Perhaps it's a good thing that JJ walks around with headphones on whenever he's home and that the kids are just used to my weirdness as pretty much everyone else would probably have gone slightly insane at the sheer number of times I've been listening to True Colours by Artists Against Bullying (linked to a sign language one because it was adorable, this is the official clip and here's the original Cyndi Lauper one that they covered) and Here I Am by Bryan Adams (again linked to a Spirit one because I'm still not sure what to make of the original XD).
So I had these grand plan to at least finish the tail feathers if not the entire phoenix over the weekend, and I would have succeeded if it weren't for those meddling kids!
Actually the kids didn't do anything, we had a pretty chill weekend, JJ took @shadowlioncub out for a hike and that was about it, and my tai chi plans were messed up because I hadn't done midweek laundry or weekend laundry at the time and thus had no clothes for the entire day (except for one item which I failed to notice hanging on the airer in the laundry because I was too busy being cold and grumpy but it was the last item of clean clothes that was needed to make going out possible aaaaaaahhhhhhh). I also spent way too long researching and trying budgeting apps because I finally admitted defeat on being able to run things in my head (that was partly sheer subbornness and partly because I knew I'd lose many hours researching and angsting and playing around). I did end up picking two that I'm working between because they both have stuff that I like and I apparently can't do things sensibly.
Anyway the actual problem was, I completely failed to notice that two of the tail feathers were too close together until I started doing the barbs.
HOW DID I FAIL TO NOTICE THAT FOR SO LONG.
Despite assurances from the crew on the SteemArtists server that it looked fine, it grated so much that I redid it. Now it's a bit more evenly spaced (and I fixed the outermost green sections as well as they weren't following the tail flow properly, I must have started them from somewhere completely random inside the floofy bit of the tail o_O).
I zoomed the uv map view right in so show the better spacing. Now on a flat surface I would really need more symmetry in the tail feathers but the reason the four outermost ones are pointed in the same direction is because I think there's better flow when they look like they might tesselate on the underside of the arm.
Why does it matter when it's not like that's a part that gets seen that often? It's because I know and that's all that matters!
And also why this is going to take forever. I've been having increasing periods of feeling like no matter how hard I try or how much I push myself, I'm never going to be able to resolve the catch 22 and thus never going to get to where I want to be and it's seriously depressing. But I'll keep going because I desperately want this with every proton, neutron and electron. And maybe things will align one day.
This post also appears on my blog.
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