Another month theme done?!

And so ends Artistic April. I wasn’t able to rouse any creativity while I was ill, so I lost a week, sadly.

But even so, I got a short story finished, another one almost done, and some writing done on two existing long stories as well.

I also worked on my one canvas and made some good progress that I’m happy with. That was what I did on this final evening. I did four sketches, and attempted a fifth while I was feeling ill that didn’t really get very far.

And lastly, something that I did count towards creativity was building some Sylvaneth miniatures – my Spirit of Durthu and some dryads. Although I didn’t entirely make them myself, I did choose which bits went where so there was some creativity associated with it.

So, all in all, this month seemed more challenging, surprisingly. I think because I was fighting against my normal deprioritizing of doing my art, and because it is work to create things. It takes energy, and sometimes I didn’t have much. It helped that I mostly had a plan for what I wanted to do, so I didn’t have to think things up on the fly too often. The couple of times I didn’t have a plan were tougher to get through, and I wasn’t as happy with the results.

And May? I’m going to do a Mindfulness May. No, not every month has to alliterate. But I’d like to challenge myself to incorporate meditation into my daily life. It’s another one of those things that I have been deprioritizing.

One of my sketches, inked and cleaned up – a replica of one of the pages in a quest item from Skyrim. I really enjoy the designs they developed for the game.

Ice storm + sick

Time for my mid-month check in on my theme progress.

Unfortunately, I’m feeling rough today, and did all weekend. It started on Saturday – nausea, headache. My husband went to get me crackers and ginger ale on Saturday night when I was making plain pasta with oil (and parmesan) for dinner (he also had a steak). I thought I was feeling better yesterday, though I was still kind of unsure. Today, I called in sick because I’m just back to how I was feeling on Saturday – horrid headache that I am fearful of taking anything for because my stomach is unhappy and I’m having one of my telltale symptoms of potential vomiting – profuse, salty tasting saliva. Sorry, this is probably TMI.

So all that said, Saturday’s creativity attempt was kind of a bust. I started sketching, and erased, and restarted with better page mapping, and erased, and I’m tempted to just scrap that page and start over with something else. Yesterday, I spent the day building miniatures from Warhammer Age of Sigmar (Sylvaneth dryads and a branch nymph, and now I’ve started to carefully put together my Spirit of Durthu).

As for my creativity moments from the beginning of the month, I think it’s been going rather well, actually. I finished a short story and I’m thinking of writing another in that same universe. I’ve done a couple of sketches that were fun and good. And I got some paint on my one active canvas. I was hoping to get some work done on it on Saturday but alas, that was not to be.

And the other fun happening today is the ice storm that came through this weekend. Happy mid-April! We have some impressive ice buildup on the trees and power lines (and anything outside really). People are without power, school buses are cancelled, trees and power lines are down. My husband is working from home, so that he didn’t have to risk the roads (also he’s getting reports from those few who made it to their office that they’re thinking of heading home for the afternoon because it’s freezing there – maybe they lost power last night and the rebooted system hasn’t warmed the building up yet?) I’m trying not to bother him, wrapped in three blankets and my hoodie, closed in the living room with my ginger ale, crackers, chamomile tea, water, painkillers that I dare not take and some relaxation music on Youtube (allegedly to remove all the “toxins and negativity” – not working…)

Hopefully I’ll feel a bit better this afternoon and I’ll be able to do something creative, but feeling gross might be a good enough reason not to push it.

Some photos of the ice buildup I can see.

Stay safe, folks in the path of the storm.