…blogtober day 25 :: pastel play…

Laying in the dark, heart racing, I was attempting to convince my brain that my dream was just a dream. I hadn’t left a heap of sports equipment out in the rain. I hadn’t left the storage shed wide open. In fact, dear brain, I hadn’t been near the sports field in a week, nor do I even have keys. Silly, silly brain. The previously gentle rain picked up the pace as I picked up my phone. It grew heavier still, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw an iPad light up on the other side of the blanket I was trying to hide under. (Disclaimer – I was hiding under the blanket to block the light of my phone from my notoriously light sleeper husband, not because I was scared of the storm!).

“Radar looks dicey,” he murmured as I popped my head out of the doona like a turtle emerging from it’s shell. I agreed, and we had a brief chat about how best to handle it. He decided to start his day at a time normally reserved for the last week of the financial year. I decided to watch half an episode of Castle to try and wind back down for some more sleep. Nothing says “sleepy time” like a good murder case.

With camp done, and Recovery Day been and gone, I had such big plans for today. I was going to make all the things. I was going to whip this house into tip top shape. I was going to smash school out of the park.

That…didn’t happen.

After the early early morning chat, it had taken a while to get back to sleep. I woke up around my usual time without my usual get-up-and-go. I lay in bed scrolling the news and Instagram. Beetle woke up and crawled into bed with me and helped me complete today’s solitaire game. We slowly made our way through the morning routine and went to town and got home and I stared at my to-do list. I got the children set up with their “morning” bookwork, and decided enough was enough. I poured a third cup of coffee, pulled up a reference image I’d snapped on my phone, and got to work.

The vibrant colours leant themselves to working with oil pastels, a medium I enjoy but haven’t mastered, and since my default position is “perfect first time or give it up”, I haven’t touched them in far too long. They tickled my mojo today though, and with my current languishing in pandemic fatigue state, I was not going to let a mojo spark pass me by. While the children were busy with their independent learning I marked out the couple of squares I wanted, sketched in the tree as well, and taped it up with a cute washi to protect the nice sharp outlines.

While I was grabbing the photo with the intention of doing this sketch, the quite defined separation between the lilies and whatever those purple things are stood out to me. Almost straight away, I decided to do it as a diptych, and then with that settled, I thought an overlay of the tree, framing my photo, would make for a fun addition.

The layering didn’t work quite as well as I had expected, but for a quick sketch it works. It captures the essence of what attracted me to the scene. The colours, the shapes, the height differences, the framing. Most importantly, it pulled me out of my funk and away from a scroll spiral, and got me stretching my creative muscles.

The rest of the afternoon is going to be a bit more chill. The children have a couple of science kits to do for school. I’m going to stitch while supervising. I have a pile of Cricut work to do for one of my committees. The sun is coming out so I’m going to try and get a heap of washing done while the batteries are charging – off grid solar gets interesting in times like these! One little sketch has done the world of good for getting me out of my rut and back on track. Three hours until I kick off the evening routine, let’s see how much I can get done.