To imagination I commit

I create words and dreams

I inspire and trigger

I paint and scribble

I have no quibble

To do what I do

For me

For you

I colour

I talk

I dream

I walk

I am that I am

And nothing more

What do you need an explanation for?

I am me

And this is it

A simple creator

To imagination I commit

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!

Hippy child & hedgehog invasion

A lazy day today, real lazy, I slept something like five hours longer than normal and didn’t realise the time at all when I woke up – it’s frustrating because I went to sleep four or five hours earlier than I normally do because I want to get into a new routine!  Ironic really!

Though I think I’ve caught the cold Paul and Henry has, as I am achy and bleh!

If I could dress however I wanted to today how would I?

A light cotton dress made useless by a hugely thick knee length fleece cardigan, white dress potentially and rainbow cardigan – I want to wear large beaded jewellery, so I would probably have three different length necklaces on, wooden beads with copper or brass and bracelets to match.

It’s not summer and it’s not a warm day, but I am crazy enough to wear sandals with this because I know I will be warm with that cardy. 

As lazy as I feel I’d actually make more effort with my hair today and have them done with curling tongs, so I have a cute but scruffy rainbow dolly look to me.

I may even do something I really love and wear one of my knitted plaits in my hair and maybe attach a couple of feathers to it.

Basically I want to look like a child from Peter Pan’s lost boys or like something that fell out of my all-time favourite TV series, The Tribe, today.

It’s an OK day to be gardening, dry at any rate – so I’d have probably have been out there today if it wasn’t for the bad neighbour.  Especially as I seem to have window trained a great tit to befriend me in the last few days, I have a feeling he’d actually sit on my lap or something if I were outside he doesn’t seem afraid of me when I am at the window and he has come up to look at me within 3 inches and I move and he doesn’t flinch.

As I said before, when it comes to wildlife, I am a bit of a Disney Princess.

Talking of which I had a dream last night that six hedgehogs came into the garden one after the other and walked into the house and wouldn’t leave and as I was trying to encourage them to get out, they hid.  When Paul felt that they can’t live in the house, he went to chase them out and as he did so they all slowly morphed into porcupines instead and aggressively tried to defend themselves from being man handled. 

Paul was so upset in the dream he phoned up a specialist to get rid of this very problem, the man came and said that the hedgehog/porcupine problem is down to him not remembering things for me and not taking care of me properly, so the porcupines are trying to fill in his duties.

Paul sarcastically said what like doing the washing up etc?  This made the entire four little baby porcupines become bigger than their largest parent and they all chased Paul – I don’t know what happened to Paul in the dream after that, but I was confused and went into the garden.

I nearly trod on a frog and the frog was sitting in a crack in the patio looking at me.  When the hedgehog/porcupine specialist came out into the garden and was on the phone to somebody – he then turned to me and said that someone special has arranged a party for me and that they are going to be coming soon.

I was confused because nobody visits us.

So, when people started letting themselves into my house to set up the party in the garden I was amazed to find loads of people there, mostly celebrities, like Queen, Whitesnake and a bunch of others.

I never did find Paul again in the dream.

I woke up when someone behind me kiss me on the cheek and cuddled me from behind, whilst Brian May was about to start on his guitar for me.

Weird dream, but fun!

I think that the hedgehogs is something to do with my inability to do art because of my art table being used for other things – hedgehogs are one of the main animals I tend to paint and draw with confidence.

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!

Inktober challenge 2018

 

Tomorrow is the start of Inktober and Wednesday is my 36^th birthday, yesterday Paul (my husband) and I went out to select my birthday presents and I chose to concentrate on stocking up my art supplies.  I chose to take on two new Medias this month, inks and oil paints.

As you can see in the photographs I have eight different colours from the Winsor and Newton range, traditional black Indian ink, apple green, silver-metallic aluminium, purple, blue, scarlet, sunshine yellow and peat brown; I wanted gold but they were sold out, so I have to buy them another time.  I didn’t realise until I had got home that these inks are mixable, which meant that I would have needed the white I saw there, to mix with the scarlet to make a sort of pink colour.  I learned this by watching some YouTube videos which showed me how to use the ink for various effects in art.

I am very new to inks in this format, usually I draw with inks from felt tip pens and biros, but I wanted to do something a little more traditional – so I bought a dip pen for drawing and mapping to help me, I was tempted to pick up the big black feather quill I saw there too, but I forgot to put it in the bag at the end of my shopping trip, I was limited to a budget of £75, so I wanted to see if I had more money for it at the end of the trip, I did, but I forgot it.

I also bought a pack of 28 limited edition sharpies that are fine permanent markers, another thing I have never used before.  Now all of this didn’t cost me £75, there were other things I bought too – but I took a photograph of the things I specifically bought for the start of Inktober, which is something I am trying to do very seriously this year.  I have also bought a pink mixed media sketch book with forty pages, specifically for this event. 

For those who are not in the know, Inktober is an annual event which lasts for thirty one days throughout the whole of October, where artists are urged to use inks in their art in at least one picture per day and to record these pictures on social media – the idea was bought about by a guy called Jake Parker, it’s a sort of NaNoWriMo for artists.

I am hoping that my best friend in the art world, Erin Cooper is going to do Inktober as seriously as she normally does this year as before now, I have never took on the challenge as seriously as I aim to for this year – it would be fun seeing what each other can do this month.

So, the challenge starts on October the 1^st, all you need to do is draw with inks daily, until Halloween and you’ve officially passed Inktober, miss a day and you can go to the imaginary Wall Of Shame!  Well that’s what I will do to myself, if I miss a day, lol.

 

 

art, feminism and technology

Yesterday I decided to paint something that was emotionally lead and unplanned; the result was a horrible mess of gloomy colors around a shadow person bleeding from the upper thighs. When done, I reflected on my emotions and they took me to a place I wasn’t sure was a factor mentally. A place where I am screaming about feminism going too far, a place where I see lackluster mothers at the school gates waiting for their children to come out, only for them to act like they’re not home when they go, ignoring their children’s existence and having one child after another.

I was feeling strongly about this because I am a mother, I have a five year old little boy and I wanted so much to give him siblings, but due to ill health I was and still am unable to fulfil that. I come from a family where having lots of children is expected by and large (particularly on my father’s side), but also a family where fertility doesn’t last past 35 (on my mother’s side) and I am 32 right now and so far, I seem to have all the health problems of my maternal side of the family.

I crave to play with my child, go out with my child, have fun with my child, but due to sickness a lot of events I have to miss due to being bed bound. Unfortunately or blessedly in many cases, I have a child that is far too independent for his age, he is strong emotionally, he doesn’t need me as much as most five year olds need their mothers. He is unusually mature and above average intelligence academically. He would rather read quietly alone, listen to Lady Gaga music, play dress up, do painting, all alone. I offer to play with him regularly and his response literally is “No thank you, I want to play alone” or “Not now, I am listening to music”. I can’t even tempt him with treats, because he is unusually moderate for a child. You give him a whole bag of candies and he will never eat more than 12 small ones. Now you’re probably thinking he is a dream child and to many modern mothers he is, but to me, he is a nightmare come true in some respects. I wanted children, because I am a big kid, I am imaginative and naturally playful and I have to admit I am rather crestfallen at how serious my little one is turning out to be.

I see children running around screaming, playing tricks, wanting attention all the time; “mummy play with me”, “mummy hug me”, “mummy, mummy, mummy”. My little boy isn’t like that.

I am surprised he likes being alone at home and playing quietly because he is also naturally gregarious; he will super socialise with everyone outside of the house and will do things in large groups of friends, teachers at his school has said he is unusual for this. He is very caring and sharing, creative and fun with other children and even other adults outside of the house – but inside the house and with other relatives, he acts too adult for me.

I am not sure which personality is his natural one, the one when he is at home or the one when he is at school or going out with me.

I scream at feminism going too far because a lot of women these days are forced to be equal whether they like it or not, to the extent that women’s rights have taken rights away from the traditional women. Women have to work to support the bills even if they are married because of their financial difficulties. Therefore a lot of women have careers and in my opinion, hardly know their children because of it. Feminism and women’s right’s aren’t the only factor here though; the increasing dependence on technology is another problem. Women are known to be very social at the best of times with other women, therefore women are never away from their mobile phones or tablets or social media websites. Women are more dedicated to their relationships with other adults and their gadgets than they are with their children and what is worse, they are encouraging their children to have the same unhealthy relationship of being plugged-in to any type of computing device, just to get them out of mummy’s hair.

Feminism and technology together are slowly killing the mothering instinct. It has been proven through generational breeding various animals that after several generations of having their off-spring cared for by others, the mothering instinct dies and even if forced to rear their young the mothers usually have forgotten how; breastfeeding for example, is a skill lost to a majority of women these days because of the access to formula milk, so much so that breastfeeding has become a taboo in public and a taboo subject to discuss. How ridiculous the world is becoming! I truly believe this is a serious problem and I plan on writing a story about this soon.

Keep in tune.

A writer’s thoughts

I have read somewhere in the past, that you are what you read and I believe that. The more I read the more defined my tastes have become, my skills, my genre leanings and this influences my writing and art.
With each good book I learn how I want to write and what I want to write about.
With each bad book I read, I learn how I do not want to write and what I dislike.
I do not believe that as a writer you must write things outside of your comfort zone, I believe you should be comfortable with what you are writing – although on an emotional matter, that’s quite different. You must write outside of your emotional comfort zone if you wish to write fear, pain and heartbreak effectively, unfortunately that means opening up your old wounds.
A lot of the time, I like to write about horror, trauma etc. and each time I do, I open up real and old wounds, this is why I often become quiet as a writer and have prolonged periods of not writing, whilst I emotionally recuperate.
I was once told that writers and artists generally go mad after a time and I believe it, we send ourselves mad for our art and stories because we are constantly reliving the horrors of our past for your entertainment and as a collective, we seldom are known or recognized for it.
I am not moaning about my lack of recognition as a writer and artist, because personally I think that’s my own fault. I think I am generally a lazy person and have not bothered to find myself a publisher or to advertise my work very much over the years at all. On the one occasion I did contact a publisher to see whether or not they liked an idea of mine, I was lucky enough to get a letter back within three weeks, but this terrified me, because they loved what I sent them and praised me highly for it; I never contacted them again, I was worried about becoming famous and at the time I was young and didn’t know about pseudonyms.
These days I am more prepared for whatever life throws at me because I will be totally blatant about what I can and cannot do and what I will and will not allow.
Other than twitter, my blog and magazines are there any other steps I should take to get myself known?
Please comment below.

Daily Pages 1 2015

Daily pages are just that, to be written daily.
If I for whatever reason have forgotten to do so, some day, please email me at misstcousins@hotmail.com and tell me to pull my finger out and write them, if you are a fellow author or artist, because I need some motivation and support in my creativity at times; being lonely and without creative friends makes me lethargic and lazy.
Usually it is required to write three pages per day in your daily pages alone until you have built a habit of writing again; I start these and do it well for about seven weeks but then I lose interest and then I do not write for three or four months at a time; this is not because I have no interest in writing or because I am forcing myself to write because I am interested in the money prospect once published – but because I get lazy, I get ill, I get side-tracked by new games online or 1000 piece puzzles and painting.
I am 32yrs old, I have only one friend offline and I see her less than once a month because I live an isolated life, because of my sickness. I am trying to see her more often, especially as she is only four doors away from my house and her name is Alona, she is Latvian and we became friends because my son and her daughter goes to school together and are in the same class and are best friends.
Alona seems to me to be the perfect friend, one that is there for you during your ups and downs and though I personally don’t see her often, she helps a lot. My husband and my son see her daily and occasionally she looks after Henry for me if I have appointments that are at the times where we should pick him up from school – he enjoys going there and playing with his best friend Alice.
I just wish I could do more for Alona, as I am sorry to say it all seems too one-sided this friendship and I feel like I am taking advantage of her good nature.
Alona’s husband is a builder and has often offered to do our house up for us for free, I couldn’t possibly allow it, he works too much as it is.
I am reading a lot more lately too, I am getting through two to three books a week now, particularly books based on art and how to paint and cosmic ordering.
I must say however, that the more I read, the less I want to write fiction because I feel that I am stealing from someone all the time or many people, I don’t think there are original ideas anymore and I don’t want to come across as a cheating fraud; I have been on numerous writers groups online and they’ve all said that I shouldn’t worry about it and just simply write and get things published as a lot of people have confidence in me that I have natural talent not only in writing but also art. I still feel fraudulent though.
Today is a Saturday when I am writing these daily pages and they won’t be published until tomorrow, daily pages will be published on my blog the day after I have written them because I am trying to get ahead in my writing of this blog.
I am a little confused by myself, I created this blog to be based mostly around fantasy short stories and it has become a personal life and poetry blog instead, fully unintentionally, I am actually disappointed in myself for allowing it to be side-tracked, but it will be side-tracked a lot from now onwards because I do plan to talk about a great number of things, from food, to culture, as well as fiction and poetry.
Horror will be present on this blog too, so if you’re going to be too squeamish it might not be for you.
I am also very spiritual and will talk about various things in regards to spirituality and the occult.
Something random, today I went the hospital for an appointment with my consultant, yes a Saturday morning, no lie ins today; and on the bus I saw a lovely site, sitting on the fence in the beautiful English countryside just outside the East side of Coventry city, between Pailton and there, was a buzzard watching some sheep and it turned its head and looked directly at me, it was amazing.
I was also confused by some hedgehogs which seemed to be up and about at midday, two in fact, in half a mile distance to one and other, I thought they were strictly nocturnal.
I am unhappy with the fur I found outside my house today too, lots of it, looks like some animal had had it ripped right out of them in the night, I was a little unsettled, because I got myself involved a few years ago online with some witch friends and I got myself an American boyfriend who turned nasty and jealous with my offline friendships in the UK and he turned my friends against me and when they hate someone they do curse them and stalk them and tend not to forget them. It makes me wonder, you know?
Though Paul my husband reckons he heard a very aggressive cat fight last night around 3am, I take his word for it because I am nearly totally deaf these days without both my hearing aids in and when I am asleep the only way I can wake up from day to day is to be patted on the rump, I can’t even hear an alarm clock!
It is weird you know to think that it is cheaper to travel 120 miles away to visit a friend to a free entry fete in Sheffield than it is to go to a local adventure playground park, I bought this up because soon it is half-term and I am thinking about doing something with my son Henry; I was hoping to take him to The Conkers Discovery Center near Ashby-De-La-Zouch and it would cost us for the whole day around £90 – 110, whereas a trip to Sheffield to visit my friend at a free classic car show will be £18 return ticket via coach, it’s a mad world.
I then looked into taking him to the nearest zoo, all costs included; train fayre, food, tickets etc. will set us back £250.
We have a leaking roof which will cost us £3000 to replace as we’ve bought this house outright now, we have a new boiler system being put in next week and we are in dire need for a skip that will cost £150 for what we need.
My health is getting really crap now, excuse my French and so, I thought enough is enough and it’s time for a change – so I decided to re-enter my interest in cosmic ordering and ho’oponoopono to get my life back to where I want it to go and not where other people are forcing it to go.
I was told for cosmic ordering to be truly beneficial to you and your life, you must not set yourself limits or be humble in what you want, you’ve got to be completely honest with yourself about what you want from life or else it will feel you are trying to cheat the system and you won’t get exactly what you want – or if you do, there will be things you will still be unhappy about – so I have made a list of the things I really truly want, to the maximum and greediest of my dreams for a perfect life.
My wants and needs are thus;
I want a garden bigger than 1.5 acres not sure how big I am willing to go, but the garden must be able to contain a large area for guinea pigs and guinea breeding and rearing (breeding to keep and show, not sell or give away). The area should contain several pens to separate males and females for selective breeding and each pen should contain 20 individuals with lots of space for toys, and a little tunnel that leads outside in the garden for fresh air. My husband Paul used to breed guinea pigs in the past, so he has the necessary experience to do this.
The garden must also be big enough for me to have an agility training area for my dogs, Paul and I have agreed we must have at least 4; one pair will breed a litter where we will keep at least 1 pup and keep that line in our family for generations if possible. Again I will show my breeding pair of dogs, the other two dogs I won’t because we plan on having a giant breed and a lapdog, the breeding pair will be some kind of spaniel or collie. I have the necessary experience to train dogs, in fact I very nearly got a job as a police dog trainer, but because the job involved me bringing home two pups to live with me during their training my mum wouldn’t let me take the job (I lived with her at the time).
The garden must also be big enough for 50 fruit trees, particularly apples and hazelnuts, as we want to hire dormice to help them breed and work with the national wildlife trust.
We also want a vegetable and fruit patch at least 50ft square.
We want a large patio area with potted herbs that’s approximately 30 by 30ft and a large BBQ area; this patio area might be extended to an outdoor swimming pool that will have a pull enclosure that’s attached to the house so we aren’t limited to using it only in the summer.
We also want a little meadow flower patch to attract bees, we want to hire a beehive, and we also want a pond big enough to take 6 Aylesbury ducks.
We also need an area to put chickens, up to 30 of them.
And a little flower garden, a football field for the kids, another field with several adventure playground apparatus for the kids and finally a little moss garden retreat for me.
Ideally this house will contain a brook or a stream flowing through the garden somewhere.
As for the house we need a lounge for visitors, a family lounge, and a large shared office for me and Paul, a huge kitchen with a dining area and room for a sofa and an island and a walk in larder, as I am Ina Garten in this family.
We also want a separate formal dining room as we will host dinners.
We also need a large art and music studio as I do compose music as well as paint and write.
A play room for the kids downstairs would be an added bonus, a downstairs toilet, an outside toilet, a three car garage, an annexe for a housekeeper, and a minimum of 5 bedrooms because I want more kids and I have relatives that travel down from Manchester a lot who needs a place to stay at Christmas time.
My life will involve painting, writing, composing, and voluntary work, prop making for theatres and going to auction houses.
Ideally I would want for nothing, never to be in the situation again of deciding between going to the hospital via bus or having £8 less in the food budget that week, which is a lot, considering the current food budget, is £50 a week.
I do not want to drive, but Paul wants a large garage for two cars, one that’s large for day trips with the kids and friends, and another little run around for us to do shopping in when the kids are at school, he also wants a RV as we’ll take regular trips to Great Yarmouth and Dorset and the peak district for photography and rock pool reasons.
We’d also like to drive across Europe from time to time.
I would love to go to the fantasycon every year; I would love to go shopping in New York at Christmas time. I would love my health to get better so I can start living now I am away from forced isolation.
I want to be able to be a Goth again (though not a strict one as I get rainbow moments, hippy moments, sexy jazzy moments, steampunk moments and middle eastern harem belly dancer moments) and to afford their plus sizes as I am not a lightweight, I can barely afford normal types of clothes, let alone alternative fashions.
I want to say to my son, yes I can buy you those Disney Cars pyjamas that are £25, there you go – I want to be able to buy things off the rack in shops and not have a buy now and pay later account in some catalogue.
I want to surrender to my urges that one day I wake up and I say to myself, I want to go by bus to town, just to go to the library and sit about for a couple of hours and then come back home without second thoughts that this will cost me £7 out of our weekly food budget.
I don’t want to sit around for 3 months waiting for me to save enough to get more brushes or paints to finish a painting I’ve started, which is a regular occurrence.
I want to make friends that are so at home with me they think they’re family – I don’t want friends that are there just for fun or just to rant about life, I want positive, creative, spiritual and family oriented people who want friends because they want emotional support, they love people, they crave being with others and sharing food and homes with them.
That’s the dream life for me.
This is what I am working towards with my cosmic ordering ideas.
Wish me luck xx

Watercolor mermaid 1st attempt

1st attempt at watercolor mermaid scene

 

For the last 6 months I have attempted to teach myself art, sketching and painting particularly with watercolors.
The image that you see is my first ever attempt at creating a watercolor mermaid under the sea scene and my first ever attempt at under-painting a picture.
This image is unfinished and I am afraid to say it will stay that way because I mixed the shades of colors that are used on the paper and my fiance Paul knocked over the palette when getting it for me and it was all lost and I am very reluctant to attempt to try making more of the same shades of color as I don’t want to completely ruin this picture.
There are some blemishes to the image, for example the mark of yellow on her left inside elbow amongst other things, but I cannot repair these without severely impacting on the color scheme, as I cannot guarantee I can mix the same shades again.
I am a self-taught artist that have only really been practicing twice a month any kind of art-work for about a year now, as I mentioned before my attempt at watercolors started about six months ago.
In my personal opinion, starting to teach yourself artwork, particularly sketching/drawing shouldn’t really start at how-to-draw books, because that never worked for me, instead, trusting my own eye works better and reading books based on painting; that is of course if you eventually want to move onto painting your images.
I have been getting a lot of comments from my immediate family and friends that they believe I have a natural talent for art considering that I spend less than five hours a month practicing; personally I don’t see it, I see too many imperfections in my work and I cheat. For example, I have hidden one of the mermaid’s hands in this picture because I couldn’t make it look as good as her right hand and the paper was thinning with all the erasing I had to do.
I have a gallery at deviantart.com if you wish to see more pictures that I’ve done as well as my budding artist four year old son, Henry, some of his best work are up there, which reminds me that I must add his version of a toucan up later on.
http://ffgallery.deviantart.com/

A sunflower picture, made approximately in the year 2000

A picture I made on my PC when I was 18. It’s pretty naff, but there seems to be a lot of people who like it, so thought I put it here.

A few years ago I tried to get to grips with using Microsoft paint on my PC.  I’ve never really been a good artist, in my personal opinion, but there seems to be a lot of people who disagree with me, especially in regards to my hand drawn sketches of dragons, which I will post at a later.