flying with frogfish....Aug.12th.... not happy with the way I'm doing shading on human faces, need to practice that. The original idea was that the girl is sitting there, setting the fish free, but Kenji said it looks like they're flying, I like that better! Unfortunately it looks like she's choking the fish.
When I started drawing again, I was frustrated at the little time I had, Kumari’s nap was only 45 minutes, I’d barely get into a groove before I had to stop. Two amazing things have happened though. Last month Kumari started taking a two hour nap! And my mom started watching her twice a week for about a 3 hour stretch. It’s amazing how just having a few hours completely changes everything.
It’s just like Hugh Macleod said in his book Ignore Everybody (he doesn’t really mean ignore everybody, its a great book for any creative type that needs a kick in the butt to get going), even folks who work 8 hours a day at an office are only focused for part of the time. He says if you have a day job, just try to find a few hours for yourself after work, you can be pretty productive if you’re focused and motivated. He’s so right! I’ve been so productive in the past month.
Macleod has a different perspective on doing creative work. He actually enjoys having a second job and doing his art in his free time. He says it keeps him grounded and makes him interact with people, otherwise he’d be chained to his drawing table and only leave his house for a coffee run. Reading that made me feel better about not having all day to do my work.
Kumari totally keeps me grounded. I interact with way more people than I used to and I get to experience the world through her eyes and she inspired all the work I’m doing.
In fact, if it wasn’t for being inspired by her to think about doing a children’s book, I would never have read Uri Shulevitz’s book Writing with Pictures, which made me realize that I needed to sketch from life again to get off my creative plateau.
