Learning Art as A Polymath!
2025-02-24
Good morning, evening, or night to all our precious readers of 2025-02-24. Fun fact of today, I just learned about the difference between being a generalist and being a polymath. A generalist is someone who has breadth over multiple variety of subjects, while a polymath is someone who has mastery over the subjects they command. So it turns out, I fit the description of a polymath more better than being a generalist, as I am striving over mastery over the subjects that I pursue in order to create something new and novel. Here is a somewhat mandatory random picture of the day!
This is a drawing I made of my old original character named Staym Malfunk. She was part of a game I was working on called Atherwund.
Today marks the 18th consistent days I spent drawing, with one day of accidental break. I normally would be using my time to work on my Mathematics, but recently I found that drawing is actually really fun once you get to a certain level of art. It all took for me to learn a bit of The Elements of Arts, which consists of multiple elements which I am also quite lazy to write it all out, perhaps tomorrow? Now, I wouldn't call myself an artist now, but I wouldn't know at what level I'd have to be at to become an artist. I don't like putting myself in such restricting labels, because they don't serve a purpose other than to let your employer know what position you might be good for.
And honestly? I really am enjoying the process of learning art. I know for sure that the skills I learn will eventually transfer somewhere somehow, and having a sort of art skill is valuable especially when paired with a business, STEM and whatever else outlook. In every field, there will most certainly be a need for art. However, I'm not exactly privy towards learning just for profit. I am more inclined to learn for the sake of learning, and that art will one day transfer over towards my skill. It will be incredibly useful if art supplemented whatever I'd been working on in order to increase my ability to actually learn.
Why did I start? I may catch myself wondering sometimes. I think it's that I'd always admired people who could make pretty good art, and I wanted to also be the person who could express themselves in such manner. I was also interested in making game art myself because it was quite difficult to find someone who could do the job well. So, as the old adage go, it takes a man to become best girl.
In terms of progress, there were dozens of days where I couldn't progress at all because I didn't feel like drawing art at that time. Those days were less productive for art and more productive towards my study of Mathematics. Regarding Mathematics, though, it seems like I'm plateauing a bit in terms of progress because I'm currently on stale ground right now. Let's ignore Mathematics first and focus on the arts though.
I'd like to say that learning values was incredibly encouraging, because it taught me how to shade well without focusing solely on shading. It was a pretty motivating experience when I was finally able to make things look 3D just by applying dark family, light family, and halftones. Learning to colour was incredibly motivating as well, because it made my art pop a bit more than just black and white, and the process of adding colours was incredibly satisfying with colouring markers. No more troubles of colouring anymore, it's like a paint bucket but real.
If I'm being honest, the thing that contributed to my current drawing being as good as it is for the 18th day, I'd probably say it's because of line practice. From the line practice, I learned actually draw lines curvy, straight, and with confidence and accuracy. Granted, I'm not a master at it, but it helped my art to become more and more clean. If I'm being honest though, shapes and forms was surprisingly hard for me. However, the challenge itself is the reward, because the fact that it's hard for me right now, make it easier for me to create forms mentally in the future.
Currently, I'm focusing on human anatomy for now, because well, as of right now, I'm trying to represent the human form as best as I can, while it being stylized. It also serves as good form training fortunately. Honestly, I think that's it for now. I'd really like to talk more about art, but I can't think of anything.
Supposedly, this post is supposed to be about arts, but I'll take the opportunity to share some other parts of my life as well. I had realised I am still a bit jealous of other people's achievements back in high school, and hearing praise for them dampens my mood a little. Though, when I reassure myself that right now, I am incomparable to them because of my current learning goals, it still leaves a sour feeling in my mouth. Still, what my thought was about isn't exactly wrong, and I should probably use the advice I gave to a troubled friend of mine, just have confirmation bias towards the good! Again, I have no energy to give to envy other people, I only have energy for myself so it doesn't make sense to be comparing, especially when we won't meet again.
The second thing is that I'm a bit worried about how I have not been doing Mathematics in a while, and I am getting pretty bad at doing proof based questions. I can tell that I'm improving, but getting the questions wrong is a bit demotivating at times. However, I think I'll just slowly chip away at the book, I don't really need to do everything now. I think what's contributing to the feeling of slowing down is because of the gradually increasing difficulty of the exercises. So, it's imperative for me to not be too hard on myself, and devote more time into lifelong learning.
Third, I'm being distracted by my devices a lot. Especially on my phone, when I constantly check on Discord to see if there are any messages that I miss. That is bad, really bad. It provides a smokescreen on what really matters, and it is also not really an easy thing to deal with. It all starts with early morning. If I use my device early morning, it will set a precedent to myself in the future to be overstimulated and those type of negative things. This is not good, and I need to start dealing with it as soon as possible as to not hinder my progress in terms of pursuing learning.
Fourth, my sleep schedule is not good. I usually sleep tomorrow, so it isn't exactly sleeping yesterday, but today. That is the first time I'd used all main day related descriptors all in one sentence. I still do get 8 hours of sleep though, but then this relates to a bit of my problems in the next problem that I will be listing.
Fifth, I'm not exercising enough. Normally, I would exercise around the morning, well back then when I was actively exercising, but that would be at around 4am. I likely need to adapt my schedule a bit to accomodate for exercising consistently everyday, but the problem is, it takes a lot of mental effort to continue being consistent, and that's honestly not something that jives well with my ADHD-addled brain. Regardless, I need to take care of my physical as well, exercise is important for a healthy life.
Sixth, I haven't been working on my YouTube channel as much. I really want to make videos, but the slight problem is that I cannot stick to editing long enough to actually be uploading videos. I also can't create a good flow that would make someone want to keep watching, and the lack of story, coherence and ideas as well is what's making me not able to make as good as a video I'd like. I'm not exactly great at talking to the camera as well, since I forget all my lines and stuff. Well, whatever, though I wanted to start a great YouTube channel, it'll have to go on the backburner for now until I get it all sorted out one day, perhaps I need to dedicate a day to focus on just content creation and to get my shit together?
Honestly, I think that's all of my worries for now. Writing them out made some of my worries much clearer now. I should be able to tackle them once I gave em a bit of a read. After all, I'm not really the type to dilly-dally around and wallow in misery (anymore). I think that's all honestly, I'd just been writing as if no ones going to read. Writing everything here while screencasting is a bit uncomfortable, but it's something that I'll get used to. Again, that's all, goodbye and go kill yourself.