Link to Today’s Vlog on YouTube
This morning was a time to draw. A familiar and comforting style of art – entangled – in pen. I filmed the process and uploaded it to YouTube as a timelapse with vlog voiceover.
This first part of the drawing took me just over an hour. There’s more to do, but for tomorrow I think.
Thankfully, my mood seems to be improving. Yesterday, I was feeling physically under the weather with it. Hmm, I refer to emotional weather, and the term ‘under the weather’ seems quite apt! Emotional weather does have an impact on one’s physical health (weather) too. I know this from past experiences.
So, today I feel better physically and emotionally.
Over the past few days, I’ve turned to drawing entangled art, mostly. It’s something I do when I’m experiencing a bout of the emotional storms. This type of art is familiar to me. It doesn’t provoke serious bouts of self-doubt or frustration, something I get when I’m pushing my boundaries with art style or media.
Artistically, it’s like enfolding myself in a comforting, weighted blanket. It soothes and reassures me.
Days like these are not days to be challenging myself artistically or otherwise. Times like these are when the inner critic starts to bare it’s fangs at me. I’ve found that doing familiar, comforting art is the best way to disempower that inner critic. I know I do good enough art when it’s an entangled pen drawing, and that means that I don’t doubt myself or beat myself up – all of which are just food for the critical monster.
When my resilience is at it’s full level again, then I can challenge myself artistically. Until then, I carefully choose what art to do as the last clouds of my gloomy, stormy mood move along.
Angela Porter 