Drawing

BuJo for June 2018 and a reflection on May 2018

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Angela Porter Bujo June 2018 CoverAngela Porter Bujo June 2018 MonthlyOverviewAngela Porter Bujo June 2018 Mood Habit TrackerIt’s that time again – starting to fill in my bullet journal (BuJo) pages for the upcoming month of June.

I’ve set up part of my bullet journal for June. I decided to go with daises again.  They’re such happy little flowers, bright spots in the green grass. They remind me of innocence and hope. Pale pink, green and flashes of gold will be the colours I use, where I use them, for this month.

May has been a very stressful, upsetting and emotional month, and my bullet journaling, along with lots of other things, went out of the window.

My little smartcar, Smartoo Deetoo, broke down. I had the stress/anxiety/panic of a very long time for the car and I to be recovered and taken home, and then organising recovery of the car to the Mercedes dealership in Cardiff for repairs. Eventually it was diagnosed with a terminally broken gearbox.

Instead of paying to have it replaced, I decided to buy a brand new Smartcar fortwo, which then had the added stress/worry/anxiety/panic of applying for finance.

Very quickly though, Binky was with me – my third Smartcar. Binky is fantastic and I can’t be happier with it.

Just after I signed all the paper work for Binky, I went to check on my cat who had been poorly for a day or two and who had rallied round that morning. I found he’d gone seriously downhill, so to the emergency vets we went.

After a night at the vets, test results and observations of my beautiful boy Cuffs, the diagnosis was brain cancer, so I had to make the decision to let him go, and went to say goodbye to him.

Cuffs was amazing. I had 16 years companionship with him.  He was with me for some of the best and the worst times of my recent life. He always greeted me when I came home and he often tried to stop me leaving for work, especially when teaching had become so very, very hard for me when my mental health was plummeting downwards.

There’s just too much to say about him here. To say I’ve been upset would be a gross understatement. I’ve grieved for him, and it’s knocked me not just for six but for 6 million I think.

I’m beginning to feel better, I still have moments when I miss the purrfurball, when a lumpy bit of the duvet will make my heart leap that he’s under it, only to remember he’s not and to feel that disappointment and sadness.

I am feeling better and getting back into my creative stride.

I’m working on the illustrations for Entangled Butterflies.

I will be working on the June colouring template for the members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group later today.

 

Saturday mandala

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Angela Porter 26 May 2019

A warm, sunshiny mandala.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Surface Book and Surface Pen.

mhaw18

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Angela Porter mhaw18 17 May 2018

Today I’m feeling tickettyboo, a little tired, but definitely only a teeny tiny bit emotionally drained.  I think that some lovely icecream on a toasted waffle after my talk yesterday, in the company of a lovely friend, seriously helped, as did time with other friends in the evening and a serious dose of meditation.

Of course, my morning drawing helps me, and today it’s a mandala.

The perfect kind of relaxation to do before I head out later to do my fourth anti-stigma talk of the week, this time at Companies House.

This morning it’s time for some self-care, and for learning how to create amigurumi critters.  Crocheting is always a challenge for me, but I had an overwhelming desire to create a cuddly cuttlefish, all rainbow colours.  However, I think I bit off more than I could chew by starting on something so big without practicing and figuring out how amigurumi works and how to avoid increasing the number of stitches when they’re supposed to remain the same number, and how to know when the next ‘row’ starts when you’re essentially working in a spiral, and and and …

So, I finished the body and ears of a simple bear yesterday and started on a little mouse. I’ve still not figured out fully how it works, but I may be getting there, and smaller projects are definitely the way to go to learn and understand the techniques needed.

mhaw2018

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Angela Porter mhaw18 16 May 2018Today sees me do my third anti-stigma talk for Time to Change Wales as part of Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) 2018.

I am tired this morning.  Each talk I do is emotionally draining. It also takes a lot of energy for me to keep up a happy, smiley and laughing mask when in public and not to get overwhelmed by my story and allowing aspects of it to re-traumatise me.

I put myself through this for some good reasons, and one of them is NOT attention seeking (which is what my narcissistic mother would say).

I really do believe it’s time for the stigma and discrimination that surrounds mental illness comes to an end.  I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but little by little.  I tell my story to give people an insight into what it’s like to experience depression, anxiety, hyperperfectionism, hypervigilance, emotional flashbacks, being overwhelmed by choices in a supermarket, not being able to get out of my car when I go to somewhere I want to visit, being in fear of going to do a job I used to love when I was a teacher, and more, CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) is so complex.

I also want people to know that little changes in the work place can help people remain in work.

I want people to know that the social stereotypes of depression, anxiety and so many other mental illnesses are incorrect and that they lead to be people being stigmatised/prejudged and treated differently/discriminated against as a result of the urban myths that exist.

The more we can have conversations, the more people open up about what it’s like to experience mental illness, the more people will, hopefully, have a better understanding and the urban myths will lose their power.

Not only that, the self-stigmatisation that results in people not seeking help, acknowledging they are not thinking well of themselves, will result in people seeking that help and advice they need earlier.

On a more personal level, telling my story is helping me ‘own’ it, and though I still minimise the traumas I’ve experienced from a very young age, it’s helping me understand that they are not small little things that everyone goes through, as well as me understanding that it’s profound effect they’ve had on me that is the important thing as well as having counselling/therapy to help me heal from my past and have a healthier way of thinking about myself and living my life without avoiding all kinds of things for fear the same things will happen again and again.

I come home from a talk emotionally drained and tired; I either want to nap or just draw, or both, but not at the same time!

When I draw I like to just draw intuitively, drawing on my visual vocabulary of favourite shapes and patterns, and just let them flow onto the page. I can lose myself in that flow, I’m able to enjoy drawing familiar motifs and patterns and the intricacy of my work. Just letting things flow, drawing for the pleasure and contentment it brings me, the calmness that results, lets me put to oneside the anxiety I can feel when I’m creating for a particular contract, to put aside my hyperperfectionism and just go with the flow in a way that can be difficult when I’m drawing for a publisher and can add anxiety and frustration when I need to draw for peace and calm.

And that’s what this drawing helped me to do. Today, I hope I’ll be able to draw again, however after the talk today I’m taking a friend out for ice-cream and I think I have something occurring this evening too.

MHAW18

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Angela Porter20180515

Today I give the second of my anti-stigma talks for Time to Change Wales.  Today, it’s just a couple of miles down the road from me.

I was tired yesterday after my talk; not physically tired, emotionally tired, and I still feel a little so this morning.

I started drawing this before I went off yesterday, did some more work on it last night and finished it this morning.

Art really helps soothe my emotions and helps me find that place of calm, contentment and balance.

That’s my #tuesdaytip.  Find something you can lose yourself in, that brings you peace and calm and contentment and a break from the stresses, worries, problems of life. It’s all about self-care. For me it’s art or making music, sometimes taking a walk, and mindfulness meditation. For others it could be gardening, baking, woodturning, swimming, cycling, or any one of a myriad activities that bring peace and contentment.

A floral wreath card

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Angela Porter 12 May 2018 watermarked

Saturday morning and I do my best to settle into a creative mode, and this is the result.  A pretty, floral wreath, drawn on watercolour paper with copic multiliner sp pens.

It’s been a hard couple of weeks and being creative has been difficult for me.  I’m beginning to settle after the upheavals that have occurred, but it’s taking a while. I will get there, and being able to draw this, and colour it, shows I’m starting to settle. I am doing my best to find those weekend vibes.

The watercolour paper is 5″x 5″ and has been mounted on a 6″ x 6″ square side.

 

Supply Saturday

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Angela Porter 5 May 2018 watermarkedThis little pattern was created using Inktense pencils from Derwent, and a Pitt Artist Pen from Faber-Castell. Oh, I also used a Kuretake Zig water-brush to blend out the Inktense pigment.

I started by using washi tape to mark out a rectangle to work in.  The washi tape did remove some of the paper to the left hand side, but as this is more of a sketchbook experiment, I’m not too bothered.

Next, I drew in the pattern of arches using a deep rose Inktense pencil and used a just damp water-brush to activate and move the Inktense colour.

Once I had the pattern of loops, and loops within loops, I added more colours to the pattern.

The colours will lie over others as a glaze, but once the wet Inktense pigments have dried, they are permanent. That makes them an excellent medium to create such a colourful pattern.

Finally, as this is an experiment, I used the Pitt Artist Pen to add black lines and details to part of the design to see what difference this makes.

I like the loops of pure colour, but there is something about black outlines and patterns that makes me feel something is finished, complete, defined. I do like how the loops without black outlines seem to recede into the background.

I may add some gold and white details to this design as well later on today, as well as resisting the temptation to add black line details to all of the loops. It would be a nice way to keep the #weekendvibes going!

It’s also supply saturday over on the facebook group called Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans.  There’s a lovely group of people over there and they will make you most welcome if you visit and join!

 

Tuesday Tip

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Angela Porter 24 April 2018 small watermarked

My #tuesdaytip is to do just this – create every day!

It doesn’t matter for how long – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, longer.  Just take time to create.

You can create something new.  You can work on practicing, say, your hand lettering. You could re-work or add to something you thought was finished.  You could try a new skill or technique or medium. You could doodle aimlessly.

There’s just so many possibilities, so many ways to be creative – art, crafts, cooking, gardening, wood-turning, sculpting, decorating, sewing, colouring, are just a few of the possibilities.

Just create.  Have fun.  Play. Relax.

Take a break from the worries, stresses and strains of everyday life by focusing on being creative.

I use art to help me find my inner calm and stay there.  My whole body exhales, calms and relaxes when I ‘art’. It’s a daily practice for me that has a similar effect as meditation and mindfulness does. Even if I don’t meditate every day, I ‘art’ every day, just for pleasure (as well as for my work).

When the days are very trying for me, as they have been lately due to a nightmare of a car breakdown and recovery that took 8 hours Saturday night into Sunday morning, I find creating collections of doodles and patterns for my BuJo or hand-writing quotes or words really soothing, especially if they are familiar to me.  That’s what I needed at that time, something I could do automatically, that didn’t cause more stress for me.  The rhythm and flow soothed. Just the process of repeating the drawings and drawing of letters involved practice and improvement of my favourite motifs, patterns, words; and when calm, I could move on to create something new.

Being creative isn’t just about making great works of art or craft, or any thing else.  It’s also about feeding your heart, your soul, your being and finding calm and joy in what you do.

 

 

Motivation Monday

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Angela Porter quote _15April2018

And hand-lettering is something I need to practice a lot!

I did draw the daisies and leaves on the background with a Unipin pen.  For the lettering, I sketched it out, scanned it in and then worked on it digitally.

I’m going to have to learn to embrace the human imperfections, as well as balance the weight of the black lines in the writing relative to the drawing.  It looks very heavy-handed, and not all that even.

Perhaps that actually suits the quote…

Don’t forget, you can pre-order my book A Dangle A Day, due out in September.

‘Believe’ bookmark

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Angela Porter believe bookmark 15April2018Believe … in yourself.

I thought I’d spend sometime today finishing off this bookmark design.

I’m not too happy with the colours, a bit too dark, but I can always re-colour at some point.

Digitally drawn and coloured, though I did sketch the writing out and scan it in to help me write it on my Microsoft Surface book with my Microsoft Surface pen.

#fundaysunday #sundayfunday #weekendvibes