My Pencils are Sharpened

Some initial sketches of a pig man firing a blunderbuss that I posted on my instagram @drawingmylifeaway124

It’s 12/12 make a wish, and if you’re in Europe it’s also 12/12, so isn’t that special. I’m still feeling weird today. Last night my wife said she took pseudoephed, a nasal decongestant, and I thought I was saved. This does fit a lot of the pains I get from sinus trouble, in fact when I’m done with this I’m going to give myself a little sinus massage, pressing and releasing. I took some pseudoephed also today, but I’m not feeling too much better because of it so that’s a little disappointing. What I’m really scared of is that now there’s nothing standing between me and my dreams except doing the work. I’m afraid that my body wants there to be things in the way so I can I have something to blame. I don’t think that’s it though because I feel really beat up, something is definitely up. I also had the thought that I could be plain old fashioned sick. Whatever though, for the most part I’m pampering myself to help recover and I’m meeting my daily drawing goal.

Tonight I’m going to a place called Townsend Atelier in town for their weekly live model drawing. It’s not a traditional atelier which I think of as a school where you attend for years and are basically an apprentice, but they have a lot of high quality art classes and we’re lucky they bring in a lot of great artists to teach. There’s also this live drawing which I need to start attending every week because drawing from life is the best thing I can do and I can at least schedule for it once a week. It’s three hours of drawing, usually one pose of a nude model. We’ll draw for 20 minutes, give the model a 5 minute break and repeat. I’ve gone in the past and tried to work on one drawing, but I don’t think I’m good enough for that yet so my plan is for each 20 minute block to be one sketch. Right now for me it is more about producing quantity over quality. Not to say I don’t want quality, but I will make mistakes in those beginning marks that if followed to the end will leave me with a wonky picture. I think it will be a better use of my time to do 10 or so beginning phases to work on my foundation.

Frozen Grass, Fragile Needles

I’m still feeling pretty pooped today. Who knows what’s going on with my body, but I figured I would try to get my morning pages down as soon as I can and spend most of the day recovering. Nietzsche had some sort of sickness most of his life that left him only to be able to write a couple of paragraphs at a time. I wonder for how long it was going on before he thought anything might be wrong. Maybe I have a sickness, I’m pretty sure I have something like pneumonia, but that’s another story and probably not what I’m feeling today. I want to say that I feel slugish because the weather, but it feels like something more. Anyway, as I said I’ll put an emphasis on recovery today because I can see myself crashing around the corner. Last time I saw it coming I wasn’t really able to prevent a crash though it was manageable. Like always I probably didn’t give myself the rest I needed and we’ll see if I’m able to take care of myself today. My mind wants to do anything and everything, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I have two different people living inside of you? One says lets push the limits and see what the world has to offer, while the other says to calm down and take things one step at a time. 

My wife gave me a plant for a Christmas plant yesterday. There’s actually two in there and in a couple days I’ll separate them, I just want to give it some time to acclimate to the new surrounding before stressing it out again with a repotting. I also brought in another one from the greenhouse for my sad plant series. I’m very lucky to have my wife. I don’t know why she wants to give me things, but they are nice to receive. I wish I was good at presents. I guess they’re more of a modern idea in the sense that life gets more comfortable so we have to create new jobs which comes in the form of making and distributing of consumer goods. Since I strive for a simple life where a person spends most of their time preparing food and staying warm, goods don’t make sense to me. Obviously I’m a hypocrite because I buy fast food and have a heater in my house, but that’s because I’m human and the easy path is there. Those same instincts get indigenous peoples into trouble when introduced to these luxuries. Again the spirit is willing, but their bodies have a lower tolerance for things like refined sugars than someone of European decent where people have been eating it for hundreds of years. This is also why we must be wearing of technology, no one knows the effect of social media on the body after 20 years of it.

I Love Rainy Days

Good news morning pages, I keep getting distracted by drawing and forgetting to write you. You could say things are going well. How are they going for you? Today was pretty interesting for me. I just felt beat up today, so after I took care of my wife’s breakfast I went back to sleep. Even after that extra sleep I wasn’t feeling better, so I thought it might be allergies. Maybe it was because I put in eye drops, took a nasal spray and felt better. It didn’t hurt that I also made myself a pancake for breakfast. After I got situated it was time to figure out my day. I knew I had to draw but decided not to go to the gym and it’s raining here, so I figured I could take care of somethings on the other side of town. I wanted to experiment with going to a coffee shop and drawing for days when I won’t be able to ride my bike to the library, rainy days like today. 

I drove to the coffee shop Stone Cup Cafe if you’re ever in Chattanooga, they have a pretty view of the river and I love looking outside in the rain. I got my coffee and was getting things situated, when I found out I have a wobbly table. That’s the last thing you want with a laptop, sketch pad and a big cup of coffee. I switched to another table and had a pleasant drawing experience.

A few doors down from the cafe is the local art association I joined recently, I wanted to stop by and start building a relationship as well as ask questions and look at art. That was an exciting experience and I hope to be going there to meet other artists and do art critiques with them. When I got home I was so pumped by the good day I was having, I used that to go to the gym and did the workout I should have done first thing this morning. On the way to the gym I saw a girl standing at the cross walk that I thought had a very artistic image, so when I got home later I did this drawing. I think it could be really good if I did it in ink and water color, maybe even adding an effect of rain.

Woke Up Cold

How are we already a third of the way through December, it seems like Thanksgiving was just a couple days ago. I went to the store yesterday and thought they might be low on supplies because of black Friday, but that we apparently forever ago. Quickly approaching the end of the year, celestial dates mean a lot to me for whatever reason. What has happened in 2019? A lot of things have changed, a lot of things have not. Hopefully every year brings new fortunes, ideally I would get healthier every year and it may still be the case, but someday that will be impossible. The new year is weird, it is pretty meaningless aside from the reminder that time will keep passing regardless of what you do. 

I was thinking in the shower that I used to wait for the time to be right to do things. I’m sure I still do that to some degree, but I try to say that there will never be a perfect time and if I start now then I will be better prepared to take advantage of the perfect time. For me, like most people, the new year is a perfect time to do something new. In the past couple weeks I shifted more to art and I hope that’s what 2020 has in store for me, but even if 2020 doesn’t want to cooperate, I will try my best to work towards my goal. I think about drawing a lot now, it was something that I knew would happen after the first few days. My mind is like a cave, when a noise is made inside it will echo through out, so now when I close my eyes there are echos of the drawings I work on. I like drawing in my mind, but I’m sure it isn’t as helpful as drawing with the hand so when possible I have to remember to switch over.

Lets Get Lunch

A master photo bomber

Sorry I wasn’t here for you yesterday morning pages, it was mainX24, so you should have expected this. I was so excited yesterday that I managed to leave the house, take an Uber down to main st., and get out of the car before I realized I was still wearing my house slippers. I don’t know how that happened. Drives me zanny, on one hand it should be good that it forced me to act not according to a schedule, but I think that was a test I didn’t do too well on. It’s hard for me to adjust what I’m doing if I had my head set on doing one thing. For hours later and even still I was think in loops about how I left home in slippers. I don’t know, probably best to ignore it and let the thoughts and feelings fade from memory a bit since the thoughts I have about it aren’t constructive.

Yesterday was a good day for me in as far as taking care of personal business before having fun. Without an alarm clock my body woke me up as 5:30 am. I didn’t mind too much since I was feelings refreshed. There’s some sort of scale on how awake I am when I wake up and sometimes I immediately know I won’t be able to go back to sleep, so I got up, had a little food and started drawing. After I got my daily goal out of the way, I went to the gym. This all happened so fluidly, it’s what I’ve wanted for my life for so long that honestly I thought it was impossible or just not for me. I feel like I have to recalibrate my life because this isn’t the way I live, but if I were to describe what I think a typical day for me is I would probably spend most of that time wallowing in despair that my life is pointless. It’s really wild how much I currently benefit from the practice of fake it till you make it. If I encounter something scary, I’ll just keep on working as though there’s nothing there at all and the scary things almost disappear on their own. To me that’s the power of a positive mindset.

Clean Sheets

Part of my sad plant series. I brought this one indoors from the greenhouse.

It’s still morning pages. The conclusion to yesterday was that I let the guys know I won’t be coming back to woodworking, they were all very nice about it and supportive, I appreciate that. Moving forward my plan is to replace woodworking time with going to the library. My drawing set up can be very small, so I only need a table to be in my own world. If I can be going to the library for learning time, I don’t need to be drawing that whole time though I wouldn’t complain if I were. I want to look at it more like college, I’d go to classes through most of the week, but at that time I wasn’t actively reading or writing. The similar situation would be watching the videos on New Masters Academy, they will be my lectures. I’ll try to take notes during the lectures and there are practice parts and assignments I’ll do. For now the big thing of note is the library doesn’t open until 9am when woodworking used to start at 8 am. I’ve got a whole nother hour to do stuff in that I’m not used to. I think what I’ll plan to do is go to the gym at my normal time and then I’ll go at 9 hopefully. Luckily, I’ve been writing down the times that I do everything this week because I just bought a weekly planner for 2020, it’s paying off already because I can see what time I usually finish breakfast. Anyway, maybe I’ll have to start after 9, but it doesn’t really matter as long as I do 3 hours, lunch, and 3 hours. That’s the block of study time and if I’m accomplishing the gym as well, those are some really great days. First step is to see if this library is useable for my study area.

Soaking Wet Boots

Good morning pages, I don’t even know where to begin. I didn’t go to my woodworking class today, I have to sort out a bunch of thoughts with that because I don’t know what to do. I know what I’m going to do and that’s stop going, but when am I going to stop. A couple of weeks ago is when I realized that I don’t feel the same way about anything as I do painting, so that’s where my focus should be at. After that realization happened I just felt like every second at the woodworking school was a waste of time. Even now it’s wasting my time because it’s weighing on my mind. I think the smartest thing to do for my future would be to let them know that I’m done with the school and not coming back. I haven’t done that and planned to go to class today because I feel like I’m quitting. Basically it’s quitting on someone else’s dream, so why should I care, but it’s quitting none the less and that feels bad. 

After not going to class and sleeping in, it felt good to have that time to relax, but emotionally I felt like a loser. That this is another thing I failed at. I don’t know why I put that burden on myself, that failing at this some how matters, or even that it makes me a failure for knowing I don’t want to be there and going somewhere else. That’s what I should be doing, but something in me holds me back from making that jump. Perhaps because I’ve made that sort of jump so many times in my life and I feel like jumping too quickly holds me back. It’s just a matter of knowing when something isn’t for me. I’ve left painting classes because I knew I couldn’t work with the teacher and that didn’t mean I quit painting. I guess you’ll find out the exciting conclusion tomorrow when I either go back to finish the semester or give my resignation.

Wow, This is a Great Article

Morning pages, I am so pumped to be writing to you today because last night I learned the secret to untapping an unlimited source of power that resides in every human being. The power is going to seem to be in different amounts for different individuals but that’s only because the individual puts a limit on themselves. The number one problem people suffer from is that they set their goals too low. I know what you’re going to say, “I know a person who does nothing but dream and they never go anywhere.” Well the number two problem is that they don’t plan a road map to achieve those goals. The third big one is not committing, but before that, I want to go back to number two. I know tons of people and I’d say most people fall in this category, that they live well structured lives and steadily move up accomplishing their goals. They don’t seem to be struggling in this procedure. Maybe they don’t want to take on any struggles in their life and that’s fine, but I believe the human being is shinning at it’s brightest during a struggle. Fighting or hunting is built into our DNA, this also contributes to “the sky is falling” attitude so many have taken on and is exacerbated by the digital age. We are looking for a challenge and when the lives we build around ourselves are too comfortable the brain will create a narrative that something awful is just around the corner. We can take control of our lives by choosing what mountains to climb. That’s how the unlimited source of energy is released, you realize that so much time was wasted and the body wasn’t really recharging like a device. Humans are special, there’s no telling what limits we can reach. Think about it, no where in history is someone pointed at and said, “This is the best a person could be?”, “This is the most passionate”, or  “They were the limit for courage”. Everyday is an opportunity to make your life better and subsequently make a better world.

Oh Happy Day

I figured yesterday that since my name is Drawing My Life Away, I should probably be sharing more photos of drawings. I’d mentioned before that I’d like to share more photos in general, but the plants aren’t doing much these days. Actually it’s more like I’m keeping an eye out for any plant that is obviously suffering and then I move it indoors, but I don’t know if I want to take pictures of sad plants. Maybe I will because one of the things I don’t like about media is only the best and beautiful are shared and I’m trying to be genuine. This is real life, I’ve got to learn what plants can handle what environments and unfortunately some plants are going to die in that process. Along the lines of the gritty truth, the drawings I decided to share are of my random sketches. Remember I’m trying to keep my pencil moving for as much of the day as I can, so that leaves me with these pages of things that I normally wouldn’t show anyone. If you want to following me on instagram at drawingmylifeaway124 there are pictures of what I’d call cleaner drawings. That’s where I post the focused work that I do to improve my skill, right now I’m just copying drawings from Bridgman. I guess that’s all I have to say to explain posting more pictures of drawings.

What else is new? I’m surprisingly beat this morning, such is life I suppose. Yesterday in looking for a notebook to take notes from the New Master’s Academy videos I watch, the book I found had some old diary entries from about three years ago and I was talking about being sick. Maybe I was sick, but I feel like at that time there was a lot of “feeling sick” that now I’d think would be linked to depression. It’s almost like there was an idea in my head that I couldn’t do anything, but that’s ridiculous and no one would normally listen to it so my body or mind gave me this excuse. Part of me knows I could have pushed through what I was going through then because I feel like I push through it now. Life is tough and full of pain if you focus on it, but it can also be filled with beauty and satisfaction. We choose where to turn our attention even if it feels sometimes that we’re just animals responding to signals. Take news for example, because we’re in the age of click bait, many news organizations focus on the most outrageous stories and usually give a more outrageous headline. It leads to some people being surrounded by doom and gloom. They choose to keep seeking out those headlines when they might be able turn away and improve the way they feel. I hope this adds value, I’m just trying to keep myself oriented in the direction that’s best for me.

The Sun is Shinning Inside

Alright, I’ve got my Monday workout in the bag, only things left in order to call today a good day are writing this and doing my drawing. I woke up around 5:45 am this morning and my wife’s alarm doesn’t go off until 6:20. She then has an alarm go off five minutes later and that had been my unofficial wake up time for awhile. The coffee starts at the first alarm so five minutes lets me walk out and it’s done. Since working to get more dedicated to drawing, I decided to wake up with the first alarm and draw until the coffee is done. It’s not much time, but making drawing the first thing I do in the morning sends a message to myself that this is important to me. 

Back to waking up at 5:45 this morning, I’ve been waking up around then without an alarm clock and basically waiting until it’s OK to get out of bed. I think I’m going to try and get out of bed when I wake up, that could give me a half hour of drawing before the day starts. Do just that everyday and I’ll still be making some serious progress. I signed up for New Masters Academy this weekend because they had a 40% off sale for black Friday. NMA is a really good online teaching site for art and I had been planning to join soon anyway, so that’s really exciting. Now instead of wasting time on youtube, I’ve got thousands of quality art education videos to check out. Today is also the first day of my new diet with increased protein. It really is hard for me right now to eat the quantity required when eating meat instead of nuts. Nuts have a ton more fat which makes them more calorically dense, hopefully I don’t feel as hungry as I was before. The path is laid before me, all I have to do is walk it.