I’ve published an article on common reasons for career change over on my career coaching site. My website is becoming a major writing project these days – no time for poetry, sadly!
Author Archives: Carole
Formal Portrait
In lifedrawing, we are doing a two-session seated formal portrait. This is my painting so far. I’ll be completing it this Friday.
Sewing
I’ve been doing some mending this evening, so I just picked up my sketchbook and drew these without thinking too hard about it. It’s easier to do that way.
Still life
For the last few weeks at art college, we’ve been painting a still life. We’re using it to learn different ways of using paint. For this exercise, we were supposed to use tissue paper to build up a textural painting. Only I got so carried away by the beautiful colours of the tissue paper and how you could layer them that I ended up ‘painting’ it in tissue paper. Really, you can paint with just about anything.
In the garden
I treated myself to a few minutes in the sunshine for today’s drawing. These are little sketch vignettes from my garden.
Draw a plug …
… Or even a phone charger. I’ve posted this just to prove:
a) I’m still drawing every day, even when I’m feeling a bit rough after a sleepless night;
b) That I can (and do) do seriously rubbish drawings sometimes;
c) That a plug is a very difficult thing indeed to draw! Moving swiftly on …
Another shoe
Encouraged by Ryan, I’ve been playing with more of my graphite pencils. This was drawn mostly with 4B and a bit of HB. I think I’ve still got a way to go to get the tonal differences right, but I’m making progress.
Party Pig
This is a party pig from www.barearts.com – the only nude art gallery in Todmorden (or possibly the world?) who also have a license to brew beer. He sits cute and fat on our kitchen worksurface and squeals happily when Rick pulls a pint by pressing his red nose (the pig’s red nose, not Rick’s).
Feeling motivated today …
I woke up this morning feeling flat and low on energy. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my day. This afternoon, I’m feeling optimistic, purposeful and busy. So, what made the difference?
For a while, I’ve had an item scribbled on my to-do list to ‘research potential outlets for my art’. I’ve known that it is important for me to do art, but I’ve struggled to dedicate time to it, feeling it’s not serious and I should be doing a ‘proper job’. Then I went to my co-coaching group a couple of weeks ago (they supervise my coaching practice and check I’m not falling into bad habits). Being with a group of coaches for an evening, they helped me to see that I needed to research potential outlets for my creativity in order to allow myself to take it seriously.
So, today I sat down and wrote out all the things I could do that I feel passionate about. Things that appeal, rather than things that I assume would be lucrative. In doing this, I reconnected with my purpose – what I really care about, and what stimulates me to make art. It’s a purpose that I keep coming back to when I pause to listen, and that makes me burn with energy. When I reconnect with it, ideas suddenly start to flow and action always follows. I have rediscovered my motivation.
Prompted by this, I’ve written an article on finding your motivation. What is it that motivates you to work?
Todmorden Station
My train was cancelled this lunchtime, so I had a half-hour wait at the station. Luckily I had a sketchbook in my bag. I have to say, though, my hands did get cold!