I can't believe it's been so long since my last post! Even longer since I posted any finished art work. This has been down to a mix of 'life happening' and creative block. For the last few weeks I have hardly sketched or painted or created anything, apart from that is, the painting of this pink gerbera flower, and this has a sad tale behind it.
As many of you may know I work as a professional librarian in a school. The school is made up of a primary and grammar school and part of my role is teaching library skills classes to the junior pupils. The best part of the job! Through the last academic year I worked with and got to know a lovely young teacher, in fact during the summer term we began to make plans to start a junior book club - coming up with lots of fun ideas for the kids to do - us too. I knew at the time that she had not been feeling too well, food allergies she thought. Then two weeks before the end of term she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and, unbelievably on August 18th I attended her funeral. She had just had her 31st birthday, it doesn't really compute. I was really only just getting to know her but I have really felt her loss. I think we could have been good friends. I can't imagine how her close family and friends must feel.
Anyway, all her colleagues who attended the funeral wore a pink gerbera buttonhole. It had been her specific wish that we all wore bright colours, especially pink (her favourite). The day after the funeral I decided to paint this picture of her flower, just because it looked so pretty and because I wanted to remember how it looked. Now I am about to make a set of pendants using the image to help to raise some money in her memory, and the junior school have decided to use the image for their fundraising campaign in her memory - how cool is that? I'll let you know how things go.
Apart from that I seem to have started more pictures than I have finished and really have struggled with motivating myself. I can't give a particular reason I'm afraid, it's just how it has been. Well, last weekend I couldn't sit down and work on some jewellery pieces as I'd planned because I had ended up in A&E on Saturday morning with a scratch on my left eye :0( however, this Thursday gone I did manage to finish a sketch I had started on a beach, Hunmanby Gap on the Yorkshire coast in July. It's pretty basic but I'm happy with it. Wonderful beach too - I always manage to find lots of fossils there :0) I also did a bit more work on a coloured pencil piece I did to illustrate EDM # 161 Draw something you think smells wonderful - I will definitely get this finished, hopefully tomorrow and post it here. Oh and I managed to list a few more pieces in
my Etsy shop so not too bad a day I suppose!
Anyway - here's the beach picture which I will say is EDM # 100 Draw or paint a landscape:
I promise I shall be pulling my finger out in the next few weeks and getting some more work done. I have ordered myself a new A4 Moleskine sketchbook and a book to inspire me on digital artwork so no excuses!! I'd be interested to know what you people reading this do to try to overcome any creative block!
And if the last few weeks haven't been the kick in the pants I needed to remind me that life is just too damn short to dither about, well I don't know what would remind me, do you?
