Saving thumbnails here for when I leave Meta yet again. Thank you for visiting me here and staying connected!
Check out this short video about my favorite art supplies.
Some details I didn’t mention in the video:
When I’m drawing, I need an appropriate sheet of paper. Often at work, I will use a decent printer paper and my mechanical pencil for sketches or basic pencil drawings. These may get scanned in or photographed with my phone for digital work to layer on top, or sometimes just for discussion. The key is to do the planning work, and not make them too precious.
Thicker paper (watercolor, printmaking, or drawing paper) works better if I’ll be adding ink or watercolor to the drawing. I don’t talk about pen and ink in the video, but I use a lot of micron pens and I constantly experiment with other pen brands. I don’t do much pen and ink for medical illustration or fine art, so the experimenting is just that. I do it during Inktober, and year round “just for fun”. That is not to diminish “just for fun” work - we all need to be practicing our craft, and there is a benefit to using art supplies that are a good fit for YOU - you’ll enjoy the time more, and stick with it.
When I do pen and ink for work, it’s mostly in Adobe Illustrator, but I’m doing less and less of that, as I prefer 3D and Photoshop, and that’s what my clients need.
Moving on to my preferred combination for painting: I have been obsessed with Golden Acrylics for about 20 years, since the brand was introduced to me for printmaking. (They make a lovely printmaking medium that you can mix with fluid acrylics for screenprinting.) I love the transparency of some of them, and the creamy smooth richness of all. I use acrylics rather than oils for the speed of drying and the less toxic mixing-with-water properties. I grew sensitive to solvents after a few years of art school. But mainly, I’m impatient. I love to layer, and drip, and I need these things to dry soonish so I can continue on with the piece. I have always liked a nice quality canvas with the staples on the back. I talk about primed canvas in the video, but I do sometimes use an unprimed canvas! I used to stretch them myself, but now I prefer to buy them from another artist. People who stretch canvas all the time do a better, faster job than me.
One more note about art supplies: try to experiment once in a while with non-traditional materials. This art made of a pumpkin + narwhal pushpins was one of the most fun pieces I’ve ever done! Pancake batter, snow, sand, your kids’ scraps and old crayons… sometimes using something different and transitory frees you up to be a little more creative. And you may save money on these projects too!
In an earlier post, I discussed why I’m leaving. You can read all about that here.
My two main challenges have been not wanting to lose touch with friends, and a concern about losing any photos or other data.
I started by posting my intentions and my contact info, inviting friends to keep in touch with me. I wasn’t hesitant since my contact info is accessible online through my business, but if I wanted to be more private, I could have asked people to message me privately on the platform.
I then started messaging specific people, to switch my favorite conversations over to text. I am using a strict no-guilt policy! If I missed reaching out to you personally, it’s because I already have your info or I didn’t get to everyone. And I know you can look me up easily :)
I used a word processor to store collected contact info people gave me. I decided not to make a spreadsheet or anything with rules, it is simply a document I can paste any format into. Just in case I need it later. I also input it into my phone (or at least part of it, like the person’s phone number). If I ever do Christmas cards again, I will need to reorganize my address list, but now is not the time.
A side benefit of moving some conversations off Facebook is that we chatted more in depth! This gave me more confidence in my decision. Texting someone is just as easy as using Messenger, but it feels more intentional and it led to getting to know people who I’d “reconnected” with online years before - but our relationships had remained superficial until now. Here’s a nice example of a text conversation:
I created this website so I could have a personal blog - a place to write instead of posting to Facebook. I had already used Squarespace for my business website, so I decided to use that and I chose a template, creating the site as quickly as possible, and not letting myself get mired in the decision making process.
I shared my new blog on Facebook, and tried to collect the blogs of people I know. I still need to decide how to organize them, perhaps just bookmarks in my browser, something simple.
I considered what news and articles I get from Facebook - I become overwhelmed with those, but there ARE some I enjoy or find useful. I decided that my Washington Post subscription will cover me from a paid perspective, and I also use the freebies from the NYT, NPR, etc. For political figures I follow, I just get too MUCH on Facebook. So I’ll just see them in the news, or go to their website to make a donation or buy a t-shirt. Then I can back away and go on with my daily life. Similarly, if I follow a favorite brand… I can find them when I want to buy something. We have really enjoyed getting ads out of our television life by using Netflix and similar services, and I think this is going to be enjoyable too, not seeing ads and marketing posts. (Consumer Reports works great if I want advice!)
The last step was downloading my info from Facebook. I kind of recommend everybody going through this process, even if you are not leaving. It’s interesting to see your information. It took about 15 min to generate my file, and it was 494MB. If I had chosen “high-quality” for the media, it would have been much larger, but I believe I have the original of any photos that need to be hi-res. It’s kind of neat to see all my comments, likes, and posts, but they are separated into category, so if you are wanting to save all the responses on a particular post, you should screenshot that post for yourself before you delete your account. The messenger threads do seem to be saved in order, by person (so you can go back to a messenger conversation later to check what was said).
I hope this was helpful! Have a great Monday.
Today we visit LEGO®️ Maya in her new office/studio, where she is tidying up her workspace and upgrading her supplies. Maya is going from only 6 basic colors to a large and vibrant palette! More art studio updates to come…
what did you think? (I didn’t include spoilers)
My take: I loved the connections to the previous stories, especially the first trilogy. That vehicle! That helmet! That other helmet! That OTHER helmet!!
I loved the idea that there are more regular, good people out there than power-hungry bad guys..
I loved Rey’s struggle with where she comes from.
I loved General Leia Organa and her part in the redemption story. It was great (though bittersweet) that there was enough footage of the late Carrie Fisher to use for her.
I loved the strong female characters and the lack of romance as a main motivation. Although I like a good love story, sometimes other things happen which need tending to, especially when the Dark Side is trying to ruin everything.
I loved the quick break from work and kids. And if you hated this movie, I feel bad that you can’t just enjoy things. Hahaha. Share your thoughts!
Me trying out Rey’s hairstyle. In the end, I didn’t have time to tuck in all the ends, but I’ll try this again sometime with brown hair-ties.
No boring carbs allowed. Examples: white rice, un-fried potatoes, any bread that is not delicious.
All boring food should be nutritious - try to sneak in a few vegetables this month.
Extraordinarily delightful and yummy holiday treats are a “yes!”
*moderate your own blood sugar as needed.
*I am not a doctor.
I’m leaving Facebook at the end of the year. So I’ve got about three weeks left. The time is to allow me to transition away with relationships intact, and I’ll write a little more about how I’m leaving in another post. This is just the why.
It’s NOT because of annoying posts, envy, not curating my friends/feed properly, or addiction. I have dealt with all these things and found workarounds that made the platform “work” for me. I’m not annoyed by too many of the people I connect with, and when I am… I just unfollow for a while. I feel great when I see updates, for the most part, even if you appear happier than me… I know it’s the edited version of life, and also I’m pretty genuinely happy for you. There are some politics I don’t like, but again I can unfollow. There are some comments which are probably unhealthy to be reading, but I skip them sometimes and choose to waste time on them other times. There is an addiction component. Scrolling gives me a bit of anxiety, yet that hit of chemicals that keeps me coming back. I’ve used blockers and other methods to keep myself limited in time wasted on the platform. (StayFocusd on Chrome and the Freedom app on my iPhone have been part of this). And I do think ultimately getting off will have very positive mental health benefits, but that’s not what pushed me over the edge to actually leave. The positive relationships I had on Facebook were overriding all of these factors until now. The reason I finally feel the need to go is Facebook itself, the company and its policies, and the negative effects on the United States and the world.
I know I’m just one user, and my leaving will not change the world, but I can’t support this company as a user anymore.
Facebook may have come from an intention of “connecting people” and it still does a great job of connecting, but the overriding drive to make money at all costs using the data mined from those connections has led to some bad things. Whether you want to call Facebook “evil” or not, some “evil” has been allowed to flourish there.
Personal data being collected on millions of Americans by outside parties in violation of FB’s terms (see Cambridge Analytica); data used by Facebook itself, not in violation of its terms, but to serve ethically questionable ads; the platform being used by other countries to attempt to influence the United States elections; hate speech posts allowed encouraging ethnic and religious violence; fake news and the spread of disinformation; and targeting ad consumers based on categories that are awful awful awful… how can I sum this variety of crap up in one statement? It’s a smorgasbord of things I don’t feel good about.
I think they are using me to make money, I think there are some terrible side effects of which they are aware but will never fix, and I think it is my responsibility to go get the value I get from Facebook elsewhere and remove myself as a participant.
Perhaps the overriding theme, for me, is that we are not the customer - advertisers (this now includes political campaigns and lobbies of all sorts) are the paying customer - so the product evolves to service them and not us. “You are the product,” which has been said by so many people I’m not sure who to attribute the quote to. Maybe I’d be ok with this, if I didn’t see the yucky results. I guess I was, in fact, “ok with it” for a number of years.
My brothers and I started working on a social app a couple of years ago which would combat some of these negatives and be user-centric instead of designed around advertiser needs. We unfortunately (or fortunately) all have young families and careers that we love, so it hasn’t been a quick process. The app is still in the works, but I can no longer wait for it to be done to leave Facebook, as was my secret plan for a while. :)
What do you think? I don’t judge anybody who needs or wants to stay on Facebook. Are there other ways to make change besides leaving? I’d love to hear your thoughts!