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!

Fred with mouse
Fred and his new friend.

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.

Charcoal figure drawing of man's hand reaching toward viewer | Lee Devonish

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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