It’s Monday. The start of another long week in the office. But the weather is beautiful warm and sunny and it makes me happy. I hope it stays like this until spring 🙂
Here is the Black Book entry from yesterday:
I am totally in love with this circular pattern on the outer part! This morning I started another one that will use the same pattern. Yay!
Have a good Monday (as much as Mondays can be)!
It’s a beautiful Saturday here and another entry into my Black Book:
Of course if the photo is made in natural light, the shimmer from metallic pens is gone. Here is a close-up made in artificial light:
Actually I made another one today, but I could not make a photo because it’s already getting dark, so I will post it tomorrow. I worked in my She Thinks Positive journal too and will have a few pages to share. Maybe I do that tomorrow and leave the Black Book for later. Ah! So nice when there is lot to post 🙂 Have a beautiful weekend!
It’s raining. It’s been raining for two days. I am confused. I have too many things to do. I do not feel like doing anything. I am tired. I do not know what to do. That summarizes it.
This one I worked on during our company retreat:
The retreat went well, but left me exhausted. It was too much. I needed time to come back to normal. But I did not have time. I needed to travel and work. And then a problem appeared which needs solving, and more travelling and it unsettled me. Hence my feeling of not being able to do anything. And the rain does not help.
And then I am thinking about catching up with the courses I took. Why did I take 5 courses I cannot possible manage to follow? I knew it would be impossible, but I still tried. I am a bit mad at myself because I always think I can do more than I can. And it creates anxiety. Like I do not have enough of it anyway…
So I am paralized. Frozen in time. Cannot get going. There are too many things to do and I know I cannot make it. So I choose to not do anything. Does it make sense? Instead of enjoying the courses I am taking, I made myself miserable and started thinking about the lessons like something I have to do. Like work that needs finishing, like obligation that needs to be fulfilled. Look, it’s crazy!
This morning I painted with watercolors. It’s drying, I will post it tomorrow. I did not do any of my outstanding lessons in my five courses. They will have to wait and I will need time to recover. From today until December 31 I am enforcing a ban on buying art courses. On January 1st I will reassess the status. There is only so many hours in a day and there are limits to what I can achieve and stay sane and happy. That’s what I wanted to say today.
I am a bit unsettled because today I am going to a company retreat. It will be nice I am sure but being who I am of course I do not want to go and I am nervous and restless.
Anyway… I am taking my Black book with me so I’ll have something to calm me down in case I will need it. Which will be the case 🙂
Here’s the page I finished today.
Another update from the Black Book:
These things are hard to photograph… I applied a filter on IG so it looks quite ok. I remember my frustration with this from January. Maybe I should try with a real camera and real photo editing software. Maybe the phone is not really the best solution here.
Anyway, you get the idea… I used sakura metallic gel pens, sakura white glaze pen and acrylic ink for fine details. I really like this one… Think I may frame it one day 🙂
Here’s a little video I posted in IG too. I tried to film the white part, but it was even more out of focus than this 🙂
I was so excited to get back to my Black Book. I started a mandala two weeks ago, and then travelled and decided not to take it with me because I wanted to devote myself to catching up with courses. Yesterday I finished it.
It’s such a pleasure for me to do these little doodles and dots that fill up shapes of my mandala. I used Liquid Pearls, sakura glaze pen, sakura metallic pen and white acrylic ink.
This morning I started a new one. I don’t have much time before going to work – I can devote only some 20-30 minutes and they fly so fast. I make myself a cup of coffee and I sit and doodle and sip my coffee and 30 minutes is gone. But I feel so recharged and so happy (and so looking forward to the following morning).
Little moments of happiness.
As I said in my last post, I have re-discovered my Black Book and one unfinished drawing inside. And having my new white ink to test, it was a perfect opportunity to finish it.
I loved doing the little details… This all reminds me of a stash of black paper I had somewhere… Hmmm…. I could make another Black Book… and get ready for January because I will do mu challenge again!
BTW, I am quite pleased with the ink 🙂 and if you are wondering, it’s Schmincke Aerocolor acrylic ink and I used it in a Rotring 0.5 technical pen. Colored dots are Liquid Pearls.
It’s been days now that the fog is not lifting. It’s cold and it’s wet and all looks dirty. And I feel sad this morning. I did manage to sleep for a whole 7 hours tonight though… what a success!
Here’s yesterday’s entry in my black book.
I quite enjoyed creating this one. Today I started a Life Book lesson for this week some rather intuitive painting of vase with flowers. Not my thing definitely. Maybe also something to do with my sad mood today so it seems predestined to fail… that’s why I left it and decided to revisit it tomorrow morning. I will do it. I promised to finish all lessons this year, remember?
I finished this yesterday but was too busy to post.
I really enjoyed creating this one. Love all those little dots and it being hand drawn and not symmetrical. I am thinking about turning this one into line art and making it available for coloring. Let me think some more…
I rarely frame my works. Mostly they are anyway done in books, meaning there is always another painting on the back side. The Black Book is different. Because of shimmery stuff, embossing and raised paint I didn’t do another piece in the back, so it was easy to just tear it out and take it to be framed.
And the reason for doing it at all was… well it was done for someone I love because he wanted it. Enough reason to take that trip to the frame shop. I did have other three drawings done for my kitchen wall at the same time. I just need to hang them now.
It’s a horribly cold sunny Saturday morning here and my spirits are low. I’m tired and sad. I didn’t use my bright light for two days because my sleep was disturbed and I thought I would skip the light therapy for a few days. Maybe my mood is affected… maybe there are other reasons…
