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Warm-up doodle. Trying to play around with different body types and mass distributions in females of the same height. These still feel very same-y, though, so I’ve got to push things more. 

See that terrifying mucoid blob in my hand? I tried making seitan from wheat flour today. 

After much kneading, rinsing, boiling, and sauteeing, I ended up with the rather more appetizing plate below: dressed in sesame oil, vinegar, and garlic, on a bed of rainbow chard. 

Guys, be grateful that this shit doesn’t happen to you once a month

also known as the reason why I should not look at recipes late at night →

this is real lust

I was in an art supply store today and came across the smallest kolinsky sable brush I have ever seen - it was a 5/0. I licked it (that is not weird okay, you have to wet the brush to test its snap) and tested it against my hand. By god, I felt like I could conquer any fucking doll eyebrow in the world. It was also $23, which is sufficiently exorbitant for a brush with about ten hairs, each a few millimeters long, that I just bought a cheap synthetic instead. But it was a sable! :c

And for the longest time, I’ve been using the cheapest acrylics I could find, but I finally felt the consistency of Liquitex’s soft body acrylic, and it is exactly the kind of fluidity I need but arghhh, they are expensive too. But I feel like it would absolutely be worth the investment, especially because in painting miniature eyelashes and eyebrows, I don’t go through it very quickly. 

By the way, if you have no idea what I am talking about

I paint dolls

oh my god this photo is old I think I was a high school junior or something here ;_;

protocol for when you get your period after it’s been on an extended leave of absence

1. go to the bathroom
2. see red stuff coming out of your hoo-ha
3. stare
4. stare some more
5. is this real life
6. okay
7. run to the nearest person and gesticulate wildly while pointing manicly at a stained piece of toilet paper and your general pubic region
8. (this is only really acceptable if the nearest person to you is your mother)
9. give a big fucking middle finger to anorexia
10. POP SOME FUCKING ADVIL
11. wait for the cramps to come
12. post about it on tumblr

I spent an undue amount of time thinking today

about what I have going for me, and more to the point, what I really don’t have going for me, in terms of my innate abilities and qualities. 

I’m not physically attractive. I’m not socially graceful. This precludes the possibility of me realistically being able to bag some wealthy man who would be able to support me financially and thus making the not inconsiderable expense that oil painting incurs from materials alone a non-object. (And really, I’m not here to lament not being pretty. I’m just saying that if I was a looker, I would leverage the fuck out of that just because, practically speaking, it makes sense)

I have a bunch of debilitating character flaws. I hate confrontation (and unfortunately, by “confrontation”, I mean “most forms of social interaction”). I am indecisive. I waste time and cannot structure my own time productively. I get caught up in negative thought cycles far more than is strictly healthy. I get stuck in rigid routines that limit my ability to be flexible and social. (this has manifested in its most ugly way in my eating disorder, I guess) I have a tendency to destroy relationships with the very people that want to help and support me. I distance myself from my friends, not because I don’t value them, but because I am simply lazy.  I’ve never felt pressured by financial necessity, because everything I’ve ever wanted has been provided for me. I’ve always wrestled with issues of control, and for most of my life have felt an intense lack of agency because I am not financially independent and lack the balls to try and support myself. I find it difficult to take the initiative to do things. Until recently, I’ve found it nearly impossible to empathize with other people, and even now, it is an active effort because I realize that I was so un-personable that I was actually putting people off. I’m incredibly self-absorbed, and painfully narcissistic. I have grandiose ideas of what I could achieve if I could overcome all this, and I think a large part of my drive to succeed is actually rooted in a craving for validation from others. It’s not like I’m suffering from crippling self-doubt or something - I actually do know what I’m capable of achieving, but I’m just too fucking spineless to go out there and get a fucking job or internship or do something productive with my summer. 

The only thing I have going for me is that I have a pretty good work ethic. Even that is sort of conditional - I’m at my best when there’s externally imposed structure. A schedule, a deadline. And I know I’m not stupid. I hope that using big words somehow proves that. 

So, the willingness to work for hours and hours and hours on end without getting burnt out, and a decent vocabulary are all I have here right now. I don’t even understand why I think these qualities are enough to get me anywhere in life. 

Oh, and I missed my biggest flaw - my tendency to go off on long soliloquies to no one in particular while wallowing in the biggest pool of self-pity there ever was. 

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This is a really uncomfortable position to hold while trying to draw, by the way. I want to say that this is what accounts for the incompetent anatomy fuckups and the iffy line quality, but that’s just me sucking at life. 

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In other news, I bought a romanesco broccoli today. Inspecting it up close is terrifying as fuck. 

Spent a few hours today derping around and trying to do a copy of that Georges de La Tour. 

Several problems: 1) I can’t paint for shit 2) I have no idea what La Tour’s real process involved 3) I managed to plan the placement of the whole composition far too low and amputated poor Mary’s feet 4) I’m working on a sheet of canvas pad, which takes paint completely differently than a stretched canvas - there’s no spring-back every time you touch the brush to the surface, and it just seems like the surface sucks up all the paint and it is very frustrating, and nothing that I know how to do is working

idk is this educational for me