I'm not well

Eugh, I have golf balls in my throat that for some reason I appear to have swallowed partially and they are now stuck there, sore and swollen, red inflamed and kind of oozing some foulness down my throat that leaves a foul taste in my mouth that nothing will shift.

I have felt unwell for a couple of days. My tolerance for illness is about 48 hours. Any longer than this I begin to wonder why am I just not getting on with it? I'm being lazy, mardy, pathetic etc, etc.

My head feels big, I have slept most of the day. My mouth is sticky dry and my back is killing from being in bed all day.

I have wasted a day, precious in the world of "there are just not enough hours in the day".

I did finish the cover of my new sketchbook, ready to be filled and altered for my new project on the human form. I haven't used an altered book as a sketchbook for a while and I felt this project needed just that. It was a book of industrial archaeology. Fairly wordy and with a few full page images needing removing to allow room for adding pages and painting over the pages I need to be less busy.

Here's the front cover. It's from a sketch I did a couple of weeks ago. I really like this model, she is beautiful and has a natural way with her that leaves me a bit over excited and breathless. Not felt so excited about a model before, but she is really really good. Potentially a muse for my future career and fame and fortune? Yeah OK, fame and fortune? Obscurity and poverty more like.

To be famed and fortunate you have to be able to do stuff and apparently I am not able to do anything for the foreseeable future because I have these idiot tonsils that insist on staying right where they are, too big and infected for me to be out of bed for more than a couple of hours.

Pants.

The Human Form 1

First try at painting.


This is a small painting that wasn't working at all, so I sanded it down and suddenly it looked better. Needs more work to make it OK, but it now has possibilities.

The Human Form

New project about to be underway. Self directed, we have to write our own briefs and decide what the outcome is to be.

I have decided I want to concentrate on the human form, the nude and the character study. What will bring it all together is that it is going to be exclusively a painting project. I have hardly done any painting and this will be a massive challenge for me.

So, folks, please be aware this blog will be the scene of rants, complaints, desperate pleas and at least 1 nervous breakdown as I go through the gestation and birth of a new skill. Please bear with me, normal service will be resumed. I just need to sort out what is normal and if I can ever attain normality.

To coincide with this I am now officially suffering from an under active thyroid, and so will be enjoying thyroxin for the rest of my life. Having only just started on the thyroxin I will be my usual self ( forget normal, doesn't exist in my world!), however as time wears on there may be interruptions to my usual pattern of depression and activity. Let me know if I'm being weirder than you are used to. It may be the tablets.

No really, I am serious about that. Honestly.

Life drawing 3

Very successful life drawing class this week. Again very small attendance, but I have faith this will grow with time, but the model this week was new and wonderful. Here is the best drawing from the night and one I am very proud of. This will become a painting later I think. I hope!

Finishing stuff off

Over the years I have started, but failed to find the time to finish things. Small personal projects, ideas that seemed to work but were too time consuming to complete with all the other more demanding calls on my time. I have decided that in between the larger, time driven projects that I have to complete to get a qualification that I will complete these small pieces.

This is the first one of them.

It was for the Embroiderers Guild branch that I go to, for last year! We have a rainbow banner that lots of different branches have had a different colour to do, and ours was pink! I would never normally, voluntarily work in pink. Far too girly. Basically we all had a small 3 1/2 inch square panel to do which was then sewn together in strips and hung together with the other branches strips and displayed at the regional and annual general meetings. They looked wonderful together. I just missed the deadline because of the complete lack of spare time I suffer from. Oh I know it all sounds like excuses.

What am I like 11/Hundredth post

I have been putting off posting for a few days, partly owing to extreme busy-ness, but also because the 100th post was looming and I got a bit, well, daunted.

I wasn't sure if I should be posting something earth shatteringly important witty and wise or whether it should just be another normal run of the mill slightly dull except when I'm describing one of my disasters kind of post.

So here we go dull as ditch water post here we come.

I've had a really busy week what with working 14 hour days and trying to finish my latest project on time, I am now so exhausted that I think my hands belong to someone else. Honestly, my fingers feel too big and I keep hitting the wrong keys on the keyboard. Next time I have a deadline I'm having the week off work. Properly, not, I'll not book any shifts in advance but do every single one that gets offered to me no matter how tired I end up getting.

So, the project went in on time, not without a couple of problems. I had to wash out the water soluble pen I had used to draw the illustration onto the fabric with. Then I had to re-stiffen the fabric afterwards because all the cellulose glue washed out of it with the pen. Then I had to hope that it would dry quickly enough for me to get it on the frame that I made at 11 pm last night (sorry about the sawing, banging and loud swearing noises neighbours, I promise that won't be happening again until May), I then had to stretch and staple the backing fabric into place. The piece hadn't dried last night, so at 7.30 this morning I was stapling it on top the backed frame. In a complete panic and rush, because i had to be at work for 9 to be naked in front of strangers for the morning.

So frame made, quick, disturbed panic stricken sleep, up at sparrow and lark fart, bath, staple to frame, wrap in bin bag to protect it in the car , off to work, stand still for 3 hours, then rush to college to hand it in with accompanying sketchbook and reference materials. Phew.

But now, of course, I have finished my project. My thumbs are twiddling already, because as those who know and still love me (I can see you, peeking out from behind the blast screens) I am incapable of not doing something with my time. A new deadline looms, from quite a distance really. It seems that looming from May might be a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but still it has the potential to loom at me. Plus I have an essay and presentation to write and a presentation workshop to do. And not forgetting all the things that my lovely friends want me to make for them because I am sooooo gifted at making stuff, and the pages for the travelling sketchbooks and making some more stock for sale. See. Can't stay still. Oh the pressure. Problem is with nothing to actually do I get very stressed and depressed and feel sorry for myself and get into a bit of a pickle. Living life in a jar of Branston is not my idea of fun, so on with the business of busy-ness.

Here's the finished project by the way. Hope you like it now you've seen it in progress. I have my fingers crossed for a good mark, but as usual will be delighted with a pass and wonder why I deserved a distinction! Contrary me I know.

So for the first big number post, not too shabby, strangely quirky in places and not too dull. Moderate success I announce.

Now to await the return of the boy with my junk food and a nice cuppa tea to drink while i am waiting.

What am I like 10

I'm on the home straight now.

What am I like 9

I am really cracking on with this now, and I need to, I have a deadline for next Friday and 2 pages to do for the travelling sketchbook I am part of.

Here are the latest progress pics of the What Am I Like project. Once that is done there will no doubt be yet another project to fill my time!