Six months in observations

(Almost) Six months into packing up everything and moving to England we are pretty much adjusted to our new life. I have some observations. 

1) Living abroad is lonely. Moving to a country with the same language certainly helps but the cultural differences are still hard to overcome. 

2) You adjust. My kids adjusted the quickest and my husband and I a little slower. Adjustment doesn't happen all at once but it ebbs and flows.  

3) Visitors from home are awesome! Our first visitors from the states came in May and we really appreciated spending time with them.

4) But when they leave homesickness will be rekindled.  

5) Living abroad is addictive. I love not being super tied down and hope to live in other countries in the future.  

6) There are so many flowers and birds in the UK! At least in the area that I am blessed to live in. 

7) I am allergic to at least some of that beautiful plantlife. This past May was by far my worst experience with allergies.  

8) I don't know why crosswalks exist since drivers constantly block them.  

9) Traffic is the worst! But walking, biking and public transit are all reasonable options. (Despite the crosswalk blocking vehicles) 

10) Living here still feels like a dream that I am going to wake up from.  

Something changed. Why there is no such thing as a bad sketch. Only learning.

Sketching in Rome was some of the hardest on site sketching I have done. Harder than Oxford, harder than Notre Dame. Headache inducing difficult sketching in the heat while putting a lot of pressure on myself to do a good job and "make the most of the experience". At the time I did not feel that I made the most of the experience in Rome since I didn't love a single drawing that I produced. Then we went home and I started going out more on non-rainy days and really focusing on getting buildings to look believable and confident in my sketches. And it's working. It's getting easier. I learned a lot from my "bad" sketches in Rome and am so grateful for the opportunity to make them. Relax.  

Have a great weekend!

I had big plans to attend another London Sketchcrawl this Saturday followed by a mini Sunday botanical garden sketching trip with my eldest.  But recovering from illness (again!) means I need to reevaluate those plans. No matter what it will be an art filled weekend. 

Urban Sketching tests my limits.

Urban sketching in Oxford UK around some parked bikes at a very crowded bus stop. Oxford gets filled with tourists from all over the world in the spring and summer, especially on the weekend and holidays. Yesterday was a bank holiday. Testing the limits of my ability to sketch around others. Then 1/3 through the drawing my pen ran out of ink and I needed to switch to a brush pen. Keep going. 

f.y.i. 100 days in a row of something is a lot

One hundred days of florals is starting to drag. But I am sticking with it and will adapt to make it fun because it is rewarding and I am learning a lot with this daily practice. 

But some days I am so tired. Some days I am so busy! I can't just collage all my prior florals and call them new again can I? No I can't do that. 

Stretching myself

The Sketchbook Skool assignment for the week was to collect sketches and after six days cut them out and collage them in my sketchbook. The instructor Jonathan Twingley uses a dip pen and ink to make bold expressive marks. Sounds like an exciting challenge. I got started a few days late but I was motivated. Then my four year old got sick. Away went the dip pen. While I was able to sketch during this period it was mostly inside of books and it was far from free and messy. Mostly blind contour drawings of my sick kid filled the pages. But I have been filling loose pages with watercolor, gouache and a bit of ink for months so I got that stack out and started cutting. What fun! Stay tuned to see what I ended up making with all these bits and bobs. 

When am I going to learn?

Daily blogging is really hard for an introverted perfectionist like myself. I always start out strong then fumble and frustrated toss the whole thing out. Not this time. This time I will fumble and keep going. Just not everyday.  

Alone

Finding myself already counting down to our next vacation. On vacation in new countries I don't expect to know anybody and don't have the chance to feel bad. Here in England when I go out and am around people it is the worst because at home I know people back home through online. But out there I know nobody. Feeling alone in a crowd feels like a horrible party every time I go out of the house. It rarely bothers me I'm so busy and preoccupied with making art and growing my skills and business, but when it does ouch! Summer might me difficult for me. 

Car free life starting now!

Oh boy here we go on the latest bit of our UK adventure. We no longer have a car and are giving a car free lifestyle a go. When we left Boston in Jabuary we sold our car but we have had a rental car here up until we left for Paris. Now we are back and starting our first week without having a car to fall back on. Saturday I took the bus to the city centre and came back with groceries for the week. Today my husband took the complimentary shuttle bus to work for the first time. Biking is also an option for both of us. And when they are in school the kids take a bus there and back. So far this car free thing is pretty great. I like it. One step closer to my dreams of a more minimalistic lifestyle. 

Going with flowers for spring.

When I went to bed last night I thought that I was about to start a hundred days of self portraits. But in the eleventh hour I changed my mind. Spring rebirth and flowers it is for the next hundred days. Follow me on Instagram to see how I keep it up and keep it lively and interesting. My goal is to learn, strengthen my skills, connect with others and stretch myself.  #the100dayproject

Starting with the simple daisey. We saw a lot of daiseys around Versailles.   

My name is Marissa and I am a creative challenge addict.

A new challenge for 100 days? On top of my 365 creativity challenge but with a narrower focus. And the 30 days of blogging. Sure, why not? But only if I can roll it into my main challenge.  

Brainstorming:

1) self portraits - 100 of them in a row, ouch! Not medium specific. Challenging to keep it interesting and not get terribly sick of myself. 

2) drawing - probably too broad of a theme 

3) painting - same problem as above

4) daily floral - another good option. Good chance to practice florals.   

5) daily portrait - like #1 but with more flexibility. 

I think I am going to go with the self-portrait theme or floral but I will think about it overnight.  

Lonely in Oxford

Loneliness when I'm healthy breeds artistic productivity and focus. Loneliness when I'm sick is just lonely. I've been spending the past few days resting as much as possible so I can be at full strength for Paris next week! And the next burst of creative energy. 

Curveballs

There seems to be some rule that as soon as I give myself a big challenge and start on it within a short period of time life throws a curveball at me to make the challenge all the more challenging. It happened within the first few weeks of my 365 daily creativity project and now just a few days into a month of daily blogging I am sick. It started out as a sore throat last night, now today I am full blown sick. I get one "I'm sick" blog post out of it. Then I need to keep generating content while feeling like crud. I can do it! No big deal.  

Sick day watercolor abstracts in my sketchbook while I sip tea with honey.  

Moved in!

Shelving is up and my printmaking tool pegboard is up. That makes me officially moved in to my new space in England!  

The Blogging Habit

The blogging habit is not an easy one for me. I need to commit to doing a short blog post Monday-Friday. In fact, maybe blogging should be a seven day thing for a month or so while I establish the habit. Blogging is a hard habit for me to keep up and I think that that weekend break is a good idea in the long run but derails me in the short term while establishing the habit. My sketching and painting habit is solid. My ice cream habit is sadly quite established as well. Time to get the blogging habit set. I have the work to share, time to share it beyond the word of Instagram. How do other bloggers do it? Especially visual artists that don't consider writing to be their thing?

March is my sketching anniversary!

A year ago in March I decided to keep a regular daily sketchbook and picked up my first set of watercolors since childhood. Things have changed a lot for me in this year and a sketchbook and some paint has always been nearby and along for the ride. I am super grateful for this adventure and looking forward to sketching more and continuing to grow my skills in the coming year. Thank you for following along. Here is some then and now. I try to only compare myself to my past not to other artists. 

One of my earliest watercolor sketches. If I could go back in time I would tell my past self to use more paint!

Thinking of spring a few days ago in Oxford.  

Plenty of paint on this paper!  

365 art challenge and thirty minute paintings

At the end of 2014 I decided that I needed to take on some sort of big year long sketch challenge. But with an international move looming and tons of change coming I didn't know exactly what type of challenge was going to work for a full year. I really liked the idea of focusing on ink and watercolor and setting a time limit but instead I simply promised myself that I would create in my sketchbook 365 days of the year and leave it at that. I am glad I started out easy on myself because early in the move I got sick and stayed sick for over three weeks. I was able to fill pages in my sketchbook during those weeks, but just barely with real struggle. Temporary housing limited space and supplies and that also limited what I made. But the boat shipment did come and after six long weeks in a new country in temporary digs we moved into our new home and my art studio was one of the first rooms I unpacked. With that everything changed. I was able to spread out and create and my creativity and energy flowed as a result. I would reward myself for unpacking rooms by giving myself uninterrupted time in my art studio. And now here I am finding myself doing 30 minute ink and watercolor paintings in my sketchbook everyday.

Did you plan any challenges for the new year? What are they and how are they going? 

Energized!

After two months of setting up painting at various dining tables throughout our stint in temporary housing I am energized by my newly set up art studio! I have a filled palette for my studio and I am ready to paint all day long. In fact that is pretty much what my Monday looked like.  

Life drawing drop in is tonight. Since today is Charlotte's day home with me I really need that time out to focus on art. I need to pack my bag with the right collection of supplies.  

Holding Time

That is what my life here is here as we wait for our stuff to arrive so we can move into our apartment. Over a month in temporary housing and our furniture and possessions just arrived and now we begin the hard work of unpacking and moving in. We got rid of a ton of stuff when we left Boston, but apparently not enough! 

Thankful for a Thai food lunch break between hours of unpacking. This is easily the best food we have had since moving and it is just down the street from our apartment.  

I'm ready for my boat...

The boat shipment filled with the bulk of my art supplies that is taking it's sweet time getting to the UK. It didn't even leave Boston until two weeks after we left the country and isn't due until later this week, then it needs to clear customs. I am regretting some of my air shipment decisions. I wish I had included more art supplies. Especially watercolor sketchbooks and tubes of paint.  I'm comepletly out of thick tough watercolor sketchbook pages and have been on a roll with the watercolor sketching. Today I went looking for an affordable option to tide me over while I wait and I found nothing but an old stock Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. Of course I bought it immediately since the old paper is supposed to be a lot better. But this is a very nice book and not inexpensive. No doodles for it! It might come with me to Paris or Rome though!