Sunday update

So here I am, all of a sudden; end of my Summer holidays. Tomorrow I'm back to work. After weeks of progressively later and later nights and longer and longer sleep ins, I need to drag myself up and out to work in the morning.

I think I'm typed that last sentence for my own benefit so I remember to actually do it.

Good Reads 2015 Book Challenge

I've signed up to read 24 books this year. My son Simon says I'm crazy, and that I should've gone for 12 because that was more achievable. My counter-argument is that I never finish anything so I could say any number, and I wouldn't achieve the goal. 

Off to a great start though, with the completion of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn which I enjoyed well enough. Afterwards I took a look online for reviews and blogs about the novel, and saw that there are some pretty avid (rabid?) Gone Girl fans. I wouldn't rave about the book but it's a good summer read.

How's *that* for a review?

So for my Good Reads Book Challenge I'm going to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. With that in mind, I'm about to start Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg.

The January Cure

Apartment Therapy website has an online/email "clean along" for January. I worked my first email task today: Floors and Flowers. Sounds nice doesn't it? until you realise that "floors" means "clean all the floors in your house". 

"All the floors" is a lot of floors.

I did it but it wasn't pretty. I have a hate/hate relationship with vacuuming in ordinary circumstances, but throw in a Kirby vacuum machine as my only option and you've got one grumpy, pink faced, perspiring grump-fest crawling 'round every nook and cranny, hovering where no man's ever gone before. But I did it, and the floors look good. That's the trouble with vacuuming and sweeping, the results are so satisfying and worthwhile.

The flowers part was easy enough because my rose bush is exploding with pinkly scented blooms that are cherry on the dining room table and I hope tomorrow's task is a little less strenuous.

Sketchbook Skool

The other course I signed up for to kick the year off was Sketchbook Skool - a six week online course to introduce sketching into my day. 

Again: started - so that's good - making a point of *actually* doing all the parts of the course, and not just skipping forward to the 'good bits' of drawing. 

This week we've been asked to document our week with drawings so that'll give me something to think about as I ease back into my work life from tomorrow.

Now that's you all caught up. I hope your holidays go on much longer than mine - but if you're like me and back to the grind tomorrow, take it easy, and I hope everyone is nice to you.

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Proper drawing

When I was at primary school, possibly 8 or 9 years old, I desperately wanted to now how to draw properly. I figured there was a knack or a key or a system that I could learn and then presto, I could draw properly.

One day I discovered a girl in my class could draw princesses - proper princesses - and she said she could teach me how. So one day she came to my house after school and she taught me how to draw a proper princess. Today, gorgeous reader, I shall impart that secret to you so you, too, can draw proper princesses:

Even after all these years I can still remember how to draw a proper princess. The technique was fantastic. It covered up all the hard bits like hands and feet, and left all the fun bits like embellishing the dress. I don’t know how many years I depended on my proper princess, but I do know she made me feel like an artist. A proper artist who could draw proper princesses.

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
— Pablo Picasso

Isn’t it funny how as adults, we adore our children’s artwork; the big swaths of colour, the multi-fingers, many toe’d expressions of our pre-school-age kids is just wonderful.  Somewhere in the first few years of school children lose that self confidence and start to look to draw "properly".

I don’t have any recollection of an adult telling me I couldn’t draw. I think the self doubt came from inside me as my brain developed faster than my hands could assimilate skills to depict my visual inputs - you know, Disney princesses!

Now as adults who are inclined to draw, many of us spend the rest of our lives trying to get that charm back. That innocence of colour and simplicity of line. The confidence and quietening of our self doubt. Well that's what I'm striving for and I hope to be sharing some of my "childlike charm" over the next few weeks.

I start with my trusty pink Crocs. Always at the back door step to be slipped on by anyone who needs to walk in the back garden. There's a lot of rabbit poo out there, but that's not your worst worry - try standing on a slug in bare feet; or kick a bee as I did the other day. These crocs are no fashion statement but they sure do make some of natures more squishier items easier to bear underfoot.

PS: do feel free to learn how to draw a 'proper princess' too if you'd like to use the six step process :) but best not share that info with any young people you know - let's delay their proper drawing for as long as we can.