A merry dance
(Morris dancer: Glasgow, Scotland)
Yes, yes ,yes, so I’m utterly shameless, I know it. I have been bandying this image around cyberspace as much and as fast as I could yesterday. Some of you are probably sick of the sight of it! I was out with my Gran when it went ‘live’ and I wasn’t able to see it first. I waved my Gran off on the bus and immediately reached for my phone, accessed my emails and lo! There was one in my inbox to let me know my image had gone live, headlining the article on Amelia’s Magazine blog. I think I actually gasped. It’s a small step, but it’s great to have my work out there, especially as I only just got my online shop up and running – good timing on my part, for once. Basically I answered a call for an illustrator to submit work for another article (you may remember one around the time of the Royal Wedding – see last paragraph).
Anyway, on this occasion, I had several days instead of two measly hours to pull an illustration together. Consequently – and unsurprisingly – it was better than my previous offering. I was thinking about this, that the posts here are usually observations or anecdotal images from my spare time antics. Considering the amount of time I spend drawing and working in relation to messing about and eating (which is mostly what you see and read here) I hardly document it here. I have another site for all those things so I try not to mix the two worlds too much, but on this occasion, it took up a lot of my thinking time over the weekend and now that it is over, I feel like celebrating. It’s another one of those personal triumphs I allow myself to feel good about. Often in freelancing, there is so little praise and morale boosting, that when something splendid does occur, I’m apt to rejoice in it, however insignificant it may be.
Today, for instance, I whiled away the remainder of the afternoon preparing figures for my tax return. Not exciting, but now the whole process is an hour or so away from being completely over. Most people think it’s terribly early, but the Tax Return Deadline hanging over me has marred the last couple of Christmasses. I intend for last January to be the final one that sees me into the New Year with old accounts. I needed this drawing and it’s accompanying recognition to boost me onto the drudgery of a Tax Return. In a ‘proper’ job, someone would probably be coordinating me and my workload, urging me to do better, faster, smarter. I have to rely on myself for management, and friends and family when I am having a creatively recurrent existential crisis.
For now, I am firmly an illustrator and I love drawing. I especially love producing pieces like this that surprise me. I didn’t have a plan when I drew it, I simply did it and kept to a subconscious set of rules in my head. By happy chance, this drawing also marks the fiftieth daily drawing I have done over the past weeks. I have been keeping that up for ten weeks. It’s a motivation technique that seems to be working. If you’re not yet sick of it, have a look at the other Morris men related images here in my illustration gallery.
– Today Rosie is working, going to an exhibition opening and playing Badminton in Glasgow, Scotland –
Good work! Keep it up! (Where’s the Like button on this site?)
Hmm.. can I put one on? Well – that’s another one for the ‘to-do’ list….
Good, 加油!
I just have time to finish my railway station, more or less.