How to kill an artist

There is a broken bridge in the creative heavens

Where creators steal other worlds

Make them their own and change things

Make them straight when they ought to be curled

It’s a tragedy to see it

When a creator can’t create

For they need to take another’s work

To put food on their plates

How proud do they feel when they do it?

Does it feed their soul?

I live in doubt of the truth of that

If I may be so bold?

How hungry is the creator who takes another’s art?

How starved and deranged are they? 

If they could eat another’s heart!

For I have seen it happen

The scope of vicious duels

Of two creators in battle

For one who won’t use their tools

And I have seen the tragedies it causes in their lives

As depression rips them soundly, as though they’re stabbed with knives

They can’t live with what they do and they know it’s wrong and bad

But they can’t help it really and that’s what makes it sad

To kill another artist for the want of fame and gold

It pounds reality into me

And makes my blood run cold

Lessons & time

Everything that happens in life is a lesson!

Well that is what has been told to me time and time again by various people of all walks of life and I sit and I wonder, well, what am I learning from what I do?

What can be learnt from sitting down three hours per day skipping between three YouTube Livestreams of nesting birds? 

What can I learn from watching a solitary albatross chick pulling grass on the edge of his nest, ducking from incoming adults of neighbouring nests as they land?

What am I learning from watching five little owlets being fed rats by its parent in a dingy dirty owl box in Florida?

What am I learning from watching Osprey pulling apart fishes given to her by her mate to feed her two little chicks?

What am I learning by scrolling through various female artists throughout history?  Especially when I can never remember their names or the names of the pieces of their art?

What am I learning from collaging bits of paper onto a canvas and then painting the edges of it?

What am I learning when I am laying down staring out the window cloud gazing?

If everything that happens to me in life is a lesson, then what am I learning from everything that I do?

Somethings don’t make any sense to me, other things are very clear – but not the so-called mundane things of sitting and watching or just sitting and thinking; the most nonsensical thing about my life is how often I sit down and imagine conversations I want to have with people dead or alive, or imagine creatures or people having lives within stories I’ve made.  I understand that imagination makes me productive when I use it to make stories, but what exactly is its lesson when I am more or less making it up as I go along?

The lessons I have understood and learned, yet still appear to be a student of nonetheless, which must mean I’ve not entirely grasped them yet are these…

Dropping food I am eating – I have presumed the lessons here are;

Don’t take anything for granted

Be grateful for what you eat

Don’t eat so much

Yet I still appear to need to learn that lesson – not that I am in the habit of dropping food on the floor, but you get my drift?

I’m bored and philosophical right now, so I am coming out with a load of crap – but its thought provoking nonetheless and I do waste oodles of time thinking such things!

When I was little my grandmother said there is a very good reason why we drop food or spill drinks and it is to do with the fairy folk around us!

I asked her… what fairy folk make us become slobs?

She tutted and swiped at me and said, no silly – when we drop food or drink we’re to remember not to forget the fairy folk and give them an offering – it’s a kind of magic where we get accident prone with food and drink because it’s a sign they’re hungry or thirsty and feels neglected by us!

At the moment I am inclined to believe this house has a fairy who is particularly fond of sausages, because Henry is constantly dropping his and Paul has been known to drop them whilst serving them on plates too… so whatever fairy we have in our house sure is a sausage lover!

We used to leave offerings out for the fairy every night but we’ve got a rodent problem right now so can’t.  People have become very accident prone at dinner ever since.

My grandma would say (if she were still around, bless her) that it will only get worse till we make an offering.

But we really can’t right now!

I have been thinking about playing my recorder in the dining room to see if the rat will think I am the Pied Piper of Hamlin and follow me dancing out the door, or whether or not that idea is completely ludicrous, a waste of time and liable to get me called weirdo by Paul again.

It’s irritating having a rat, especially when you live with someone so jumpy and fearful of the things.

It’s tried eating the window to get out at night – our window frames are wood, there are gnaw marks all along it, I said to Paul unless you’ve got a spare 15k I suggest you try to flush the rat out because we’re going to lose our window!

The terror immediately hit Paul and he plans in a couple of days he will try and get rid of it, it’s always in a couple of days though with him on everything.  It’s been a couple of days since summer of 2016 that he promised to fix the shower… it’s been a couple of days since 2017 to finish painting the living room green… my goodness I feel immortal right now, a God… 800 million years is a day isn’t it to God?

They said he made the world in 6 days and rested on the 7^th, which means according to science this planet is approximately 4.6 billion years old meaning a day is around 800 million years, so I have to presumably wait 1.6 billion years for him to do it?  Because I am pretty sure he is not using Earth human mortal dates here!

I have the strangest life.

Never mind.

Thanks for reading!

Abstract art and the subconscious

For the first time in months I have done art.

Yesterday, late afternoon to early evening I spent time doing art and I did it in a rebellious kind of way.

So tired of never having access to my art table I did a very childish thing and sat crossed-leg on my bed and risked ink stains on the bed covers to do it.

I did get a green splodge on my duvet, which looks black against the red polka dots that were originally on it.

But it wasn’t as messy as I thought it would be.  Paul moaned, of course he did – ink splodge on the bed covers, but he didn’t say as much as he usually does because he knows in a way, it was his fault this happened.  My art table has been taken over by the whole household, except me.

I made abstract conceptual art of a beauty boutique with inks, coloured pencils, biro and sharpies. 

I also made a lady and cut her out as part of a big collage I intend to do as part of a free course I signed up a week ago to – thing is, I haven’t done the project yet, because I couldn’t find a wooden palette big enough to continue.  I have everything else though – but the palette is meant to be the canvas!

I also learned today when experimenting with different music on Alexa that I’ve been a big fan of The Kinks my whole life and never knew.  Every song of theirs I was like… ooh this is my most favourite song of all time, I was like that with around ten of their songs I listened to.  But I’ve told you all before, I have the memory of a sieve.

I probably knew once, that I liked them.

As stupid as it sounds I thought quite a lot of their songs were from The Beatles, The Beach Boys or The Monkees to be honest.

So yeah, I learned I like The Kinks, typical really upon reflection.

A new short story series has entered my mind today, which I was also practising art for.  I wanted to make the art of a Goth girl, as the main character is Goth – I want to write three short stories before I do my plan.  The plan is, to post them here on my blog as a weekly thing. 

I probably won’t, but who knows.

It’s a black comedy comic strip.

Still intend to write the other projects, but my heart isn’t in something since I found out someone wanted to steal it, I am tired of idea thieves.  It really is disheartening.

So, that’s what I am up to lately.

To me, that’s huge progress.

I’ve been in a huge depression slump since September; this is my first creative foray since then.  Well on a major scale that lasted longer than thirty minutes in any case and wasn’t poetry either!

I’ve been eager to get heavily into art actually; particularly conceptual abstract in mixed media format and collages.

I’ve been trying to learn off and on for about a year now, what abstract art actually means – to try and develop respect for it, because to be honest with you, up until recently I had a very naïve and uneducated idea about abstract.

You know… anyone and their dog can do it.  Ouch.

Actually there is a lot of thought and feeling that goes into abstract work, a lot more than you realise.

You realise that in the first few minutes of abstract the artist genuinely doesn’t know what they are doing, they are just adding colour and shapes to the canvas to fill it up – then they layer it and cover up a lot of what they’ve done in order to make something special to them.

You see the thing is, abstract really is suggestive.  The artist sees something that you and I won’t, then give it a name based on what they see.

I remember an art class I did once in the last school I’ve ever been to – where I was at the frustrated sweaty end of a ranting art teacher, because he felt I was disrespecting the craft because I couldn’t grasp what abstract or even surrealism was at the time.  He wanted an abstract painting or sculpture of a musical instrument and I couldn’t do it for the life of me.

He forced me to read loads of books for that whole lesson and I realised what I was doing wrong.  I was attempting realism, because I thought that’s what he wanted from me.

I thought abstract at the time meant bold unusual colours with blocky patterns in it. 

When I finally grasped what he wanted, he was so happy he was bouncing off the walls for weeks and from being the most hated pupil he ever had, I became his biggest success in his words!

I realised what he wanted me to do was to create a musical instrument of my choice, but make sure it doesn’t look normal – that it looks contorted, sort of trapped between realities and maybe make it in a way in which if you squint and put your head in a certain position it will actually look like the guitar you meant for it to be.  Weird, but then again – it’s all thinking outside of the box.  We can all look at a picture, but do we really see it?

How deeply do we look at it, do we see details?  Do we try to see beyond splodges and shapes or do we take it for granted?

That’s the thing with abstract, a lot of people do take it for granted and pooh, pooh it.

The best way I’ve found in understanding abstract art, is to get used to looking at shapes in many forms.  Silhouettes are a good start.  Splodges on paper, but don’t just look at the splodges – look at them as silhouettes, what could they be the silhouettes of?

If you squint your eyes or tilt your head slightly or a lot does the silhouette look different?

That’s the understanding behind abstract art I’ve found.

Sometimes, yes, it’s just random stuff people throw on a canvas, but a large amount of abstract artists really do over think how they make things appear.

Another way in learning about abstract art that helped me was the idea of junk journaling and collage.  You take scrapbooking papers and you cut them into shapes and you paste them onto a paper, you have a square and a triangle, put them together and it is a house, but they are random colour and patterns the shapes – all of this helped me understand better.

So abstract is both the worlds of random paint throwing and thinking deeply about what you’re doing – this is something I’ve learned from almost every abstract artist.

They really do start off, just piling paint onto a canvas for ages until they squint in a certain way or tilt their head or just simply see beyond what they are doing – this is why they pause and focus on the picture regularly – they are trying to see what their subconscious has just made and it does give people a huge insight to the state of the artists mind.

It’s all subconscious, it’s not meant to be 3D realism. 

Today, I was concentrating on my abstract picture, without a hope in Hell knowing what I was doing, I just went back to being five years old and threw different shapes and colours and textures onto my canvas until I saw what looked to me to be a mess of clothes, boots and shoes all over a carnival style boutique, I outlined some things and I did some random scratches and texts and to me it works.

I didn’t intend to make it some flamboyant carnival style clothing boutique, I just wanted to paint and play.

But it is funny how my subconscious did that, because I haven’t had a shopping trip for six years, not where I can impulse buy more than £10 and in the past few days I’ve really missed my old haunts in London and the ability to go out for a shopping spree of £300 without battering an eye lid like I used to!

So by throwing myself into abstract art, I’ve found I am learning a lot about myself and my deep desires.

I really do miss London and I did notice along the flanks of the painting, it looked like some foggy scenes of a London high-street!

I missed doing art and todays lifted my spirits slightly.

Thanks for reading!

Moledro what’s that?

Moledro

“n. a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.”

A beautiful notion I’m sure, it is a new word I learned through an acquaintance on Twitter the day before I left the site for good. 

It’s interesting and inspiring to think that some artists and authors have the skill to be read and noted centuries down the line like this, but it seems only a small margin get the opportunity to have that effect on the world and we will never know if we will be one of those people, for life is cruel and short like that.

Some people are very fortunate in that they could predict they’d be like that someday, because they have been made a big thing of before they die – but most teeter on usually without the vain slither of hope that it will ever be them.

Some, who experience this kind of fame during life, often remain in denial of their talent and so they don’t get to enjoy it whilst they can.

I have experienced moledro with a couple of authors who aren’t widely known or popular – I found their books through Goodreads giveaways before they closed them off to the UK and I found them on kindle really cheap – attempts at vanity publishing, I presumed because they gave up trying traditional publishers after many years of failure.

Here’s one that I can remember Alex Weinle, his book The Decapaphiliac: or love in the time of cappuccinos, it is an anthology of fantasy stories and in my opinion he is very similar to Neil Gaiman, though more macabre.

There are many others that have never been traditionally published where their stories have gripped my imagination so much so, that I still cannot believe why they are not huge household names by now?

An amazing short story I read in a magazine once by an author I can’t remember the name of – where an angel was attacked by a demon on Earth and she had her wings ripped off her and she was found by a mortal man who took her in and had a relationship with her – suffering from depression as she pretends to be a troubled mortal.  Eventually her stepdaughter found her wings in the closet and the story had ended and I thirsted for more.  Why was it so short, why wasn’t this writer known?

Moledro, do you have an infatuation with an author?  Are they still alive?  Are they traditionally published yet?  Let me know in the comments below about any gems you have found and let’s help these people build their confidence as a writer and get them to try again shall we?

Thanks for reading!

A silly dream

One thing I didn’t realise or remember about having an Alexa Echo Dot thingy, is that I can get to hear my kindle books on it, spoken aloud by Alexa herself!  I am excited about that because my Kindle stopped working around two years ago I had loads of books on it, downloaded a load of free classic literature.

Today I sat through and heard the first three chapters of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, for the first time – it’s quite a good read actually.  I have wanted to read that story for years!

I can totally understand why so many classic horror novelists have owed their inspiration to it!

Because of the book and because of the music, I have found myself daydreaming about my vampires again – yes I know there are no vampires in the story, but still, the thought is there.

The music I have been listening today have been my vampire playlist, but I have started to create a new vampire playlist now, one that concentrates mostly on classical music because of the time period I am thinking about.

My music tastes are more than just a little bit eclectic; I do in fact listen to classical music about half the time actually and my paternal family has always been into classical music and that side of the family has always been musical and involved with entertainment in some manner of speaking.

I for example, was classically trained in opera as a young child, until my mum got fed up forking out the money for something she didn’t find productive, my dad and his family were very distressed at her stopping this.

I love a lot of different types of musical interests, Jazz, soul, rock and alternative with classical or classical fusion and world music.  I have never been to a music concert before, unless you include local classical orchestra that is and nobody really wants to hear that I have gone to those, because they expect you to say some cooler like a rock band or something.

But I have always been a huge fan of Vivaldi, George Gershwin, Beethoven, Vaughn Williams and Tchaikovsky to name but a few.  I even like modern classical from John Williams, Alan Silvestre and Brad Fiedel which are movie composers.

I am one of these strange people that when she watches a movie, she lets the whole thing consume her – the visuals, the acting, the audio – background music, it is all taken in by me.  I am not happy to just watch a movie and enjoy it; I like to know where that music came from in scene whatever and well that’s just me, I am a geek, what can I say?

Since I was very small I had loads of dreams about being some kind of composer myself, lyricist, but also a director or something along those lines.  But the thing is I could never narrow down what I wanted to focus on, because I like the whole caboodle. 

I want to be an artist, I want to do the music, I want to design the costumes, I want to help the props, I want to write songs, I want to write the stories and for a good few years as a child I used to roleplay being a radio DJ too!

But because I can’t focus which one, I never threw myself into it, because I would literally run around trying to do the whole thing!

I have so many interests and I let a project consume me, I remember when I was in college I was part of an amateur dramatics group and I couldn’t choose my focus and my friends loved me, but found my lack of focus on one or two aspects very frustrating and distracting!

They loved my dedication but would often cry into their hands about “Tina, please just focus”!

Most of them pushed me into the acting, writing or prop making as they felt those things were my best strengths.  But I wasn’t keen on the acting, though they kept trying to steer me into it as they believed I was amazing.  But I didn’t want that, I knew that, I knew that I didn’t want that part of it, but I wanted everything else, lol.

In the last few weeks of being in that group, I was primarily writer and they enjoyed it – but then they started to try and shift my genre focus.   “You do better horror and psychological thrillers than anything else” they said.

By that time I knew my time was up, because my mum didn’t like me doing this in my spare time after college, she wanted me home in the evenings and didn’t like how many friends I was making and didn’t like me leaving the college to go into London with my friends to do things like street miming.

I love mime artists.

Recently I have new desires and I am not taking myself seriously over it, because I am starting way too late.

This new desire is one of the reasons why I am losing weight and trying to get good fitness levels back.  I want to join an adult beginner’s gymnastics class, as silly as that sounds.

Because my whole life I have wanted to do something and I had never confessed it to anyone because of how stupid it is!

I am one of these people who want to run away with the circus, kind of – but not quite!

Since I was a child I would often find myself listening to classical music and imagining myself as a circus acrobat, primarily trapeze, trampolines or tight rope walking.  I often saw myself in the circus glamour and doing my stuff – but more recently, as silly as it sounds, I have thought of myself doing this in a comedy sketch form.  A clown in fact, but I am not interested in any circus.  I am inspired by the Cirque Du Soleil.

I know it will take me around fifteen years to get to the standard they would hire, so this is why I am not taking myself seriously.

It’s just a stupid big dream of mine.

I have even thought about the clown design I would have for myself.

I don’t want it as a long term career, I just want to do my show on tour for a year and then give up, because it is something I would have worked hard to do and ticked off my bucket list – one of the BIG dream tick offs!

But as I said, I don’t think it will ever happen and it is just a silly dream after all, I can barely walk two miles without coming to my knees right now – still recovering from eight years of bedbound sickness, this is why I am not taking it seriously.

But I am totally in love with The Cirque Du Soleil.

I sent an email to a local disabled adult beginners gymnastics tutor today, she said twenty hours a week for ten to fifteen years and I could do my dream and no, forty years old is not too old to be accomplished in that!

There are many silly dreams I don’t share.

Thanks for reading!

Pierrot the paint thrower

Today’s abstract thoughts took me to these places;

I was imagining my favourite movie soundtrack “Good Omens” and in my imagination I was proficient in playing this tune on a recorder, I was sitting on the top step of a step ladder, watching a cute guy who walked a bit like Charlie Chaplin painting an abstract picture of a candy world.

He was enjoying the music I was playing and every so often he would call out a colour and I would throw it into the general direction of the canvas and he would be happy!

“Pink” he shouted and I threw the bucket of pink paint at the canvas and he wiped it down on the canvas making lovely pink foliage for the flanks of the picture and I continued playing the recorder, getting off the steps slowly and gracefully whilst doing a solo waltz around the artist.

He then shouts “white” and I dip a large paintbrush into the pot of white paint and playfully throw my left arm out to the sides splashing the artwork all in seemingly perfect choreography – again he looked happy and continued painting in the clouds.

A little white dog, a Jack Russell terrier to be precise, came and sat next to me dancing with my recorder, still playing The Good Omens tune. 

I noticed in this vision I was a sky blue and pink Pierrot style clown and the little white dog had a silver and pink ruff around him, instead of a collar.

I was soon interrupted in my imaginings by Paul, who said it was time to get Henry to bed!

But these are the things that I imagine but are never put to use in a novel or story or anything, such a shame as I love sharing my thoughts with anybody who is willing to listen! 

Thanks for reading!

The wonders of technology

I have been learning a lot about what to do with the technological gadgets I have; I have always had various social media accounts, but never really got to grips with how to make the most of them.

I have only just realised that the “notifications” I get in twitter are not all messages the public give to me, but are actually random posts from people or subjects I follow.  It was very confusing for me for a lot of the time and my wires got crossed a lot!

I have since learned how to tell if something is actually for me or a random public post and it has destressed me a lot!

One thing I am still not clear on in regards to twitter is how to reply to thank someone for retweeting something without having to go to their actual profile page to do so?

I didn’t fully understand the value of twitter as a writer until recently either.  I was always told that as a writer you need a social media presence, but I didn’t understand why.

I realised it’s not all about self-promotion at all, like I was told by other writing friends – It’s all about your personality and who you are.  It’s fascinating to think that I have gained over sixty followers this past week, purely on a heated topic I took part in earlier this week on twitter about gender identity.

I really didn’t think that people really cared about a writer until they’ve read copious amounts of their work and then decided to become a fan.  I didn’t realise in this day and age, your personality accounts for a lot.  People are really into this “influencer” ideology and I have been behind the times for years it seems.

It’s opened up a whole new world to me, I didn’t know this was a thing until I actually bothered to research all this stuff as I am preparing myself for a career in art and writing and I am taking it all very seriously!

I was distraught the other day when I learned that Goodreads was taking away their ability to recommend books to friends option – but then, when mooching around the site I found that there are three little buttons at the top of every book I’ve read where you can share your book on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest; why get upset then?  I can merely click one of those buttons and do it another way anyway!

Although I had a Pinterest account, I had never really wanted to use it as a proper social media until Goodreads took away the recommendations options.  I have made new boards on Pinterest about the kinds of books I read, so my followers can go there and have a look and perhaps get inspired to read something that inspired me.

I have since learned that Pinterest can be monetised without ruining your follower’s relationships and it will earn you a passive income – this is something I will delve into more deeply later on in the month, to see if it’s something I may or may not do.

I have had an Instagram account for a few years now and have never posted a picture on it – but again I learned it can be monetised without affecting follower relationships too, again earning you a passive income each month.  I got an Instagram account because I was friends with a lot of artists who wanted to share their artwork with me and a couple of relatives who like to show their holiday pics up there too.

I have wanted to start doing short poems, art and wildlife photography to put up onto Instagram, maybe with a few inspirational quotes as well?  But not sure when I will take the plunge on that yet! https://www.instagram.com/tardycreative/

I will share my profile from Instagram but you will see its empty more or less.

I am @CreativeTardy on twitter these days.

My Pinterest is https://www.pinterest.co.uk/naturescreativecomrade/ it is called NaturesCreativeComrade because that is my account on google and will be the name of my up and coming YouTube channel.

I bought the webcam and microphone a year ago and still haven’t learned how to set it up; I really ought to get around to it! 

Why did I choose that as my YouTube name?  Because my YouTube channel is going to be about my journey as a writer and an artist, but also a gardener and wildlife photographer; I will also include pet care in the videos.  Writing is not my primary focus on this channel – it will be about my relationship with nature and how it inspires me to become creative.

I focus a lot of my gardening on permaculture, polyculture, food forest, no dig ideologies and completely 100% organic, I heard the bad neighbour is moving by the end of summer, so hopefully I can get back out there – saving the world starts at a garden a time, after all!

Thanks for reading!

Apologies for poor endorsements

I do not like being used as a tool to promote hate and anger in other people; I do whatever I can to decrease discrimination of all kinds and to promote a safe environment worldwide for future generations;  with that said, I am angry at the behaviour of certain people I have endorsed in the past – I endorse people I feel have talent and who seem to have the same values as I do, but it seems that once someone has a taste of social media success and has gained confidence in their skills, they also seem to have more confidence in showing their true colours and sometimes, unfortunately, those colours are muddy!

If someone endorses your skills on social media, please do them a service and try not to embarrass them in turn!  I am deeply embarrassed that some people recently I have endorsed are actually starting to spread political hate and discomfort in other people I support and the world in general.  This is not just a post about political hate, but also the fact that some of the people I have endorsed have downright copied other followers art and poetry so closely, that it is almost indistinguishable from the originator. 

Please don’t do this, not only are you stealing from other creatives, but you are also shooting yourself in the foot as far as advancing yourself in your career goes.

I want to apologise to my followers right now, for the behaviour of the people I have previously endorsed but then again, it isn’t my fault they decided to say or do the things that they have done.  I understand to a handful of people they have seen a connection with certain people and it has linked back to me and although some of you know that I haven’t copied work nor said any hateful thing, you have noted the association and regarded me with slight caution and rightly so.  Because, they were people I endorsed and therefore must trust in some way.  But I can tell you now, it is making me less inclined to endorse people in the future as I do not like to become embarrassed.

Things like this can affect the mental well-being of people who are highly empathic and I am one of these people, I have had a bad three days regarding my mental health, ever since I found that someone I have recently endorsed is promoting unsafe ideologies and hateful political propaganda.  It has literally churned my stomach, because there has been a significant increase in traffic to their sites since I endorsed them – some of my friends couldn’t believe their ears when they heard the things this woman was saying and thought it reflective of my own views, which I can assure you all now, are not! 

The fact of some followers on social media copying other followers has been a problem for the past two years in particular, but that is something that affects everyone!  It is still hard to tolerate and understand that some of these unoriginal artists are stealing original art and causing so much stress to the ones they steal from – it is embarrassing when someone connects to you only to use you as a tool to steal from your friends. 

It not only damages the reputation of the art thief, but the people that they have connected with as well and that is not fair!

I am not a snob by any means, but I do have high standards of ethics and propriety and I expect the people I help to be the same.

Happy reading everybody!

Simplifying my art makes me happier

Yesterday I discussed how I am struggling with what comes to me naturally and what I really wanted to do in my writing; How I wanted to be a serious writer of adult fantasy and horror, but instead I am naturally drawn to corny humour, vampires and comedy fantasy as a natural lean to in my actual first draft writings.

Today I am focusing on the fact that I wanted to be a realist artist, who paints mostly portraits of my characters and some impressionistic landscapes and watercolours, but instead, I am naturally drawn to creating cartoonish characters suitable for children illustration or satire comics.

Increasingly a few of my writing and art ideas are becoming more and more comic ideas, not just funny, but comic as a whole, including the art I do.

My colour palletes are specific and consistent, my doodles are too and I am finding that comedy is punching its way through my art too!

I am creating funny creatures and doodling faces into random splatters and blobs and creating unique characters; with Henry’s help, we have been deciding names and personalities for the beings and progressively Henry is encouraging me to make stories of them.

This is something I have fought against in a professional way and kept to only doing this as a hobby with Henry – but more and more, I am starting to become more inclined in doing art consistently, when I do this, than when I do what I feel I am supposed to be doing!

I have noticed also that I am simplifying my art increasingly instead of refining it to become more detailed and realistic, to such an extent that it is very suitable for many children’s novels.  My style is looking similar to artists such as Quentin Blake, Katie Risor, Dr Suess and the likes.

Yet my aim was to be more detailed and to eventually brave steampunk and to perhaps be of a similar style to, Brian Froud, H.R Giger and Colleen Doran eventually, though my colour palette is very different.  I tend to like pastel primaries or as I call them, candy colours, or my darker palette which concentrates mostly on black, purples, orange and gold.

As I am fighting against my natural inclinations to develop a wanted style, I am finding that I am burning myself out in both art and writing and therefore becoming grossly unproductive.

When I ignore what I really want to become and focus on who I really am, I tend to do more and feel happier in myself doing those things.

But I do worry a lot about how simplistic my art is – I mean, other than children who would really be interested in this kind of art?

Something I did for inktober a couple of years back! See the injected humour… couldn’t help myself!

Pictures originally made to cheer Henry up after a bad day, being bullied at school. But instead, Henry is trying to collaborate a series of stories with me, regarding them.

created via blobbing random water colour paint on paper and drawing details of what my mind saw in those blobs.

Maybe I am a snob – no definitely I know I am a snob, it must be true.  Why else do I fight against the grain?  I must be… up until now a snob in denial?

Happy reading!

Imagination from the shadows

The shadow world surrounds me and inspires my heart

Stories to tell and wondrous art

Fantasy, horror, I love them all

They dance in my head in their raucous ball

I sit and I write about courageous fights and dragons protecting their nest

I write about angels betraying God and I think I like those the best

But the thing I love more than all of these things

Is the fantasy that someday I may inspiration bring

To other writers and artists like me

To help and set their imagination free