Wednesday 1 April 2015

Art, Skate and The Actual Gym

ART

Specifically still trying to create things faster and better without having to think so much throughout. The latest thing I made was something that makes me feel I'm going in the right direction with regards to the kind of work I want to be making. It's a portrait made from a range of elements from other projects.  There is a lot wrong- as always, but the process was better-chucking lots of things into a photoshop file and putting them together in a more experimental and committed way. The style is getting better, still quite weak and constrained but with some areas that look more effective and free. Things to work on- generating textures and assets for a project rather than grabbing them from old random things, and finally doing more paint and mixed media portraits.


SKATE

The stand up thing! It's on. Slowly. Really slowly and awkwardly on. Getting over being fucking terrible at it, one abysmal 180 at a time. Pretty much the only thing I can do in terms of downhill is put together an ok run of peep. An ok run of peep is just put in a big slide and don't fall off, so I've only really been working on big not very technique heavy slides into a corner and not falling off. And it is time to expand! Grabbed a Chopper 3D from lush to feel as locked in as possible- will hopefully inspire confidence! Need to get a basic grounding in sliding each way standup and then from there it's just improve those things. What I've done before is have a little go every now and then, get discouraged, and don't build a platform to work on. Do I sound like an idiot if I say I see people doing 360's and things and really want to do that? We'll see what happens! Enjoying a lot so far.



THE ACTUAL GYM

I don't know if I've written anything about this. Anyway, joining a gym was a really big deal for me, I was fully nervous. Some thoughts were- am I going to be kind of wandering around and feeling really awkward? Am I going to feel too self conscious to do what you have to do to become less weak as fuck? Am I going to be able to keep this up or will I quit and feel terrible?

So on the first point, wandering around and being a bit awkward. That's something a lot of us do. For me I was nervous of figuring out where everything was, I didn't want to be looking lost and out of place. I booked up an induction/tour and it's surprising how quickly you pick up where things are. This was the first step in my head, figure out where things are and feel more comfortable going about what you're doing due to that. I'm really into irrationally stressing out over new things and places, but being more accepting of that frees you up to figure out ways of dealing with it, rather than being down over dumb shit being bigger to you than other people.

The second point, about feeling self conscious and being super weak. The main things that you learn that mitigate this are, firstly, for the most part people are paying attention to their own stuff. Secondly, once you do something that you thought would be really embarrassing- I've sat on a seated row machine, reached forward, grabbed the thing you're supposed to hold, gone to pull it back and realised that the handle in fact is on the floor and needs to be attached to the machine, what I have got hold of is a part of the machine itself-you notice that nothing that bad happens. A massive arrow doesn't appear over your head saying "Professional Wasteman on tour, tickets available now". Thirdly, doing anything for a while usually makes it feel more natural and less like you're going to have to go into a corner and dig a tunnel through the floor and out of there.

The third point, I had a clear idea that I wanted to figure out where the things I needed were, what I was going to do with them, then put that into a kind of routine, and gradually get into doing that each week. New things are a lot less scary when you transition into them at a rate you feel comfortable, and it's not a negative thing if you have to do things really slowly. The main point is that you get to do what you want.

Progress in all areas, feeling good about that.

High fives.

Will


3 comments:

  1. Hey really nice post, awesome to hear your observations regarding your art and design work, looking forward to seeing some textual stuff from you. And about the gym, yeah, it's prettyhorrifying to think you are going to be really exposed, but then you realise that everyone is there just focusing on themselves and most people there are really not that fit and are just doing something for themselves in their own time. So well done, keep it up, and maybe I will take you to my gym and give you a right good thrashing and probably embarrass you!

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  2. Also, sorry about all the grammatical errors in my post, I have started dictating my messages because I have got fat thumbs

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  3. Yo! Cheers for the words. Finding a lot of concerns are pretty widely held but like you say, most people are there to do something positive. Dictating your messages! I hope it's all being typed up by an unpaid intern in the corner not just some hipster app...

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