse by teacher, duration, style, and level and they also have some lectures as well). It even allows you to set goals to meet (# of classes or # of hours per week) and tracks them. You can even create a queue and schedule what day you want to take a class.

In addition to what I've already listed, they even have classes modified to accommodate your cycle (you are never supposed to do inversions during your period). I don't know if most ladies take that into consideration or if they are just trying to get yoga butt.

Speaking of yoga butt, I didn't even know that was a thing when I started doing yoga. My yoga experience has always involved old hippies. There were never super skinny Lululemon clad ladies practicing yoga, but here in SF they appear to be the only people who practice yoga.

Justin and I discussed the possibility of me taking antihistamines in addition to strict diet to get things under control (and allow me to eat MOAR DIFFERENT foods).  This conversation was held over a bowl of Pho. I had asked for no jalapenos but alas there were jalapenos in it. So far, so good. No reaction to the Pho or jalapenos. This could be huge because I could totally start eating fermented hot sauce again. It's delicious and I have missed it terribly!

Obviously I don't want to take benedryl every day again (I did that for years and still was a mess), so I started looking into natural antihistamines. I stumbled across the blend of Lavendar, Lemon and Peppermint, which is supposed to be a natural antihistamine/anti-inflammatory blend.

Well, I don't have any gel caps currently, so I whipped up the LLP blend in a base of coconut oil. Topically, it is applied to the soles of the feet 2x a day. Even if this does nothing for my allergies, I will have soft, nice smelling feet!

I may try doing the the LLP blend internally using the gelatin capsules, but for now I am going to do the topical application.

I also started doing some rough sketches for another idea I have to add to my skull series.

The Mini Figs Have Landed

I did not get around to making my videos this weekend illustrating the issues with M0rt1m3r.

I spent some time in my garden. I made real cupcakes for my husband. I made a spice cake for myself (with eggs and that was NOT the best idea).

I broke down and bought LED light bulbs for the kitchen ceiling fan (and of course, the hardware store had 2 standard and 2 candelabra bulbs on the same rack - Get home and only 2 will work for our fixture.   BLAH). I have to say even having just the 2 is great (though we have only had 1 of 4 bulbs working for lord knows how long).

Put up some shelves yesterday:

And organized our Lego Minifigs today:

I also organized the bookcase. We finally have books on most of our bookcase instead of stuffs. 

I totally had something I wanted to write about earlier but for the life of me can't remember what it was. 

For now, enjoy the assortment of mini figs. Items to note:Gnome, Spongebob (x2), Sandy Cheeks, The Flying Dutchman, some robots, skeletons, and a hippie. 

Nothing to see here

today.

After last night's frustration with M0rt, I spent some time in the kitchen today. I made broth (a Sunday activity for me), home made sausage meatballs, harvested some volunteer collards and arugala from the plot that is slated to be a compost plot, planted kale, swiss chard and lettuce and researched laser cutters.

I'm currently testing how M0rt, Make the Cut and eCraftshop Pro work with Lappy. Perhaps it will all work better with 64 bit v 32 bit?  Who the hell knows. All I know is that if I am to produce quality work of any sort with M0rt, things better start acting straight. Or I will get lasers. Seriously. We're LaserGnomes with no lasers at the moment.

I seriously spent some time researching laser cutters/engravers. I would love to have one in the Gnomery. It was the main reason for going to techshop, but these days it's neigh impossible to get time on the laser since everyone and their brother is running a business out of techshop AND people are booking far more than 2 hours at a time.

So far MTC seems to be okay running on Lappy, but the first cut almost always runs all the way through. The problem usually occurs on cuts 2, 3 and so on.

The real issue with eCraftshop Pro is the speed at which it runs M0rt. MTC runs a lot slower, which allows for fewer issues with delicate cuts. Neither offers speed control and there is no speed control on M0rt himself. This is a fatal flaw. Running full tilt isn't so much a problem if you are cutting 5x7 rectangles (which I was for my first project of wedding invitations). But high speed and small cuts don't mix well. Same with the laser. You don't want to run full speed, especially if you are doing delicate detail work.

The prospect of a laser cutter would open up a lot of doors. I wouldn't be limited to paper products, fabric and the like, as I would be able to cut items up to 1/4" (some models 3/8" thick). I would also be able to glass etching as well.

Last night in all of my frustration, I busted out the scissors and started cutting (I know I said I could have cut my pieces faster than M0rt by hand, but that was clearly an exaggeration on my part). I still can't use scissors. I have regained A LOT of use of my hand and arm back, but scissors are still NOT one of those things. My arm burned and hurt so badly and I really only was using scissors for about 15 minutes. It was frustrating. That compounded with M0rt issues and disco disco made me feel ready to punch somebody.

I have days where holding a pen is difficult as well (like Friday, I'm not sure what was up, but I really hope my instructor doesn't grade based on penmanship - it was atrocious). Luckily those days are fewer and farther between than they used to be.

M0rt is currently 82% through the first cut in MTC with no problems. We'll see how he does on round 2

365 Days of Zantangles - Day 26

I ended up tearing down part of the privacy screen I put up yesterday at work. It didn't take nearly as long as putting it up, but it was a rather involved process. As flimsy as the stuff is going on, it's a beast to take down. I spend the afternoon scraping adhesive from glass.

I wonder if I subconsciously cut my finger while making dinner so I had an excuse not to keep working on it tomorrow. I do have to say though, doing that is far more relaxing and straightforward than a lot of the other stuff I have to do.

It's been a long week and it's only Wednesday.

I'm not sure what....

is wrong with people.  We just finished week 5 of school.  I actually had an instructor open last module back up for comment (we did a California poster), because only one person critiqued anyone's work.

Can you guess who that person was?  It was me. Of course.

As much as I hate critiques, I understand they are a part of the learning process and it allows us to practice our art criticism skills as well as teaching us to accept criticism.

It is the end of the following module, giving an extra week for critiques of the California posters.  I am still the only person who has critiqued anything.

Here is the poster I submitted.  The goal was to create some sort of informational poster representing California to the world for the period right around the Great Depression (I sort of crammed this in to an all nighter last weekend after Justin's grandparents' 50th anniversary party - poor time management on my part)

If this lack of participation was just in 1 class, I'd think it were a fluke. But it's not.  It's happening in ALL of my online classes.  And normally the instructors are harping on critiques by the 2nd or 3rd week.

Not a word has been said.

In a way it's frustrating because there are a lot of "oooh, I like that" or "ooh that looks really good" going around, but never anything concrete.  In fact, most of the time only a handful of people will have any comments on their work (the aforementioned comments included).

I've not received a single critique from a student so far this semester.  For the campus based classes, we don't crit every week.  In fact, last semester, we only did crits at mid semester and finals.  Class would take forever if we were doing the number of crits expected.

And when did people stop learning how to write a coherent thought?  It just feels like students are LAZY these days.  This school is not cheap.  I bust my butt (and Justin did too) to make the most out of a very expensive situation, but it makes it hard to take seriously when the other students are always just like "DERP".

Anyway, enough about that.

On to some assignments.

In class work over 2 weeks

In class work over 2 weeks

In class work over 2 weeks 

In class work over 2 weeks

Homework - basic foot shape study

Homework - Basic foot shape study

Homework - Basic foot shape study

Homework - Basic foot shape study

I've worked from the model we used previously.  I always would draw him too willowy and make him super elongated.  I was sort of doing the same here.  From the sides, I think I did pretty well with his proportions (I'd like to think I did a damn fine job on the knees).  looking at him head on, he just looks too narrow at the waist.  Unfortunately, we're tearing this one down on Thursday and staring anew.

I didn't do any artwork for my California Art class this week.  Instead our assignment was to write a "virtual tour" presentation teaching a specific audience about the Gold Rush or Native Basketry.

Here's my work from my graphic design class.  I swear to pete I hate cutting magazine paper or newsprint.  Worst task EVER.  Every time you think you've got the perfect piece picked out, the damn x-acto catches and crinkles or rips the paper.  Besides that, it's not like a lot of people have magazines or newspapers sitting around.  I most definitely am not going to go buy a bunch of magazines to cut up so I can have varying fonts (magazine layouts are pretty samey, so you need a variety of magazines to get a variety of text).

For a coming assignment, I've chosen to use the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund as my non-profit to create collateral for.  I think the work they are doing to help protect food freedom is really important.  So that will be an interesting assignment.  

I'm not sure if I'm getting better at tuning out the stupidity of my fellow students or if maybe they've quit being so obvious as I have no amusing stories to report this week.  

Running late..........

Oh I know I'm getting behind in my blog posts.  So much work and so little time (and the addition of my garden plot just adds to the busy-ness).  I've been fighting off a cold this week as well.

Last week (since I skipped it in blog form) I was waiting for the frightfully late shuttle bus (the idea of a school run shuttle is fantastic, but the execution is poor - apparently they have added too many runs/stops and don't have enough drivers), I was speaking with a guy who was waiting as well. I was talking about R2 and my hopes to teach kids 3D modeling skills and expose them to 3D printing. I then mentioned that kids should have no problems adapting because of their tech savvy nature these days.  The guy thought about it for a moment and said "well, I guess that's true here in San Francisco.  Kids don't get iPads in Texas, where I'm from." That led me to say "well, there were no iPads or iPods when I was growing up.  Kids learn quickly."  You could see the wheels turning as he tried to figure out the before time.... Before i devices.

I actually remembered to take my camera to school last week to photograph my geometric model before breaking him down and the start of working from a live model.  I have to say that this is the first class EVER that I have really enjoyed completely.  It's still early (we're on week 5), and this class does make my arm VERY tired, but I'm doing so much better than I had expected (especially stamina wise).  I am glad I didn't enroll in Form Dev for IDS at the same time though.  I don't think my arm could have handled both.

Geometric based model 

Geometric based model

Time to tear him down - so sad to do

Time to tear him down - so sad to do

Back to the armature and time to start all over again. 

Working from live model

Working from live model

Working from live model

Working from live model

Working from live model

 I've worked from this model before and I have a tendency to make him look to willowy. I think I did a great job this week of bulking up the figure. I'll post pictures in another blog post for the current weeks work (and I'll try NOT to do it a week late).

I had an interesting, albeit one sided, discussion in my Art Education class about the legitimacy of digital art and the value of digital tools in the classroom. I feel that digital tools can be a great asset, especially when schools do not have the budget for consumable materials.  In no way do I think that all art should become digital, but if you are trying to scrap to keep art in schools, take ANY tool you can to keep it there.

It seemed as though most of my classmates deem digital art as less valuable and less artistic than "traditional" art forms, even going as far as to say that the computer does the work for the "artist".  When I asked my classmates to define what they consider art, it was the usual "art is in the eye of the beholder and creator" drivel.  They seem to have definite opinions on what does NOT constitute art, but no real definitive opinion on what DOES constitute art.

Where do you weigh in?  I'd be interested to hear what you consider art.

Really?

It's the end of another week of school. I've made it through 3 weeks, only 12 more to go until summer break.

I still can't believe what people think constitutes a "discussion post" for my online classes. No one seems to care about punctuation or spelling (if they typed their responses in Word, they could at least use Spell Check). Most of what is being submitted is gibberish that is incoherent.  It is a rarity when people write a clear sentence.  These are my complaint just on syntax and grammar alone.

It seems that most people think that "I like it" or "That's good" or "I agree with you" should count as their participation in class.  Granted, with the amount of discussion postings we are expected to contribute, we are doing far more work than people in the classroom situation.  If everyone in the class were expected to speak as much as we are expected to type, class would be 10 hours long including lecture.  It can be hard to come up with substantial posts each and every time, but with some thought and effort you can keep contributing to the discussion.

We're on week 3 and I am still the only student actually critiquing the other students' work.  I was glad to see that the things I have been saying are being considered by my fellow students, but it is important that they develop the ability to look at artwork critically and thoughtfully.  "I like it" and "You did a great job" don't really imply that they are looking at the work critically.  The instructors usually have started cracking down on critiques by this point, but it seems as though they don't care this semester.  Weird.

I at least remembered to take photos at my figure sculpting class.  I'm really starting to enjoy this class, which is a first for any class I've taken at the Academy.  Here are a few pictures from class.

We have started working on typography in my graphic design class this week.  We had some fun with "making words move" and here are my results.

I also tried out the school's shuttle bus system this week (after last week's disaster of $32 parking AND almost 2 hours to drive 3.5 miles across town to go home).  Getting there was great.  I picked up the bus a few blocks from my house.  The buses are clean and comfortable AND there was a TV on the one I caught.  They were showing Iron Man 2.  I got to class on time and relaxed.  Let's just say getting home was NOT that easy.  I stayed behind to take pictures of my model, so I missed the bus by 1 minute.  Not so bad, I thought considering there was another bus in 1/2 an hour.  Well, that bus never showed up.  Finally an hour later the next bus showed up and I hopped on.  Well, the "next" bus was a different route and it was taking so long I hopped off by the dorms and walked the rest of the way home.  I probably could have walked across town faster than my trip home took, but once I caught the next shuttle, I wasn't entirely certain where I was.