The Wellness Adventure Continues!

Here we are:  the next 10 pages of the wellness quest. These are days of highs and lows, stopping and starting, on track and off. Over the Christmas period it was difficult to stay focused, easy to let things slide. These ups and downs, stops and starts are a normal part of a process of change. Strength comes and goes. Attention wanders. Sometimes it seems easier to live with less than good health than to push the river enough to make it better. But by the end of the first month, I feel that new patterns are emerging and changes are gradually being implemented.

Day 11

These are homemade shortbread biscuits given to me by a friend. So many words and phrases of self talk go with eating. As they came up, I stamped them in.

One of those inexplicably heavy, melancholy days. Even though they are low and gloomy, they are not without interest. I like to get to know these feelings, give them names, differentiate one from another. Befriend them, even.

It wasn't my intention to sit out in the backyard in the dark drawing my washing. But when I saw the clothes and the Jacaranda in the cool light of the moon - it was just irresistible.

There were a bunch of days when I did no recording or drawing at all. They seemed to pass very quickly and I was shocked that I had almost forgotten that I was doing this. How easy it is to be side-tracked, distracted, turned astray? But here I am, back again. Not as regularly as before, but still going on, keeping going.

Yeah, this was a really hot day.

More stopping and starting, on track, off track, on track again. Wandering off track - how much harder it is to get back on track than to stay on track in the first place. Why am I making this harder than it needs to be?
So here I am, taking myself to task, setting the ground rules again clearly.

Simple food, coffee and water - a picnic by the river on Christmas afternoon. What you see here is mostly leftovers. Eat first, draw later.

I can't believe some of the conversations I have with myself. I have such a talent for persuading myself that what I feel like doing is better than what I know I ought to do. What's laughable is that I'm the one who decided what I ought to do and fully support it - or at least one of me does....The others are kicking and screaming and weaselling around trying to convince me that I agree with them and giving me such excellent reasons! No wonder my head hurts. It's full of my very own personal demons.

Knitting is very therapeutic for me. Especially knitting small things that can be finished quickly. I get bored knitting only one colour, so most of the things I make have stripes. My favourite part is going through all my yarn and patterns and then casting on. And changing colours. I like that too. Also chatting and knitting with friends is really nice. So yes, knitting is good for me.

One of the things that is contributing to my growing sense of wellbeing is having a vision of wonderful accomplishments in the not too distant future and mapping out the steps to accomplishing them. I've been doing a lot of planning. Then implementing and adapting the planning in the light of the implementing. I've filled up most of a bullet journal just this year. Next post, or maybe the one after, I'll show you my colour-based planning and review system. It's the colours that keep me going back to it. If I forget, remind me!
Till next time.

Evelyn

Getting Pastelliferous

I like oil pastels. I like the richness of their colour and the way you can blend them. I particularly like the way they look on brown paper.

The first ones I did were on paper bags. 

Then I started carrying a roll of wrapping paper around with me. The outlines are done with either a brush pen or a good sized chunky marker. I like the thick dark lines you can get with them.

The latest oil pastel drawing is quite big. It's the little kumquat tree outside my living room window.
It's drawn on the opened out surface of a sturdy brown carry bag. (you can tell by the handles). It covered my coffee table, and I used a big brush and indian ink to draw the outlines.

My box of pastels is getting quite well used up now and filling in a large area with small pieces of oil pastel takes some time,  especially when putting down more than one layer of colour. Also, I have yet to find a way to buy replacement pastels individually. I can just imagine a house full of all the colours I hardly ever use, because each time I use up my white, blues and yellows, I have to buy a whole new box!

Tasmania: the East Coast

This almost qualifies as a throwback, since a couple of months have gone by since I took a slow drive from Launceston, through the Fingal Valley, to St. Helens, then to Hobart, with two nights at Swansea on the way.

The things I love most about  holidays like this:

1. They are full of unstructured time. No schedule. Anything can happen! Having a few days of unstructured time is what, for me, best promotes creative thinking and new perspectives. Minimal routine, maximum productivity. Strange, perhaps, but true.

2. I'm alone. Bliss.

3. There is no plan. If the beach where I eat breakfast just begs to be walked along, I can spend the rest of the morning walking. If I meet someone on the beach, I can stay and talk as long as I like. No "sorry, gotta go, gotta be in blah place by blah o'clock". And without a fixed plan, it's as though my vision expands from something narrow and driven, to something wide and open, ready to involve and be involved in all the world:  newly flowering wattles,  the mutter of fishermen on the rocks,  the changing colours of the sea from shore to horizon, thinking about how aboriginal people would have lived in a place like this, the unusual number of motorbikes on the road, erosion, cloud formations, unemployment, rural lifestyles, family history, coffee, languages, shoreline geology.... .

4. Beauty. It is good, now and then, to be in a place where, at every turn there is gut-punching, heart-stopping, soul-soaring beauty. To participate in it, to resonate with it. To exercise that heart muscle that recognises and identifies with it. To be overwhelmed and swept away.

5. Remembering, These are places that are familiar to me from long ago. They are rich with memory and experience. I love travelling through unfamiliar places too, but this is a different kind of love.

6. Time to reflect, time to imagine, time to draw and write.

Here are some of the drawings from that drive:

The Ben Lomond Massif seen from the Fingal Valley. There were so many stunning views on this clear, cold day, but very few places where the road had sufficient shoulder space to pull over. 

Binalong Bay, just north of St. Helens. 

Granite rocks at Binalong Bay.

Swansea: the view from my window on a quiet, misty morning.

Some broken shells I picked up, walking along Beer Barrel Beach, a little south of St. Helens.

More broken shells, these I collected above the high tide mark in Swansea, some drawn there, others finished when I got to Hobart.






A short stop on the way south, for some breakfast and a bit of conversation.

At my sister's house, looking out of the window from my bed, first thing in the morning.

These are the drawings in my sketchbook from those few days. I'm glad you could join me!

Chancing it Again: micro travel #2

Sunshine, a pleasant breeze, blue skies - a perfect day for micro-travelling.The plan for today involved dice (again) and cards ( white cards the size of business cards). I could have used bits of paper, but fanning out a hand of cards has a je ne sais quoi that wrinkly bits of paper absolutely lack.
So what do you do with the cards apart from fanning them out in a je ne sais quoi kind of way?
Take a look.

Each card has, written on it, precise instructions of something to observe, notice, and draw. Here is the whole spread:

With dice, cards, sketchbook, the usual drawing kit and my $2 K-Mart folding stool, I left my car in South Fremantle and walked to the nearest bus stop to wait for the CAT bus. This is a free bus that does a loop around Fremantle. There's a bus every 10 minutes. While I waited I rolled a die. Five dots looked up at me. According to my plan...

that meant I had to get off the bus after five stops then pick a card at random and follow the instructions.

What I hadn't counted on was zoning out on the bus and losing track of how many stops we passed. I think I may have gone one stop too many. Never mind. Micro travel is not an exacting discipline, but a cheerful embrace of the unexpected as well as the ordinary.

There were a lot of Spanish and Italian passengers on the bus. When they got off they left clouds of Ciao's and Hasta la vistas and Muchas Graciases in their wake, the way some people leave a fragrance or little bubbles of happiness. At my stop, once I had added my own farewells and thanks to the atmosphere, I stepped onto a sun drenched pavement and took out my pack of cards. Fanning them out ( with that certain je ne sais quoi ) I selected one and turned it over. It said:

Notice Foliage

There was a big Plane tree just around the corner casting deep shade onto the footpath. I unfolded my stool, parked it against an old limestone wall and looked across the street at a group of small trees. Different coloured foliage, different shaped leaves, different textures. Two of the trees had red flowers. Behind them another large Plane tree and in the distance a Norfolk Island Pine. As I drew, a group of children inched their way towards me. When I looked down at my sketchbook they took tiny steps closer. When I looked up, they stopped. They didn't speak to me at all until I asked where they were from. Then in a chorus they all said 'KL'. They watched me silently until a parent hustled them away. I drew and coloured the foliage 

and by the time I'd finished I was ready for a coffee. 

Blink Cafe is a tiny hole in the wall. I sat on a wooden cube at a table on the pavement  sipping a long black out of a glass. Justin, the barista, brought me a flourless sweet thing on a really pretty plate.  As I drew it a young woman glided in wearing an academic gown. She'd escaped from her graduation ceremony with her brother and wanted him to take photos of her in the cafe, since that's where she'd spent so much of her time as a student. 

Back to the bus stop, back on the bus, a quick stop at the station for the loo and a roll of the die that told me to get off after six stops. La la la... bus ride through Freo.  The card I picked said:

Draw your fellow humans.

but when we reached the sixth stop there were no humans to be found. Just blank walled buildings and blue blue sky. Not even a bit of foliage!! So I cheated and went one more stop to a place where there are cafes and shops and plethoras of people. There, at Ootong and Lincoln, I occupied a large table, ate a salad of sweet potato, green beans and a whole glorious gallimaufry of  salady things and drew some of the humans around me. 

How quickly the time passed, but how utterly delightful to explore in this way. Here's the complete page from today's micro-travels:

If you are in the area and feel like joining me next week, let me know. If you are far away you might like to try something like this in your own neck of the woods. Keep me posted, I'd love to hear about your adventures!