Art Therapy

Sadly, I had to leave my job for health reasons a few months ago and I have struggled quite a bit with this change. At first my GP helped me and then eventually I managed to arrange some phone counselling to work through it all.

Now I’m not going to go into details about any of the counselling itself here, except to say that it’s been incredibly helpful. What I have found though, with respect to my art, is that it is of real therapeutic benefit.

Firstly, art it is a form of meditation for me a lot of the time, and this has been very helpful. It’s very soothing to draw and paint. It feels a bit like putting a really good hand cream on very chapped hands. Secondly though, it gives me this wonderfully safe space in my head and on the canvas where I can work things out. I don’t know if this kind of thing would work for everyone, some people are more at home with words than visuals, but for me it has been very useful indeed.

This is a drawing I did as I mulled over a question my counsellor left me with at the end of a session…

It was initially done in ink on paper and then toned with Mars Lumograph pencils.

Then I scanned it into my computer and coloured it like this…

I wonder if other artists find art is supportive in this way? Maybe some writers and musicians feel the same way?

A School Comic Strip Preview

 

This is a quick, preview of a comic strip I’ve been developing.  It’s set in a fictional school where all of the children and staff are animals. (All of the characters are completely fictional too.)  In a later post I will go over the process I went through to develop the idea and the characters. This is just a taster.

Here is the rough sketch…

Once I had my rough layout I redrew it all digitally…

Then finally I added tones and textures…

 

Jo Kenobi

This week’s art is a little fantasy sketch of what I might look like if I were both young again and a Jedi!

I took a picture of Lucasfilm’s character Obi-Wan Kenobi…

 

…and a picture of myself when I was about Ewan’s age in this promotional shot from Attack of the Clones.  Then I attempted to make a sketch of the two faces mixed together!

 

I began with some basic measurements.  Luck was on my side with this as mine and Ewan’s face proportions were really similar.

 

Then I sketched out the basics…

I expanded the eyes to give the whole picture a hint of manga styling and then put in some basic pencil shading…

 

I had this drawing like this in my sketchbook for a while.  Then, when I got my Mars Lumograph Pencils, I thought I would have a go at inking the picture and shading it with pencil.  Here are the final results…

 

I wish I were a Jedi!!!

 

 

Lilies

Lilies – watercolour on cold-pressed paper.

A hand-painted card for some friends dealing with a difficult loss.

Natural Cycles – Mixed Media

 

I’ve been thinking about a new start in life.  Given that I can’t teach anymore due to my medical issues I am looking into the possibility of working as a freelance artist or as a private tutor or perhaps even an art tutor which would be a dream job!!!.  This would be a whole new adventure.  So my plan is to try to get some contract work when I am well enough to work again.

This week’s art was done in early December.  It’s an extension of my thinking on the Tree of Life motif with the additional idea of natural cycles.

I began with some sketches on the back on envelopes which I “helpfully” threw out while tidying up!  So the earliest process image I have is of the main outline done in pencil…

I then went on to ink this outline and use my new learning on texture to fill it in.  Here it is part-way through inking…

 

Once the ink was complete I scanned the image into my PC, tidied up the scanning artifacts I tend to get from my scanner and balanced my levels. (This is the light and dark levels picked up by the scanner and translated to tones in the digital image.)

 

This is the finaly line art…

 

Once that was complete I toned the line art digitally to make a finished grey-scale, mixed-media design which looks like this…

 

 

Update:  Thanks for all your kind wishes with respect to the pain problems I’m having at the moment.  I started the new meds from the pain consultant yesterday.  I’m dealing with side-effects right now, but I expect them to settle down a week or two after the dose is put at the final level the Dr want’s me to take.  (This will take about 6 weeks since the old meds have be reduced slowly and the new ones introduced slowly.)  My pain is still pretty bad, but I am starting to get there.  I’m not allergic to the new medicine and, although there are side-effects, I can tolerate them, all of which is very positive indeed! It’s amazing how different I feel when I have some hope!  I’m also looking at getting carers in a few times a week to help with some of the normal day to day living things I can’t do at the moment.  This will start when my son goes back to Uni.

 

Anyway – I wish you all a very happy new year!!!!