Flamingos and Change

Flamingo

This week I worked on a small project in my sketchbook again.  It’s the last week of term so I’m pretty tired and still struggling with my health.

I forgot to take any process pictures with this one.  So here’s the final result:

While I was working on this painting I had a big period of time when it looked bad.  I think this is quite common in art.  I had to rework the background from scratch in fact.  I painted my main subject with gouache and then tried to put a watery watercolour background in but it didn’t work so I went for a background which reflected the style of the flamingo in the end.

 

Change

I am really grateful this year for the coming holidays, since my body’s a bit stressed out and unwell at the moment, but generally speaking I don’t like the summer holidays at all. I find change difficult.  I will be teaching different children next year and I will miss those I worked with this year.  I also find the change from working to holidaying quite stressful too.

I think it’s probably just the autism, my neurology seems to be very sensitive to change.  I feel like a boat afloat without an anchor or an engine when change comes.  I don’t know what I’ll be facing,  I can’t prepare for it and so I have to fight down panic when I think about it.

Comics, like Judge Dredd and Star Wars, Science Fiction and Fantasy like Harry Potter and Asimov’s Foundation series, and going fishing, these things all help.

Here’s an amazing Judge Dredd Megazine Cover by Adam Brown – all rights belong to Rebellion.

They are what is know in ASD terms as ‘special interests’.  Research has shown how an autistic’s interests help support them in times of stress and that’s certainly true for me.  They are like a safe place to go when the world is too much to cope with.

 

Also, for me, my faith also helps a lot, since for me,  God is always there, always loving and always the same.