The week overall

This is more or less what I posted as my weekly "check-in" for my creativity focus group.  Being lazy, I decided it would be just fine to use it as today's blog post.  


GOOD AND BAD:  I was actually able to devote a couple of nice blocks of time to painting, did my multiple-store marketing, and a lot of healthy cooking (good).   Tuesday I worked on a new circle painting; on Thursday I started another painting I've had in my head for weeks (girl in birch forest) and so far I'm fairly pleased with it (very good!).  Yesterday I spent most of the day doing battle with my demons while searching for a design for the screen printing class that starts tomorrow (bad!).  I was an angry ball of angst by last night (very bad!).  This morning I finally settled on an image that I feel ok about (good); I keep beating myself up about the skills that I lack (bad).   I actually had a pretty great day today, bought stretcher boards at Jerry's for Kathleen's class, some paints that were on sale at Hobby Lobby (the devil's own craft store), had a late lunch at Madam Mam's, and found a children's book with wonderful jack rabbit drawings at Half Price (nice and good).


BAD:  Once again, I'm realizing that I have a very low tolerance for frustration.  As you may well imagine, this is a character defect that hasn't served me well.  That lack of tolerance combined with my perfectionistic tendencies often drive me out of the studio and back into bed with my macbook and Netflix.    It's so disconcerting that the baggage around pursuing something I love can make me so irritable and depressed.  Wish I could just dump the stuff that I know doesn't work.

GOALS:  I want to practice drawing and I'm really loving a particular style of illustration right now.  I'm going to do some research on illustrators I like, track them down at the library, and make some scans of drawings I want to study.  This week I'm going to spend a few more hours drawing, finish my circle painting, and work on the birch forest painting.  I have a few ideas for a box series I'd like to do so I'm going to sketch those out for future work.