Do your effort

Last summer (So this article was written about a year before publishing...) Anne Field posted a good blogtext in her blog. I interpreted it so that it is about learning experiences, practice, effort and doing your own work in general. I thought the article was so good that it should be saved somehow, to be easy to find later, so I linked it to my blog and commented on the subject(s) while chatting with an American friend, LittleYoungOne, in Discord.

Not So Black, a draft stallion from 2020.

Here comes my comment speech: 

What I got out of that post was how Anne emphasized that you can't trick when you want to do something well. Tutorials, instructions and answered questions from others will help, but the only thing which truly helps you learn is making the thing you are working on.

Practicing to cut slots (for noseband hangers) in split crownpieces before doing the same for actual split crownpieces.

...it worked!

 

One can read books about riding and know how to do that in theory, but the same person can't do anything for real after first reading and then randomly getting on a saddle. Books are books, real life riding is riding. Same goes for customizing, painting, resculpting, even writing, and tackmaking.

Also being afraid of fail is not an excuse. You will fail a lot during your practice sessions, get a ton of ugly stages and so on. What's the key to solve those? Continue to create. The ugly stages and fails are not going anywhere - they can only teach you to improve and eventually push through them and finish your work.

In 2016, I asked and got taught how to braid. It may be the only "textile craft" I can enjoy, which shows in the number of ropes I've braided serially since then.

And then about competitions and chasing prizes: If one participates in a show or competition, they should be totally okay with the possibility that they will not win. Everyone can't win, but most do good stuff to try with. The idea should never be winning, but participating, trying your best and figuring out what you can do, learn more. Compete against your previous works, if something has to be competed against.

What works for me, is thinking that "if I do this for my friend, it has to be the best I can do". This is how my bridles and halters are in the stage they are in at the moment. I started making tongue buckles to bridles, developed the bit hooks and bothered to figure out nosebands because I made a bridle for Kave in 2017. Basically I could say that I wanted to impress my friend with... skill? What?

My first proper bridle where I didn't use sliding buckles. That was when I learned how precious tongue buckles are in the hobby! And I was afraid of their "complexity" for so long... As an old work, this bridle is more or less ugly, but I'm also happy that it has a good home at Kave's.

In 2021 my Swedish hobby friend, Decors, asked if I could do tack to donate for a Swedish liveshow, Vattenshow, whose co-hostess she is. Of course I said that yes, I can make a few halters. Among the batch to be donated, I also wanted to make pieces for both of the hostesses. For Decors I made also a bridle and some bits to go with it. The difference between my oldest proper bridle and this is like between night and day.

The bridle from June 2021, which moved to Sweden.

What else can I say? I have wanted to write about this stuff for ages! But blogging is hard. While it can be hard to believe, I am not a writer, after all. (I do blog stuff or story/world texts almost daily, and draw very very seldom these days... But yep, I am not a writer.) I am a visual artist, a drawer. I also can do painting if I bother to. Watercolors are nice. So are makeup sponge tools when you use them on graphite - which is the only use I have ever had for them. 

A travel set of watercolors and tank brushes (brushes which have soft, hollow barrel) pair very well together.

"What else"... Uh oh. I figured out that this is actually a good spot to mumble about my art life even further. I've drawn my entire life, and cannot remember the time I first scribbled something which should look like an animal or whatever the topic was (I remember drawing a carrot in kindergarten). I never drew with the idea that I "could become an artist". I just drew because it was a natural part of my life. It IS a natural part of my life. 

Due to having drawn animals from that young age, I have an odd angle towards those who first grow up and only then decide to start drawing. Good luck with practice... It is a lot of work. I can say I have an advantage here. Though, it does not mean I could be good. I have seen so many beginners being great in what they do. Meanwhile I usually stop thinking good about my own works after each doodle gets a couple of years old or if I can see it all the time. 

Outdated thumb rats, since 2014.

I often wonder what life could be like if I didn't draw or do my model horse stuff myself. Good stuff is pricey! (I guess my art room could also look very different than what it is. Supplies take a lot of space, so do projects and finished works...)

What could life be with aphantasia, as well? I can't imagine the lack of visual imagination; meanwhile I see everything in my mind. One ridiculous brain image I have had was about lemons flying downstairs with mosquito wings - thanks to how my dad tried to describe he had mosquitoes in his room. Don't ask how he managed to call them lemons, I have no idea. But I sure have some oddly rich hyperphantasia. I can see worlds while in the shower, and forget I even exist. 

There was a time I wanted to learn to draw horses as properly as was possible. I became an anatomy freak. Eventually I also learned that realistic and semirealistic drawing styles are my thing, while I also wanted to develop my personal way to stylize "cartoony" equines. The latter went so that the anatomy had to work, but stylizing to some degree had to be possible, too. I have a ton of good memories of those years, but most of the doodles are not worth seeing... Of course. 

Once I also decided to test if I can resculpt a toy horse in the BH-style, which is how I called my cartoony style. Now when I think it, it's strangely absurd and, ummmm... Impressive, in the sense that it really happened. I couldn't do that today. It's the same thing as what happened to my tack: I made a lot of Schleich scale tack at some point, learned to enjoy it, then switched to traditionals and no longer understood why and HOW anyone can enjoy crafting mini scale tack. It was impossible, and still is. 

I never knew my first(?) buckles with moving tongues were in a Schleich scale bridle, and I don't even know the year this is from.

My drawer background was why I got into model horse customizing ages ago. It was the idea that I could really make a model horse, not only buy it. By customizing I was no longer dependent on what factories provided. Buying commissions from others was never an option - because I never knew anything like that even existed!! And well, I still like to do my own stuff, anyway... Not that I could not want to have others' works as well. Collecting others' tack and customs is a nice way to learn something new and see different angles of doing things.

But the bond between you and your own work is something which you can never have with a thing you did not make. It also feels nice to be able to say that "Yea, I did all the stuff in this photo." (Shows don't exist here.)

Since I probably didn't make any sense with most of this text, I will continue to comment on other stuff. It's close to the topic, of course. How can people be so crazy about winning, indeed? I have never been that much into participating in anything. I'm not a prize chaser. Shows (even photo shows) have never been my main motivator to learn to make model horse stuff. Good horses, paintjobs, tack, dolls, performance setups... Nope, never done those with showing in mind. And then the rare time I bother to try my luck in something, it even didn't require crafting on anything but just writing a little - and then I won! That made this little pessimist super happy. I still can't understand that it happened. 

Tripworthy, my Braymere giveaway marwari.

Anyway. I wonder how much and how far could things have developed in the hobby if there were no shows, and especially, if the shows were not about competiting against others... This one has prettier horse, this one has the most blingy set of tack, here's a cool scene, aaand... So. How far can you go? What this logic has taught me about my species, is, that humans have an odd natural tendency to compete and try to win... It has to be natural.

I also want to say one more thing to the practice topic. I have found out that maybe I am unusual in the sense that I am less afraid of trying new techniques and tools when it comes to arts and photography. I struggle to start drawing anything I haven't drawn before (it is annoying, I wish I could draw many different species of animals), but I probably have tested various techniques and tools in more relaxed sense than most people I've talked about this with. I don't understand why it is like this. People are afraid of using a lot of colors, contrast, mixed media... They're afraid of shading with strong hand or exaggerating anatomy and expressions. And some are very afraid of starting their model horse customizer career. 

I brainwashed Kave into painting, taught her about how I layer colors, and her very first (very first!) repaint was this stunning tinker stallion. His name is Abundiantus Fructum. Photo by Kave.

To say it simply, I do my all to kick encourage my buddies to try new things and hopefully make them go crazy and enjoy it. This happened with Kave and went successfully, so I am positive that my other hobby friends can start a model horse artist career too. 

One thing I have wondered a lot is a stupid habit I have. Sometimes I find a way to do something, then go "nope, it's too much of work" or "that part will be weak" and it basically prevents me from trying it. Then when I finally give it a go, I probably get surprised and realise how much more sense everything makes when there is one more step in the process. It can both make the product better and also make me value my own work more than before. My halters are often better when they have paddings in the nosebands, and I always like my dolls better when I bother to paint shadings to their bodies. 

I also have learned that my brain needs challenges, and even works to stress about. One example of this could be one of my dolls, who is based on a character I designed in 2011. That doll had to turn out perfectly enough. It went almost so, but he's no way ideal... Of course. Finishing complex projects feels good afterwards. Another example of this could be my thumb rat cages. Sometimes I assemble them from a million of different pieces just because I enjoy the process. Weird. 

Enjoyable.

Do your effort.

The art of overcomplexifying everything

I decided to write this text because, let's be straight, I'm getting bored at the fact that I struggle to keep things simple, compact and short, and I never seem to finish anything (read: blog texts). I will now list some things I am or have and which affect my blogging.

The cat is from Kave, then croc, penguin and laptop came from Lahjakas, the easel was also bought, and I don't know the history of that flowerpot which serves as a seat. The rest is made by me.

I am a perfectionist. Posting a blogtext takes forever, because I don't want to publish them before they're the quality I want.

I am autistic. I got the Asperger's syndrome diagnosed when I was 13, I guess it was 2008. I think that due to my autism I have a habit to think everything the complex and more logical and scientific way that people who don't have this. I analyze, I ponder, I draw images and maps in my head, I think how this and this correlates with that and why and how and what started it. And more often than not it goes out of hand. 

I've made this kind of bridles into functioning 1:9 scale miniatures. I call them fightmore.

I have ADD. It basically means that I struggle to focus on boring things - like applying millions of layers of one color so that the transparent becomes a new color layer. Of course there's also much more than that. But patience, while normally can be achieved by stubbornness, just doesn't come that way for an ADD person. It's like AD/HD but without the... H. 

I am depressed. I think it was diagnosed a couple years ago, or before the pandemic went crazy globally. There have been easier and worse phases, and this disorder is one of the biggest explanations to my current struggle to make art. It's annoying, but I can't do much for it. Do you know what it feels like, when you read about mental issues for ages, and then randomly find out that you do suffer from them as well? It's an absurd experience, but ah so useful what comes to accuracy in pessimistic storywriting.

I have zero patience (depending on thing). Check the ADD paragraph. But this is exactly why I haven't been that much into hair-by-hair coloring on model horses, haven't done much dapples ever and overall don't care that much about really complex colors. I also don't add as much detail to anything as I wish I could. It just isn't possible. 

Drawing on paper is a different story then. I can hone and detail a doodle for hours and not lose my interest towards working on it.

I can make simple things sound overly complex. Check my animal doll tutorial. Or snaffle bit tutorial. None of those are complex, but I make them sounds like that. Apologies, but that's very unlikely to change ever.

I overthink and overanalyze, count "what if"s. This is why I struggle with opinion texts and rants. I love the idea of those, and writing them, but I haven't actually published that much of them. Should I? How many readers are going to throw their computers (or smartphones - hooray!) into a wall if I let them read my harsh and blunt opinion texts? (Didn't you just read my secret opinion about smartphones...?) I want to figure this thing out especially, because I and Kave want to post them more than anything. We want to bring up conversation topics, and sugar-coating is not an option.

I don't double check, I double-double-double-triple check. This means that I'm going to through-read a text at least twice before I publish it. It's not that fun really, and I struggle to through-read with thought,  except when I should focus on everything else. 

You didn't expect this photo. Haha!

I have zero idea what I am doing, more than I just have an idea about what it can be about. This applies to everything. I also believe it is why I have no idea if I've written enough; when to say the text is finished and ready for publishing. How do you everyone else know that?

I hate the fact that I can't lay interest on more than a few narrow topics at once, on one phase. A phase means a time which I can't tell the length of. When an autistic person has a special interest, it often dominates their attention and life for a certain phase, which can last from hours to decades. My oldest passion have been dinosaurs - I've hobbied them my entire life. And my passion to horses started when I was about seven, then it lasted to 2011 or so and eventually modified into the less crazy level (doesn't mean I could not be a horse crazy still...). Examples of short or occasionally repeating interest phases could be this and that animal group (like once pinnipeds - for a few hours) or something else biology-related. 

The childhood me could have freaked our due to excitement if saw this - or learned that they can have dinos like this once they grow up.

Speaking of passions and special interests, one of mine are rats. This isn't a surprise to everyone, I guess? Unless you're a first time reader? I've been crazy about rats since 2007 when we got real ones, and that also is why and when I started drawing them (and got really serious about that in 2011). And because I'm a model horse dork, I also naturally became a model rat dork. I think we're a rare breed. 

Long story short, I struggled to find a nice way to make tiny rats until 2014, when I learned what silk clay and foam clay are, and figured out a logical simplified sculpting technique. Making my own rats has been a big thing to me personally, because I'm really picky about realism, and rat models aren't very common - let alone accurately sculpted ones. After figuring out how to make thumb rats I was able to gain a massive rat collection. Only a minority of my rats are factory made or sculpted by someone else.

Most of these are by myself, but seven thumbies (behind the rainbow ones) and the tiny dragon are by Kave. And that black rat on top of the taller container is by an IRL friend.

Lately I've also been really much into genetics, especially color genetics. I've been inventing totally unreal colors and their genetics for my fictional rats (not only clay rats, but also characters). This got kicked even further when I recently started to do teamwork with my Swedish hobby friend Decors, who I probably brainwashed into making clay rats. (Ooops.) I love pondering these and playing with ideas and writing standards. 

But, suddenly I had a problem in my hands: I had way too many colors to identify, name and describe, yet I should figure out how they are related to each other, how one can breed them, what kind of modifiers exist and all that. And more. I like complex things and science, but this sudden flood of new things to think and write is just too much. It's overwhelming me. Yet I struggle to read certain genetics terms, while I can understand the colors and map their tracks in my mind just fine. I can't explain this in any way, it's so abstract but also so logical to me personally. I understand recessive, dominant, heterozygous and homozygous. But I can't get what a locus is. I also don't remember much about epigenesis, what I read about years ago... 

Don, a rex coated reddish brown "halves-l" buck.

Ulla, a red flame doe.

Horse colors are more or less easy to understand, I think. At least most basics and dilutions, since I've read about them for so long already. Actually, I'm using some horse color genetics as a base to correctly model some of these entirely fictional rat color genetics I am cooking up here. 

I really don't know why my brain can't grasp some things, no matter how much I try. I'm a visual person, so maybe that has something to do with how I learn genetics as well. (When I think how the cream gene in horses does work, I always combine and repeat visual images of the actual colors in my mind, instead of trying to write it. And when I read about these things, I visualize them in my mind meanwhile.)

So, have I now written enough? How should I determine that? 

I know I'm not the only one who plays with their own works before sending it away... And don't worry, I made a braided rope to match the halter after taking this photo.

 

I'm terrible at writing end words for a blogtext. Argh.