glorious technicolour v. shades of grey

this is a post about colour theory, and why I hate rainbows. for more information, see "Polymer Clay Color Inspirations" by Lindly Haunani and Maggie Maggio, a fabulous book (that I read, cover to cover, on christmas day a few years ago) which is almost entirely responsible for me finding my colour voice.

bellow is a link to the LPCG colour theory board on pinterest. you can look if you like, make up your own mind...
https://www.pinterest.com/lpcg/polymer-clay-colour-theory/

...are you back? good.

this board contains 19 pins intended to educate the viewer on the wonderful (but occasionally baffling) world of colour theory. there are a lot of colour wheels, some annotated with the expected emotional responses of specific colours, visual representations of words like "analogous" and "complementary", a few example colour palettes and not much else.

of course, none of this is unique to the LPCG. you would find similar things in any relevant google image search.

so? what's the problem with that? well, it's a bit like the problem with sex ed. the information isn't wrong, but the same, limited stuff is repeated everywhere. this leaves teenagers (or artists) with the impression that they already know everything, because they know analogous colour schemes are calming and purple is supposedly a spiritual colour (or, you know, "HIV=BAD, stick a condom on it"). they may understand nothing about important concepts like consent structures (or value contrast). this may leave the artist frustrated, as they see others working with colours they would never have thought to use together making fabulous things, while their colours look flat, lifeless and muddy even though they used the brightest red and blue they could find.

(there will be no more use of sex ed metaphor, please discuss the importance of consent on your own time)

to learn more, we need to know what questions to ask:

so, why does your blue & red colour scheme not sing? and why can I wear purple and green and red and mustard yellow all at once and still get compliments?

value contrast.

imagine taking a black & white photo of your chosen red and your chosen blue. which one would be the darker grey? if you don't know, they probably have little to no value contrast. visually, this means if they are placed next to each other the human eye tries to "mix" them, resulting in an illusion of gloom, or a "buzzing", strobe  effect.

the next question is "how do we fix that?". there are 2 answers, firstly, you can chose different colours. there's nothing wrong, per se, with red and blue (or any similar combination), just with that red and that blue together. try your mid-value, tomato red paired with a deep navy or pale sky. or keep the blue and use a dark, rich burgundy or a pale pink. (or abandon both mid-value colours, using navy & pale pink or burgundy & sky blue, it doesn't make much difference to me).

the second solution? cheat. if you really love both colours individually, but they don't want to work together, use a 3rd colour with a lot of value contrast between them. that deep navy and rich burgundy could really sing with a pale grey/lilac/minty green outline between them. so could your original tomato and ultramarine. the original palette will also work with a dark boundary, as would the pale pink & sky blue.

so, by discussing ways to "fix" this particular disappointing colour scheme, we now have 10 options which will lead to a far more visually dynamic palette. they might not all be to your taste (hell, pale pink is never to my taste), but they will work.

if yellow + blue = green, why does bright, sunshine yellow and equally bright ultramarine blue make such a muddy green? and why can't you get orange right?

your primary school teacher lied to you. they probably said there are 3 primaries: red, blue & yellow. these mix to make green (blue + yellow), orange (red + yellow) and purple (red + blue).

but there are no perfect primaries. a "sunshine yellow" is tainted with red, so it will make fresh, bright oranges but slightly muddy greens. to make bright greens, you will need a "lemon yellow", which is tainted with blue and, as such, forms more earthy oranges. the same is true for the blues, with yellow-tainted turquoise making the clearest greens and murkiest purples, and red-tainted ultramarine making clear purples and mud greens. tomato red is heavily tainted with yellow, meaning clear oranges and sludgy purples, and blue-tainted fuchsia makes clear purples and muddy oranges.

so, to mix all those colours bright & clear, we need 6 primaries instead of 3. this doesn't answer the orange problem. why does a 1:1 mix of red & yellow make something so...red?

some colours are stronger than others. try picturing a tug of war, between a team of boy scouts wearing yellow shirts and a team of rugby players wearing red shirts. if we have equal teams, the red team will win every time. to make the contest fair, we need many more boy scouts than rugby players. a 1:15 ratio seems to work well, giving a fair contest and an orange that looks like it's half way between red & yellow.

blue is also stronger than yellow, but not by as much (try replacing the rugby players with accountants wearing blue shirts) and a 1:3 ratio works. bizarrely, a 1:1 ratio works fine for purple. you've got to wonder how the accountants manage to hold their own against the rugby players...

for mixing tints (lighter colours, with added white), and shades (darker, with added black), you can consider a second scout troupe wearing white shirts and a fleet of black taxis. you'll need quite a lot of white, but even the rugby players can't compete 1:1 with the black cabs, so use black sparingly when mixing.

of course, these are all rules to be broken. you might want earth tones, or secondaries that are visually closer to one primary than the other. the main thing is to use this knowledge to choose when you want lime, kaki or emerald, terracotta, mustard or tango.

ok, what's wrong with rainbows? and what do I do about this information?

rainbows are everywhere. after you've been on a few pride marches they just become boring. the simplistic sequence of bright colours that describes both colour wheels and pride flags has no visual drama. it always does the same thing. natural rainbows are a completely different thing.

personally, I like colours that work despite appearing to break all the rules. that's where I get my fun. I recommend sticking a basic colour wheel to a dart board, throwing 3 darts at it and trying to develop a colour scheme from that. I can almost guarantee you will be able to do it successfully (if you think you "hate orange", consider the full range from pale peach to deep brown, from almost yellow to the red you got from that 1:1 mix earlier). this actually sounds like a fun group activity.

colour is incredibly personal, so what you like probably isn't what I like. the aforementioned "rules" are not intended as gospel, more as an explanation of why you might be struggling to find your colour voice. if you love pastels or neutrals, or even rainbows, that is absolutely fine. you've probably found your voice already. otherwise, consider these ideas, there might be something useful to you in there. or check out the colo[u]r inspirations book. it really is an amazing book.

CBT: what's in a name?

I've been experimenting with a new name for the past 2 1/2 months. I didn't expect to feel any more attachment to it than I did to the old one, but I really do.

I had my second CBT session on friday, and on the way home (via hobbycraft) I realised something interesting.

in my head I still use the old name, but only for the "bad thoughts". 

old-name-me is weak, lazy and totally to blame for her failings.

new name me is awesome. she is strong enough to take on the world. she is one of the most generous and creative people you'll ever meet. she can do anything she sets her mind to.

so, for the first time on this blog, I'm going to use my name.

if there's anyone out there reading this:

Hi everyone, I'm Jude.

my brain wants to mess with me. BRING IT ON!

my therapist says I'm depressed.

that sentence says a lot of really positive things:
1. I have a therapist
2. I have no shame
3. there is hope that life will get better
4. erm, well, I'm sure there are more. or maybe it just feels like there should be more because they're so big...

ok, this post is going to be about me starting CBT. it feels like there might be a lot of posts related to this subject coming up. I'm not sure who I'm warning about that, as far as I know this blog has a maximum of 2 semi regular readers, but there it is.

I had my first appointment on friday, and (read most of) the information today. the idea behind CBT seems to be that depressed people do less because they have less energy, which makes them feel useless, which makes them more depressed....so if we can break that cycle, we'd feel better.

once this is pointed out, it seems ridiculously obvious. why the fuck didn't I just do that, rather than do all the painful hoop-jumping needed to get access to an NHS therapist? but that's kinda the point. it would never have occurred to me because my brain is screwed up and that's not my fault. so I need this help, and thats ok. I don't feel guilty for the taxpayers money spent on sorting out my fucked up head. if this money wasn't spent, I'd never be capable of productive work and therefore (assuming I have a right to exist) this is much cheaper than any alternative.

so, with that in mind, today I have tidied my bedroom (mostly, I have reclaimed my bed at least), called the vocational support dude (phonecalls are hard...), drunk tea (lets pretend that counts as "productive"), written this blog post and set my first "SMART" goal.

my first goal is to get up by 9am every day. to do this, I plan to go to bed before midnight and set an alarm on my phone. this will make me feel better by giving me more time to do all the other things I need/want to do. it will also encourage mum to be more productive in the projects we have to do together, like sewing or making the room over the garage a functional space again.

hopefully this will allow me to set more goals for other bits of life that need to change:

1. my friends. I love you all dearly, and I'm genuinely grateful to all of you for putting up with me and my dysfunctional brain. with all due respect, fuck that sideways with a pineapple. I happily "put up with" yours, and would hate to think you had to feel grateful to me for that. I am as worthy of your friendship as you are of mine and, even if I don't always grok that, I know it and I hope to make it a part of my lived reality.

2. learning. I feel powerful when I'm learning new things. I want to feel that more. here is a list of things I want to learn:

more maths! - I will continue with the graph theory for now, then find another subject to occupy that part of my mind. I might even learn programming.

driving - I will talk to the grownups about restarting lessons.

life drawing - I feel that this is a shameful gap in my arts & crafts skills.

3. I am an adult. or, failing that, I am an adult sized human at least. therefore I shouldn't be completely dependant on my parents. getting financial independence is a long way off, but in the mean time I should be helping mum around the house.

4. work. I want to at least be capable of active jobseeking. this one is big & scary right now, but hopefully I'll be more able to deal with it after I've done some of the other stuff.

hopefully, this is the start of a long term change in my thinking, which will lead to long term changes in my doing, which will lead to long term changes in my life...

rationalising the irrational.

last week, I tried to have a blood test. this did not go well. me + needles does not, usually, go well.

I could, at this point, tell the story that explains why me + needles = bad idea. it is a good story. it explains everything very neatly. it also has the advantage of being true.

I'm not going to tell that story. instead, here are some things nurses have said to me when they want to be helpful (and the reason they're not)

"don't worry, I've worked with Sue* for years, she's really gentle, it won't hurt at all" - pain is beside the point. I say this every time. there is no pain memory involved (the main sensory memory from the story mentioned above? the sight of my blood travelling along a clear plastic tube). I know it won't hurt nearly as much as, say, under arm waxing, even if "Sue" is a trainee undertaker. the problem is that There. Is. A. Needle. whatever you say, my natural reaction is to bend my elbow to protect the vulnerable target skin/hyperventilate/cry. no one ever believes that the pain is irrelevant.

*not her real name. or maybe it was. I honestly can't remember

"we can't do it if you won't stay still" - I know. that's exactly why I'm pulling away. I don't want this to be happening.

"if you'd let us do it straight away, it'd all be over and you wouldn't need to think about it" - yes. and if I grew wings I could get home from the hospital without waiting for the bus. I couldn't let you do it the first time any more than I can grow those bus defying wings, because it is terrifying.

"ok, we won't do it today. maybe you'll feel better next time" - yeah, cos that ones worked so many times over the past 18 years. I have to live with the consequences of this, why should you get off so easily?

"come on, be a big, brave girl" - no. I am at least a foot taller than you and made of badass. I gave blood and got a tattoo in spite of (and, in some sense, because of) this needle phobia. if I need to scream and cry and defend my vulnerable inner elbow skin, don't you dare suggest I'm not trying.

and two new ones from last week:

"if your friend & the other nurse hold you down, I could just do it" - NO. Nononononono. I actually suggested that idea once. in the office of the counsellor I was seeing for my needle phobia. she said it was a bad idea because it would add further needle trauma to my frazzled psyche. she also said they normally only force medical treatment if they feel the patient should be sectioned under the mental health act. not only are you suggesting assaulting me, but a small part of my brain is now worrying you want me sectioned. great.

"you have to get over it. I had to get over my fear of spiders" - um, no, you didn't. I bet you're still terrified of spiders. I bet you have to stare at the one on the bathroom ceiling while you pee. maybe you can trap them with a glass and a piece of paper and take them outside, or maybe you have to summon someone like me to remove it before you can relax. it doesn't mean you'd be able to do the most traumatic spider-based activity you can imagine (say, kissing a tarantula?) on demand, all of 30 seconds after someone threatened to assault you if you didn't.

and from non-medical professionals:

"but you've got a tattoo!" - yes. because, as I mentioned, I'm made of badass. that doesn't mean I could get one done again today. it's also a completely different needle experience to a blood test. if I was to score the fear factor of various needle based events, it would go something like this:

hand sewing/handling safety pins - 1
machine sewing - 1.5
tattoos - 5
body piercings - 7
injections - 10
blood donation - eleventy billion
blood test - slightly more than blood donations, because there are medical consequences if I fail.

sometimes, with the right nurse/friend combination I can take on the big scorers. most of the time, I can't. doing a 5-point activity on one day means I could do it on that day, with that very sympathetic tattoo artist. it doesn't mean I could do it again today, and it definitely doesn't make it ok that someone wants to stick sharp metal things into me. and that's ok. it's ok to be a badass wimp.

how to unlearn a lifetime of "School"

theres a blogger I like called Neurodivergent K. K is Autistic, like me. unlike me, however, she has found her "outside voice" and won't let anyone take it away from her. I'm still looking for mine.

K is also an abuse survivor. physical. emotional. sexual. the kind of hard core stuff no one could ever condone or justify. this makes the next bit difficult.

K wrote a post about "gaslighting", a form of emotional abuse. reading that post, I felt cold. gaslighting wasn't a term I was familiar with, but I have personal experience of almost every example given by K. basically, gaslighting is denying the inconvenient emotional responses of someone you have authority or privilege over. generally, this is done by telling the victim that they're just being "oversensitive", that they need to learn some self control, or that they should be grateful because the person who hurt them was trying to be helpful. after a while, the victim starts to doubt the validity of their own lived experience. they start to internalise the abuse.

I found this post maybe 3 weeks ago. I'm not sure what I feel about it. on the one hand, I'm not comfortable saying that I'm a survivour of emotional abuse. it feels disrespectful to anyone who's had it worse. I know my family love me. on the other hand, if K says it's abuse I'm inclined to believe her (she is, after all, a kind of expert on the subject). at this point, I'm out of hands, so I start channelling my inner octopus. the internal dialogue bounces between the voice that claims to be reality but might just be internalised gaslighting, and the other, more sympathetic voice. for the sake of clarity, the first voice shall henceforth be known as "School" and the second "Bicon".

"School" is louder most of the time. "School" stops me asking for help because I "just need to try harder" or I have no right to ask for "special treatment" or simply because "everyone else can do it". "Bicon" tells me "School" is the reason my life sucks. if I could defeat "School", I could get a job, escape Croydon for ever, conquer my deepest fears, get everything I've ever dreamed of. "School" ignores "Bicon". "School" won't dignify that with an answer.

"School" is so loud that I'm shocked whenever another person sides with "Bicon". I'm used to "School" telling me "Bicon" is a pathetic excuse or an overreaction that I see that as the only reality. but if "School" is right, why am I crying? some people agree with "School" (including my family), but my close friends are all "Bicon" (and so are most of the counsellors I've seen) and that's wonderful and painful and confusing. I love you all even when I'm not strong enough to believe you.

some day I'll find my outside voice. then I'll use it to shout back at "School" and everyone who agrees with her.

(but I'm still not comfortable with the abuse survivour identity though, sorry K)

THIS IS OUR LIBERATION!!!

this is a poem I wrote at a workshop ran by the V&A museum as part of their LGBT history month event. the workshop facilitator assures me that there's no such thing as bad poetry, so here goes (it's not like anyone reads this, anyway...)

here I am, stripped,

"artistically" concealed and revealed

for my audiences pleasure,

or maybe just to slip under the radar of censorship.

I face the camera with a level stare,

and feel naked in a way that has nothing to do with clothes.

but what does my face reveal anyway?

and is anyone bothering to look?

I am sexually empowered.

that freedom is mine to take.

I can strut my stuff and seek gratification however and with whoever I please

so why don't I?

what's wrong with me?

why does the leather, the soft skin, the gasping breath not thrill me?

why don't I seek that which I'm told was the pinnacle of our longed for liberation?

because yours is the only voice.

the chains that encircle my body entrap my mind.

this is freedom.

I have to want it.

wearing my skin

I have no right to be body positive. it doesn't really count for me anyway. in the campaigns for "real", "naturally beautiful" bodies, mine is the one used to oppress yours. it's a white size 10 with long legs. a boob job and a few makeup lessons away from being as close to "magazine hot" as anyone can get without photoshop. I know this, and I resent it.

not that I don't enjoy this body, you understand. I love how it's stunning height draws attention, it's hair so thick its almost waterproof, its long, dexterous fingers...no, the problem is the expectation that other people should aspire to conform to a body shape that is, to most people, unnatural and unhealthy. I am painfully aware that by the simple fact of my existence I am hurting other peoples self esteem.

not that it's always been easy. for me, the challenge was never weight, it was hight. as a small child, mum was very careful to give me only hight positive messages. I remember her bragging about my big growth spurt (1 foot in 2 years, around the top end of primary school) and feeling proud. I was big and beautiful. but not everyone agreed. I also remember my aunt telling me about an operation where they could take chunks out of my femurs to make me more normal looking when I was about 9. I was also offered hormonal growth stunting at about the same time. read those last two sentences carefully; as a child, it was recommended by both a doctor and a member of my own family that I take drastic steps to reduce a natural, non harmful trait. does that sound a bit fucked up to you? yeah, me too. I didn't do that.

fast forward a few years, to the start of secondary school. I hated that place. I was bullied to the point where I was too anxious to eat. at lunch time, every mouthful was a struggle, but I didn't have the words to explain what I was feeling. I just said that the lunch break was too short. eventually, I gave up. I didn't even try to eat on school grounds. I made up for it at home, but this decision meant the bullies had something new to call me; now I was "anorexic" too. the scary thing is, I remember that now every time I'm with a friend and they're eating while I'm not. it doesn't matter if I've just eaten, or I'm anxious about something, I worry that maybe I'm scaring them. maybe they think my reason is an excuse.

anyway, I left that school. I healed and I grew up. I went to university. mostly, my body was a non issue in the circles I chose to move in. it was just a convenient physical portal through which to view the world. then, one day I walked past primark. I glanced at the window, then stopped, horrified. the manikins. they were probably the same ones that had always been there, but they were wearing bikinis. I'm not a prude, the issue was not the naked glossy white plastic. the issue was that I could see their ribs, the contours amplified by the high shine finish. I have the questionable privilege of living in a body that looks like that. mine is a stone underweight according to the BMI scale. now, I know that a lot of people question the significance of the BMI scale, but most of the criticism comes from labelling otherwise healthy people as overweight, I have never heard anyone claim that such a low weight is ideal for health.

so, where do I go from here? I don't want to perpetuate a system that hurts others, but I'm not sure how to change that. as my weight has been fairly constant since I stopped growing a decade ago, this is clearly the size I'm supposed to be. if I can't change me, that leaves changing the system. of course, that's not a one person job. I'll try to dismantle these ideas. I'll try to ignore the suggestions, both internal and external, that my body somehow invalidates that message. I'll raise my hypothetical future children to think they're beautiful, not because they're tall like mummy, but because they're real, living humans and that's enough.

I am body positive. not because of my fashionable skinny body, but in spite of it. I wear this skin with pride, decorated however I please, with a two fingered salute to the beauty industry.

diet swearing.

I hate americanisms, but today I'm going to talk about the second most annoying (incase you're interested, my top 3 are "could care less", "ass" and "color" in that order).

If you want to swear, swear. As loud as you like. The more creative and passionate the better.

If you want to describe that piece of anatomy, you have a whole list; bum, bottom, backside, rear, posterior, or, if you really want, ARSE. Just stop watering down our authentic, earthy arses to their sugar free, disneyfied, slightly plastic-sounding asses. It's not a real swear word but, if you didn't want to swear, you could have taken your pick from the list.

Beyond the obvious americanisation issue, this donkey/backside combination word allows for an internet meme that hurts/annoys/demonises/oppresses people like me. As anyone who knows me irl or reads this blog (if there is anyone who bothers to do that) will know, I am autistic. Specifically, I have the soon to be obsolete diagnosis of asperger syndrome. I have heard several variations on the pronunciation of this, but the most common sounds like donkey/backside-burger. This leads to my diagnosis being deliberately misspelled to exaggerate this "joke" whenever someone wants to dismiss an autistic perspective or troll an article on autism. No, this is not the biggest issue autistics face in the NT world, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't mention it. OK, here endeth the lecture. I will now end with some examples of creative swearing.

Go swivel on a pineapple, you LFNT arsewipe of an excuse for a human being.

Croydon sucks. It sucks it's own arse. Croydons arse is West Croydon bus garage...

You want me to tell you where you can stick that idea?....

What you are expressing there, is fractal bullshit. each element of that speech contains an amount of bullshit equal to the amount of bullshittery in the speech as a whole.

(but, having said all that, the literal image of an "asshat" is still kinda funny)