Under Lavender Skies

 Hey all!  I turned this paper in yesterday.. I am not sure if this one was my best work, I got really tired with it and just ended up submitting it without reading over it again.  I mean I did work on it a lot don't get me wrong.  This essay is about ancient narrative art and how it can tell us about the culture and life of the time through the story depicted.  I discussed the Warka Vase (ca. 3300 BCE), the Judgement of Hunefer (ca.  1290-1275 BCE), and Achilles and Ajax Playing a Dice Game (ca. 540-530). Anyway!  As the title promised here is the last paragraph of the essay, not sure why but I kind of like it!  "Humans have been creating stories through art before the invention of writing.  Narrative art is extremely common in ancient times if you consider how many ways stories and tales can be told.  I learned a great deal just researching three styles and pieces and it made me realize how it doesn’t matter how much time has passed b...

  As many of you might know, this semester I started taking classes at TCC (Tulsa community college), as an art major. So far it hasn't been too eventful, I am only in the basic drawing foundations class. Even yet I think I've learned bunches, a lot about proportions, shading, art elements, composition, and what generally makes a piece well done. Today I am going to be sharing something that sounds small but makes a large difference. And that is value (as you've probably gathered from the title) but also the contrast of and using a wide range of values. It's the final step of a "simple sketch" that can make it more than that. Even when drawing a still life...you can lie (essentially), though it's not called that, it's called taking artistic liberties. Here is an example using a drawing of my cat, sweet Mr. Edison. It's simple but I am using it because the idea of this post came from this drawing. I drew it in one sitting (I was really jus...

Honestly I hate how the phrase "you might have noticed that I missed and didn't post last week," is becoming more and more frequent but it is. I want to like what I post and sometimes I'm busy and don't have the drive to create for this space along with everything thing else. Saying that, I'm making and have ideas for some pretty cool things right now.  Please enjoy this short comic illustrating some of my recent thoughts.  Here are the words just incase it's too small to read on the page:  Chasing sunsets.. like chasing beauty in life. Living moment to moment waiting for the next thing to live for, the next thing that's really worth it. But what happens in the moments in-between? What happens when the fire dies when the coffees cold, after the sun set but before the stars come out.  How do we learn that it all has value? that there really is a point to it all the mundane in-betweens, that is not just waiting for the next good thing?    How...

At the beginning of this year, I made a New Year's Resolution for myself as well as one large, and far-fetched goal, that I thought was achievable if I worked hard enough.  I have come to find out that it was a terrible goal.  My goal was this: to get some piece of my writing published.  It could be anything, a short poem or a story.  That probably sounds crazy but I have entered many contests, and there are a lot more of them out there than you would think.   Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed that writing became more of a chore than something I jump to in the morning.  It’s really a terrible feeling, wanting to write and to be happy and excited about it, but just not.  I wasn’t writing to get better or to just write, I was writing to get something published.  Unintentionally, I was putting pressure on myself to write really well so that it would be something I would be proud to enter in a contest and in turn to achieve my goal....

I adore my blog and for over a year I have been gathering things, ideas, and, stories that I love, and putting them in a mixing pot and sharing a little bit of it each week with you.  But the pot has nearly run dry. I thought I would always have something to post, that no matter how late, something would show up. And for a while that is how it worked out, but recently I haven't been able to think of anything interesting.  I have had no motivation, call it writers block, to write blog posts, stories, or poems. It's difficult because I do want to write but the right words won't come right out.    Which is why I have decided that it would be better for me to post less often for posts that I worked harder on. I will probably post poems each week when I don't have a full post put together but I have a hard time considering poems full posts.  I am not cancelling my blog or anything like that and I will still probably post lots of poems as well. Hopefully you all under...

Do you know what is everywhere?  What litters the streets, lingers on sidewalks, and a lot of the time is delivered to people who didn't ask?  You probably read the title, the answer is advice.  Unsolicited advice is given everywhere but that is not what I am going to talk about today.  Instead, I will share my thoughts and explain pieces of advice that I may not listen to all the time, but I did, technically, ask for.  And that is writing  advice.    Most of the pieces of advice I have found are valuable and in general good tips, so I will explain each piece of advice in the best way I can and give examples.  Even if you are not a writer and reading this now I hope you can still find something interesting.   No. 1: Show Don't Tell  If you have explored any amount of writing tips or advice on Pinterest or Instagram then you know this is one of the most common sentences thrown around.  Maybe it made sense to you the first t...

A while ago I wrote a post about the 10,000-hour rule.  A study that challenged a book that said you have to practice or work on something (the study used violin students) for 10,000 hours to become a professional.  The study discovered that that was not completely true, some students were at a much higher level than others who had been working even longer.  A lot more comes into play for success than just practice.  You can read the post here:  https://under-the-lavender-skies.blogspot.com/2020/07/100000-hour-rule-fact-or-fiction.html I found another study about success called the Relative Age Effect.  It has to do with sports and when the children's birthdays are in correlation to the cut-off times for sports and discovered that an earlier birth is typically associated with increased physical ability.  Now, this is a study that can only be tested with sports since they have designated cut-off times but what it illustrates, in the end, is more than ju...

 Do you make new years resolutions for yourself?  I think it is a fun thing to do at the beginning of a new year, but most of the time they don't last long.  There are many reasons why they are hard to stick to but one of them is high expectations.  Now hear me out.  If you want to work out more, or eat less sugar etc. that is a lot to expect of yourself.  Don't expect too much of yourself, in turn you will achieve much more if you expect less and achieve more than if you expect more and achieve less.   We are creatures of habit, you have probably heard that before.  We like our routines and it never seems to work out if we suddenly change it.  Little steps, you have also probably heard this before, are best to start with if you want to make a big change.   I think the first step to sticking with a goal is having a good motivation, something that you can remind yourself of when you don't feel like doing it to keep you going....

The week of Christmas has crept up on us and so I must write something about Christmas in this second to last Monday of the month.  I am sure every one of you has yearly Christmas traditions, my family does as well and it's one of my favorite parts of Christmas.  Many of them have to do with food, so that's what I am focusing on today.  We'll get to see if we have some of the same traditions.   Orange in your stocking I don't think finding an orange in the bottom of your Christmas stocking is an unusual tradition, but I was curious what it meant and decided to write about it anyway.   This tradition is a symbol and goes all the way back to the true Saint Nicholas story.  It originates in the same place as the stockings.  You've heard the story, Saint Nicholas tosses bags of gold down into three maidens' stockings as they hung by the fire to dry.  The orange represents the gold, landing heavily in the bottom.   Pizza when we set...

 A week or so ago I had a conversation with a new friend who is Puerto Rican.  The conversation morphed, as they always do, and we started talking about the Spanish language.  She said: tú hablas español? and I said:  sí, un poco .  I have studied Spanish for 2 years and we began talking about languages and talking in Spanish too.  She said she has started learning several languages just by watching TV shows and listening to music in that language.   I think knowing two languages (or more) is one of the coolest things.  You are able to communicate and learn from and read books by so many more people.  One of the things my friend said is once you know more than one language you are at an advantage to most of the world who only know one.  And once you know two, it's easier to learn others.  There is so much more to learning a language than just knowing how to speak and write it.  It invites awareness of another person's cul...

Whether you love it, hate it, or are indifferent, you have probably heard of the enneagram one way or another.  The enneagram is a personality test that seems simple because there are only nine numbers (or types) but there is a lot more to it than that.  That's what I want to focus on, how the enneagram does not confine people but actually teaches them more about themselves.   If you don't know much about the enneagram and would like to learn more you can take a look at these links.  Don't limit it to just this, there is much more information out there if you would like to learn more.   https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions ns  https://www.truity.com/enneagram/what-is-enneagram Keep in mind that each number has a name but if that name doesn't describe you, it doesn't mean you are not that number type.  The first type is called the perfectionist or the reformer, however you don't have to be a perfectionist to be a one and you do...

Today I wanted to talk about writing, each component of writing, and how I have been working and improving on my own.   When writing, three different components come to mind.  Researching, also called outlining or preparing, writing, and editing or revising.   R e s e a r c h Non-writers don't realize how much of writing is not really writing but instead researching.  Even for fiction writers,  research is important.  A few weeks ago I researched types of doors and the layout of a mansion in the span of two minutes.  This part of writing is especially true, though, when writing historical fiction.  I haven't shared any of my historical fiction short stories because I am quite nervous about just missing the mark and getting the history wrong.       W r i t e Just write!  Sometimes I find that I have more motivation to research and edit then to actually write.  I love learning about certain historical events a...

Have you ever heard of the 10,000-hour rule?  It is a simple idea and practically explained in the name.  The 10,000-hour rule states that to master one's craft you must spend 10,000 hours working on it.  It says that 10,000 is almost like a perfect number to work on a painting, or music or writing, or anything else.  A man name Malcolm Gladwell popularized this idea in this book Outliers and this idea has been debunked multiple times.     In theory, this rule makes sense but when you really think about it, it is an almost self-deprecating rule.  It is saying that if you are not good at something it's your own fault.  You should have just practiced more and worked more.  Now I am not saying that practice is unimportant, you must practice to get better but practice isn't everything and practice does not always make perfect.  Malcolm Gladwell's idea came from a 1993 study of violinists and pianists which found that on average mus...

Dreams In my opinion, dreams make some of the best and most interesting conversations.  It's always fun to tell someone about my dreams and hear all the interesting stories in other people's dreams as well. The fact that anything can happen in dreams makes it even better.   Another concept that interests me greatly is lucid dreaming.  Lucid dreaming is dreaming yet knowing you are in a dream.  It could be as simple as only knowing you are dreaming and can go all the way to you being able to react with dream characters and essentially control the events in your dreams. I decided this sounds very cool and I am going to try and teach myself how to lucid dream!  Lucid dreaming is like any skill, you must work on it and it will develop over time.  Before you start lucid dreaming you must be able to remember your normal dreams each night.  You might not have known that people actually dream every night, just don't remember them mo...

Why is it so Hard Last week I wrote only a bit on change.  I didn't have much time to write so I couldn't expand as much as I would like to.  I noted how many people I know (and most people, I think) have a hard time going through large changes.  I can agree to this as well (depending how large the change is, of course).  Today I am going to go through points and reasons why I think many people have a hard time going through change.  Some are my own, unaffected opinions, and others some points I found through simple reaserch. I believe hard or large changes are good simply because they are necesary.  One would have a very hard and sad life if they were not able to go through changes and make it on the other side without awful things happening in the middle (which is actually what I think happans to many people, so let me rephrase).  One would have a very hard and sad life if they have panic attacks every time things change.  Most likely tha...

Hello friends ✋ Recently I got glasses! If you have needed glasses in the past you will know one doesn't really know they need glasses until they put them on and begin to marvel about how crisp trees and blades of grass really are!  The only reason I thought I needed glasses is because I had a hard time reading the menu at Panera and seeing the board during my spanish class, pretty important, am I right? I mean, I just stared at the trees outside for probably 3 minutes.   I have never had glasses and I kinda love new things.  Recently some things have happened that have never happened before.   No. 1, I got glasses.  No. 2,  I wrote a ballad!  I wrote a ballad for a class. In February I took a literary analysis class and for the final assignment we could pick between a couple things- an exploratory essay, a comparative essay, a ballad, etc.  I have never done anything like that before and think it was pretty fun...

Stuck? F or all of my friends who write: what do you write when you're stuck?  That is kinda how I am feeling right now; stuck.  I have many titles for possible posts that I saved as drafts but I am not sure where I was going with them when I wrote them down (I am sure it will come to me later).  As I said, I am stuck so I have decided to write about some tips I have for you if you are stuck.  Yes, I have decided to not use any of these tips and write about them instead.  (Also don't worry, not all of my posts will be about writing and books😄) Most of the time when ever I get stuck when writing (a blog post, specifically) it is because I don't have a topic.  When I find something I am interested in, enjoy, and want to write about, I am pretty much set.  I also think you have to be in the mood to write.  Ninety percent of the poems I have written were at 1 o'clock am and written with the faint glow of my alarm clock so I am able jot dow...

The Definition of a Writer A writer is someone who writes. If someone came up to me and spat that sentence in my face I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. I just believe I have a greater definition. A writer is someone whose mind is flooded and overflowed with words. They are constantly coming up with phrases and words. They mentally switch out previous words for more powerful ones in the everlasting inner stories. A writer is someone who wakes up every morning and begins creating poems as they drink their daily cup of coffee or tea and watch the sunrise in all its splendor. A writer is someone who comes up with a poem or story before they fall asleep or when they wake up at two am and have to write it  down with the faint glow of their alarm clock or any other light source in arms length. A writer often can’t sleep for the countless and endless words. Don’t worry, a writer is never bored, they alwa...