This piece reminded me of why I don’t use colored pencils that often. My hands get horrible cramps after about an hour… Next time I’m coloring I’ll bust out my FlyLady timer, and color 15 minutes at a time. And No I’m not an affiliate of Flylady in any way. I find her system of organization super helpful. 
It’s a rather depressing writers prompt that I found a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea where, because I didn’t write down the source, ah well.
Provided I’d had second opinions, and I was sure what the doctor had said was correct. I the first thing I’d probably do was break down and have a good cry, right there in the Doctors office. Then again I might not. I tend to be calm under pressure, and knowing I only had a week to live would be pressure.
It would be hard, to almost the point of feeling like torture, to tell my friends (and relatives) that I was dieing. I hate seeing people upset, no matter the reason. An I know that several of my friends would be upset to the point of tears (lots of my friends are prone to crying.)
One thing I would definitely want to do is to take at least a couple of days to clean out my room. I wouldn’t want my parents to have to deal with everything. I’d want to set things up to where they would know exactly who I would want to give what things. Gifts for friends, things to donate to charity, things that they would definitely want to keep, things that would go to the trash, and so on.
I’ve had to help my parents with both of my grandmother’s houses full of things, as well as several auctions for living relatives. A list of who they wanted to have what would have been a great help, although it would probably have caused even more drama with my relatives. A house full of my stuff is the last thing that I want someone to have to deal with, as well as a funeral, and so forth.
Funeral, that’s another thing I would want to arrange as much as possible. Nothing fancy, just a quick memorial service and get it over with. Those seem to work out best. No wake, or whatever they call the extra day before. I only have two relatives that would need to come in from out of state so everything could be done rather quickly.
I don’t own any land, any buildings, cars, or anything like that, so my finances would be easy to deal with.
Other than that I guess I’d just spend time with my parents, my brother, and my pet birds. Friends would probably come over, ones I haven’t seen in ages, and ones that I see every week… I’d talk to them, but mostly I’d want to spend time with my parents, and my brother. No going to extremes, like going sky diving, or racing…. Pretty dull huh? ;-p
It’s something that dawned on me last week when I was finishing up my Rainbow Tam (pictures coming soon I hope). I had to do some pretty basic algebra to figure out how to decrease the hat enough so I could knit the hat band. Between that, and a new podcast called The Math Dude (excellent podcast, be sure to check it out) , it hit me how much math is used in artwork.
Knitting, and crochet, use algebraic formulas to help you figure out how many stitches you need at certain points. In sewing it’s figuring out how much to add for seem allowance. Computer code is basically a series of computations to tell the screen what to show, and the program you’re using what to tell you when it’s done. Those are all examples of the more obvious spots in arts.
Mixing colors is another spot where math comes into play, but it wasn’t as obvious to me at first. Mixing colors moved into percentages, and ratios. A similar concept, though slightly more obvious is the classic ‘rule of thirds’ that is used as a classic guideline in composition for paintings, and drawings.
Cooking is another one where math is more obvious. Everything from basic addition, and subtraction, to fractions, percentages, and ratios.
I’m sure that there is a lot of other places that I’m missing where math is involved, these are just the ones I spotted off the top of my head. What are some other examples that y’all can think of where mathematics and art combine?
