Possibly the best thing I have ever read.

About my brother, Matthew.

Oh dear

For today at least, I hate all the music on my itunes.

Relevant doodle.

Me Animation

Was watching some Daniel Johnston songs and the animation made me feel so happy, so I want to post my own (made years ago) which I am really enjoying (at least visually) today.

Train Drawings

Bad morning

This morning I drew a lochness baldy and it made me feel better.

Little Alien Head

Finished reading Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz and this bit:

"His eyes were an improbably vivid sky blue, not made for looking outwards but for steeping themselves in the cerulean essence of dreams"

 Made me want to upload this picture:

Drawing progression and Website now live :3

 Pretty Asian woman on train, gona experiment with watercolours today and that scarf needs colour!

 Also, got a website together:  www.catmoody.com

Recent drawing in cafes

Penises are surprisingly awesome to draw.

Kit Williams

Jenny the Man

Awrite. Puppet making today at art therapy school.
This is "Jenny the Man", a tribesman with Trent Reznor 'Head Like a Hole' era hair. (I recommend clicking and listening as you finish the post :P)

While I can't be certain to what degree I am just making something because certain shapes and colours are pretty to me and then coming up with a story to make it fit to my life (THE PUZZLE PIECES MUST FIT!!! THEY MUST!! MY HUMAN MIND CANNOT ACCEPT RANDOMNESS AS A REALITY) it is fun and feels in some ways satiating.

I have been listening to Jonathan Haidt talk about religion and it's uses, religiosity being something I have looked down on for ages as nutty people control.
People coming together through dance/morality/ritual/tribe stuff is powerful, and I could decide this puppet is my inner tribesman, horrified at my exorcising myself from any kind of community most of the time.
So today I stroked his tiny feathery 'ed and reconsidered my contempt for being tribal.

Here is a great video, learning a lot of new takes on things from him. He thinks differences in morality in is more to do with personal taste than reasoning.

How I am feeling and what I did today instead of my essay

I have noticed in using a graphics tablet...and a pencil...I write/draw as though I am trying to dig my way out of a concrete block, so I am trying to become aware and relax my hand so I don't get RSI or something.

Bruce Bickford and Brains

I can get a bit creeped out after watching too much Bruce Bickford animation, but generally I feel so excited by his conscientiousness in making it as well as the trippy end result, being morphed through different shapes into new lands to the beat of Frank Zappa, that it tends to be quite a nice way to spend ten minutes.
The morphing reminds me of improvisation classes where you play with first impulses, learn to trust them and then turn it into something fun.

Thinking about what excites me, I was reminded of the split brain tests carried out on individuals with epilepsy by Michael Gazzaniga&co in the late 1950s. Reason being, it's results leave me wondering how sure I can be the reasons I provide for why I like something are the actual reasons.
In these tests they found that when the connections holding the left and right halves of the brain together (corpus callosum) was severed in animals, the animals stopped having epileptic seizures with no clear long-term side effects.When they tried the same thing with humans they found that their patients could not communicate information from one brain hemisphere to the other.  The left hemisphere was found to be the part responsible for language, and interestingly would come up for explanations for things the right hemisphere did, without knowing why. Unconsciously lying to explain away the situation. Examples here
This leaves me wondering how well my left hemisphere can actually explain why it likes something, particularly art related, when it can unknowingly lie just to give an answer.

 I am studying art therapy at the moment, and there is a lot of making up your own stories about a picture you drew, stories that come up like an impulse and with all kinds of feelings on top of it. If I can gain value from them I will, but I certainly want to keep an eye on what I end up believing considering my left brain is so good at confabulation.

Below is a sculpture I made on said art therapy course. The teacher told everyone after they had finished that the initial themes that tend to come up are generally sex and faeces, which I think can be seen here, but then maybe those are just the most shocking ideas and human's are biased to seeing the shocking in art.

Below I have copy-pasted a study carried out by Wegner from Wikipedia which I feel explains this a bit better;
"Ironic process theory

Wegner and colleagues performed a series of experiments in which people tried to suppress thoughts, for example by attempting not to think of a white bear. That work revealed that attempting not to think of a topic often backfires, resulting in high rates of intrusive thoughts about the topic. Wegner coined the term "ironic mental processes" for this effect, which is also known more commonly as the "white bear phenomenon". The effect contributes to various psychological challenges and disorders. Smokers who try not to think about cigarettes find it harder to give up. People who suppress thoughts that may cause an anxiety reaction often make those thoughts more intrusive. Wegner found that the ironic effect is stronger when people are stressed or depressed."

In other news, if you get the chance to drop a lump of wet clay from body height, it is loads of fun.

Christmaaaaas

This post has nothing to do with christmas :P
Here is a picture of Seb (my boyfriend) the giraffe to make up for it.

He has an awesome blog here http://sebscogblog.blogspot.com/ that contains studies and information I have found very useful for going from thinking;

"Parental behaviour affects their kids massively and in horrible ways only changeable through therapy - all the issues in the world are caused by childhood trauma"

TO


- There is no proof that therapy works
- Adoption studies have shown that parents/shared environment do not seem to affect (I have trouble with using effect/affect correctly) personality traits much long term.
- Why did I think parenting has such monumental power over the world :/ ?!?!

Yay for development in thinking.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

This podcast is an awesome help for any Harry Potter fan interested in learning how to think scientifically and in becoming... less wrong! (Potter and Malfoy sorta become friends!!)

I love the *idea* of going where the evidence takes me, it seems reliably exciting and like I would be less susceptible to manipulation by others.
On the other hand I am very aware I have my own biases which means I need to keep an eye on myself in terms of how I interpret evidence, but it feels great if a little intimidating to be on this track :)

Picture on the left doodled by me.

New thingzzz*£@

My first post in abshalutely agesh.

Main reason being I made a banner (see top of page) and I love it :) so putting it somewhere seemed the next logical step.

I have been editing a lot of drawings with the purpose of building a website out of them, though assessing what is 'quality' enough is a little fuddly. (I made up that last word up before you check any dictionary for it)

I have been looking into how to illustrate freelance, learning Photoshop and Illustrator CS5 and painting again. This is a rather useful site for anyone interested in going down a similar path: http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/

Some work in progress below painting wise, a self portrait, and I am looking forward to giving it a mouth!

I have also been reading a bit about copyrighting, main question being, do I HAVE to copyright stuff?
I like the sound of Myows.com so far, as it is free proof of the date a picture was made.

I have yet to check out Ludwig Von Mises's case for NOT copyrighting...Something about it shutting down the creativity of others. But if someone makes money out of/directly rips off a drawing of mine I will feel ze rage.



I like this picture of my desk... But saying that, I dont work at it much, even though I hauled it up the stairs myself for the sole purpose of working at it.
I seem to prefer sitting on my bed, looming over my laptop in the shape of a prawn, or squatting like a frog on the floor for painting...

Unwind

Brothers Quay.

"In that city of cheap human material, no instincts can flourish, no dark and unusual passions can be aroused.
THE STREET OF CROCODILES was a concession of our city to modernity and metropolitan corruption. The misfortune of that area is that nothing ever succeeds there, nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Obviously we were unable to afford anything better than a cardboard imitation, a photo montage cut out from last year's mouldering newspapers...
...Obviously, we were unable to afford anything better"

Shudder it out

I don't know who to credit for this :( but it is awesome.

God is..