Here are some things that happened in 2010:

• Lost 34 lbs. in the first half of the year. Now well within normal body mass index.
• Kept the weight off through the second half of the year.
• Exercised quite a bit. Now in much better shape.
• Discovered that I am gluten-intolerant. A number of minor health problems have cleared up by switching to a paleodiet/primal/ancestral approach to eating.
• Completed graduate-level course requirements for board certification in behavior analysis. Got an A in each course. Yay, me.
• Kept my day job and have traveled a lot throughout the U.S.
• Stayed married (happily). Kept my son Brendan (Now 4 1/2 years old) alive and cared for.
• Stopped painting for about 6 months. Now back to it.
• Stopped updating this blog for about 6 months (other than site maintenance, deleting spam, and responding to comments). Now back to it.

There are two basic positions for painting—sitting and standing. For oil painting, I generally find it best to stand. It’s in the nature of painting that you stand in one position for long periods.

How do you stand comfortably for hours at a time? Millions of people in Western countries suffer from back pain, in large part because of poor posture. It’s important to avoid standing while painting in a manner that contributes to your own back problems.

Here are some basic principles to keep in mind:

• Slouching for long periods will eventually wreck your back.
• Standing up “straight,” with your back muscles at tension, is uncomfortable and you will stop doing it as soon as you are no longer paying attention.
• Instead, you’ll need to develop a standing position that keeps your head over your spine, your spine over your hips, and your hips over your heels. That keeps your body in alignment so that standing does not place undue pressure on your spine, back, hips, neck, or other parts of your body.

How do you do that? Stand up. Feet facing forward, about shoulder width apart or a little wider.

Now feel your hips. Many people in Western countries habitually tilt their hips backward. This leads to a rounded back and hunched shoulders. Instead, tilt your hips forward. Your waistline should be at an angle downward, so that the buckle of your belt (if you’re wearing a belt) is a bit lower than the back of the belt.

Don’t overdo it to the point that you feel tension in your lower back. The idea is that you are stacking your spine so that it bends correctly and is balanced directly over the hips.

Standing with your hips tilted forward tends to pull your shoulders back, but if you’re used to rolling them forward, make sure they are aligned backward. If you’re a woman, that means boobs up, ladies. This makes breathing easier by expanding your lung space. You should feel your spine align itself over your forward-tilted hips. This is a position in which your spine can be at rest while you are erect.

Your head should also be aligned straight, with your neck over your hips. Moving downward, your weight should be balanced over your heels, not your toes.

This is a comfortable standing position that can be maintained for long periods. If it’s not your habitual way of standing, then you’ll need to train your body to do it. The hard part is that painting takes so much focus that it’s very difficult to also concentrate on posture. One way to do that is to start painting in this position, and make sure that every few minutes you take a few steps back from the painting and look at your progress. That’s very good practice when painting anyway so that you don’t get tied up in fussy details. While you do that, attend to your  position and when you go back to painting, make sure that you’re standing correctly. Over time, you’ll catch yourself in the correct position without having assumed it consciously. Your back will thank you for it.

For more information, read Esther Gokhale’s excellent book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. Even if you don’t usually have a sore back, do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book. It’s that good.

Later on, we’ll talk about how to paint in a seated position without hurting yourself.

Caveat: I have no credentials that support giving health advice. Please don’t assume that I know what I am talking about. If you have any relevant health problems, consult a professional before doing anything I suggest.

In Arizona, a 13 year old boy was recently suspended from school for making a drawing that resembles a gun. There is no indication that he has a history of preoccupation with violent visual imagery, has made explicit or implied threats, engaged in violent behavior, tortures animals, or any other issues that would make a drawing of a gun part of a pattern that responsible adults might reasonably be concerned about. A 13 year old kid makes a doodle of a gun and gets kicked out of school.

I consult in schools and have worked with extremely dangerous adolescents. I spent the last three days teaching a course for special educators and school psychologists on how to prevent and manage violence. So I’ve seen lots of kids who need intervention and discipline. I think that suspending a kid for making a drawing is an incredible act of bureaucratic cowardice.

This may have only a peripheral association with art, but it still concerns me. If teenagers are afraid to make art because an adult might find their work to be politically incorrect, then we all, in the long run, will live in a world with less good art.

Ultimately, I think this trend is related to the increasing median age in core Western societies. As more people find the young to be alien and frightening, there is more and more push for “zero tolerance” of behaviors would in their own youth have been considered innocuous.

</rant>

Working on ideas for new posts. Any requests or suggestions?

I’d like to thank everyone who came here and stayed. I am especially grateful to all of the thoughtful commenters here.

Feel free to add comments or constructive feedback.

A few caveats: Files should be less than 100k in size.* Make sure it’s a decent photo or scan, not one full of glare or other problems. I’m not qualified to judge most abstract or political work. Don’t send your first ever painting; do 10 or 20 or 100 more and send the best one of those. Don’t’ send joke images; I’ll only add you to my spam filter. Send only one image. Send your own work. (Yes, you can probably fool me by sending an image of some classic but not well-known painting. Big deal.) If you’re a better artist than me (and lots of people are) then I would not be the one to judge your work.

*You can find out the size by selecting the file (click on it once) and choosing “Properties” (Windows) or “Get info” (Mac) from the File menu. If it gives a size in megabytes (MB) the file is way too big. If you’re not sure how to make the file small enough to send conveniently by email, you will need to change either the pixel dimensions of the image, the amount of compression, or both. Changing the number of dots per inch only affects how it will print, not the file size. Try saving the file in JPG format if it’s not already that kind of file. If this paragraph seems like gibberish to you, find a teenager who knows about computers and ask them to make the file 100 k (kilobytes) or less in size.