It sure would be nice to not be in pain all the time

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There are so many things I’d like to be doing with my time, except every time I start on any of them I get a major pain flareup. And that makes it really hard to get into what I’m doing, and then the moment I have any minor setback (such as a problem with the tool I’m using) that just makes the pain explode even further and then all I can focus on is how much I’m hurting.

I’d love to be making 3D models for VRChat or drawing comics or making music, but all of those things just feel so inaccessible to me right now. And even playing games hurts, and even hanging out in VRChat can be pretty painful too because even standing up for an hour at a time is awful (and doing VRChat while sitting down has its own share of issues).

I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about money so much, but gosh, there’s more to being productive than making a living. Quality of life is important and that feels just so lacking right now.

I just feel like so much stuff is locked inside my head and screaming to get out, and I sure wish I could just like. Not be like that.

Plaid!

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I reached another big milestone on my avatar!

Then I used it in an area with a low-resolution mirror and noticed some really bad texture seams around the edges of the pigmentation map. And I’m wondering if the pigmentation map approach is really all that useful for the avatar in realtime.

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Pottery class

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Today I had my pottery lesson at Rain City Clay, namely their “sip and spin” crash-course to wheel throwing.

A while ago I’d bought a cheap learner’s wheel and while I’d had some fun trying to self-teach on it, I couldn’t quite figure out a few basic things, particularly centering, which is, y'know, pretty important. And it turns out there’s a lot of other basic stuff that I didn’t learn by watching a lot of The Great Pottery Throw Down either! Like how to test the bottom thickness, among other things.

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More thoughts on drawing programs

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I really want to make comics again. But none of the drawing programs I’ve tried have been suitable. They’re all overcomplex in ways that don’t help with the drawing process, or buggy, or have enormously troublesome user interface issues.

I used to use Photoshop but it’s gotten unwieldy, slow, and expensive. There were many really nice things in it which most drawing programs fall incredibly flat on.

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More rants about art programs

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I’ve been trying to work on comics again, now that my pain is starting to subside. As part of that I’ve decided to try relearning how to draw comics, in some of the other art programs I’ve bought in an attempt to get myself off Photoshop.

It is not going well.

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My dream art program

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Photoshop has gotten unwieldy, slow, and unstable. It has a lot of features I’ve grown to rely on but sometimes I feel like they just get in the way.

After playing with Strike I’ve come to realize that my relationship with art programs has gotten pretty dysfunctional.

So here’s a list of things that I’d love to see in a drawing program.

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Drawing apps, still meh

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Once again it’s getting time to renew my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and once again I really don’t want to spend a few hundred dollars for another year of access to Photoshop. So as usual I’ve looked at other drawing programs to see what the state of affairs is for my uses, and boy howdy is it still pretty dismal.

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