Two pals sitting in a galaxy of bright yellow celandine stars. Two pals that happen to be my two favourite animals – cat and raven.
Drawn with a Lamy fountain pen on Rhodia dot grid paper then edited and coloured digitally using my trifecta of Microsoft Surface Pen, Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Simple colouring for a simple but sweet, cute and whimsical image.
I don’t know about you, but watching a beautiful sunrise or sunset lifts my spirits somewhat. Sometimes the experience makes me cry, sometimes with the beauty of it, sometimes releasing some of the stuff going on inside of me. Either way, I find myself relaxing and breathing more easily as I watch the sun set or rise.
It’s something I don’t do often enough. Not just watch the sun rise or set, but spend time in nature. Walking where I can hear birds sing. Paddling in the surf where sea meets land. Feeling the wind in my hair.
When I need to do it most is when I’m least likely to do any of these things. People scare me. Being on my own with people around when I’m emotionally and mentally vulnerable scares me. Being on my own where there’s no people around scares me. Growing up I was always scared and anxious. I always tried to get away from family to somewhere where there was no one who could pick on me. Yet when I got somewhere I’d be so nervous and anxious and scared that I’d end up returning home and then usually hiding away in my bedroom.
If I think about going out to watch a sunset, walk along a beach, sit in nature and draw/write when I most need it to soothe my emotions and mind, the inner critic pipes up in my mother’s voice saying ‘why do you want to bother to do that? what’s the point of it?’ That voice still has power at these times, the times when I really do need to ignore it but don’t have the strength to do so.
I need to fight back. I’ve never fought back, well rarely. I have rarely had ‘no’ in my vocabulary. After over fifty years of life, that voice still has power over me, still robs me of what strength I have.
It’s on notice though – I’ve just recognised you and have worked out what you are doing and your time in my head and heart is now limited.
It’s Friday, so today is both furbaby friday and dangle day, so it’s quite fitting that I have, once again, combined a furbaby and a dangle in one design. I drew the design on Rhodia Dot Grid paper using Uniball Unipin pens and then digitally coloured it using the usual Microsoft Surface Pen and Studio along with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Looking at it now, I think I missed an opportunity to attach the dangle to the cat’s tail. I also didn’t add shadows, and I’m not too sure about the circles on the cat’s coat. Also, the cat looks rather ‘flat’.
‘A Dangle A Day’ is a tutorial book I wrote and illustrated to show how you too can create dangle designs and was published earlier this year.
A cute kitty to start the day with a bit of advice for self-care.
More of something for me to work towards – reaching out to a friend when I’m having a tough time with my mental/emotional wellbeing. Still a valid bit of advice.
I’m still not quite right today, feeling emotional and fragile still. I still need to get some work done, after an errand or two this morning. I think it’s a day for lots of tea and also drawing with pen and paper so I can sit in/on bed and work.
I still don’t know how EMDR could’ve floored me this week. It all seemed so gentle and nothing much came up during the session. Lots of body stuff for sure, but no memories or insights at the time. I seem to be stuck in emotional flashbacks and all I can do is hope that it’s processing trauma as part of it all.
I know this will all pass in time. I know I’m working towards healing myself with help from Linda, my EMDR therapist. I know that there are steps backwards which are really steps forward as trauma is released and processed outside of the EMDR session.
So, today it’s errands then it’s settling down to be creative and to take care of myself. Lots of tea. Lots, and lots of tea.
A simple mandala for the change in astronomical season. Drawn and coloured digitally using Microsoft Surface Pen, Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
Yesterday I had a pretty grim day after EMDR on Monday.
I really was down, miserable and feeling very, very alone in this world yesterday. A day where I felt I was unlovable. A day where I felt I didn’t belong anywhere. A day where all the past rejections and hurts were bubbling up without any specific memories attached to them, just the emotions, the emotional flashbacks that come with CPTSD.
These are feelings and beliefs about myself that I lived my whole life with. Life just added more and more of the same to them, reinforcing them, even when evidence came along to show it wasn’t true. It’s so hard when I’m stuck in these flashbacks, in this frame of mind to find let alone believe anything that is contrary to the old messages.
Those old ways of thinking about myself are familiar. Not comfortable, but familiar and more powerful than the more positive ones I’m working on replacing them with. It’s like they have a life of their own and pounce on me when I’m at my most vulnerable, and after EMDR on Monday and yesterday I was vulnerable.
I still am somewhat vulnerable to them today, as I am everyday to an increasingly lesser and lesser degree.
It’s on days like these, as I recover from them, I’m able to see a little of the progress I’m making through EMDR, something that makes me see it’s all worthwhile. Even on days like these when the old inner critic finds another bout of fading strength it’s worthwhile persevering with EMDR and working towards the maximum possible recovery from CPTSD.
I still haven’t learned that trick of reaching out to people on days like this. I still believe I need to struggle along alone and isolate myself. It’s I still think I’d be a burden to them and I don’t want to worry them and I don’t want people to think I’m an attention seeker or making it all up. I avoid phone calls, messages and I try to avoid social media as that can provoke the flashbacks or intensify them.
Most of the time, when I’m not stuck in the past, I’m actually quite content when I’m by myself. I draw and create with a gentle smile on my face and inside my heart. Life feels soft and gentle.
But on days like yesterday life seems harsh and hard. I’ve never learned to reach out to people for company or help on days like these. During days like these I never think to reach out either, not until the feelings and thoughts of the emotional flashbacks recede.
Then … then I start to wish I felt I could reach out. Which I now won’t do as the need has mostly passed.
I am still emotionally vulnerable and fragile, nowhere near as bad as I was, but still fragile. The flashbacks are receding. I may have some waves and ripples left from the storm that has almost blown itself out. I weathered the storm once again, I can weather the tail end of it now.
Yesterday I drew these pawsome pals. In the midst of emotional flashbacks I feel very, very alone, more so as I isolate myself at these times. For me, I think this is more of a goal. That I reach out and/or let people into my life. I learned how to put a brave, smiley face on at a very young age. Letting that face drop is not easy. Not easy at all.
Another cute kitty-cat cartoon, this time drawing on my previous life as a science teacher, chemistry was my speciality along with curious facts and random bits of knowledge.
Drawn and hand lettered with a Sakura Pigma Sensei 04 pen on Rhodia Dot Grid paper. Digitally coloured using a Microsoft Surface Pen, Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro after removing the dot grid and cleaning up the image using GiMP.
I’ve just realised I’ve not added shadows beneath the objects! Oops. Oh, it’ll do for now.
I’m starting to recover from all the anti-stigma talks last week, though I’m still feeling rather tired and yesterday I was overly emotional. I didn’t sleep too well last night as today I have two more Time to Change Wales anti-stigma talks to give this morning followed by therapy this afternoon. Not sure what is causing me some anxiety – the talks or EMDR therapy!
Both are emotionally draining. Telling a small part of my story relating to my CPTSD is always draining these days as I become more and more in touch with emotions I’ve suppressed all my life. EMDR is emotionally draining as it involves processing thoughts and emotions that were suppressed at the time a trauma happened, trauma being a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
A bit of fun art this morning! I stumbled across the quote and thought it needed a cat, and this was the result – Piccatso!
Sometimes you just gotta have a bit more fun than usual, and this bit of fun has me smiling today. It’s also a sunny day here in Wales after many days of wild winds and rain, so a happy smiling pusscat seems quite appropriate.
Simple in appearance but it took me a good three hours to complete!
The black and white line art was drawn using a Sakura Pigma Sensei 04 pen on Rhodia dot grid paper. I used the same pen to hand letter the quote. After scanning in and removing the dot grid, pencil lines, smudges and errors, I added colour and texture using various gradient and brush tools.
I used my usual trifecta of digital tools – Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Pen adn Microsoft Surface Studio along with GiMP to do the removing of the dot grid and smudges.
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!
Many hours of colouring later and here’s the dragon and daffodils.
Pencil on paper sketch to start, then digital redrawing and colouring using Microsoft Surface Pen, Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
I’ve created two coloring templates for Time To Talk Day, which is tomorrow, and the art above was created using one of them, but more about that later in this wittering.
The whole idea of the day is to get people talking about mental health. Mental health problems affect 1 in 4 of us, yet people are still afraid to talk about it. There’s still a huge stigma surrounding mental ill-health and that leads to discrimination of those experiencing mental illness.
I’m one of the 1 in 4. My cPTSD means that I am constantly anxious and it’ doesn’t take much of a trigger to get me into a full state of panic. I can have bouts of depression, nowadays not as deep or dark as they have been in the fairly recent past. I get emotional flashbacks to times of trauma. I don’t remember many traumatic experiences, but my body remembers the feelings associated with that trauma and I experience them yet again, retraumatising me.
Thanks to EMDR, however, these emotional flashbacks are less common and sometimes aren’t quite as intense, sometimes just as intense.
I have a whole host of other issues related to cPTSD and a quick google will bring back lots of information if you’re interested.
Tomorrow I will have my champions hat on for Time to Change Wales as I go to give an anti-stigma talk to a group of police officers in Ton Pentre and then on to man (woman?) a stand in Port Talbot after that. That means I won’t be parking in the police station car park again after my last experience there!
The anti-stigma talk has me telling people a little about Time To Change Wales, the statistics for mental illness, what stigma and discrimination there are and then I tell my story of my mental illness.
The talks wipe me out emotionally. I end up exhausted and often with what I call an emotional ‘hangover’ – I feel headachy and spaced out, sometimes quite upset too.
However, I consider that a small price to pay if my talks (and my blogs) help one person to recognise their mental health isn’t what it should be, or to find the courage to seek help as they know they are struggling.
It’s also important as meeting champions who have experienced or are experiencing mental health problems helps to break the stereotypes of what people with mental illnesses look like and behave.
I’m well on my path to recovery. I don’t know if that will be a full recovery from cPTSD or whether it will be a good enough recovery that I’m resilient to lifes ups and downs, that I’ll be able to form meaningful relationships, trust people, be able to travel by myself, be able to go places because I can go there not because I have to have some reason…and more.
I know that crowded, noisy places are always likely to be a no no – I don’t appear it, but I am an introvert. I learned to wear a mask of extroversion (among other masks) when I was very young and that mask kind of protects what is beneath it. Wearing that mask is exhausting.
I’ve created two coloring templates for Time to Talk Day 2019. Originally they were for the colouring day being run as part of Time to Talk Day at the Welsh Office! I’ve also made the templates available to Time to Change Wales and Mind have copies of them too, so they’ll be available over social media.
I’ll also be adding them to my facebook page – Angela Porter Illustrator as well as on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group too.
To create the art above I used one of the templates as a basis for the art. I think you’ll agree that this is a very different piece of art from me. It’s rather graphic and quite 1960s psychedelic too!
I had a lot of fun doing this artwork and I’m surprisingly happy with the result.
It is digital art; I used my usual trio of Microsoft Surface Studio, Microsoft Surface Pen along with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to create it, along with my creativity.
I created this mandala after I returned home from EMDR therapy yesterday. I knew that my time today would be limited, so thought a bit of chill-time would be good for me before heading out for another commitment in the evening.
As is my way, I sat down with a blank concentric circle grid for mandala drawing on the screen of my Microsoft Surface Studio, Surface Pen in hand, and chose a colour to draw with. I had no idea how this mandala would unfold as I started to draw the first shape at the centre of the mandala.
As always, the lines and shapes just flowed from the centre out, one by one. In this case interlocking in a way that is a first for me.
I drew the whole design in one colour, before adding lighter and darker shades and blending them out to give some interest and dimension to the design.
As I worked, as the lines and colours flowed, even where I had to make adjustments or erase and start again, I could feel myself relax and my whole body started to breathe.
The whole mandala took a little less than 2 hours to complete, thanks to the magic of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro which does the work of repeating my motifs around the circle and makes it so easy for me to fluidly, organically develop and adapt the design elements as I go.
I firmly believe that digital art is allowing me to create art I wouldn’t have created for a very long time, if ever, if I were still using pen and paper. I’ve said it before, I say it now and no doubt I will say it again – digital art is opening doors to my creative expression I never thought would be possible, especially with the styles of mandalas I’ve been creating of late.
Drawing really does help me to relax, except when I’ve become overwrought as last Saturday and then nothing I do seems good enough to me and just serves to compound the unsettled nature. Finally, I’m aware of this part of my cPTSD and in future I can, hopefully, manage it better by doing something other than art to help to shift the mood.
Therapy yesterday was a combination of a loving-kindness meditation so my therapist could see what happens to me during one and then we used the physical pain I experienced to do an EMDR session. Lots of body stuff went on during that session – lots of pain and sensation. But by the end of the session I wore a gentle smile – not just on my face but throughout the whole of my being.
I felt content, at ease, for the first time in a few days.
I still feel that way this morning.
I had recommendations from my therapist for some loving kindness meditation cds to try by Tara Brach. So, two are downloaded into Audible for me to use later today!
Art is the Adventure 