The Leanan Sidhe & 10,000 Hours

Wikipedia has this to say about the leanan sidhe (yay for quoting the Intarwebz!):
"The leanan sídhe is generally depicted as a beautiful muse, who offers inspiration to an artist in exchange for their love and devotion; however, this frequently results in madness for the artist, as well as premature death."  

A thought I've been kicking around for a while now though, is that the depiction above is a rather unfair one. For one thing, it isn't just inspiration she offers, or at least, it doesn't seem to be. It's both skill and inspiration... and then they die young, her chosen artists. But how good you get as an artist also depends on how much time and care you put into your art - same as any other skillset. In other words, artistic skill (if not necessarily inspiration) is what the artist gets in return for parcelling away chunks of their lives to their muse. 

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell mentions something about how it takes most humans 10,000 hours or so to attain a highish level of mastery. That's 10,000 hours of your life you'll never see again.  

So what's the leanan sidhe really doing? Stealing the lives of her 'chosen', and dooming them to early splatting? Or is she merely compressing the whole process? Maybe that's the real bargain she offers. ;)

'Listen, puny mortal, you can spend the rest of your life improving your craft, or you can just pay me upfront, now, and I'll give you all the skills that would have accumulated in the time you've just bargained away. And I'll throw in some inspiration as a plus!'

...suddenly she doesn't look all that evil anymore.

>.> Especially since her way is the easy way out. You don't get to procrastinate your life away instead.  

Big Bear Butt Blogger » Writing about reading genres

I like reading science fiction, and I like reading fantasy. I also like detective fiction, superhero comics, military adventure, action adventure, dramas, in fact I like books in quite a few different categories.

If you nodded along with that statement and didn’t see anything wrong with it, than it’s probably just me that has this grumpy old man problem with how I look at things. You’re probably going to think I’m insane. That’s okay, I think the same thing often enough.

See, I like to READ.

via thebigbearbutt.com

Big Bear Butt with a great rant on books, genres, and just plain reading what you want, and damn the covers! ;)

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!

Having finally accepted that it's unlikely, in this life, that anyone's going to pay me to paint whatever the Hell I feel like painting...

...I can freely paint whatever the Hell I feel like painting! Woohoo! XD

I know, I know, I should have realised this years ago. What can I say? Nuggets have low (no!) brain content!

And maybe it's better this way, anyway. I never loved print design, and I'm glad I don't do that anymore. But there are aspects of web design work, especially the bits that deal with poking and prodding humans into doing things, without them *realising* they're being poked and prodded, that really appeal to me.

Still... it'll be good to get Inanna, my current sole-completed-piece-for-this-year completed. -_- I miss my weekly free sketches, but I'm too lazy to do them while this project is there staring at me. Yes. One completed piece a year seems to be all I can do. And we won't count those 3 years that WoW ate. Prolific, that's me!



Ze Weekly Nuggetsketch

Alas, for the best laid plans of mice and nuggets!

I seem to have spent most of the weekend frolicking and sleeping. -_- Didn't do as much as I hoped.

Was supposed to finish jewellery and wings this weekend. Hah! >.> And no, the jewellery isn't done. Necklace, bracer (or is that bracelet) and her hooked rod thingies still need proper detailing - all I did was put in the highlights.

Alas for lazy nugfaces! >.< Must work moar... moar! :( Need to finish by 15th August.

Ze Weekly Nuggetsketch

I'm experimenting with a slightly different way of rendering, and I think I like the results so far.

Unfortunately, it also seems to change how I hold my pen, with the result that I'm getting a blister on the first joint of my pinkie. I've tried holding the pen differently, but it doesn't give me the results I want when I do. >.> Apparently I need to grow new callouses in order to use this technique.

The great thing about this 'early digital' art time we're living in (and considering it's only the last what - 20-30 years? that's pretty early, if you consider history in general)... anyways, the great thing is there's lots to discover for yourself in terms of techniques. The basic principles of stuff still hold true, but the *how* of doing things with a different medium has lots of stuff to explore.

Back to blisters. >.<

Going to have to do this in shorter sittings over the week, I think, rather than one long sitting and, 'YAY I FEENEESH her today'... cause looking at my hand, I think that might be a Bad Idea. But at least it's moving!

SQUEE!

(Yes, it's flipped around. I tend to flip my work back and forth a lot while working, so it's not only flipped now, but is going to continue to do so! Zoom! ZOMP! Zoom!)