The Artist’s Way – week ten

Overview

Since my last check-in, I find myself awash with religiosity. Specifically, I’m more active in my faith and faith community that I have been for a long time. It’s good. I’m happier in myself and whether that’s because of this fresh start or incidental to it doesn’t matter. I’ll take what I can get.

I’ve started a new blog to talk about that because I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea and I’m not the proselytising type. There’s inevitably going to be some overlap at some point, though – plants, animals, and the environment have always been Special Interests of mine, and there’s no hard line where it stops being an interest and starts being an expression of faith, especially for an animist dealing largely with fantastic themes. If it works for Miyazaki…

I do consider The Artist’s Way to be the root of this. All of Cameron’s talk about a Creator and how our creativity is our gift back to them and/or them working through us is where it started, so I’ve definitely got something out of this course, even if it wasn’t what I was looking for when I went in.

Morning pages

I’m getting better at doing the pages, even if it’s only every other day. I fired my counsellor in January, and haven’t yet built up a rapport with the new one, so I’m relying on them to figure out what’s going on and what I need to address.

I’m not beating myself up as much about not getting them done every day, but I’m celebrating when I do them and when they provide insight, and that seems to be working. More carrot, less stick

Artist’s date

I took a couple of hours to revisit some characters I haven’t thought about in years. I had to try very hard not to fall into the trap of ‘this has to be perfect/presentable/portfolio-worthy’ and just enjoy the moment, but I still struggle. Character design isn’t something I’ve done for a long time and these characters are so ill-defined that the first big step is to get a sense of who they are, but they’re coming along.

I remember wanting to use them in a comic, if only I could come up with a coherent storyline for them, but the concepts are still fun to play with. An accidental necromancer, an atheist paladin, and an immortal pirate captain walk into a bar…

Verdict

I’m starting to flag, but the end is in sight.

I enjoyed taking some time to sketch without the expectation of having anything presentable. Like when I was playing with the figurines, removing the pressure of making something presentable freed me up to just tinker with ideas. My life is an ocean of stressors, unfinished to-do lists and self-inflicted deadlines right now, and making space to play was exactly what I needed.