Despite my complete and utter disbelief at the speedy passage of time, it is now June. Month 6. Which means we’re at the halfway point of Sarah 2018 Draw-A-Palooza. Which means I feel more obligated than I usually do to make a blog post.
But it’s awkward, because I haven’t posted in like 2 months.
Soooooo…here we are.
This project.
Let me just preface this by assuring you that I haven’t stopped drawing. Seriously. I haven’t. I have, however, slacked a bit in the do-it-nearly-every-day department.
Here’s the thing. I have to 1) work 2) cook 3) train for runs 4) write 5) draw 6) pet my cats (yes, plural, because Freya now has a sister we’ve basically all-but-signed-the-papers-for adopted) 7) interact with my fiance and 8) obsess over fictional characters. But see, drawing is in that list of daily 8 activites I HAVE to do. Well, okay, #8 isn’t a HAVE to but golly I cannot. Stop. Thinking. About. Them.
Basically, I have 8 necessary things and only 16 hours a day to do them (because sleep). Work takes 9 hours, so now we’re down to 7. Cooking takes at least 1:30, depending on how complicated the recipe is. That’s 5:30. If I gym (which I do at least 3 times a week), that’s at least an hour. 4:30. Cat time? 30 minutes. I love them, okay? They demand snuggles. I can’t refuse. 3 hours. Fiance time? 30 minutes. I love him, okay? He demands snuggles. I can’t refuse. 2:30 hours. Also I need to shower at some point & prepare for bed. 2 hours. ALSO I need to sit down and stare blankly at a wall or Bravo TV for a minute because decompression is good. 1:30hrs. If not less.
If I am not brain-dead after work, and if I eat leftovers, don’t go to the gym, and don’t touch the TV remote, I’m left with a solid 5 hours of creative time. Cool. But most days of the week I don’t have leftovers, and going to the gym makes me feel good and needs to happen if I want to keep running (which I do), and my brain hurts after working all day. So worst case scenario is that I only have 1:30 to be creative. Oh, also, I have friends. Sometimes I need to hang out with them, because I like them and I require socializing in order to be a fully-functioning human. Hanging out with friends automatically reduces my availability to 0 hours.
For a couple of months, drawing took a back seat to being a social person and running training and my various other needs. And I was…honestly okay with that. Sometimes you have to make priorities and I had to prioritize being a social person (because extrovert) and making sure I wouldn’t die while running 13.1 miles.
But then May came ‘round, as it does, and I was in a fuege of creativity (fueled by my continuously Not Great coping skills during the month of deathiversaries). Coincidentally, out of nowhere, my obsession with Maggie Stiefvater’s the Raven Cycle reignited into a mother-trucking BONFIRE. For months prior, I’d had artistic visions of my two faves from that series, but hadn’t thought I had the materials nor skills to make them a reality. My practice and newfound desire to learn how to use the wacom tablet, however, suddenly sent me into a fanart spiral. I decided that ENOUGH was ENOUGH of keeping these ideas locked in my head to drive me nuts. If I could just EXORCISE these visions from my body, then maybe I can resume being a normal human able to function in society. My 1:30-5 hours worth of potential creative time was funneled into fan art in an attempt to just get it out and be done with it.
Spoiler alert: the opposite happened.
I spent HOURS completing this piece that had been torturing my imagination every time I heard this song (which was often because I like it). And then I finished it, put it online (because why the heck not), and then….it just….took off?
For context: the most notes I had ever gotten on anything I’d ever posted to tumblr (or any social media, for that matter) was maybe, like, 10 notes. MAYBE.
This piece is at over 800. And it keeps getting more!!! What. In. The. Fresh. Hell. Is. This.
So yeah. High on the fact that people actually responded to this piece and that this thing I spent so much time on WASN’T absolute garbage (thanks to that darn tablet….how was I so against it for so long????), I was suddenly full of inspiration. The problem? It was inspiration for The Raven Cycle and The Raven Cycle ONLY. So I followed it, and drew more things. Like this:
And I wish I had more to show for this obsession but these both took, like, over 20 hours each because I’m a perfectionist and slow and so really this doens’t seem like much BUT IT IS.
Like, I broke down and bought Adobe Photoshop to do these drawings. THAT’S how intense this is (also ClipStudio Paint was hella glitchy and I wanted something more reliable, but still…)
Now I have 28732702 other ideas, but have 0% inspiration for anything else. And because I’m spending hours of time on these pieces, it’s draining my creativity to be able to do other things. Like redrawing (that project is not forgotten. Trust me, the guilt I feel for not working on it is way more than it should be.)
So I am still drawing. It’s just mostly exclusively tablet-drawing fanart.
OH I did do some drawings for the summer camp at which I used to work. They needed coloring pages, and since digital art lends itself super well to line art drawings, I happily obliged.
I now see that those circles are different sizes and widths……that’s embarrassing.
Anyways. TL;DR: life and fan art swallowed me (and the wacom tablet) whole, so that’s where I’ve been for the past few months.
I will say, though, that my obsession is taking a chill pill (I can FEEL it happening), and I have until September before the next half marathon, AND all of my friends are 4th year vet students so they’re all in clinics now which means I have no social life when they’re gone/busy (which is most of the time)….so hopefully I can pull myself out of this fandom/life quicksand and get back to redrawing.
In the meantime, I’m pushing myself to 1) do a 6-month check in, 2) finally do a sketchbook C wrap up, 3) scan in the collection of loose drawings I found in my childhood bookshelf, 4) start drawing other things on the tablet, and 5) keep practicing outside of this fanart craze I’ve been suckered back into.
Fingers crossed I’ll be back this weekend with some progress.
Falling, Failing, & Flailing 