Drifting Embers

My daughter came home from school one day with a poster made up of various cartoon faces showing different emotions. They had talked about them in kindergarten class. The Asian faces were all drawn with their eyes like narrow angular slits while all the other eyes were very large and round. Ugh... Really? Please don't draw with this stereotype. Asians have eyes that are a different SHAPE, not SIZE. They may have an epicanthic fold that covers the inner corner of their eye. As a group they have a variety of eye sizes like everyone else. I stare into a beautiful pair on my husband's face all the time. He has very definite epicanthic folds, but they are paired with lovely, normal sized eyes. I can even measure his eyes and they are the exact same size as my Caucasian ones. Asians do not go around seeing the world through narrow little slits.

I dislike doing gestures but I keep trying...

More painting from life.

Painted a pony.

I am not happy with this because it looks more polished than I wanted. I was just trying to design an outfit, but then I had no idea about the colours. So I tried choosing colours, but couldn't visualise it well without lighting. So I thought I'd try making it like a concept piece. I added lighting, and my brushwork was atrocious, since I have trouble with brushwork. Even though I'm using bigger brushes at higher opacities than I used to, I'm still having to repeatedly paint over areas to make it more "chunky" and defined with the right shapes as opposed to "splotchy" and messy. I tried very hard to think in terms of paint-by-number instead of constant blending, and I still don't think I'm doing it right. I'd like to get the earlier stages of a piece to read better.

Yuck: She's kind of a slumpy girl. I used a mirror and thought a lot about the underlying anatomy, but my attempts at it still made her look unnatural.
Yay: I learned a lot about leather boots, pants, and various facial expressions.

Studying the shoulder girdle and the muscles attached to the scapula. Couple more attempts at composition design.

I am a very slow and inefficient person in life. It grates on me all the time. It annoyed me enough the other day that I completely analysed my workspace in Photoshop and streamlined it. Remapped a bunch of my tablet's keys. Learned how to auto-hide panels. Figured out where to put my keyboard while I'm painting so I can actually use keyboard hotkeys. Was amazed at how much time it shaved off.

I painted the arm to my art mannequin to try out the shading techniques I learned in the workshop I took last year. I think it took around 20-30 minutes.

I started doing value studies of paintings I like, kind of like this (Sargeant) and this (Giancola). I was mostly concerned with composition and looking at value masses and hard vs. soft/lost edges. Then I decided after every one or two I finish I will throw something together of my own for composition practise. This time was a waterfall.

Still working on anatomy. Tried drawing figures from photographs while thinking in terms of spheres. Drew my husband's back. Had no idea what I was looking at. Except for the arm, I knew the muscles there! Looks like my sketch smeared there though. Hmmph. I think some technical studies of the scapula area are in order.

I chose to study a photograph with a highly unnatural pose and fabric preventing me from discerning the back leg very well mainly because the arm and front leg were situated in a way that I did not have any muscle diagrams that matched. I wanted to try figuring out where they would be located.

When I drew the gesture, I drew the overlaps in the upper arms backwards because I didn't understand how the deltoid insertion moves with the arm. I also noticed one of my previous studies looks like I connected the iliotibial band to the femur instead of the tibia. Lots to learn.

Trying to get faster at doing quick sketches.

Gesture drawings and an attempt to visualise the muscles in a photograph of a male ballet dancer.

I have learned that a great way to get time for personal projects is to fall down the stairs and break your foot! I have been completely rewriting my webcomic script. I was also able to watch a Vilppu video on gesture. These are the most prodigiously counterintuitive drawings I have ever tried. You can tell me to "feel" the pull and "experience" the pose, and my brain is obliged to respond with complete blankness.

Drawing my hand.

I'm currently recovering from surgery. Feeling much better. It seems that my trick for ending up bed-ridden is to set any kind of drawing goals, as they've coincided for months.

Well, before all that I did a couple quick photograph studies. My husband had agreed to sit for me every night for half an hour or so and I drew him a few times. I think he's gorgeous, but his unusually large skull gives me a bit of trouble. I tried out Posemaniacs for gesture drawing, set to something around a minute per image. I did a Caravaggio study of a detail from The Calling of Saint Matthew.

Studied Richer diagrams to learn the leg muscles and then attempted to identify leg muscles in a photograph.

Started drawing again after visiting family for about a week. I took my Hamm book with me, although I didn't get much studying done. My father noticed my book sitting on the table. "That looks familiar," he said. He looked at the copyright date and started skimming through it. "My mother had this book." I had no idea my grandmother was interested in art. My father said he never saw her draw any figures. She seemed to be more interested in painting landscapes.

Unfortunately, I had to visit the doctor again for something unrelated to my previous health issues. I squeezed in a question about my heart and liver. He poked at me a bit and listened to my heart. They both seem perfectly normal now. Gluten really was doing some strange things to me.

Studies on leg structure (more Hamm copies) and attempts at constructing torsos.

Long post. My health has been bad and I'm feeling down. Hence a break in posting anything. Thankfully, I suspect that I should recover fine. I also learned a lot about the human body and precautions people need to take concerning their digestion.

I've learned that gluten is what's been causing my rapidly declining health over the past few years. Unfortunately, I had to figure it on my own and not through a doctor, despite going to doctors for it for years. It was pretty obvious to me after I took it out of my diet. It's hard to realise a food you eat every morning and all day long is making you sick. I tried adding it back more than once just to be sure it wasn't all in my head. I recognise the need to get immediately tested for Coeliac (or Celiac) Disease, since going gluten-free on your own causes testing to give you a false negative, but I'm not sure my situation was such that I could try to get a diagnosis. It's a combination of insurance concerns and lack of support.

I wound up bed-ridden and non-functional shortly after moving to a new state. We didn't have the time to develop any kind of external support network. We have no help right now. I was ill for years, non-functional for months, and the stress it put on my three year old and husband was too much. After I experimented and found the solution with my diet, I just couldn't bear to put them through more. I've been so fatigued, drowsy, unable to think or concentrate, always dizzy, nauseous, in pain, waking up at 3 am from a bloated stomach, dealing with my systolic blood pressure dropping down to 80, etc. Food's been passing through my system undigested, especially things like almonds and vegetables. I started dropping in weight (to which the stupid nurse responded to with, "Oh! You've lost some weight!" in a tone that suggested I was supposed to be pleased, despite me already being a healthy weight and not trying to lose any). I was constantly hungry and eating. I was found to have a vitamin D deficiency.

Essentially I was told that if vitamin D supplementation didn't work, an anti-depressant trial should be considered. Again. This was the third doctor to do this, and the attitude that was present at my last visit made me very uncomfortable. I was laughed at and I felt like I was considered a hypochondriac. I wasn't vomiting, had no diarrhea, my blood pressure jumped up every time I went to the doctor, testing for orthostatic hypotension seemed normal. Unfortunately, my doctor was a DO (Doctor of Osteopathy) and seemed convinced that my lower back pain was a result of a lopsided pelvis. Odd that I only get pain there when I eat gluten. Now I've learned that intestinal inflammation can cause the nerves in your lower back to feel pain. The doctor also used up all the visits our insurance covers for the year and we'd have to pay for further testing until next year comes around.

After being gluten free for a matter of months, I'm now doing all the housework and cooking that I should, taking my daughter outside to play, and going out shopping with my family. My blood pressure isn't spiking up and down and staying steady with a systolic between 100-110. I'm guessing that means that the next time I have a doctor visit I will be diagnosed with hypertension. Haha. I've finally begun to feel the side effects of vitamin D supplementation that people typically feel a lot earlier… as in immediately after starting it. My bones are aching all over while calcium is being deposited back into them. I guess my intestines are healing now. I can't even imagine how those that went through decades of untreated gluten problems managed it.

I'm a little confused as to the label I should give myself when I have to turn down food from people outside my family. It sounds like it would be easiest to claim I have a "gluten allergy." I don't have any official paper acknowledging that my intestines are getting destroyed, so I (understandably) don't have the right to throw the term "coeliac" around very loosely. People seem to understand the word allergy better anyways. Labels would be easier if I got tested for coeliac disease, but to do that we'd have to have a family member leave their spouse and come live with us in order to help provide care for my daughter while I stay on a gluten challenge for the rest of the year. I did go search online for a well-reviewed doctor for my daughter (hopefully I've learned my lesson in picking doctors), since our insurance covers a number of visits per person, and she still had her full quota to use up. I found a doctor that was very agreeable and was very willing to test her for CD, and her tests were negative. I hope it stays that way for her.

I'm also feeling a bit of guilt over the whole thing. After coming across some medical research that's been done, I really wonder if I made some choices that made me develop this condition:

A few years ago I had what I thought were chronic UTI's. Going to doctors kept resulting in nothing but antibiotics. When I asked why I kept getting them, I was always told the same things - wipe front to back, drink cranberry juice, pee after sex, etc. Believe me, I was doing all of that! I started wondering if I needed to see a urologist instead. One doctor said it could be my urethra is too small. Around Christmastime I had the worst episode ever. I started finding big blood clots in my urine and was in so much pain. The doctor said, "Yep, it looks like an infection. You have a lot of pus and blood in your urine." Wait… I thought you were testing for bacteria? I was so frustrated that I went to the internet after being prescribed antibiotics again. I finally came across "Interstitial Cystitis." This is where you have developed open wounds in your bladder, and eating certain foods can cause your urine to irritate them. I messed with my diet, and it was very easy to pin down. Chocolate. That's all it was. That's also why it got so bad around Christmas. I even figured out which kinds and how much chocolate it would take. My urinary system has now been pain free for years.

And I was always a good girl and would take the entire course of antibiotics. I'm regretting it now. I didn't need the antibiotics to begin with. I don't think antibiotics are evil. They're not. Infections are serious. But there are precautions I was never aware of that a lot of doctors haven't quite caught up on yet.

The thing is that after cutting out gluten, I noticed I was still reacting to something. It's common for coeliacs to find they have other food intolerances. I started to suspect soy or legumes, but it seemed patchy. I was reading a lot of stuff on the internet, wondering why autoimmune disorders and food reactions were becoming so prevalent in more industrialised nations. After my experiences, I kept wondering if they were connected. They've shown in studies how patients with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis stop producing antibodies after a certain number of months on a gluten free diet. Coeliac Disease has been correlated with a bunch of other autoimmune disorders. Some Multiple Schlerosis patients have found success through diet changes.

I kept coming across these Candida sites claiming that a yeast (Candida Albicans) could cause damage to your intestines and give you a "leaky gut," allowing undigested proteins past the intestines and aggravate your immune system. I had previously always thought the idea was silly. A yeast causing the largest list of symptoms I've ever seen and being blamed for just about every condition? Especially when these alternative sites are wanting to sell you something, it just seemed ridiculous. Then I read about people being on antifungal medication to kill off yeast infections. They feel like they have the flu. It's called "die-off" or the Herxheimer Reaction. As the yeast dies, your body has to deal with cleaning up all the toxins the exploded yeast cells have just released. One of the more common recommendations for an antifungal treatment I saw was garlic. Garlic has been used in studies and is known to have antimicrobial properties.The light bulb clicked on, and I went and looked at the foods that were still making me sick. They all had garlic. Cooking garlic is supposed to decrease it's ability to kill, so I tried eating some of my raw garlic in the fridge. Good god, did I feel sick. I have a yeast issue I never knew about. I've taken the garlic long enough now that I'm not getting sick and my questionable gluten-free foods aren't bothering me anymore. It's not a garlic allergy.

So I had taken a whole bunch of antibiotics, didn't replace the "good" bacteria in my intestines, and the yeast colonised the empty space. Antibiotics don't kill yeast. Apparently, most probiotics that are ingested are destroyed in stomach acid and don't reach the intestines. So much for those years of me eating yoghurt. After reading that, I went and bought a probiotic that's coated in a special coating to protect it from stomach acid and is released after it hits your more alkaline intestines. And then I read this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12826451
http://www.celiac.com/articles/695/1/Does-Candida-Albicans-Trigger-the-Onset-of-Celiac-Disease/Page1.html

The protein structure in the cell wall of Candida Albicans is almost identical to that found in gliadin (the protein people keep referring to as "gluten").

So great. It's possible that my immune system has been trained by a yeast to try killing my food. So to sum up: I'm feeling really depressed that my chocolate gluttony has possibly led me to being unable to eat like 80% of all the food at my local food store. Maybe it serves me right.

It's interesting that a lot of CD patients find they are lactose intolerant for a time. Some don't get over it. L. Acidophilus is one of the good bacteria also present in your gut that is most known for breaking down milk sugar to ferment yoghurt. I really wonder how much of the health problems in industrialised nations are actually due to antibiotics.

I'm trying to figure what to make of the "Gut Fermentation Syndrome" or "Auto-Brewery Syndrome." I could never figure out how the urgent care doctor I first went to found I had an enlarged liver. I'm 27 and I've had like 5 alcoholic drinks my entire life. That's spread out over the years, mind you. I didn't drink them all the night before going to the doctor. He wondered about hepatitis, but it doesn't look that way. I'm not overweight at all, so I don't think it's a fatty liver due to obesity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1027959

So there are these medical syndromes that suggest it could be the yeast overgrowth in my gut creating all sorts of alcohol that's leaking into my bloodstream! Now that's just funky. 

I hope to heal up soon and get back to working on my studying.