This week I tumbled unceremoniously back into the world of work – yay for me!

I brought back a sweet little felted mouse made for me by Jenny. How cute is he? I gave her some jumpers that I’d accidentally shrunk, and she made this mouse out of one of them. One of the cats stole him when I wasn’t looking but I managed to get him back unharmed!

My gentle return saw me cutting up cardboard and cleaning screens – which, of course, made me think about my return to the world of artwork. I’m definitely well enough to start printing again, but my studio is an absolute tip after a month of ignoring it.

Honestly I don’t feel mentally strong enough to tackle cleaning my room, but it’s got to happen sometime. The banknote project was really on a roll when I had to stop, so I feel as though I’ve lost momentum, and I’m almost wondering whether to start from scratch. (Almost.)

Figure drawing again

To stretch my legs, so to speak, I started some figure drawing. I like being able to switch from one theme to the next when it feels like I need a change, and it’s good to plan something different – and big – later in the year.

I love this pose and I like the challenge of the foreshortening. It’ll be interesting to develop it and work on it in paint.

Let’s end with something totally unrelated to art.

The award for the weirdest phrase I came across on the internet goes to:

“I consume pineapple thrice a week”

I mean, who talks like that? This question almost deserves an interrobang!

Almost.

This kind of thing tickles me somewhat because I spend a lot of time writing for the internet. This personal site is the tip of my blog iceberg; I also receive a lot of submissions from other writers looking to publish posts on my other, vastly more popular site. On top of this, I used to edit for a website where I’d publish interviews with other bloggers.

So I’ve seen a lot of writing cross my desk apart from everything I read for post research, and it’s easy to spot non-native English writers, as well as to tell which part of the world someone comes from… and nothing gives you away like cramming words like “consume” and “thrice” into a sentence. We know you’ve been busting out the thesaurus, it’s ok.

Anyway, it’s stuck with me because of a link scam email I got this week, from someone who was definitely not who they were claiming to be.

It made me think about the ways we represent ourselves online and how we use language to cover up who we truly are, like a mask, or to portray ourselves in the best possible light, like makeup. Artists have a pretty tough job when it comes to figuring out the right tone and content for promoting themselves and their work, so it’s all going into the pot of topics to research for future articles.

I meant to write about it this week but haven’t yet, mostly because of getting stuck in to writing a mammoth article about running a craft business, and a few more about digital marketing. All of these topics are bleeding into another post about why on earth an artist writes about digital marketing in the first place.

Well? That’s for another post – soon, I promise.

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Having shiny object syndrome has its pros and cons. On the plus side, I’m always fizzing with ideas. On the downside, when one of my ideas takes off and people start to want a piece of it, it starts to smell a bit like work!

My plans for getting down to some figure drawing were totally derailed by – no, not someone else – by my own writing.

What I did produce was, at long last, the outline of an article about running a craft business, and what I learned from the business that I gave up. It made me think about how much has changed for me in the last 10 years, and how little has changed about me fundamentally. I’m still trying to do all the things, mostly on my own; but now, instead of sewing all the things, I’m drawing and writing and publishing and promoting all the things.

Back to life, back to reality

Six weeks ago I had surgery. In the first week, nothing much seemed to change, but every day after that, I could see incremental improvements. The biggest changes happened about 4-5 weeks on, when I could stand up straight again.

When usually able-bodied people get ill, we can go from taking our daily lives for granted to taking nothing for granted, and then slowly ramp up to forgetting again. It’s easy to forget about it when you get better, but some people never do. I am getting better, and before long I expect I will fully recover, but this experience has made me think about those of us for whom diminished ability isn’t a couple-of-months-long blip.

I had this many years ago, where I was temporarily disabled whilst I was pregnant. I knew that in all likelihood it would go away, but at the time it was an all-consuming blot that not only overshadowed the way I felt about myself, but obviously changed the way that others viewed me. At the time I didn’t know how long it would last, and was actually quite afraid that I’d never be the same. A year later, I was fine.

That experience has never really left me, which is partly why I was dreading this fresh experience… but it hasn’t been as bad. Yes, I’m impatient with myself, but the fact is, there is an end in sight.

Even now, I’ve passed through the realm of invisibility that the disabled are pushed into by our reluctance or inability to engage with them.

A friend of mine, a fellow artist, suffered a stroke last October, and despite having been dealt a hand of truly outrageous fortune, he’s been a real inspiration to me and I expect, to everyone who knows him. It puts my passage through this state into sharp perspective.

The less able figure

Representational art can’t help but find itself sticking to the decorative, the beautiful, the perfect. We want it so badly because frankly, we need it. Static on a page or as a sculpture, we want to immortalise the image of the body so we can forget about the body’s propensity to go wrong.

It’s all just made me think about the purpose of my own figure drawing, pursuing an image of a body that is itself relentlessly in pursuit of perfection…

But we’re all being transformed, no matter how able or less able we are right now.

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Generally restless – it’s been a long time to be indoors. I can count on my fingers the trips I’ve made outside my house, and I’m starting to get a bit bored.

On the other hand, I’m recovering steadily and am now standing up straight and walking around, which means that it’ll be back to business soon! In the meantime…

Beware of commissioning beggars

I’ve been loving Reddit’s Choosing Beggars sub, where a surprising amount of entries have to do with artists getting lowballed – or just begged for free art – by tightwads.

When your client asks if you can do it cheaper. from r/ChoosingBeggars

The amount of abuse artists get just for asking for payment makes me glad I don’t chase commissions. I considered it, but decided I didn’t want that.

Our homemade book was well received…

I started off well, trying to follow the instructions in an old bookbinding book I was given years ago – but the instructions went something like, “sit at a gilded table no more than 3 feet from any corner of your room, with your book placed 12 inches in front of you at a .25° clockwise angle, and commence wrigglestitching whilst a cockerel crows.”

Needless to say, I just hand-stitched the signatures and back to the best of my ability.

Finally getting somewhere with photography

About this time last year, I bought a DSLR camera, mostly to use for my other blog and to take pictures of my artwork. Of course, starting (mostly) from scratch, I had next to no idea of what I was doing and next to no idea of how to learn, so I turned to the internet.

I came across The Beginner Photography Podcast, which broke things down into fairly manageable bites. It comes at photography from a commercial point of view, focusing on wedding or event photography, but that doesn’t matter when learning about the basic technical aspects.

Besides that, it goes on to discuss aspects of running a creative business that are useful for artists as well as photographers, so I recommend it.

A year ago I didn’t really have the time to put into photography, but now I do have a bit of time where I can play around with the camera, and learn a bit more through trial and error. Even though I haven’t been actively looking up information on technique, I can tell I’m improving somewhat. Is this going to make a photographer out of me at last?

Absolutely not! But maybe it’ll make me a better artist.

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Bookbinding. That’s what I have to figure out today.

Nothing too complicated, just an A5 booklet made up of two signatures of printer paper and a cartridge paper cover, but it’s still something I haven’t done for ages and on top of that, it’s a present. For tomorrow.

After a few days of editing, story filling, typesetting and printing, I now get to bind the epic book that my son has written. Something tells me he’s been the victor in this battle of the division of labour. Anyway, here’s some more of the week’s highlights and general things I wanted to proclaim.

Pop Culture Detective

I discovered this channel earlier in the month but after watching a few more videos I have to recommend Pop Culture Detective’s YouTube channel. It is now officially my new favourite thing or at least one of five New Favourite Things.

The video essays dig into aspects of masculinity in pop culture that I never even put my finger on, but recognised instantly. I’ve had a go at writing this kind of essay before with my Rocky critique but this channel shows how to do it properly. With titles like Stalking For Love and Abduction As Romance, you’ll find yourself questioning what the movies have been doing to your brain all these years.

Gold rush

This week I stumbled across a site called PrettyWebz (oh, that Z…) and it’s full of tutorials on creating metallic effects as well as vectorising fonts in PowerPoint – a blessing for people who don’t have Photoshop.

It was an eye-opener, to say the least. It’s actually allowed me to replicate a text effect that I’ve been after for one of my other sites, to match its logo. Besides that, I’ve put it to use in putting some bling on the cover of T’s aforementioned novella.

The Riddler strikes

Yes, I know it’s just a Primark t-shirt, but what’s wrong with that?

I designed the question mark a few weeks ago (going nuts with fonts) and have been trying to keep it under my [bowler] hat, but T caught a glimpse of the file on my laptop… Still, I don’t think he knows what’s coming.

The shirt is a surprise gift for T and an excuse for the grown-ups to geek out a bit. Last year I gave in to a fit of nostalgia and started gathering up the comic books I’d loved when I was about 7, and I’m still working on that collection.

We’d planned to print a Riddler-inspired shirt for each of us but could only find two men’s tops, so mine will have to wait. I did a quick tutorial for Ste on how to help expose a screen (the screens I coated last month were waiting for me and still good) and pull a print. So this time around I had an assistant for a change!

Binding, printing & photo editing

There was a lot more going on this week than I thought there would be, so who knows what will come around in the next few days?

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Not being able to work as I normally would has pushed me hard towards graphic design. Funny, I had envisioned spending my time putting all of my previous visual notes in order in my sketchbook, but I haven’t touched it once.

Part of the slide towards design has come from the fact that it’s so sorely needed. I have too many live websites with butt-ugly images on them, and that’s not a good thing to admit as an artist. Thing is, graphic design and fine art are two very different things, and I know just enough to know that I’m not a designer.

Still, it doesn’t look great, seeing as I should (and usually do) know better. Sometimes when you’re close up to a project with a tight deadline and very little resources and, you convince yourself that good enough is actually good, when it wasn’t even good enough in the first place.

This reflection came from looking back at my other site’s Pinterest images from 2016 to now – you would have thought they were created by two entirely different people! With all the time sitting still, I’ve been able to work out a plan for an image overhaul.

Free (and decent) design resources

Taking my own pictures was not an option – not being mobile and all that – so I started a quest to find some good stock images that weren’t already used to death.

That’s where I came across Rawpixel, which has some fantastic photographs and vectors and offers many for free. This link gives you a month’s premium membership.

Creative Market is one of my favourite resources for one of my favourite design elements – fonts! Every Monday I check their “free goods” offering, to see if there are any stock images, seamless patterns or fonts that catch my eye. It all started when I bought two fonts there at the end of 2017 and I’ve been a fan since then.

The design bug strikes in the family

A very talented playing card-obsessed teenager I know has opened his own Zazzle store!

What started out as a way to create one custom printed deck of cards turned into a bit of an entrepreneurial crusade. Who knows if it’s the start of an empire?

Speaking of Zazzle, I’ve been questioning whether I want to keep my own store open at all, or just set up a design site elsewhere. You know, because I need more things that I don’t get around to doing.

The problem I’ve faced for years is whether to legitimise something that I only really play with. I’m not a designer and I don’t really want to be, but I like it as a diversion. Plus, I like owning my own merch.

Present day approaches…

Our annual present day is looming and I can’t exactly nip out to pick up any surprise gifts, which is a pain. On top of that, I can’t exactly make any gifts.

The original plan was to print some t-shirts but I’m not sure if that will come to pass either!

What I have been doing is putting my typographical fix to work in designing the gift tags we’ll be using (look out for those in a few weeks).

Maybe in another week’s time I’ll have a stencil cut and be able to direct the printing from a distance. A bit like a real designer, right?

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