TopNotch I agree and as you say, nobody want to sound snobby or dumb when with people.

Say for example I went to an anime convention, I'm not the biggest weeb in the world but I don't want to look like a fake so learning a few Japanese anime words and popular phrases would be a good idea to make friends. I just posted about this on Instagram, I work in a bistro and I have a patron who is well traveled and knowledgeable and weathy so say I wanted to impress him with some knowledge on alcohol (he comes in for a drink every Sunday) I'd learn a bit about drink lingo.

(best boi just fyi)

So I've been thinking about the whole artist / manga / ✏ art thing and I decided to become a fan art creator. Not right away, I need practice first but maybe next year. To that end I thought that 1 drawing a week for 6 to 8 months should be enough time to practice taking the original artwork and adding my own spin plus teach me to take my time sketching and shading.

I'll be honest, women characters are more popular as fan art so I'll likely end up with a lot of bikini clad girls but I'm going to try and break the norm and do a few male characters.

I was at the gym yesterday and this morning my back is sore so I am not going to do my own workouts from now on, I'll use workouts from YouTube or darebee but most likely YouTube.

No. Firstly, why do you want to impress him? Secondly, if he is knowledgeable, your grabbing some tidbit of info that you might not fully understand and that he probably already knows will just make you look pretentious. The best way to "impress" (if that is what you want to do) knowledgeable people is to display interest in what they know, and ask them questions. If you ask intelligent questions and show a willingness and capacity to learn, you suddenly have an interested, enthusiastic teacher, who thinks you are an interesting and intelligent person. Is he knowlegeable about wine, or does he ask for the same drop each time? If the latter, then talking about wine might not be the way to go. Perhaps ask something like what was his favourite place in the world, or if he's been to every country (I have a friend who only has one country left to tick off). If the former, then were you to ask something like "what does it mean when a wine has "cigar box on the nose"?" or whatever, and if he is kind and has the time, he will probably tell you, and in such a way that it is easier to understand than anything you read in a wine book. Sometimes ignorance but interest is way more impressive than hurriedly cobbled-together, not well-understood comments.

I finally played aome Genshin impact and just spent a few minutes grinding to level up. I want to get my team (the whole team) to level 90 b4 I reach Inazuma and have to fight raiden and signora. It'd also be nice to have all 4 of my team at level 50 b4 fighting tartaglia in Liyue.

I get my pay tomorrow morning and am going to buy some charcoal pencils and a easy harmonica songs book (if I have the funds after investing and housing costs). I've had the itch to draw again but had to leave it (it was 00:00). I'm only buying 6 charcoal pencils at £11 to see if they're any good.

TopNotch that was what I was getting at but as usual I can't explain what I mean.

Whoo I'm feeling good. I got £85 in my ISA, £29 in my flex direct and £14 in my reg account. The goal is to keep the £14 in my reg account for emergency, my ISA is being saved for my new art studio room (which I have planned all that's going into it). I'm hoping to use the MikuMikuDance software to get into animation as well as drawing. When I am a decent artist on paper I plan to get a digital art pad and draw on the PC and create my own characters and my flex direct is for shopping.

Today I ordered a set of 4 charcoal pencils (1 soft, 1 medium, 1 hard and 1 white). They were more than I'd like to pay but that was due to postage. I also had to buy my dad painters tape at near £16.

I plan to do some more exp. Grinding in genshin tonight and then it's time to work all weekend. I also screenshot a lot of pictures on Instagram (a lot of 😳 but I got this one of Noelle and it is just amazing, let me see if I can post it).

I have the itch to draw BUT I also have a bad feeling. So you know the way I can only draw what I see, well I feel [kinda] bad when I copy someone else's work and wish I could draw my own stuff. I currently have over 200 images on my IPad, some are to draw other are for... stuff but I have more on my phone.

I want to get into animation because as you may know, anime is a love of mine. This fan video is the height I wish to achieve:

I absolutely love this video.

Pre work drawing. It's all in regular pencil so it looks kinda bad kinda cool.
It's professor Zero from Dawn of the witch.
It looked good b4 I added colour, and symmetry needs work.

Despite the missing symmetry, it doesn't look bad. But still, I'm going to be blunt:
Do yourself a favour and learn how to construct faces. atm, you're mostly copying and you don't learn to draw while doing that. Your missing symmetry originates from that. It shows in the way that you only draw frontal, even when the image you're copying has a bit of perspective to it. If you want to animate or draw yourself, you have to know how faces and bodies work and how they're constructed. Get a good book and start learning. I think you already have one, so use that. You'll profit from that in the long run.

lofivelcro I just need to get around to reading it, cover to cover. I've glanced at portions of each section but never read it all. I'll read some tomorrow or maybe tonight if I don't pass out, it's already 0015 so maybe leave it to tomorrow.

I was thinking about buying a thesaurus and dictionary to increase both my vocabulary and understanding of word's. I just had a look at my bank and I can't buy them this week. Should I bother with these books? I was inspired by a character in Genshin Impact named Yae who's a shrine maiden but also a 9 tailed fox and servant of the electro God. She's a wiz with word's and, obviously She's a fox so she's crafty with her word's and I'd like to at the vary least have a better understanding of my own language.

It's Sunday already, when did that happen? I also found out that my boss thought I was only allowed to work a certain number of hours so that's why I was only on 2 to 3 days but I said I could do 4 - 6 days if she wanted.

instead of buying books, especially if you are unsure, why not using the internet. Something like "one word a day". That was something I used in the past as well to spice up my english skills, to sharpen up my vocaculary, at least I tried, and it was really nice, first of all its free, and on the other hand, you have to deal with one word in general, getting used to it and how to use it in context. Just a thought. Have a nice day.

Yeah, I'm with TheLibrarian on this. The internet has a lot of online dictionaries that lend themselves to bouncing from one word to another. Btw, don't you have a public library where you live? Another way to learn new words is reading books. Doesn't matter which ones, just read. You'll see words used in context and naturally pick up speech habits and sentence construction.

TheLibrarian OK I'll use an online site I know, save £10, thanks.

lofivelcro our library closed back in the late nineties. I have books that I can read but I don't know if they'd have anything I can use IRL as they're fantasy.

There is a bookshop opening locally but it's not a library.

Finished work and got an email that my charcoal pencils have been dispatched so they'll be delivered tomorrow.
I haven't drawn in 1 day but it feels like ages.

I'm working tomorrow, 5 to finish so no gym for me but it looks like a quiet day.

Side note: this may seem weird but I'm curious. I've been looking into witchcraft and it's interesting but I am only interested in an anine context. What's you bees views on witchcraft? I took a quick look at a documentary on YouTube and from what I see... it's basically a combination of religion/spirituality and alchemy. I was curious about it in terms of useful skills I could learn (herbal remedies etc) but it's just a fleeting curiosity, I don't think I'd actually do anything regarding witchcraft as I don't believe in God or the like (if I had to give a religion I agree with... jedi, when star wars first came out I was/am a believer in the force).

Genshin impact has given me some interest in things like witchcraft and alchemy mainly. I'd like to learn about both but have no idea where I'd begin. I did look at a few witchcraft books on amazon but there was too much I didn't know about it.

Sorry about that whole witchcraft rant.

First thing, herbal remedies are not witchcraft! Some remedies have involved a degree of Faith, and hve relied heavily on the placebo effect but proper herbal medicine uses herbs whose medicinal properties have been proven, either as one single herb (known as a simple), or in combination with others that work synergistically. I have, for example, a linament from my physio that contains St John's Wort (pain relief, and has also been used to combat depression), arnica (great for bruising) and calendula (wound healing). Peppermint tea is well known for soothing an upset stomach and freshening breath. One could call these remedies herbal medicine but certainly not witchcraft! Herbalists generally don't think of themselves as witches. To become a herbalist, you need not only to know about herbs, but also about anatomy and physiology, and a spot of psychology (and other stuff like business management, but I guess you probably didn't need that a couple of hundred years ago!).
Second thing, block Amazon! Just because you've become interested in something does not mean you have to buy any books at all about that subject! And there is so much good information (but watch out for the rubbish) on herbal medicine out there on the internet.
My rant over.

TopNotch don't worry I was just curious, I don't plan to buy anything about witchcraft.

But I do plan to buy a sh*t ton of merchandise from this website I just discovered by chance yesterday called "teyvat factory" (teyvat is the name of the world in Genshin Impact)

They're a fan website selling items inspired by the game. It's American but I looked through the site and still want to look at stuff, like if they're affiliated with HoYoverse in any official capacity but they have a vast selection of stuff from cloths and jewellery to figures and plushies.

In the future I want to buy a load of stuff from them but that's for a later date for now I'll stick to the official merch from Amazon but if you're a fan of the game they sell beautifully made stuff. I'll maybe buy a couple of samples to check for quality over the coming months to see if it's worth buying a lot of their stuff.