5 Jul 2013

I'm back



“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” 
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson



I can't believe it's been nearly eight months since I last posted here. I was only meant to take a short two week break, maybe a month max but, things happen and here we are eight months later.

A lot of things have changed in my workspace. I'm still sharing the lounge but I invested in a good sized second hand desk and a cubby type bookshelf to store my growing collection of art and reference books. I still need to look for a decent office chair though. I also picked up a second hand medium sized wooden box with a tilt top lid to paint my watercolors on. The space inside it is handy for holding my desk sketch/idea book and small works in progress. I even managed to pick up a second hand three drawer mobile unit to store my art supplies in. I've put little trays in the top two drawers that I can pull out to use their contents when needed. Ideal for colored pencils, felt tip pens, gel pens etc. and it all tidies away to keep my desktop clutter free. Well it works in theory anyway, my desk now seems to be attracting school papers and bills etc instead. Grrr. The paperwork of life is such a pain.

Art wise nothing new has happened really. I haven't painted in a while. I started creating business cards and letterheads etc in Photoshop for my Zazzle store and that snowballed into opening a separate store for business items. Then I created a number of new photographic and computer generated designs for elsewhere in my store and that's kept me busy for months. Right now I have three boy's birthday card designs waiting to be painted and some more half designed cards for girls that I haven't quite got right yet. Once I've finished these designs I'll have them to paint too.





Elsewhere I've been going through our house again and getting rid of unnecessary clutter. This seems to be an ongoing process. Some things I donated, some things I sold, which paid for my desk, bookcase and mobile unit and some things I threw away. So between all this and keeping up with the kids I completely forgot about my blog.

I've decided to try to plan out my week a bit better and make sure I leave myself some painting time so it's not all full on computer work all week cos that gets tiring after a while. Perhaps alternating days will liven things up a bit. I've also got to get rid of this idea in my mind that if I don't produce a finished piece of art at the end of every art day that I've wasted my time. I'm not sure how many of you have the same nagging voice in your mind, but I find that it stops me enjoying painting when I'm forcing myself to up my output and sometimes it stops me from starting a piece of work. I need to relax more and just let it all flow out as it comes. My morning walks are always a good way to blow away the cobwebs and get new ideas coming. Time spent in nature is never a waste of time. Anyway, hopefully this will be the start of weekly posting from now on.

Take care and have a great week :)