This Blog Is Nonsense and Hogwash!

From the moment I wake until I sleep at night, I see art in the mundane and the unusual ideas I concoct in my mind. If you are a fellow artist who happens to see this then you know as well as I you can easily get lost in your thoughts. 

Because to everyone else you're staring into space but in your mind you're thinking: I like the way that plant is resting on those books on the shelf, also look at that plant, it's not just green I'd say that shadow is maybe even slightly blue to my eye, and look it's reflecting a shade of lilac!

I've found myself stood in my bathroom with my face five centimetres away from the tiles just because there was a colour I hadn't noticed before when I first picked them out (it was a shade of violet which surprised me since at first glance you'd assume its all more sandstone colours, I guess you have to be there and look at them)...so yeah, we're all the same right? I hope so.

I found a few years ago (maybe less I cannot quite remember) I was getting frustrated with myself. It had been months since I had touched a sketchbook or even attempted to use my iPad for any kind of drawing or painting. I was deep in the trenches of a "new mum rut" routine and felt I had no energy to even start, or I'd get an idea in my head only to stare at a blank page and have nothing happen. Sometimes I would start drawing shapes or anything, hoping for inspiration to come to me from nowhere. 

I had stopped wanting to draw because of the pressure I was putting on myself to draw something I thought should be "amazing" or good enough to share and it was just being worsened by my lack of ideas as soon as I had the page in front of me.

This is a situation common to many artists I know. My mum at the time was doing her own art projects and paintings, and helped me to break out of the confines of my own rules of what art "should be" and my fears of not developing a certain style unique to me. We spent a whole weekend doing little watercolour challenges where you paint objects from lines without taking your brush off the page, we would draw an object in a certain amount of seconds, sharing sources of inspirational material both online and in books. 

That weekend totally changed my art journey. Art was fun again.

I want to share that joy and fun you can find in art even if you don't call yourself an artist.

So, to wrap it up because this post is already long enough, I am hoping this will be a good place for sharing my journey, sharing what I love, ideas I have, projects I am currently doing as well as some of my favourite tools I use to create my art (both traditional and digital).

Already looking forward to the next one!

- Gabs