Late night doodling.
Nov15
Butterfly
Category Archives: creativity
Nov9
Sketchbook project
Guess what I signed up for…
Nov8
I did a guest-drawing!
Nov1
The no-experiment
I've not felt well lately, very tired and stressed. Part of this comes from having a lot of appointments scheduled. A big part of it however comes from wanting to do to much. I don't want to do extraordinary stuff -- although for my condition it would qualify as such. I want to do stuff other people consider normal.
- Walk the dog for an extra long time.
- Buying groceries.
- Hanging out with friends.
- Visit family.
- Go to the movies.
- Randomly hop into the car with TG and go for a nice beach-walk.
All of these things require planning on my side, which also sucks up precious energy.
A couple of days ago I read Michael Nobbs' new book Sustainable Creativity in which he discusses the importance of learning how to say 'no'. For some areas I know when to say 'no': I can easily say it when I don't want to do something, or I don't have the time, or I have other plans. But at those times when I don't have plans yet, I really want to do it and think I have the energy, I won't say no. And this backfires. I rarely do have that much energy, and end up canceling many things. This does not make me happy.
Tonight I watched the movie 'Yes-man' and it gave me an idea. What if I say 'no' instead? I have things planned (and one not-yet-planned-but-sorta) and won't precancel them. I will not make new plans however, excluding the ones where I go to the hospital (or other medical stuff) or where people come to my house (less tiring).
This may sound a little drastic, but I gave it some thought and it seems like a cool experiment. Worst case, I'll feel bad the day after for saying 'no' and then I'll have learned I said 'no' to something that matters to me. In a way, this will force me to re-evaluate things that matter to me most, and these may or may not include the things I think matter the most.
It will also, hopefully, give me some practice in saying 'no' when I do think I have lots of energy (but actually don't and I end up wasting all of my reserves).
I have no idea about how long I want to do this, considering a month or perhaps until New Year
Oct6
Having a bloody week
I’ve done a drawing over at InkBlobChronicles every day for roughly two weeks now and for almost two weeks before that I did one almost every day. I guess the habit slowly forms. One of the drawings resulted in me changing my twitter icon, because I really like how the drawing on the side turned out (a self-portrait with new hat).
Yesterday Nano hurt herself again during our walk, and she started bleeding from her paw. Today I went into the hospital and had some blood taken. This week has already turned into a bloody week. Wonder what else will happen in the next few days…
Sep23
Total sucker for art supplies
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Other people suffer from *enjoy* it too, right? An abundance of art supplies? I could do without of course, but I so very much like them….
I got a few more Faber…
Sep19
Daily: 2010.09.18+19
I very much enjoy doing these dailies, they keep me drawing. I’ve also managed to set up a system to make scanning a lot easier. My beast (a nickname I gave my laser-printer / scanner combo) can email scans so I have it set up to send the image to my emailprogram, which then extracts the attachment.
This weekend we took it easy. It rained a lot and I felt very tired — these two share a clear link — so I spent a lot of time on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket sipping tea and watching a lot of MacGyver.
Nano didn’t seem to mind.
She did, however, mind the attack of little stickyweed balls. They got between her toes and in her mouth. It took a bit of work getting them all off. We did eventually managed to free ourselves from them and will avoid that area for a while.
You know, just in case they lie there in the bushes. Hiding. Waiting. Planning. Ready to attack…
Sep18
Daily: 2010.09.17
I drew this daily in my pocket moleskine sketchbook and feel a little torn. I like the pre-printed dates in the planner, which works as an extra stimulant to draw every day. On the other hand, my colours bleed / shine through a lot which causes a few annoyances on my side. And on one side I can get over that, like how I get over the pre-printed lines. On the other side, I just like it more when it doesn’t show that much.
The added benefit of using an 80-page pocket sketchbook: it fills up much faster which works as a great motivator too. One of these days I will actually fill up an entire sketchbook ;)
So, for now, I think I’ll switch to the sketchbook. As my friend said, I can always change my mind again.
Sep17
Dailies: 2010.09.12+13+14+15
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After the sofa day came a grape day, on which I ate a lot of grapes and messed up the colouring of my drawing. I suddenly turned brown!
It had nothing to…
Sep13
Having a sofa day
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I had a sofa day. Not the entire day, because I did do some drawings, just most of the day.
Nano and I went for a firm walk in the afternoon, and…
Sep11
Making little drawings
These past few days I’ve made a few autobiographical drawings with myself as a cartoon character. I also did a few of Nano, because she plays a big part in my life. I used to do these drawings / cartoons (I might dig them up and scan, no promises however!) and stopped doing them when I started to do ‘serious’ drawings. I now feel I can do both, so I do :)
Today we visited a few monuments in the city of Alkmaar. We nibbled some cheese and one stand had free poffertjes. Though the official recipe uses buckwheat flour, most poffertjes-makers these days use plain wheat-flour to make them. As did these. I can’t tolerate wheat very well but couldn’t resist nibbling on one little poffertje with lots of butter and powdered sugar. And then I had one more. And another.
The following tummy-ache did not make me happy. But eating poffertjes did. It made my week, aaah!
Sep9
Doodling in a planner
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Today turned out pretty good. My new (2010) moleskine daily planner arrived. With around 1/3 of the year still ahead of us, I decided to purchase it (with discount, haha) to try out…
Sep5
Creativitea
Inspired by AnnaDenise and Kathrin J-M I wanted to try some drawing in my moleskine planner.
At first my brain objected: I couldn’t possible draw through pre-existing lines!
Que ‘Eye of the tiger’ and I did it anyway.
Sometimes you just have to do what your brain objects to.
Sep3
New rucksack
I recently purchased a new rucksack.
Yes, another one.
Some people buy shoes, or clothes, or purses, or gadgets, or games. I buy rucksacks.
Because of my RA I can’t carry regular bags easily and shoulder-bags pretty much kill me. No joke, I seriously ended up at the ER once (with Christmas) because I carried one and it gave me horrible tendinitis that left me in so much pain someone had to drive me to the hospital. I easily get tendinitis in shoulders and neck, and a rucksack seems to work best in preventing it.
This one weighs less than a kilogram on its own, has its own rain-cover and it came with a separate pouch you can either hang on that loop on the inside, or attach to the waist-belt.
Bonus-points if you guess who I have hanging on it.
Sep2
Worms (the earth kind)
Last week my new worm-bin arrived. Even though you can easily make them yourself, I decided to go for a prepared bin because I don’t have that much excess energy.
I set it up according to the instructions and held a few of the worms. They haven’t grown to their full size yet, I think, measuring only 5-8cm roughly (2 to 3 inches). They wriggle a lot and I fed them some cabbage and teabags.
I’ve only had them for a week so I don’t know how it will go. I do like them though, always wanted a worm-bin as a kid. I remember this time my mother and I got up really early to look for them and to dig them up. She let me do crazy things like that ;)
I made a page about the worms with some freehand drawings and the actual bin. The bin drawing ended up a bit wonky due to the tendinitis in my neck and me shifting position. Close enough though.
