Gaashk
2d ago
I don't know if there's any research into especially fast and effective methods for learning to draw. Art education is in general not very interested in finding out, since there isn't a shortage of people who can draw well enough with the current methods.
A drawing course will include something like the following:
- A shaded sphere
- Cubes in one and two point perspective, a hallway in one point perspective, the corner of a rooming two point perspective.
- Negative space drawings. The space around a tree. The space around a set of easels. This is pretty important, and one of the things someone might not encounter by looking up individual topics. Especially, whenever there is an edge, you have to decide if the figure or the ground is darker/lighter, and provide contrast. Speaking of which
- Contrast! Always figure out a way to have reasonably high contrast.
- A draped cloth, preferably in charcoal. Preferably large. My drawing instructor made us draw everything on 18x24 inch paper. That's extremely tedious with pencils, but lovely with charcoals and pastels.
- Basic anatomical proportions -- proportions of a face, proportions of a body, how many heads high is a person? How many eyes across is their face? DaVinci's human in a circle.
- Some still life drawings, preferably with some reflective surfaces, perhaps silver, perhaps glass.
- Preferably a landscape; some classes have students drive to a better location for this.
- Figure drawings. The model might move every minute for warm ups, and then stay put for 20 minutes for a longer study. Sometimes after a few classes they stay put for over an hour, to allow a more finished drawing.
- Critiques.
Gaashk
2d ago
Indeed. And since all the students surround the owl in a circle, you should also draw a slightly different angle than anyone else. Only you will know what your angle is, exactly. The teacher might make a mark or two and comment that since their head is near yours but not superimposed, those marks they made might not be exactly right.
Gaashk
2d ago
What kind of drawing do you have in mind?
Studio drawing is really simple and straightforward, you just look between the thing and the page, and keep changing what's on the paper until it looks like the thing. I recommend charcoal.
Gaashk
4d ago
I would be interested to read a novella length exploration of the situation. There are some tasks that are themselves fine, but almost nobody is willing to do them all day every day.
It's really hard to get special education assistants, for instance. They're paid poorly to follow around a severely disabled child with poor life prospects, who can't communicate with them very well, and watch them fail at a lot of ordinary and expected tasks. Sometimes the kids get frustrated and lash out at them, and hurt them. Then they quit, often after a couple of months. It's a bad job that can't be done by those who usually do bad jobs, like working in meat processing plants. Then it becomes worse when they're understaffed, which is most of the time. There's some legal liability as well. There are adjustments that could be made at the system level, but are not, for various legal and institutional reasons.
I'm especially curious about some of the ages involved. Five, six, and seven year olds mostly still seem happy to be learning to read and write, and it's important to have strong first grade teachers in a school, especially.
My state teaches phonics and is fine with it, but are now training upper elementary and middle school teachers in phonics, to try to re-teach those who didn't get it the first time. I'm not especially optimistic. I don't think there's necessarily a learning window for reading a semi-phonetic language like English, but if someone is in sixth grade and hasn't learned phonics yet, they must certainly have baggage around it. Their language arts teacher is unlikely to suddenly help them realize what consonant clusters involving "h" are all about.
Gaashk
4d ago
We used to have that, and have lost it. Test scores are the same, teachers are more stressed, but maybe parents pay less for childcare? I'm not actually sure if parents pay less for childcare or not, since the after district childcare for working parents is a lump sum amount, which increases in line with inflation.
My current district gives me a set amount, and lets me spend it attending art workshops. It may or may not be a good use of public funds, but is absolutely a better use than the other mandated trainings I've gone to.
Gaashk
4d ago
it resulted in varying degrees of intelligence
Varying degrees of scientific accuracy, you mean?
My mom was very into Creationism. Her college degree was in biology. She got As on a bunch of evolutionary biology courses, and liked to go to Creationist conferences, debates, read books about it, and so on. None of the many Creationists I interacted with tried to argue that dinosaurs are fake. One didn't like vaccines, and was homeschooling. That's kind of a weird homeschooler position. Aside from Covid, ate-vax codes kind of crunch liberal to me, with kids in oatmeal colored overalls going to forest school until they're eight.
Yeah.
Transportation is a major impediment. There are some kids I know who clearly should not be in an enormous industrial elementary school, and are having constant meltdowns, but are in general smart and capable enough. They would probably do just fine in a school that wasn't forcing "transitions" every half hour or so. But their parents probably can't drive then anywhere, so the public pays a bunch of money for counselors and social workers to try to get them to put up with the environment instead.
Gaashk
4d ago
child-time.
This is all times. There aren't any times not like this.
My father bought himself a shed, installed an air conditioner, reptile cages, and bookshelves, and called it his study. I am not currently in a stage of life where I can do that. Despite having the physical space available, I do not currently have a room of my own. As an introvert, this is stressful, but the alternative was to not get married and have children. The alternative was never to be socially "on" all the time in my own house.
My daughter is much more extroverted than my husband or I. When we're both on break together, she will talk six hours a day if I let her. It's not really a conversation most of the time. She talks at me, nonstop. She won't even watch a TV show if I ask her to, or will bring the TV show to my lap, to watch it there. Her younger sister is more introverted, and likes to play with her for a while, but then plays by herself. Older daughter gets offended and angry, nobody in the house can match her social energy. She also gets home from school and I from work, and she wants to talk about imaginary worlds, rainbows, unicorns, princesses, and magic. Very seriously. For hours. I have no idea what to say, there's nothing I can say that makes a dent, that goes anywhere I could possibly want to go conversationally. I suppose when she's older she'll be more fun to talk to? She's fun to go on outings with. We all do very well on hikes, trips, going out to see new things. It's been dusty and miserable this week, though.
Of course I prefer to see my actual friends and talk with them, and my friends who married each other and also have three small children are planning to visit tomorrow, I will make them lunch, and I'm excited about it. But a person cannot enjoy only their husband's company and seeing their friends once a month, and all other adult venues are fundamentally childcare. Work is childcare (I teach 700 children at my job). Church is childcare. Shopping is childcare. Public events are childcare. All times and places are childcare.
I don't know what your wife or children or the general situation is like. Does she have a space she can go to and read a book or do something quietly? Do you? When do you have time to write on a message board?
Gaashk
5d ago
I realise this may not apply to the American Department of Education, which for all I know does a lot more than just provide funding
Apparently it moves around about 13% of education funding. It also provides some requirements, for instance around Individual Education Plans, which are fairly expensive, and mostly say things like "J will have additional time on tests" and "J will have preferential seating." They may also provide some of the rules that lead to special education positions being chronically understaffed, with entire positions unfilled for years at a time.
Despite having a kind of unnecessary fluff education job, I would still be interested to see what would actually change without them.
Gaashk
5d ago
Libraries taken over by homeless seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, though, mores than night only shelters.
Gaashk
5d ago
Based on the Asterix article, it sounded like chewing was one of the most common triggers, so apparently you're not alone. I can't really guess why, though. I would imagine that hewing used to be even worse, with older people losing their teeth?
But put me on a plane to the US with a bunch of Americans, or in a public space with Americans yakking on and on, or some random person yakking in English on their phone in Cleveland, and it's very annoying. Because I can understand every word, and have forgotten how to tune out the way I can subtly tune out Japanese speakers.
I was once on a plane near some people who were in a Young Opera Performers program, which I know because they talked about that, and about the petty drama of their cohort, and about the clothing choices of some of their cohort members, all in very loud, clear voices that carried well through the plane. I can see how possessing a loud, clear voice might be a pre-requisite for being an opera performer, but did not at all appreciate their using those voices to go on about someone's clothing choices for half an hour.
Gaashk
5d ago
Haha, husband doesn't actually watch Big Bang, just the former housemate. He watches lots of Seth Macfarlane shows, which I sometimes find entertaining if we watch it together and nothing else is on, but I hate so much as background noise.
The new ACX post on misophonia" is interesting.
I don't particularly suffer from misophonia, and hadn't heard the term before, but used to be more sensitive than average to, especially, television shows. My former housemate would watch the Big Bang Theory, and I intensely disliked the voices of the actors, along with the voice actors from shows like American Dad and Family Guy. My husband likes to listen to the TV in the background, and mostly wears headphones for these shows when I'm around. My husband, meanwhile, is extremely sensitive to the sounds of the neighbors' vehicles, which he can hear through the rock tumbler, white noise machine, and multiple other people in the house.
Some of the comments are also reminding me of the times I tried sleeping in rooms with ticking clocks, and took the batteries of of the clock, then reset it again the next morning. I think once I tried to muffle a clock under a lot of bedding as well. This hasn't effected me lately, but that's probably just because timing clocks are no longer standard.
I was homeschooled for unrelated reasons, and I have often been confused by "sustained silent reading" regimes in some of the worse schools. A third of the kids mess around, making small noises, while the other two thirds pretend to read. Sometimes I would attempt to read, and as someone who likes reading, I always found it completely impossible for more than a page, which I would immediately forget.
Lately, I've recommended Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" a couple of times. Somehow it came up with my mother this week -- I think in the context of why I don't paint. It's not the same, of course -- reading and writing or painting in open spaces -- households and offices without walls, where it's normal and expected for anyone to talk about anything at any moment, and the person who ignores them and asks them not to is in the wrong. Both my husband and I find it rather demoralizing, and exhausting. We are angry that there is no viable way to signal unavailability to talk in a way that doesn't hurt others' feelings. I remember my father saying that he had "run out of words." I have to stop writing now, because my daughter has followed me through a couple of rooms, to talk about ladybugs. She has, as I wrote this, read out loud all the letters on my keyboard, asked for a dry erase marker, asked for a drink, and talked for several minutes about ladybugs. She is, of course, more important than writing on message boards. But I am tired. I'm not sure how to make things better and less exhausting.
Adding, since this is already stream of consciousness, that my mother does not have misophonia, either, but is also an introvert. She remembers, and sometimes mentions distastefully, how 40 years or so ago her roommate went on and on about the royal wedding. After 40 years, this is still an unhappy memory!
Gaashk
6d ago
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Congress can still redistribute directly to the states if they want to, and probably will.
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Student loans are already a horrible mess, and the DOE and federal government hasn't done anything to sort it out, so it's probably best we have less of them, not more. I went to community college, followed by an inexpensive state college. If those colleges don't have enough money to function in some states, the federal government can redistribute directly to them. Private scholarships are probably useful and good.
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I work in a school, and have seem hat kinds of programs the money goes towards. They are mostly not what I would want. The DOE's priorities are not only the same priorities as most children and parents, but not even the same as most teachers. Not even the teachers of superfluous subjects.
Gaashk
7d ago
Why would you expect that? I wouldn't necessarily. I would expect it to stay about the same, since the core teachers, the children, and the states they live in will remain the same
Gaashk
7d ago
I think feminine or androgynous would be acceptable. "Trans woman" would also be acceptable. "Woman" would certainly give the wrong impression.
Whether or not it's reasonable to call Alice "Miss Smith" will probably depend on how well he passes for female. Going by the description, it sounds like people who don't know him will feel confused, and try not to use gendered terms of address, and people who know him well will simply call him "Alice," and introduce him to acquaintances as "Alice Smith." Unless they're schoolchildren, I suppose? I would prefer that he not be allowed to pull schoolchildren into his preferences, and would likely refer to him in front of my own children, in private, as Alice or Mr Smith, but not as miss.
Gaashk
7d ago
It is a little silly, and will probably be regarded with bemusement by future generations, like fake recovered memories from a generation ago. But it is also causing active havoc in the present, also like those "memories."
norms of personal presentation, for instance.
This is how we got terms like "tomboy" and "drag queen." Masculine and feminine are fine for more formal contexts.
Gaashk
7d ago
Going by the people I've known who want to work retail between getting a college degree and a serious job, Starbucks and Trader Joes are both fine with the trade off of higher turn over, but smarter, more interesting employees, and will give an immediate interview. Other companies don't necessarily respond at all. I suppose these are simply different business strategies?
Gaashk
7d ago
Education is more like this than not -- I've gotten about a third of the jobs that I've applied for. They do make people enter all their credentials into an online application with no chance to autofill, and ask for written letters of recommendation, often from one's current principal, before even scheduling interviews, though. It's also accepted to substitute teach in a school district someone wants to work in until they offer a permanent job.
It doesn't help to call and "check up," though. I suspect it might annoy the people involved, and make them less likely to hire, actually.
Gaashk
10d ago
I'm on team "it depends."
There are a lot of problems in Chicago, but the city looks pretty goody, actually. I like their Trump Tower! It has human centric walking paths around it, gardens, and places to sit. It looks pretty good from across the river! It's probably comfortable inside. The Wrigley building may be more aesthetic, but not enough to be worth passing up all those windows. I love the aesthetics of the Lurie Gardens, with a little bit of prairie, surrounded by city towers. But Chicago has always wanted to be a big American city.
I'm less of a fan of California design, especially since it's been encroaching on the Southwest, with grey houses with sharp angles taking over from the tan houses and soft edges. The Southwest should have tan houses and rounded edges! It should look like it's covered in local clay! I'm not certain what's prompting the grey and white angular houses, the owners probably think it looks "fresh" or some such thing, even if I think it's tired just five years on. Like the Catholic churches in the 70s, they age quickly.
Phoenix is odd, and not very aesthetic, but each individual person gets some nice desert landscaping, an air conditioned house, and access to a bunch of goods at one of the hundreds of identical strip malls. It isn't a city built for the past or the future, but for the present, and it will be fine if it keeps getting rebuilt until they run our of water or air conditioning units are outlawed. Tucson has more history, and therefore better architecture. Here's a church from about a decade ago. It's completely fine. Most of their newer apartment and condo developments are also just fine, in a way that pictures don't capture super well. They're safe, clean, have nice little patios full of potted succulents, and a couple of swimming pools. Nothing grand or awe inspiring, but just fine. Very livable.
I'm not sure what's happening with Toronto, perhaps like Phoenix they don't have enough history as a city? Quebec City sounds reasonably aesthetic. South Korea is more aesthetic than Phoenix, but may be a worse place to live, going by everyone's unwillingness to raise children there.
Gaashk
10d ago
I think that it's reasonable for the government to provide care for disabled children, teens, and even sometimes adults, since Americans do not live in multigenerational clans or villages, where care can be somewhat distributed. But it seems both very expensive and also rather miserable to be in a school, specifically all the time if someone isn't being educated. They aren't that comfortable, I guess they're reasonably safe and the food is acceptable, but large schools just don't seems like a natural setting for primarily providing supervision.
Gaashk
10d ago
That seems fairly similar to how things are in the US. I work in schools, but not in subjects with mandatory tests, but I get to see all the IEPs for the school, and they're mostly things about longer times for tests, breaking down instructions into shorter chunks, repeating instructions, preferential seating, and less stimulating environments (especially for testing).
The very high needs children who have a one on one aid are also on IEPs, but it's quite different situationally, even though their IEPs generally look more or less the same.
Perhaps it ultimately won't make much of a difference whether there's a national Department of Education or not, since the expectations are already there for all of the accommodations.
Gaashk
12d ago
Career and Technical Education high schools have pretty useful shop classes.
Keeping a sketchbook?
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