March 29

Okay, so maybe i have been slacking off a bit. ButI have something to show for it!! See, what I've discovered about myself is that when i learn something new, put it down for a while and then come back to it a while later, I get a lot better at it. Doing things this way has cut my Rubik's cube solve time from 1 minute 10 seconds down to 50 seconds, and further practice cut my time down to 34 seconds. With yoyoing, taking a break allowed me to land tricks i never was able to before immediately after picking it back up. With digital painting, I've gotten a lot better somehow. I'm not sure why this happens, but it's been pretty consistent through everything. 

I messed around a bit with the tools this past week (monday or tuesday) and i could see a difference. THEN, my prof for the course showed me a tool that i already knew about and i THOUGH i knew how to use... well, lets just say i was wrong. I had no idea how to use it, but now that i DO know how, I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!! It finally feels like I'm painting on a canvas instead on a computer screen.

So, to show what has changed, I'll show a project that I've been working on for a few weeks. The goal was to make a Renaissance style self-portrait. Here's the first version (before the break).

So... I'll say it's okayyyyy. Not finished yet because i got sick of it and that's why the shirt is all wibbly-wobbly, but overall i really don't like this one. It's flat, feels dirty and just bleh.

Fast forward to after break when I tried new stuff and my prof showed me how to use the tool. I decided to redo the portrait. here's the re-done version.

SOOOO MUCH BETTERRRR. It's not flat. the colors are better. everything feels soft and blended. The darks are darker, the lights are lighter and it just feels so much better overall.

And that's not the only one. There's this one from March 27 of Andrew Huang:

And this one from March 28 of my girlfriend:

It's just like whaaaaaaaa???? There's a difference here for sure. I don't know if it was more the 2-3 week break I got to refresh my brain, the  knowledge of how to use the tool, or both but I'm happy with where this is going.

As a side note, this has also happened with oil painting. I was getting nowhere fast with my skill, eventually I just broke down in the middle of class, got a counseling session with Barb (my painting prof) and from that point on all of my preconceived notions on how to paint just ran away and my skill grew exponentially. I don't have any before/after pictures for them, but trust me. It was significant.