Sunday, December 27, 2009
I hope everybody had a happy Christmas. Even though I was incredibly stressed out before Christmas, I ended up having a great time with everyone. I spent the past three days with family just talking, eating and not doing anything in my regular routine. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I was so stressed out about to be honest. I am lucky that I have a great family who is loving and supportive and not really materialistic at all. I will have to remember this for next year when I’m tempted to get stressed out again.
Now I have a quiet day to myself to relax a bit. I am going to do some sketching and some cooking for the upcoming week. I’m also going to work on my year end review and my 2010 art goals, which I’m still debating right now.
A note on the image: I drew this from a photo that I took in October while I was visiting Cape Cod with my boyfriend. I was there in the middle of a Nor’easter and it was raining almost the whole time, otherwise I would have sat on the beach to draw.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Instead of looking forward to Christmas this year, I’m sorry to say that I’m sort of looking forward to when Christmas is over. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great family and a wonderful partner, and I haven’t had any traumatic childhood Christmas experiences. I have just become overwhelmed with it all. I am normally a “medium maintenance” kind of girl, but I have reverted to being high maintenance until Christmas is over.
I am trying, but struggling, to take it one day at a time. My temptation is to become preoccupied with January when all my Christmas art projects will be over, because I have so many other projects that I am itching to start. There is a very big project in particular that I have been thinking about for years now but I have never been ready to begin. I have been on this self improvement kick for a number of months now and I finally built up my confidence to jump into it, but my Christmas projects are a more pressing priority right now. I also signed up for Kate’s Courageous Year e-course partly because I want to keep up my motivation to actually finish this project. Also, I have been reading her blog for years now and I trust her integrity that she put something great together.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
I went to the mall yesterday and did some Christmas shopping and some shopping from myself. Shopping is something that I don’t like to do so much as I find it exhausting and a little stressful. When I got home, I remembered that it was the 25th World Wide SketchCrawl and also the 5th anniversary of the event. I was too tired out to go anywhere to sketch so I just stayed home and drew some things around me.
I tried to experiment by drawing things in a way I ordinarily wouldn’t. I would have kept going, but eventually my right hand got too sore to continue and I had to rest it. It’s still a little sore today so I’m planning on doing some watercolor and going easy on it.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Yesterday I had a bad fall when I was walking my mother’s German Shepherd. The leash got tangled around my thumb and she started running after some sort of small vermin, leaving me flat on my face, with bruised ribs and sprained wrists.
I spent all day in bed with wrist splints on, not doing much of anything. I was a little afraid of having a major problem with my hands again, and there were multiple “what if” situations going through my head. After some time I realized that this will clear up within a few days, and my thoughts settled on other subjects, like financial, relationship and career matters. I feel I am starting to formulate an actual strategy for the first time in my life, so this fall might have been a blessing in disguise.
It has been ages since I have tried sketching a portrait from life, so I took the opportunity to draw my boyfriend (twice) while he was playing video games last weekend. He was staying pretty still which was an advantage, and I was behind him so he didn’t even notice me drawing him for quite awhile. One of the things I love about him is that he encourages me to draw and doesn’t mind if I spend time on it. And I don’t mind if he plays video games either.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Now that I am feeling better I have been doing drawing mostly every day, except right now I am working on Christmas presents because I am so behind schedule. I was originally planning on getting all my Christmas artwork done before July, but things didn’t really go as planned. I don’t want to post these drawings right now because my family reads this, so for the meantime I will be posting a bunch of random stuff from my sketchbooks. This is a sketch that I made on the cover of my new craft paper sketchbook that I just started recently. I only realized afterwards that tea and fixative don’t mix too well.
I’ve spent the past two months agonizing over a perceived health problem. Now that my doctor could not find anything wrong with me, I’m almost completely convinced that it is mind-body in nature, and not a real illness after all. Unlike my previous hand issue, it was really starting to affect my art productivity not because I was unable to draw, but because my mind was so occupied that I lost my motivation and because I was wasting so much time reading Web MD-type articles online. For the past few days I have been really testing myself by not reading any such articles and I’ve been able to do a few sketches. So far I have been feeling better as well! I love personal victories.
Ever since I was a kid I remember this bottle in the liquor cabinet. This must be at least 75 years old because it has been there ever since I’ve been around and the bottle says it’s already 50 years old! I don’t think it would be very good to drink.
Metaxa is a type of Greek alcohol which is a blend of brandy and wine. According to their website, it has quite the history behind it. According to my family members, it is actually quite yucky and they don’t really recommend trying it.
Magnolia Blossoms, watercolor on hot press Arches, 5″ x 9″
Last week I took some time off from work because I was sick with a cold. I mainly slept, relaxed, and did some reading, but I did do some artwork as well. I recently organized all my reference photos on my computer and I found a photo of some magnolia blossoms that I took while I was staying at Snow Farm this past April. Then I started fiddling around with my art supplies and I found a scrap of hot press Arches watercolor paper that I took home with me and have been saving all this time.
I wasn’t really used to the hot press paper and I haven’t done anything with watercolor in a long time, but it was fun to just play around with it. I wasn’t aiming for accuracy or anything great, just a pretty picture. I’m just happy that I ended up doing something productive when I could have been just feeling miserable being sick.
