Using the head to get ahead...
Work on the art fair pieces is well under way. I've made pretty good progress in a week (the image below is very early stages) even if it did entail working 'til late most nights. Finding time during the working week, even with only a part time job, is a bit of a challenge. I'd like to cut my sleeping hours a bit but with a lifelong inability to remain asleep through the night, mornings are a battle between the desire for more oblivion and the desire to get working, though I'm great once I've rolled out of bed.
The other hold up is that those moments before I properly wake up is also a very creative time. It's a fertile state of consciousness for viewing potential new pieces in my mind's eye, solving armature problems, testing out costumes or colour combinations and general think-up-stuff kind of productivity. I can lose a lot of time here (there?) if I'm not careful.
If I'm really sorted I try to set my mood or go through areas of my life that need a bit of positive momentum. The idea is to do this first thing, before you get up and find things to make you cranky! I've not been very good at this until now, but I'm at a stage when this would really benefit me. I know from experience that even a few days on one subject can have quite an impact on my attitude, and as my mindset has been my biggest hurdle so far (being beaten by my own brain - hey, who's in charge here?), it pays to make the effort. I'll remind myself again tonight...I know I should do meditation too but as soon as I sit quietly I want to build things in my head!
Something else I started doing at New Year, is keeping a daily diary. It's easy to lose track of the weeks and find nothing much has been achieved, and it's also easy to overlook what you have achieved. By doing a summary of the day, I can see what I've done, note what went well and where I could do a bit better. I can also see which things on my to-do list keep being...not done. Back to the available/efficient use of time thing. And that word of the year again - FOCUS. Maybe I'm trying to fix too many things at once. Quite likely, but I get a daily prompt to address it so something ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶p̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶. needs to be done about that!
And now...back to the sculptures for the rest of this evening. I need to make some hand armatures to attach and finish wrapping one or two limbs so I can start adding pulp. They're
really starting to look quite human now.
