I was thinking that I wouldn't be that keen to see Eminem in concert, but who am I kidding? I'd love to see him live.
I'm always thinking ahead - thinking about what tomorrow and the next day holds. There have been times when the future held no viable options.
It's hard when you're stuck in vicious cycles that just go on and on and there's no relief. The only relief is the thing that makes things worse.
There's a fascinating detail that I realised recently about Isaac and Jacob in the Bible (not that it's any great secret, it just occcurred to me recently). Neither of them were actually the first born son. That's important because, in ancient Israel, the firstborn son was regarded in a special light - he received a double portion of inheritance, had more authority and was given a special blessing. The first born was considered pre-eminent. In Judaism and Christianity, we consider Isaac and Jacob as being pre-eminent. We talk about God as being the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Bible doesn't say a lot about Ishmael. Ishmael was not the child of Abraham and Sarah. He was the child Abraham had with Hagar, Sarah's slave, because Sarah thought she would be unable to have children.
I've always been very aware that Jacob was not the first born son (even though the difference in ages was a matter of seconds or minutes, because Esau was his twin). The issue of Jacob not being the first born is forgrounded by the account of how Jacob actually tricked Esau out of his birthright. A lot of the drama and narrative of Jacob's life flowed from that event. I hadn't thought of Isaac as being the second born because the Bible focuses on Isaac being the first born son of Abraham and Sarah. But then I was reading about Islam and how they revere Ishmael and I realised that Ishmael was actually Abraham's first born son.
I first got my wacom intuos a few years ago. The intuos is a drawing tablet that is just black and you draw on it and see what you draw on your computer screen. You use different software to create digital art. Then, a couple of years ago, I bought a 'wacom one' which is a display tablet. It's a bit like an ipad, where the drawing tablet is a monitor (or, in the case of the wacom one, a copy of your computer monitor) and you use the pen to draw on the screen. I was really excited when I first got it. It's amazing how it works. You just plug two chords into your computer and - voila - the screen of the tablet exactly matches your computer screen and you can draw on the screen.
But there are problems. The main problem I have in transitioning from the intuos to the wacom one is to do with the mouse. I use a laptop and I use a mouse with my laptop. I never got the hang of using the mousepad on a laptop. And the way drawing tablets work is that the pen is like a mouse. As you move the pen over the tablet, the mouse pointer appears where you're positioning the pen, so when you draw on the tablet, the lines and shapes you're creating appear on the screen in that place. So, in theory, you use the pen to actually select the pens, brushes, brush sizes, effects, etc. as well as drawing. But I never learnt that. When I'm making art using my intuos, I hold the pen in my hand and I keep using the mouse as well, to select brushes, etc.
So, one of the challenges of learning to use the wacom one is that I have to use the pen as a mouse, because I'm working at a separate table - working directly on the monitor, but not my computer monitor. And also, I'm just not used to drawing on the monitor. Just as an example of the challenge.....I'm used to working on my intuos positioned to the right - and quite far to the right because I need space for my mouse - of my monitor. You're meant to put the intuos in front of your computer but I don't have space on my desk to do that. I've never thought anything of this. It's just the way I work. But, then, when I went to work on the wacom one, it was totally weird. I can't work with the tablet in front of me. I can't even draw a line. It's totally disorienting. It's like trying to cut your hair in the mirror or when you accidentally turn your screen 90 degrees on your computer so the mouse pointer doesn't move in the way it's supposed to.
But these are not insurmountable obstacles. I know that because of my experience with the intuos. I was really excited to get a drawing tablet. Then, when I got it, I tried to do art as it's supposed to be done - I tried drawing the way artists do. And I can't even draw on paper the way artists do, and because drawing on a tablet is harder, I couldn't do it. So, I put it away. It stayed packed away for maybe a year. But then something happened with my art - with my traditional art, as in art with pens, paints, pencils, markers, etc. I was working in sketchbooks, and I stopped thinking about how other people do art and what is good art, and I was just creating - just enjoying using the art materials to create. One of my obsessions is using language in art - letting language and images interact. So, most of my art has writing in it. It's like music in a way. The words have meaning and sometimes that becomes more prominent but the words are also part of the creation.
Then I started taking that same approach to using my drawing tablet and the different art programs. I just wanted to use them and create. At first, I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't know how to realise what I had in mind so I just did my best with what I knew. I learnt some things from watching youtube tutorials and I learnt a lot from just using the different programs and my intuos. I think, objectively, a lot of my art isn't that good, but it has its own charm. The exciting thing, for me, is that it's actually art. I'm making art. It was also exciting how my technical skills developed the more I created. I learnt how to use layers and different effects, not by trying to make art the way other people do or how it's 'supposed to be' but by making my own creations.
I haven't really done much lately, because I haven't done much of anything lately, but, all going well, I'll actually start using my wacom one soon.
