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Sunday 17 September 2017

New Journeys


My new sketchbook is proving to be a pleasure to carry around and it is beginning to fill up with scribbles, doodles, notes, prayers and anything else I want to add. Its arrival seems to have coincided with some new and interesting challenges in life and I hope it will be a way for me to try and find a path through them over the next few months. I may share more about that in the future.

I seem to have got bored with the iPad in the sense that I find it a little restrictive in how I want to physically move about on the screen and also the fact that it is yet another digital screen. After looking at my mac at work for hours on end each day I want a break from the digital world. A larger iPad might perhaps be good, or one of the new touch screen things that are becoming popular - a Wacom Cintiq or a cheaper equivalent. Technology moves fast and there are increasing opportunites for alternative working methods for designers but they are still not cheap and I am not sure I could justify the investment. That is one thing about a humble sketchpad and pen, it doesn't cost much and hand created artwork somehow seems much more pleasurable to handle and show people.

I don't always find it easy to focus or maintain a direction with my art and at the moment I think I need the sketchbook to nurture my creative soul. I always jump around between one thing and another: urban sketching, character design, cartoons, caricatures, whimsical ideas and nature based art. My mind switches between things depending on the inspiration around me and I get easily distracted. This isn't helped by some medication I am on that slows me down and getting my brain in gear to be creative can feel like hard work. 

A few days ago I was talking to a guy at work who seems to spend his lunchtimes and evenings glued to a computer screen doing some form of artwork. I can't work that way, it would be too stressful to me. I have done it in the past but now, in my more mature years, I can't cope with excessive hours in front of a computer screen. In some ways I would be happy to get rid of all the technology around me and be free of its seductive lure. In other ways I wish I could embrace it more and have the time and space to explore my own creative dreams.