I’ve really been enjoying my new digital art software, Rebelle 4 (updated since Rebelle 3), and have been practicing on it quite a bit. As I learn the software more, I’m actually starting to enjoy working in Rebelle vs Traditional Pen and Paper MORE (which came as a shock to me) because of all the amazing digital tools that make it easier to make mistakes and fix them quickly. 😉
Here are a few of the things I created while I was practicing with my new tools:
Me trying to get the hang of drawing children for the children’s book I eventually want to do. This is a background character from the wonderful book, The Magical Yet.
My confused girl. Working on using watercolor in Rebelle and also learning how to do highlights from light.
Playing around with watercolor to create a happy little fish. 🙂
So I’m trying to ‘level up’ my art skills and I’ve been working on shadows and highlights, proportions and just other basic art fundamentals that I never took the time to learn. I have been watching SO MANY art YouTube videos. I can already see a big difference in my drawings. Here are a few things I’ve drawn this week as practice.
This is from a ‘Complete This Drawing’ book from Picadilly that I’ve had for a while now. It’s great for when I want to draw but I’m too tired to start from scratch. I’m not sure why she ended up looking like Angelina Jolie.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor.
After years of using our old IKEA kitchen table as my desk (you served valiantly table), I finally have a new, real desk with drawers and my daughter gets the old table as her craft table. Here is a tour of my new desk (with only a small amount of clutter removed for pictures).
The full view. Desk and ladder shelves from Amazon. Chair from a friend who was getting rid of it. Painting was a gift.
Close up of desk top.
Close up of ladder shelf & cork board.
‘Hidden’ shelf under the desk. My legs are short so I don’t hit it at all.
Drawer #1.
Drawer #2.
My various on-desk writing implements. My mini desk bookshelf.
Shelf #3 from the top.
Shelf #3 from the top.
And that’s all folks! I love my new desk and am enjoying having drawers very much.
I’ve been thinking a lot about noise and what I put out into the world. During this time of self-isolation, I’ve felt a stronger desire to share but I have many issues with social media and find it’s best for my mental health if I mostly steer clear (which I sometimes forget and then am painfully reminded, as I was today). So I’m going to try an experiment of sharing more, because it’s what I want to do, here on my little corner of the web.
I recently read about a cool idea on Happiness is Here blog where, overnight, she leaves out cool supplies on her children’s table for them to discover in the morning. I’ve been trying it for a couple of days now with my young daughter, and she seems to be enjoying it, as am I. I get very excited to put things out after she goes to bed, as if I’m a fairy leaving little gifts of discovery and curiosity.
Today’s supplies were for collage art: I left out paper, glue, scissors, magazines, and a printout of some collage art examples. First thing this morning, she was very intent on playing with slime so the collage supplies were pushed aside for that. And I was (mostly) fine with it. I set these things out because I thought she might like them but I did my best not to have any set expectations that she’d interact with them.
Later in the day, she was ready and asked me to join her and we had quite a good time making these. 🙂 The rest of the day has been quite challenging but this was one good thing that happened. It reminded me how much I enjoy collage and you might just see more of it from me in the future.
My daughter’s creation. These are the eyes and lips of Helen Mirren in case you were wondering.
My daughter’s second creation.
My second creation. I cut out dog eyes for this face and my daughter started sobbing when she found out in case you were wondering how things are going over here.
My first creation: Gecko For President. I started out trying to make the gecko pop out of a cake but it transformed into this.
This next installment of The Love Series is for all the Frontline & Essential Workers.
Texas has recently started to open back up (amid controversy) and the roads are busier and things are starting to look almost normal. But, in truth, things are not back to normal. COVID-19 is still spreading and the threat to those that have to be working on the frontlines is very real.
I have read on social media about parents who are health care professionals and have chosen to self-isolate from their families to protect them. Mothers and fathers who haven’t hugged or kissed their children or significant other in weeks. And I just start to sob. It breaks my heart that they have to do it and that there isn’t more I can do to help.
So this Loves Series post is for the Frontline & Essential Workers. All of the grocery store workers, police officers and fire fighters, waste collectors, delivery people, and all the other essential workers. You are providing vital services during this stressful and strange time and we thank you. We appreciate you. I am sorry there is not more than I can do but know that I am so grateful.
It’s fall – and I know this not because of the weather (it’s in the high 80s here in Houston). No, I know it’s fall because one of my favorite TV shows is returning this Sunday after a very long break. Doctor Who returns this Sunday and I am beyond excited! I’ve been craving this show for a few weeks now and it’s because of what it stands for: hope, kindness, courage, wonder and love (among many others). This show has been and continues to be a bright light in my life and a beacon of hope to many.
So I’ve chosen Doctor Who as the 13th installment of my Love Series which is serendipitous as this Sunday will be the premiere of the 13th Doctor. She will be the first female version of the Doctor and I can’t wait to see what adventures she’ll take us on. Allons-y!
I was laying in bed having just finished Hannah Gadsby’s riveting special, Nanette, on Netflix – I was in awe as it had been full of vulnerability, courage and wisdom. There were many great moments in her special, but I think my favorite line was “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.” I was so moved, I had to post about it on Twitter. A preternatural sense had had me avoiding Twitter all week and that’s when I found out why.
The Brett Kavanaugh hearings and commentary overwhelmed my feed. As I scrolled Twitter, the anger inside of me had hot tears of anger rolling down my face. I remembered all of the me too stories that had recently been shared (and all the shaming and non-believing). I also remembered my own me too story – I’d done my personal healing around it years ago but I’d never dealt with my cultural anger and sorrow. As my daughter slept safe and sound in the room next door, my anger reignited. Not as a survivor of sexual abuse but as a mama who was fiercely determined to not allow anything like that to happen to her daughter. Or any more daughters or sons.
But what power did I have? What could I do? I quietly marched to my office, my anger and sorrow turning to resolve and I opened up my sketch book and began to write the first things that came out. To my surprise, they were not words of anger but words of comfort, understanding, empathy, and hope. They were words to sexual abuse survivors everywhere, including that little girl inside of me.
They came out in a flurry and then started to peter out. It had been so long since I’d been in that place of pain and intense suffering. So I did something I thought I’d never do – I got out my 10 year old journal from when I was healing and I read the fears, pains and sorrow of a young woman touching her deepest childhood pain for the first time. I cried. And the words began to flow again as I wrote to her the things she needed to hear.
This is my #metoo collection. They are reminders, affirmations and messages of connection and hope. If you need to print one out for yourself or a friend, please feel free to do so. They are my offering. They are my hope and my healing.
Here it is – the top dog of positive affirmations. At least, I think it is. After years of reading, soul-searching, witnessing, and listening, I’ve come to see that for so many of us our psychological baggage can be boiled down to one core belief: I am not enough. And when I break down most other affirmations to their essence, what they are really saying is “I am enough.”
Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. – Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
It really, truly is as simple as that and that’s why this affirmation is so powerful. If the belief of “I am not enough” is at the core of most of our baggage and it can be changed by simply believing that we are enough, imagine what saying and internalizing “I am enough” could do for someone’s life. I know what it can do for a life because it changed mine and continues to do so.
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