It’s a sunshiny morning in South Wales. A welcome respite from the rain we’ve experienced most of the week. The cleanup and return to ‘normal’ continue after the flooding that occurred just one week ago.
I had no idea what I would create this morning, other it would be a mandala.
I drew and painted the design digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro along with a Surface Slim Pen and Surface Studio, both from Microsoft.
This one has the floral centrepiece with a zentangle-style background. The flower is an unusual colour choice for me; I tend not to use corals and red tones much. It’s easy enough to change colours digitally, but I went with it, knowing that my colour choice reflects how I’m feeling at this point in time.
Yes, I do tend to create rather intuitively. This design didn’t start with a sketch, but with the first shape to be drawn, which was reminiscent of a petal. The rest of the design grew from there.
I’m surprising myself with how I’m able to ‘paint’ digitally. I enjoy creating more stylised forms, but with added texture and contrast to bring them to life. I know I’m not an expert at this; however, each time I work in this way, I learn more.
Today’s big lesson was how to save a brush style I’d edited and liked as a new brush for my brush library.
I’m glad I’m learning and developing my digital art voices and styles and that it’s happening slowly over time and as my needs demand. I know if I watched videos or followed tutorials on how all this worked, I would become incredibly overwhelmed and frustrated.
I also know that by watching what others do, I would likely be tempted to emulate their style and way of working.
I need to work out my own style/voice and be comfortable with it. So, I’m not putting any pressure on myself to do something that I’m not yet ready for or haven’t had an awareness of what I could do.
I’m later than usual making my post to this blog today. For good reasons. The last couple of days have been a tad crazy. Here, where I live in South Wales, UK, we’ve had some really bad flooding thanks to Storm Dennis. The River Taff overflowed its banks in many places. The town centre where I live was under water.
Fortunately, no flooding or damage to my home, but it’s heartbreaking to see the devastation for others homes and businesses. The emergency services and Rhondda Cynon Taff Council, councillors and many, many others have worked hard, long and done amazing things. Communities have come together to help one another.
The rain has, finally, stopped, but the wind is very strong again. And we have another weather warning for rain on Wednesday evening into Thursday, so there’s a potential for flooding once again.
But today, the sun sets, turning the mostly cloudless sky lavender and pink.
I’ve been helping as I can, in my own ways, and that’s why I missed a post yesterday and am late with one today.
So, to calm, relax, I’ve done some art. I had no idea what was going to result, I’m not entirely sure I like the result, particularly the foliage in the background. However, I’m not entirely surprised that seed pods have emerged!
It has let me play around with different brushes and effects in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
I’ve been busy this morning, working out how to video record the screen of my computer as I draw digitally.
I found a YouTube video about using OBS Studio to do this. I followed the instructions, problem solved, and after three attempts I had a poor quality video that I wasn’t happy with.
So, I went to Movavi, a video editor I’ve used previously. It has an app that will record the screen, easily. It’s a one button click to launch. A simple, small, and minimalist control panel sits in the bottom right corner of the screen. I can record, pause, start again easily.
I recorded myself drawing the mandala above. The video is currently processing and being saved. I’ll then need to edit it. The still of the video I can see while this is happening is of a fab quality it seems. So fingers crossed the video will be too!
I didn’t think to look at Movavi before Googling for advice on recording the screen. I did have to buy the software, but it wasn’t extortionately expensive and I’m sure that it will meet my needs.
So, once the video is saved, I can spend sometime today editing it and I hope to upload it tomorrow, as long as the recording is of a good quality.
Yesterday, I had a day out with my friend Liz. We visited Hay On Wye for a walk around and lunch. It was one of those glorious winter days where the sun shines warmly and the air is crisp and cool. It was mild enough for me to walk around without a bulky coat.
I wanted a circular frame in which to put quotes. So, I started by drawing some pencil guidelines for the circle and the outer borders on some dot grid paper.
I used 08 and 02 Uniball Unipin pens to draw the circle of flowers and foliage. Then, to start filling the space around the flowers with entangled designs.
It’s very much a work in progress. Part of me thinks I could’ve left an empty border around the circular flower and foliage arrangement to separate it from the background. The other part of me likes it as it is.
I want to try to get a balance of less detailed areas with the more densely detailed sections so that there’s space for the eye to rest.
I also suspect I’ll be adding colour or, at the very least, shadow and highlights to the design to bring it to life.
Trigger Warning – the following words contain some references to my past mental and emotional ill health.
I’ve begun to realise that I am as recovered from CPTSD as I’m going to be for now. So, yesterday, I made the decision, after lots of thought, that it was time to leave a month or so until my next session. The longest I’ve been without therapy is three weeks. This time it will be five weeks. It’s a test for me to see if I am as resilient as I think I am. Still, there’s also that little bit of a safety net that if I have issues I know, I’ll have a therapy session to sort out what to do next.
I know that in the future, as life experiences trigger some CPTSD reaction in me, I may need some more EMDR sessions to help me resolve the issues. Leaving therapy, for now, is necessary, but not without the possibility of returning as I need to.
How did I know I’d reached that point? Well, I recovered well from my hiccough, emotionally and mentally, over Christmas and New Year. Surprising well, actually. Even my therapist said that!
Nothing new has come up that needs to be processed it seems. I’ve had the feeling I’ve been groping around for issues to work on in therapy for a long while. Maybe I was ready a while ago but wasn’t quite prepared to leave that safety net of that one person who has always been there to listen, question me and help me to understand and heal myself. I feel I am ready to cut loose now, but suddenly, but gradually.
The soft inner smile, feeling of contentment and ease is present most days. I also have a feeling of what I can only describe as hope and optimism. These feelings are my touchstones, the way I want to feel most of my days of the remainder of my life.
It still saddens me that it’s taken me until I’m 56 years old to discover them, to heal enough of the traumas of the past to allow them to be fully present nearly every day. I lived my life believing the way I thought and felt was ‘normal’ and that everyone was like this.
It took an emotional and mental breakdown to get me to accept that I was in a severe amount of emotional and mental pain and to seek the help I needed to heal that pain. EMDR has been that help, that therapy has allowed me to heal those wounds.
Sometimes things happen, and my emotions can overshadow the contentment and smile. However, I can still feel those touchstones, reminders that the emotional storm will pass and the smile will shine out once again. This emotional weather has happened a few times since I first discovered my touchstones, but the weather has always passed. Sometimes with the help of therapy, but more often by itself, given self-soothing, self-care and self-reflection.
I am so grateful to have had such a skilled therapist. Still, it’s now time for me to find new ways to engage with like-minded people, not in huge groups, as that would really cause problems for my introverted nature.
I’ve been having EMDR therapy for nearly five and a half years. It seems a long time, yet it’s not that long, really. A lot of commitment and work has been needed, but I’m reaping the rewards of my efforts.
The quote epitomises the way I feel about therapy now. In my darkest days, when I started EMDR. Linda, my therapist, has been that one person who has consistently been there to accompany me on this journey of healing and recovery from CPTSD. She has helped me discover that part of me that wants to experience life my own way, that part which is content, gently smiling, resilient, optimistic, more accepting of myself, kinder to myself, and much more I can’t yet put into words.
I’m not perfect; no one is. However, I’m as emotionally and mentally well as I’m going to be without living life. Only the ups and downs of life will reveal triggers for the remaining CPTSD. Some may never be revealed and not be an issue. Others I may be able to deal with myself, some I may need help from EMDR to process them and heal that still wounded part of myself.
It’s actually quite exciting. All I need to do is to transform that feeling of excitement and optimism into action such as a couple of nights away by myself and finding groups to join where there are like-minded people to begin with.
This was a nice one to do. There seems to be a bit of a theme with my colour palettes lately though. Another theme is stylised, abstract flowers. Overall, I am pretty happy with this particular design.
Flowers, foliage, mandalas, geometric repeating patterns – all my favourite things!
I just had to rework the flower from yesterday, and this is what I came up with. I’m much happier with it for sure. I like the soft, almost velvety texture I’ve achieved with the flower.
Looking at it this morning, with fresh eyes, I think the typography could be a little smaller. However, I’m much happier with this one.
A variation on the abstract, stylised flowers of a day or two ago, with a lovely quote.
I got too heavy handed with the texturing in this one, but I just wanted to try the flower out without an outline. I’m disappointed with the texture, and it was too late for me to undo it by the time I realised it. Hopefully I’ll learn to save my work more often at points before I do something where it could go critically wrong and I can backtrack easily.
It was an enjoyable process, even though I’m more than a tad frustrated with myself. Still, it’s an experience to learn from for sure.
Abstract flowers with a simple mandala/wreath in the background. Created digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Studio and Microsoft Surface Pen. Simple. Stylised. Satisfying to create.
I managed to get a fair bit of colouring done yesterday and this morning. It never ceases to amaze me how colour can add so much dimension to the design, particularly as I use quite high contrast. It’s possible to see the dimension in the line art, but colour really brings it out.
There are areas that look a little flat, but I can sort those out later on by adding more shadow and highlight.
So far, I am pleased with how it’s working out. I’m also enjoying the hybrid art that results from traditional drawing and then the application of colour digitally.
Art is the Adventure 