Paint, paper and Paverpol

Been in the office full time this last week and doing every day with varying hours this week too and likely next week as well (at the least until staffing gets back to normal). In a way it’s been okay though it leaves little time to do art. It has meant a hard bike ride to the office and back five times a week, which is good for basic training so there's some positive there, not to mention decent pay!

That's the spirit!

But I have done some creative work. Started adding hand made paper ‘costuming’ to the ocean spirit which looks nice and floaty. My Paverpol is getting near the bottom of the pot and becoming thicker and goopier. It needs a bit of water to make it usable but it's still tricky brushing it onto delicate papers. If the paper survives it does go really hard though. I love that stuff; it's incredibly versatile. Now, that piece just needs a bit of sea green/blue and white edging to lift it a bit.

On Monday I did a three colour pour over fire spirit. It looked pretty nice with the white undercoat showing through in places. Last night I added some of the paper to create the flame-y effect. Have to be careful not to overpower the actual shape or end up overly covering the nice pour...aaand not sure if I've in fact overdone it! (see image below). Folks always say less is more and that’s true whether you’re painting or sculpting.

Olympic musings

Been super distracted with stuff that feels obstructive rather than constructive! Guess we're all guilty of that at times. For one thing, trying to find gymnastics coverage of the Olympics (not subscribed to any paid channels or BBC iplayer) is a pain. Mostly relying on Reddit and Twitter for the deets and snatched video where I can find it.

It's all drama with Simone Biles pulling out of events and GB winning an amazing team bronze. Boy, have we come a long way since I started watching back in the 70s when it would've been hard to believe we eventually created a programme that built world beating gymnasts.

As for Ms Biles, though I'm not a fan of her performance aesthetics, her skills and desire to push the boundaries (that stuck triple double is huge WOW) is just so exciting. A stunning meld of physical capabilities and an adventurous how-far-can-I-take-this mentality. But equally so is her gutsy, outspoken calling out of USAG etc. and being mature and self possessed enough to know when her head isn't in the needed place to risk an Olympic medal and more importantly, her neck. In the old days, younger girls would've just had to get on with it and suffer the consequences and who's to say often that happened and we had no idea what was going on?

Precious few coaches and administrators have competed at her level and they're not equipped to understand what physical and emotional toll their demands and expectations have on athletes. Elena Mukhina is a terrible, tragic example of when young athletes feel they can't say 'no'. Biles' decision to say 'no' is one every athlete should be able to make - and it should be supported.

Meanwhile...

I’ve been trying to mentally de-clutter and get renewed focus on where I’m heading. Living in a semi packed up state doesn’t help. My room/work area looks chaotic and doesn’t help clarity of thought. My other distraction has been looking into a couple of murky covid related topics. Honestly, though I value having some sense of what’s going on and what the varying responses of the public are to government actions – current and proposed - I recognise it hasn’t been helpful to my mood. Socially, the trends don’t look good (depending on who you’re talking to) but I’d rather spend my time on things that are positive than have my mood negatively affected by what I’m reading or hearing so have unfollowed a few Twitter accounts, try to ignore anything trending and looking for thinkers/doers/observers who aren't mired in negativity or conspiracy orientated. It's proving hard!

I’m also feeling the pull to pick up my book drafts and revisit the topics with some new ideas and information I’ve gathered. What I’ll likely do is spend some time on writing and leave art time for upgrading my 2D skills and paying attention to social media channels which have been neglected as usual. Pinterest needs some attention this weekend, I think and bps Twitter needs a serious rethink.

Nothing doing at the moment with the planned move to Devon. There’s just not that much on the market right now with rooms to rent. In fact, my original moving time line was around September/October so it’s not like there’s any real delay. Got a possible idea for the interim but that’s another reason to switch off from non productive brain time and do some quality thinking.

So there you go. Three steps forward and two steps back. But always forward bit by bit. Such is life. If we could get our attention off the things that muddle, confuse and distract; that make us anxious; that would have us believe our choices are limited or dictated by others, well, we'd probably get a lot more done and quicker than we imagine it could be done. We've seen others do that. The only difference between the ditherers and the achievers is that the latter never spend a second on 'but what if' or 'I don't know' or 'how do I even do that?' They just see what needs doing/know clearly what and why they want something, then set about finding ways to make it happen. That's it. That's all you need to think about. Anything else is just self built obstacles.