you are where you are meant to be

The other day I opened a Dove chocolate to find a message inside that I’ve been thinking about ever since. While I don’t remember the exact words, it said you are where you are meant to be, supposed to be, something like that.

Where I’m meant to be? What is that supposed to mean? I’m supposed to be a 24-year-old living with her parents trying to get her life together and get a grown-up job?

And then I really thought about it. With a few events that have also transpired in these past few days, the answer to that has been a resounding yes, I am exactly where I need to be. It may not be where I want to be (which is living the life of a successful novel writer and film director in Hollywood) but it is exactly where I need to be, and that is much better. So I began to think about what has brought me to this moment, to this place.

When my life fell apart a year ago and I moved home (I left LA a year ago this week), I was frustrated and couldn’t see how this was all going to be a good thing. My plan was to get a job as soon as I got home, save up money, and try again in a year or two. But God had other plans, as he always does, and I have been slowly discovering them.

I had emotional healing that needed to be done. The past few years of my life had really beat up on me and I was falling apart. Moving home turned out to be a good thing because I was in an environment that promoted that healing. Second, with everything going on with my family, they needed me home. My dad was finally diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, explaining the past ten years of his life where his health rapidly deteriorated, my mom has been overwhelmed with working full time, and my little brother is finally in high school and joined marching band–with an extensive practice schedule. Turns out having me around to help with driving around Wesley, cooking a few nights a week, helping with some of the cleaning, helping Wesley with homework sometimes and practicing trumpet a lot, and just generally being the extra help was huge for my parents. Being around once my dad started recovering from sleep apnea has also been healing our relationship. I am much closer with my family than I have been in a long time, and I am in a better mental and emotional state than I have been in a long time as well.

And as for seeing maybe some results from my work? Although a French Horn player, I spent 4 years in high school marching band and 1 year in Glassmen drumcorps as well as being a horn performance minor in college, so I know a thing or two. And I tried very hard to use that with Wesley, especially to help him prepare his band placement audition music. He said it made a huge difference for him. Also, we’ve all heard the drastic improvement in his playing. He’s talented, but he just needed some help to really tap into that.

So while my plans to get a job immediately and work and save up money and move back to LA fell through very soon after moving home, God’s plans were moving right along.

In the past year, I have been where I was needed the most. And now with something blowing up in all our faces, God has prepared me and fortified me to be strong enough that I can help hold up my family.

Sometimes it’s comforting to know that while being a Christian isn’t easy, and while my life still typically sucks, I am where God needs me, fulfilling a role only I can.

If you take anything away from this, know that while sometimes you can’t see the rhyme or reason as to why you are where you are, know that it’s just part of God’s plans, and perhaps in time, you will be able to see the bigger picture. God will put you where you are meant to be.

The little things

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to what I eat, how much, how often, calorie count, what’s in what I’m eating, and so forth. Over the course of a week (and a few days at this point) of being extremely careful and doing some research on weight loss, I’ve learned a few things that should seem obvious, but maybe aren’t. Or weren’t at least to me.

Lessons on salt/sodium:

1. I didn’t realize how drastic a different my sodium/salt intake would have on my diet, but after hearing about it on The Biggest Loser, (yes I watch that show), a bunch of things I knew suddenly clicked together. Like connect the dots, but with facts.
2. Salt/sodium causes you to hold onto water weight, which can be a few extra pounds. When you’re trying to lose 15-20 lbs, 3lbs of extra water weight is a big deal. (I don’t know how much extra water weight anyone carries, I was just giving an example.)
3. It’s okay to still have salt, but really cut back. Sea salt is more potent taste-wise, so you can use less of it but still get a salty taste. A lot of foods already have a fair amount of sodium because not only is it a flavoring agent, it’s a preservative. So even if something is low calorie, it may be high in sodium, which isn’t going to help you lose weight.

Lessons on sugar:

1. Like salt, it’s okay to have some, just cut back. Moderation is key.
2. Your body is addicted to sugar just like it would be to drugs/tobacco/alcohol. It will crave sugar to no end when you deprive it, so it’s better for you to keep a little sugar in your diet rather than cut it out entirely.
3. It’s best to get your sugar from natural sources, like fruits. At least that way you also get a ton of nutrients.

Lessons on carbs:

1. When you start cutting back on carbs, your body will hate you and that’s all you’ll want to eat. Why? Because eating carbs causes your brain to release hormones/chemicals that make you happy. Which is why carbs are go-to comfort foods. They make us feel better. This partly comes out of thousands of years of evolution and our bodies naturally wanting to store fat for when food is scarce. Carbs are full of energy that is easy to store.
2. Cutting out carbs entirely, just like with sugar and salt, isn’t a good idea because it can backfire in your face and cause you to binge eat. It’s okay to have some, but limit it. Sandwich rounds (they’re 100 cal per 2 slices/one complete bun/round) are a really great way to give your body carbs without intaking a lot of calories. Buckwheat pancakes are a great way to trick your body/tastebuds into thinking it’s getting carbs. They’re also quite tasty.

Lessons on exercising:

1. Doing 30-60 minutes of cardio a day makes a huge difference. Working different muscle groups each day is important. Rotate through, legs, arms/upper body, and core/abs. I’d heard you needed to rotate, but I don’t think it ever clicked, so I just did a lot of running and my body built up endurance which made it hard to see any results from just running, although it’s still good for me.
2. Shoveling snow seriously counts as a good upper body workout. I shoveled 2 driveways last week and monitored my heart rate and it totally counts. A lot of household type things can count as an exercise if they get your heart rate up and are working muscles. Don’t be afraid to count an hour of cleaning as cardio.
3. Staff at Drumcorps are right when they say “stretch and drink more water” is the answer to just about everything. Dynamic stretching is much better for you than static stretching, so make sure to be moving through your stretches. I learned how to stretch from dancers, and in doing the full stretching routine (about 5-10 minutes worth of dynamic stretching) I notice a significant difference in how I feel the day after working out. Also, dehydration is a leading cause of headaches, so drinking tons of water can help prevent headaches. Cool, right?

Other food lessons:

1. Black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper are all spices that encourage/boost your metabolism.
2. Dark chocolate is an anti-inflammatory food, meaning that it helps your body get rid of extra water weight. And it’s totally on the approved diet food list. Women around the world, rejoice!
3. Your body needs fat intake in order to get rid of fat. Just make sure you’re giving it the right kinds of fat. Olive oil, grape seed oil, avacados, salmon, and nuts are all good fats for you. If your body isn’t getting fat, it will hold on to the fat it has because it thinks it’s going to be starved. A little bit goes a long way though.

General lessons:

1. My mom got on board with my diet and exercise thing because she also wants to lose weight/build up more muscle. Having someone else you’re around who is working towards the same goal makes such a difference on the emotional and mental level. The support and encouragement and accountability of another person makes what you’re doing real.
2. Always push yourself to do more. It doesn’t matter where you start, but the point is that you should be striving to do more every time. So if you can only do 10 pushups like the wimp I am, strive to do 12 the next day and strive to do more the day after that. Don’t compare yourself to anyone but yourself. This will also help you accept your body easier and be more comfortable in your own skin.
3. It’s okay to get frustrated. Everyone’s body works differently, so while one person may be just shedding weight left and right, yours may be stubborn and hold on to it for a long time. My body holds on and holds on and then will suddenly lose a pound or two, then holds onto that fat for dear life again before dropping more weight. I have to realize that this is how my body works.
4. Any progress is good. Progress is progress, always remember that.
5. Just get moving. My dad is overweight and trying to just be healthier, so yesterday he started by walking around the block. If that’s all you can do, it’s fine, because you are doing something.

So what progress have I made in the past 10 days or so? I’ve lost about 3 lbs. It fluctuates based on how much I’ve had to drink and when I last ate. But I’m seeing progress. Slowly but surely, I’m going to get there. And it’s the little things I’ve been doing, along with the big things, of course, that are making a difference. My goal is to have my weight within the Navy’s requirements by the end of April, and I think I’m going to be able to do it. I am seeing my body shrink, but not where I want it to shrink yet. First was my butt, which was sad, and now my legs are shrinking. I’m hoping that next is my stomach, because that’s where the most fat on my body is. Fitness gurus say though, that’s the first place your body gains weight and the last place it loses it. Just keep going.

Fat Frustrations

This has been the story of my life. I gain weight, and then manage to turn the fat into muscle, and so I never really shrink. So once I’ve gained weight, it’s on for good. And my body LOVES weight.

I lost weight while at Glassmen Drum and Bugle Corps, but the lifestyle was so extreme that my body couldn’t actually hold on to the weight. When you’re basically doing cardio and strength building combined for 15 hours a day, 7 days a week for 3 straight months, it doesn’t matter that you eat 4 meals: your body burns far more calories than you can intake at that rate. At my thinnest I weighed about 145 lbs and wore an 8. It took 3 years to gain back all the weight I lost, and then a significant amount of stress over about 2 years packed on an extra 20 lbs and I’d grown to a size 14. I eventually started running just to try to prevent further gain. Since last July, I have managed to drop 12 lbs and one size, but it’s been hard work. I still have a lot of work to go, and I can’t afford to go at this sluggish pace any longer.

Here’s why: if you read my last post, you know that I was looking into the Navy’s Arts and Photography program. I met with a recruiter and talked with him (and the Air Force recruiter that came in the office while I was there) and found out I have 2 things holding me back from joining. First, that I’ve been on anti-depressants before. My great-uncle, who was career military, said that shouldn’t be a problem since I’ve resolved things (he also wants to swear me in if I get accepted), and second, that I’m 15lbs above the Navy’s BMI height-weight limits. The recruiter obviously doesn’t understand female bodies when he said so nonchalantly that all I had to do was just drop some weight.

I have this extra fat that won’t leave me, and it frustrates me to no end. So I’ve done research into why it’s so hard for me to lose weight even when eating healthy and exercising.

Oddly enough, I’m on Cedars-Sinai Medical Center mailing list, so when they put out their medical magazine… quarterly, I think, it comes to my house. There was an article in it about weight, and the significant factors in why we weigh what we do.

And we are all very well aware that a healthy diet and regular exercise and paramount to good health. But what we did not know until very recently is that what is already inside us–genes, hormones, fat cells, and microbes–may be as important as the food we eat and, in some cases, more so.

Against the obesity epidemic, behavioral and lifestyle changes too often fail to produce any significant lasting changes. To find out why, scientists are taking a microscopic approach to the problem, with research into the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control appetite and weight gain–and their findings could have a sizable and much needed impact on disease prevention.

There are a staggering number of statistics in the article about how much weight is killing people, and even 10 lbs of excess fat can put you at higher risk for heart disease. And high obesity rates are a significant contributing factor to an estimated 90,000 cancer deaths a year. So what role do fat cells play in further weight gain?

Fat cells send out a host of hormonal and chemical signals that help the body maintain its energy balance. When people gain excessive weight, their fat cells plump up, and these oversized cells churn out more of these signals, negatively influencing the body’s production and use of insulin, the hormone that instructs muscles to burn energy and fat cells to store it.

So basically if you’re fat, you’re more likely to continue to gain weight. And producing more insulin isn’t the answer because your body does that to compensate and too much insulin can damage arteries. But that’s the first factor. Your body is already fighting against you. This alone explains so much of my frustrations at being fat, but it’s only the first part.

And now genetics: some 50 genes play a role in obesity. So basically we are genetically programmed to gain weight, and 40-70% of that is genetically inherited. So if you have at least one fat parent, chances are you will veer towards that. This suddenly explains everything about me, because my dad has been overweight over half my life, and he has always had a hard time keeping weight off if he lost it (he’s been in Weight Watchers a few times and the weight always comes back with a vengeance). So my frustrations at being fat extend all the way into my own genetics. Great.

The third factor in the article: microbes and bacteria.

Unfortunately, some microbes in the gastrointestinal tract that might have been useful thousands of years ago–when out diets were radically different and food was scarce–can cause problems now that we are no longer hunter-gatherers. Our gastrointestinal evolution has not yet caught up with the modern Western diet, which is high in fats and sugars and changes the composition of the microbe colonies, activating enzymes that promote fat storage. This ability once kept out ancestors alive; now it facilitates obesity.

Apparently it’s the bacteria that produce methane that are the worst for weight gain. So basically people who have really rancid gas are more likely to gain lots of fat.

The article goes on to talk about how shedding weight through exercise and diet is possible, but then it goes on to talk about why keeping the weight off is such a struggle. And not a will-power struggle, a physiological one. Our bodies are programmed to store fat through thousands of years of evolution and genetic mutation. Hormones in our body go haywire when we lose weight and won’t regulate again until weight is gained. Even a year after weight loss, hormone levels are still whacked. To top that off, your body will slow your metabolism when weight is lost, so you can’t lose weight so fast. Energy conservation.

So I have every right to be frustrated that losing weight is so hard even when eating right and exercising several times a week. I’m fighting against four factors that I have no control over. Genetically I inherited a fair number of fat genes, so it’s a wonder that I’m actually as thin as I am (mostly because my body doesn’t have issues turning fat to muscle, just dropping weight), and who knows what kind of bacteria reside in my gut (my dad has the really smelly kind, which means he has the fat-inducing bacteria), and then hormones are basically telling my body “No, having none of this weight loss.” Considering that in the last few weeks I suddenly dropped about 5 lbs, my body is probably fighting really hard to gain it back while I’m fighting really hard to keep going, meaning that I’m probably just preventing my body from gaining the weight back.

There are more factors outside of the article that I’ve known about for a long time. Being female, my hormones and gender play a huge role in weight. Female bodies should be at about 18-24 BMI, which is much higher than numbers for men. Our bodies simply need extra fat on them because of the whole child-bearing factor. So hormonally, our bodies will try to keep more weight on us. Also, carbohydrates trigger the release of hormones that make us happier. Hence why carbs are comfort foods and why when stressed, that’s what we want to eat. There are dozens more factors that play into it. And again, I just end up frustrated that I have all this extra fat that won’t go away.

So I’ve drastically cut my calorie intake and upped my workouts in hopes of sort of jump starting my system and forcing it to do things, although chances are it won’t. And before you freak and think oh dear, she’s going to go anorexic, cutting calories is far different from not eating. Veggies are freebies, and I consider those calories not to count because of how many nutrients are involved. Fruits I try to limit some, dairy a lot more (although greek yogurt is one of my favorite snacks and there’s no fat and it’s low calorie for a good sized serving), I’ve only been eating lean protein like fish and poultry for nearly 2 years now, but the big thing is what I snack on. I can’t just go grab a spoonful of peanut butter when I’m hungry. That’s 200 calories. For one spoonful. Really, this whole calorie counting thing has simply made me incredibly aware of what I’m putting in my body. Breakfast is oatmeal (130 calories a packet), lunch I try to keep under 300 calories, and dinner I allow about 500 calories for. This gives me wiggle room for a snack or a cheat, as I refuse to deprive myself of carbs and chocolate. Actually, dark chocolate is an anti-inflammatory food, meaning that it helps your body get rid of some water weight. Plus it means I don’t get cranky because of being on a diet. So I’m allowed to have a little piece every day without feeling guilty.

They say it takes around two weeks for you to start seeing changes in your body once you’ve begun big changes like working out and eating right. I’m at the end of my first week in this, and I’ve seen… my butt shrink, but no weight change. I’m kind of upset about my butt shrinking because it helped me look like I had curves going the right direction, and now I just look like a board. The scale tells me at best I’ve lost 1 lb. But my weight though the day can fluctuate about 2 lb in either direction depending on when I ate, how much water I’m drinking, and so forth. But I’m still frustrated. I just want to be able to lose weight like a guy. A diet for two weeks and they’ve lost like 10 lbs. And it’s not like I can quit drinking soda or stop eating junk food and magically lose weight–there are very few things I could possibly cut out, and I love eating veggies so nutrition-wise I’m doing a lot of things right. I’m just fighting an uphill battle where everything about my own body is fighting against me. Depression is easier to work through and get past than losing weight.

what I’m worth

There’s only so long you can run before the truth catches up to you and you have to face your demons. I have been running for a long time, from the biggest demon of them all: self-worth in relation to purpose.

As a Christian, I believe strongly in God-given purpose, that we as humans are each uniquely designed to do something. The revelation of this purpose was a high point in my life. When The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition came out with the two extra discs full of “how we made it” stuff, I was in heaven. And from that moment on, I knew I wanted to do that. With each new film, I was entirely engrossed in the bonus materials, enthralled with a world of creativity and art and story telling. So I went to college and got my BA in Media Communications with an emphasis in Film. I spent a year post-graduation out in Los Angeles trying to break into the business with no success, whereas all these people around me practically walked into jobs in the industry.

My self worth was utterly destroyed by the fact that for an entire year I had to watch everyone around me break into the business and start to be successful whereas I was lucky to even get temp work.

With a history of depression and some nasty self-worth issues to begin with, thing spiraled exponentially, and I became convinced that I was entirely worthless and incompetent because I wasn’t serving the purpose I felt designed for. I moved home, and after months of looking, managed to get a part time seasonal job at a retail store. Even though I wasn’t doing what I felt designed for, my self-worth went up and I felt like for once in my life, I wasn’t the kid picked last at recess. But then that ended, and I started looking for work again. With nothing. Just sending my resume off into the wild blue yonder and waiting for a response that will never come. And once more, my self-worth took a nose dive.

So I started reading any and every fantasy book I could get my hands on. Why fantasy? Because it’s the only thing that can pull me so far out of reality that I forget how insignificant and useless I feel. It opens my imagination up to the idea that maybe I’m something special, maybe there’s an adventure I’m about to collide with and my life will magically take off into some unknown excitement as happens in these books.

But at the end of the day, I can only run for so long before I’m smacked with reality telling me I’m entirely useless, unwanted, worthless, purposeless, incompetent, incapable. Redundant. There is nothing I can do that someone else can’t do a thousand times better. Yet this doesn’t mesh with what we are told as children of God.

So how to you reconcile that?

I don’t know.

As Christians aren’t supposed to place our self-worth on careers, wealth, status, anything like that. God thought each and every one of us was so worth it that Jesus died for us. He thought we were worth enough to create us in the first place. I spent years thinking that I was a mistake God made and forgot to fix, and it took a long time to repair that perception with the truth of being a very purposefully, lovingly created human being. God didn’t screw up when He made me, and there is something in this short lifetime of mine that I was expressly designed to do, some purpose that only I have, some task that I alone am capable of.

The truth is so much harder to accept than the misconception of redundancy and worthlessness. And it hurts to no end to have all this supposed talent people keep telling me I have when I can’t see it, when I just look at my drawings and see scribbles that turned out looking like something, or when I hear my music and know I’ve heard a hundred people play this piece better, or when I look at my film stuff and think that it’s never good enough, that I should have done a thousand things differently, better. I only ever see the mistakes in my work, and usually that’s how I feel people see me: they only see the mistakes I’ve become. They look at me and see me as no better than my work, and if they see my work as poorly as I do, then of course no one would think I’m worth anything more than a few well-placed scribbles. In a society that defines you by what job you have, unemployed seems to be the ultimate worthless-human category.

Today I talked to a Navy recruiter about a specific, highly selective program they have. A friend in the Air Force, who has seen everything from my sketches to finished pieces, as well as having spent a lot of time in the Naval Art Museum, told me I was good enough to get in, that I should look into it because I could do this. It was the first time I’d felt hope about my life in a long time, hope that for once I was good enough at something. I’m waiting to hear back on whether my BA would help get me into the program, hoping that I could take in a portfolio of my art and photography and someone would finally say yes to me.

And the idea of being in the Navy, of traveling around the world taking photos, writing articles, creating videos, doing art, seems like the fantasy adventure I’ve been waiting for my life to collide with. The prospect of basic training scares the living daylights out of me after hearing horror stories from friends in the service and a former drill sergeant I had as a high school English Lit teacher. (Not to mention the fact that I had a soccer coach who was also a former drill sergeant and I mouthed off to him a hell of a lot and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was his best defensive player, it would not have gone well for me.) But being told no again, being told I’m not good enough, is far more terrifying. Why? Because I dared to hope. I dared to dream. And I should know better by now.

The only one who has ever seen me as worth anything has been God. He is the only one I’m not a redundancy to, and that is the most bittersweet feeling I know.

So what am I worth?

misfit not-monday

I haven’t been doing monday updates this year, so life is kind of flying by and I’m only partly remembering to blog. But considering how boring my life is, there is little to blog about these days.

First of all, we’ll start with more artwork. Photoshop and I are in the early stages of our relationship, so we’re still kind of figuring out how to make it work. Sometimes this goes well, other times it’s basically, Photoshop I don’t even want to see your smug face right now leave me alone or start helping me out here. After my last success, I thought I could do this whole art thing, and then five attempts at the same drawing later, and I was eating my words. Eventually I found the brush I was looking for that works for what I wanted to do, and things started going much better. Here’s where I’m at now:

As you can see, it’s going… well? There’s basically JJ Abrams lighting going on here and I’m not looking forward to that, but it’ll look awesome when done, I think. I hope. Without the dynamic lighting, the background just looks blah. So yes, here is the wonderfulness that I’m working on. Yesterday evening I did most of the skin in about 2 hours, and then today I worked a little more on the skin and then the hair, which went a lot faster than I thought it would. The chainmail is where I’m going to die.

I’ve also been doing a lot of figure drawing lately because my understanding of musculature is… well…. limited. I can draw females that have my body type, and skinny guys (I dated one for a long time), but I have no idea how to really draw just bodies in general. Especially muscular guys or really thin girls. But you don’t get to see any of that because it’s just my personal stuff.

Second on the updates is that my mom is now on a health kick. The combination of her health kick and mine has suddenly caused me to drop about 5lbs. Which means that now suddenly most of my clothes are a hint loose. Which is way better than being too tight, so I’ll take it. So what am I doing to lose weight?

• lots of vegetables. The whole fruit and veggies thing, but especially the veggie part.
• I eat a small piece or two of dark chocolate every day. Dark chocolate is an anti-inflammatory food, but it’s also keeping my body from craving extra sugars and fats because it’s getting a little.
• talking my dog for 30-45 minute walks. And not leisurely ones, but at a faster pace. Sometimes I’ll run 3-4 miles instead.
• being overly aware of what I choose to snack on. Greek yogurt and roma tomatoes are sort of my favorites right now, as well as the constant favorite, red pepper hummus.

So really the big thing is more diet than exercise. Veggies fill you up fast with lots of nutrients and low calories, and you can eat as much of them as you want without having to think about portion size. Portions are also another big one–technically a portion is far less than you think it is. Your body doesn’t need as much food as your inflated stomach will tell you it does.

My mom and I are making veggie soup for dinner, and it smells heavenly. It has tomatoes, edamame, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, zuccini, and parsnip in it, as well as a bunch of spices. Just the smell of it is heavenly. This stuff is pretty much killer weight loss food because you can eat tons of it (although it fills you up fast), and it’s full of nutrients and not calories. Yeah, so there’s salt in it because it’s a hearty-flavor soup, but a little sea salt goes a long way. Oh man, just the smell of it right now is making my mouth water.

Third: BB Cream. It’s been the latest beauty buzz since last summer, so I decided to give it a go. It’s awesome. I have the Maybelline kind and it’s wonderful. It’s way lighter than a foundation as far as coverage, but it has a lot of good-for-your-skin stuff going on and it looks far more natural than foundation does.

Fourth, I saw Beautiful Creatures last wednesday, and without having read the books, I have no basis to judge it by, so all I can do is say whether it was a good movie or not. I liked it. A lot. I might go see it again. Probably should do a full post on the review of it, but I think it can be summed up pretty easily: a great young adult film about a witch (“we prefer the term Caster”) who is faced with being claimed for the light or the dark, and how her love for a mortal (he is unreasonably charming and handsome) impacts that. No love triangles, nothing that takes away from the main plot, which is about Lena and the curse over her family and her upcoming claiming.  All very witty too. I liked it.

I saw Warm Bodies the week before and it was also very good. I’m not a rom-com fan, but a zombie rom-com? It totally works because there’s action, adventure, brain eating, and kind of creepy love all narrated hilariously. I highly recommend it.

Lastly, I’m addicted to this game on facebook, Marvel’s Avenger’s Alliance. I love that game. A lot. It’s taught me that Marvel’s female heroes are significantly cooler than all their male counterparts. So let’s have some female Marvel movies now. Seriously, there’s a good market out there. But let’s do some costume redesign so they’re not all running around in basically glorified swimsuits.

Well, that’s about all.

a long time coming

I worked a seasonal job, and the big thing I saved up to get was CS6 and Lightroom. Now that I have it, I’m slowly figuring out the whole digital painting thing. I’ve always been bad at it. Like, really bad. I had Corel Painter for a few years before I even learned how to make custom brushes, and it was because my sister walked me through the brush creator.

So here I am, determined not to be terrible in Photoshop, trying to learn the painting side of it. I learned how to use it in college, but I didn’t do much with it, especially since I’ve never been much for digital painting. I hit my stride with the Oekaki BBS system, and was good at that. I understood how it worked because it had like 4 functions. Simple.

This is the kind of stuff I was doing. As a high schooler.

While not the best, it’s pretty good. I’m still impressed by most of it. And then, just compare these to the following, which were done in Corel Painter during college and even after college.

Just terrible, right? Just terrible. Cringe worthy, really.

Well, I’ve been trying to get used to PS and what better way than to practice coloring on some sketches of mine? If you read my last post, you will have seen them at the end. Not bad. Each one I did I felt like I improved from the last. That’s a good sign.

And then I thought, well, why not try to do what you’ve never been able to do, and that is a successful piece of digital art that reflected what you were capable of as an artist?

And this was the first evening of work:

Just atrocious. I thought for sure at this point that digital art was beyond me and that I’d forever be a traditional media girl. There’s nothing wrong with that, except oh wait we live in the digital age and people expect artists to be able to do EVERY medium, not just…. oil paints, graphic pencils, color pencils, watercolors, and ink. Well, and acrylic, but I don’t like acrylic for the same reason that most people do: the drying time. The next day I woke up and said, I wonder if  I can fix this.

Yes, yes I can. I mean, it’s not completely fixed yet and her hand is a trainwreck, but it’s better, for sure. And actually looks like the actress and not like the horrific attempt from the night before that just looked…. sad. Like a blurry little sad mess. But this–this I could work with. So I kept going….

Uh, what? I might be good at this? STAHP. Let me tell you the parts I am most proud of:

• the bracelet and the cast shadow from it
• that mug. Look at that mug.
• how I managed to cut out 2 people from the background of this.
• that shadow from the hair on her face.
• did I mention the mug? The bracelet?

Stay tuned for the final version later…….

I’m going to talk about what I’ve been learning in PS now, from just this piece.

1. The smudge tool is NOT your friend. Just don’t even go there. The blur tool? That’s okay if you just need to make a line not sharp, like the background stuff.
2. CS6 is supposed to have increased pressure sensitivity, so even my bamboo tablet suddenly becomes amazing. Corel Painter has sensitivity, but it’s an entirely different program.
3. Keeping one finger over the ALT key is awesome. Why? Because when you’re using the brush tool, holding ALT gives you the eyedropper, so you can get a color in between the colors for shading purposes. Works wonders.
4. The dodge and burn tools are really good in PS. Not in Corel Painter, because it’s meant to be a painting program, not a photo editing program.
5. PS/CS6 comes with some really nice brushes already loaded in. And for the casual/hobbiest/sometimes freelancer artist like myself, I don’t really need much else. But finding the ones you like and resonate with is important, and will vary from piece to piece and on stylistic choices. And then you can just go in and edit them easy peasy anyway.
6. Understanding coloring, lighting, shading, and so forth is important, and if you know it in traditional art, it will eventually transfer over. It may just take a little push. Or reading an artbook that talks about them in relation to digital media. Thanks to my sister, whose artbook is in the editing stage right now.
7. Sometimes you need to deviate from the original image you’re using as a reference, if you are, that is. Colors may need to change, shading may need to be deepened, and artistic choices will need to be made throughout. As the artist, you control where the eye goes, more than you think.
8. Keep track of your layers. I painted something on the wrong layer at least a dozen times, and one was so much that I ended up merging the layers because of it.

And lastly, have the trailer.

Book Reviews: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass

First, you should know that the majority of books I end up reading either are films already or going to be made into films. I like things that translate to films, plus it tells me that there is a large enough audience behind it that it’s probably a good book. The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Chronicles of Narnia, anything by Jane Austen, The Golden Compass (the movie floundered at best), and plenty more; lots of good books. Not always, I’d like to point out. In any case, my reading habits are largely influenced by the book-to-film sort of thing.

I finally finished the third book in The Mortal Instruments series. And by finally I mean I’ve had it for 2 weeks, versus the two days it took me to devour the first two books. Originally, Cassandra Clare wrote the first three books to be a trilogy, and to never go beyond that. However, she wrote two more and is in the process of writing the sixth, making it sort of a secondary trilogy. I’ve heard those focus more on Simon, to some extent.

I thought I’d throw in my voice amongst the din of voices talking about these books. Widely popular, and I have seen why; Cassandra Clare has a way of spinning intricate tales directed towards a young adult audience.

So let’s sum things up really fast.

City of Bones: Clary sees what she thinks is a murder, but no one else can see it. One of the “killers” starts following her, but she doesn’t freak until her mom is kidnapped and when she returns home is attacked by a demon sent by the mysterious villain, Valentine. She ends up killing it, and Jace, one of the “killers” takes her with him to the Institute. Turns out Clary is a Nephilim who was raised as a mundane and had blocks put on her brain to make her forget what shadow world things she saw. Enter Magnus Bane, the warlock. He sort of fixes her. Sort of. And Clary’s best friend, Simon, gets turned into a rat and taken by vampires. She and Jace go to save him, and werewolves appear. Awesome getaway later, and the whole gang (including Alec and Isabelle) are after the Mortal Cup. Turns out Clary and Jace really like each other. Clary figures out where it is and goes to get it, along with Alec, Simon, Isabelle, and Jace. A greater demon (super powerful) attacks them and Simon swoops in to save the day. Hodge (the kids’ tutor) turns out to be in league with Valentine and hands over the Cup and Jace after snatching it from Clary when they arrive back t the institute, whilst Magnus is healing Alec. Clary and Luke (sort of like her dad. Also a werewolf) go after Valentine because he also has Jocelyn (Clary’s mom). Luke tells Clary that Jocelyn was once married to Valentine, and fled the shadow world to get away from everything that had happened and protect Clary from it. Clary’s mom is in a coma, and it turns out that not only is Clary the child of Valentine and Jocelyn, so is Jace, and Jace was raised by Valentine in Idris. Hurl. Valentine escapes after Jace is unable/unwilling to kill him.

City of Ashes: Clary and Jace are like wtf do we do now cause we still like each other. But Clary and Simon start dating. The Inquisitor shows up and imprisons Jace in the City of Bones with the Silent Brothers. The omg Valentine comes with this demon of fear he summoned and kills all the brothers and steals the Mortal Sword. Alec, Isabelle, and Clary rush in to save Jace, but Valentine is already gone. The Inquisitor thinks Jace is in league with daddy dearest Valentine. Alec, Simon, Jace, Isabelle, and Clary go to see the Faerie Queen, and she makes Jace and Clary kiss. Simon gets upset and leaves, only to be brought back by the creepster vampire Raphael on the brink of death. He’s turned. Ooops. The Inquisitor imprisons Jace after he visits Valentine and finds out his plans, but refuses to join him. Jace escapes because he’s basically Superman, and they all go after Valentine again. The rest of the Clave in NYC comes and helps in the battle on this massive boat, as well as Luke (who has played a big role in the book, actually). Demons everywhere. Valentine is turning the Mortal Sword evil so he can summon and control demons. The Inquisitor dies, Simon is drained for the sword turning thing(but he’s not dead dead. Just undead.). Jace finds him and lets him drink his blood, defeats the fear demon, and then Clary (who can create runes–no one else can), creates a rune on the inside of the ship, with Valentine watching, that tears the whole ship apart into pieces, thus ending the battle. And as the sun rises, turns out that Simon can now be in daylight. No other vampire can. A shadowhunter tells Clary that she knows how to wake up her mom, who is under a self-inflicted spell.

City of Glass: It’s time to go to Alicante, the capitol of Idris, the country of Nephilim (Shadowhunters.) Jace lies to Clary to prevent her from going because he doesn’t want the Clave to find out what she can do. It’s not normal. So as he’s trying to convince Simon to convince Clary, the Lightwood family is attacked and Magnus must quickly send them through the portal to Alicante. Jace brings a wounded Simon. Who is a vampire and not allowed in Alicante. The Inquisitor takes him and imprisons him, hoping to frame the Lightwoods. Clary creates a portal (part of her special powers) and takes Luke to Idris with her. Clary says she needs to find the warlock Ragnor Fell, and Sebastian (the Lightwoods are staying with the same people he is) offers to take her to see him. Ragnor is dead and Magnus is there instead, pretending to be Ragnor, and makes a deal with Clary. He’ll wake up her mother in exchange for the Book of White, which has the answer to how to wake her up and is a powerful Warlock book. Clary and Jace go to the old Wayland manor house and Clary retrieves the book, but they stumble upon a secret basement where Valentine did experiments. He has an angel imprisoned there, and he shows Jace and Clary memories. Jace was an experiment with demon blood. Meanwhile, the demon towers (they protect Alicante) suddenly go powerless and demons flood the city. The Gard (where the whole Clave meets) goes up in flames as the adult Shadowhunters race out to save their children. Clary and Jace manage to break Simon out of his cell, and he insists they save the other prisoner too. Who turns out to be Hodge. Hodge knows that Valentine intends to summon Raziel (the angel who made the first Shadowhunter) and needs the mirror, which is Lake Lyn. Sebastian shows up and kills Hodge and runs off. When everyone comes back together, turns out Sebastian also killed the youngest Lightwood–Max. Clary convinces the Clave to ally  themselves with Downworlders in order to battle Valentine’s army of demons, and creates a rune that binds them together. Jace goes after Sebastian. Jocelyn shows up and tells the whole story. Sebastian is really Jonathan Christopher–the real offspring of Valentine and Jocelyn and the demon one. Valentine gave angel blood to Jocelyn while pregnant with Clary, though he didn’t know. He also gave angel blood to Celine Herondale–Jace’s mother. So they’re not actually related!!! Everyone goes off to battle the demon army, Clary marks Simon with the mark of Cain to prevent Raphael from killing him, and then she goes after Valentine. He intends to sacrifice her as the final step of summoning Raziel. Meanwhile, Jace and Sebastian battle it out, Isabelle shows up and helps out some, and then Jace kills Sebastian and heads after Valentine. He gets there in time to be Valentine’s sacrifice instead of Clary, and then summons Raziel. But Clary changed one of the summoning runes, so that she is the one who can ask Raziel for something, not Valentine. Raziel shows up, kills Valentine, and then grants Clary the one thing she wants. She asks for Jace. So he’s brought back, and everyone goes back to Alicante. There’s a celebration for the victory over Valentine, and Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike are all together. Jace and Clary can finally be together.

So there’s the short summaries. They were incredibly addictive books. The world Clare creates is incredibly interesting and brilliant, along with her characters who are all multidimensional. When it comes to the plot line, it progresses at a steady pace that leaves you hungry for more. Normally, the second book in a trilogy is sort of the weak one, where there’s a lot of just boring stuff that has to happen to wrap up the first book and get it ready to tie into the third book. However, I felt that the second book kept everything going. Yes, one of the main parts of it had to do with how Clary and Jace were in love and hated that because they thought they were brother and sister. But it spent more of it’s time focusing on Valentine’s plotline and how tortured Jace was over the whole thing with Clary and his father and the whole confusion as to who he is.

I left out a lot of the good stuff. The books are chock full of good stuff. There’s not an easy way to talk about it, but to just say that Cassandra Clare has written a masterful tale, created a beautiful world within our own. And as any good book series should, it inspires me to want to write, to create stories within the incredulous world of Shadowhunters.

Overall ratings:

City of Bones: A+
City of Ashes: A- (mostly because it’s hard to deal with the whole siblings in love thing)
City of Glass: A (it tied up everything nicely, except Sebastian’s body was never found…)

The three can stand alone, or you can go on reading the rest of the books, which I’ve heard are full of Clare’s twists that break your heart. Oh, something I definitely appreciated with this series was that although there’s a love triangle, it’s never the central part of the story. Simon likes Clary, but Clary and Jace are in love. When they find out they’re siblings, Clary and Simon give it a go and decide they’re better as friends, especially since Clary’s heart is really with Jace. Love triangle quickly resolved. And I love that it was never Clary being confused as to who she liked. She knew who she wanted.

I sketched some Shadowhunters, colored in PS. Jace, Clary, and Isabelle as I imagine them.

Now off to the library; I have book 4 on hold there.

toughen up tuesday

Foreword: Sorry about the lack of monday updates in the last month+. Tried out doing the weekly blogger update and eh… whatever. Maybe not my thing so much. Now on to the actual post…

 

Last year I started running in the mornings and built up from a mile to 3 miles before I dropped the habit in July. This year, determined to drop the holiday weight and then some, I started running again. I’m running 4 miles a day, and today I managed to impress myself with beating my best time by nearly 3 minutes. I run a slow pace, my best time being around 39:30 for 4 miles. While a real runner could run 4 miles in half my time, I’m still going for it, and that’s what counts. Today I ran it in 36:40.

What. Crazy.

I feel pretty tough right now, especially because I am in no way a natural runner (I’m a swimmer). After the first mile I always wonder why I thought this was a good idea. And then I look in the mirror and I think, yes, that’s why.

Getting tough (or thin), 4 miles at a time.

 

Other things in my life right now include planning 2 trips for this coming year; one to Savannah, GA to visit my older sister and the other to NYC to visit my soul mate (aka best friend Nicole). We’ll see how this all goes.

I also dyed my hair again. Because I’m working on growing it out, cutting it except for trims and such, is basically off limits, leaving dye as the only “fix my boredom” solution. This time it’s dark red, but it’s only temporary because I didn’t know how it would look on me.

Not sold on it. I think it’s too dark of a red. Plus, I forgot that when I have red hair, it makes wearing red problematic, and red is one of the big chunks of my wardrobe.

Lastly, I updated my art and photography pages. Check em out!

Oh, for those who do read my blog, what kind of things would you like to see me write about this year? Art? Book and film reviews? Makeup/hair stuff? Just let me know!

Book Reviews: The Infernal Devices Series: Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince

Cassandra Clare is the author of The Mortal Instruments series, the first of which, City of Bones, is being made into a film due to be released this coming summer. Considering that I’ve never read the books, I’m actually quite excited about it and it makes the short list of films I’m looking forward to.

However, Clare wrote another series to act as a prequel series for it, called The Infernal Devices. The series comprises of, at the moment, two books with a third being released in another two months. Upon growing tired of waiting in the long line of holds at the library on City of Bones, in The Mortal Instruments series, I decided to see if I could find it at Half Price Books. I didn’t. What I did find was Clockwork Angel, the first book in The Infernal Devices, and I thought, oh for $5 why not? With having read only the back of the book, and already being hooked after seeing the trailer for the movie based on City of Bones, I thought it’d be worth it.

And it was.

Clare creates a world that feels like it could almost be real. The best lies are spun with truth, and the world she creates is much of that. Her characters seem to be a modern take on how people of that historical time would act so that we’re not bored to tears and feeling like it’s some strange historical science fiction story like Speaker for the Dead. I was anything but bored, unlike Speaker, which I couldn’t even finish I was so bored by it.

The book starts out with a great deal of mystery, followed by misery, followed by a dark adventure with potential danger at every turn, and still a great deal of mystery with a hundred unanswered questions for every answer discovered. While clearly a YA fiction book, I couldn’t devour it fast enough. I tend to love YA novels because there’s less the air of haughtiness that more adult/normal fiction has. It’s meant to be about the story, not my ability to be impressed by the vocabulary or cleverness of it. Clare is incredibly clever, but delivers her story in a way meant to simply keep you reading, not reaching for a dictionary.

So the adventure of Clockwork Angel abruptly ended in a sort of sorrow, and then I rushed (the next day) to the library to get the second book after confirming they had it on their shelves. That was saturday afternoon, and I couldn’t even crack it open until that night, at which point I could hardly put it down until a few hours ago when I finished it.

Book two, Clockwork Prince, is not nearly as good as the first, dwelling far too much on the emotional attachments of the protagonist, Tessa Gray, than on a driving plot. She is more caught up with Will and Jem and another stupid love triangle than she is with Mortmain, the mysterious villain with an even more mysterious attachment to Tessa. While I find this annoying after the fact, in the moment it’s entertaining enough, and the overarching plot comes in to play enough that I couldn’t put it down. Well played, Clare.

The characters are well developed and continue to develop as the series unfolds, bringing new discoveries and new challenges. While each is elating, they are also heartbreaking, for Clare has designed everything as a double-edged sword. On her part, this is incredibly clever, and shows how well thought out her writing is that you can desire and dread something so fully in the same moment. To add to her cleverness, each new answer brings with it more questions, leaving me, at the end of the second book, desperate for the next, despite my disgust with love triangles, a treacherously tangled web of which she has weaved.

Clockwork Princess, the third book in the series, arrives in mid-to-late March, and I’m itching to read it right now. Although not as powerful as my need for Harry Potter books was for seven years, Clare has ensnared me in her Infernal Devices series. It’s a fantastic read for YA fiction, entertaining, engaging, imaginative, ingenious, and paced perfectly. Each page leaves you hanging on the words, and each chapter drives you forward with new curiosity and desire to answer the hundreds of questions she pours forth.  Being written in a third person narrative style, the reader is often aware of things relating to the main cast of characters that others within the cast are not aware of, the knowledge of which caused me to press ever onward, cursing myself for not being a faster reader. With the title Clockwork Princess, and with constant reference to Boadicea–a Celtic warrior queen–the Shadowhunter training in Clockwork Prince, and the direction Tessa seems to be going in, I have high hopes for this next book, believing that Clare is going to bring Tessa out as a huge warrior princess, make her shine in her own light, and no longer the half-defenseless girl she begins as. She has certainly set it up to go that way, at least from my point of view.

I really do hate love triangles. Clare has made the mother of them all, with best friends–soul mates, if you will–falling for the same girl. Curse her for that while keeping the plot so engaging that you are swept away in all of it. Altogether, other than the love triangle tainting the second, the first two books are wonderful, and even including the love triangle, they are incredibly engaging and entertaining.

Overall:

Clockwork Angel: A, a completely captivating story definitely worth a read.

Clockwork Prince: B, entertaining, enthralling, but lacking thanks to more time spent on a love triangle rather than the true overarching plot.

art: a process

After my sister gifted the most amazing watercolors I’ve touched in my life, I’ve been mildly obsessed with them. Forget those pencil drawings I love; I’ve got watercoloring to do. Hence why Ron Weasley and JGL are still sticky-tacked to my desk half finished, whereas I’ve been cranking out the watercolors. Also because Ron is wearing plaid and JGL is in stripes and why do I always pick reference photos with complicated clothing patterns? In any case…. here’s how I do these watercolors.

First, here are the materials I’ll be using on this:

clear blending marker (optional), white color pencil (for last little touches, but also optional), graphic pencils, eraser, sharpener, watercolor pad, watercolors (Dr. Ph. Martin’s), sable brushes (#2, #8, and 3/4 wash), sketch paper, water, paper towels, and reference image (on the computer)

1. I start with a reference photo I like, and then make a sketch of it on a piece of paper sized appropriately for the watercolor paper I’ll be using. Then I’ll take a soft graphite pencil (like a 4B or 6B) and color all over the back of the piece of paper with the sketch.

Simple sketch with just hints of shadows marked on, and the back of another sketch that I’ve scribbled on.

2. I position the image where I want it on the watercolor block, and with another pencil (a normal HB works fine, but make sure it’s not super sharp) trace, with some pressure, the specific lines I need. Clean up the watercolor paper. The lines I need should be dark enough for me to work with, but light enough that they won’t be distracting.

Basically I’ve made my own transfer paper so that I can have the sketch–lightly–on the watercolor pad. Eraser is on hand.

3. At this point I decide what color I want to use, as this is part of a series of single-color paintings. I have a tiny bit of Indian Yellow and Scarlet sitting around that I’ve been waiting to use, and yellow is the perfect color for Molly. However, before I touch the watercolor paper, I need to do a color test to see how the color reacts to amounts of water and if this really is the color/color mixture I want.

I just use the initial sketch paper for a color test. Here I decided on a whim to add some red to the mix and liked what happened.

4. I’ll start with my wash brush and wet the paper I want more in shadow, and then add a light wash of the yellow to start, trying to guide the color a little. The initial wash is really important because it sets up a lot of the faint shadows and such.

the first color wash will set up whether this is going to turn out good or bad. This wash says good because I got the color where and how I wanted it.

5. Duel-wielding brush time. I’ll have a fine-point in one hand and a wash brush in the other. The fine point has color, the wash has water, and this is how I slowly darken areas until it’s what I want. This is where I start doing the larger details, more shading, and such. The fine details, such as the mouth and eyes, I’ll leave until last.

Screwed up a little here by having too much red on my brush. A tiny bit of that red is extraordinarily potent, and so I decided I just had to go with it. Part of art is learning how to roll with the punches.

6. Once I’ve gotten most things finished, it’s time to do the eyes and mouth. Louise Brealey, who plays Molly Hooper, has a slightly odd mouth shape here, and her teeth are showing, which is annoying at the least. Teeth are hard to do.

chose to make her teeth indistinct. I added in one other color to my fiery mix to have a darker tone for the deepest shadows. Also, I really hate that the color balance in my room is so awful a computer can’t fix it.

7. Clean-up time. Sometimes it needs it, other times it doesn’t. Really depends on the painting. In this case her eyes need just a bit of love. I have a white color pencil I’ll bring in to do highlights or any cleaning I need, and then a signature and it’s done. Oh wait, except for the part where I blast it with fixative. Stuff smells terrible, but it helps seal the color in and prevent possibly future damage from water.

“You were wrong; you do count. You’ve always counted and I’ve always trusted you. But you were right; I’m not okay.”
The final scan took out a lot of the yellow from the image, which I can’t figure out how to get back without the reds becoming overpowering.

Sounds pretty easy, right?

Molly is such an amazing character, because even when John can’t see Sherlock, she does. She never stops seeing him.

So in light of that I’ll talk about my color choices for her. I wanted to do Molly in tones of yellows and golden browns, but a yellow-orange color ended up being the one that felt right to me. Here’s some production design babble on the significance of this: Orange is what’s generally known as the people’s color. The color of the ordinary person, but it is also, in color theory terms, a color of energy and life. Unlike orange’s counterparts–the powerful and aggressive yet passionate red and the energetic and obsessive yellow, orange bears none of the negative stigma. It is bright, hopeful, yearning without the pain. Lively. But also the color of a deceptively ordinary person. Molly is this. She is the ordinary person exemplified, but she is a thousand times more, special and anything but ordinary, and that’s why orange is right for her.

Orange is the color of the people’s hero, and that is who Molly Hooper is.