I enjoyed having a personal project that had nothing to do with work or school. It helped keep me inspired and actually made me really productive on all of my work because it was refreshing to work on something personal when I was getting frustrated with a design project. It's also very helpful for me to shift gears - if I've been designing all day and the last thing I want to do is kern or mess with point sizes, I can do something a lot more open and playful and without rules. It's inspiring.
However, I sort of took this too far. :) I focused so much on channeling all my illustration ideas into my sketches until they weren't really sketches anymore. Part of the issue I realized is that this is my only blog currently and though it's called "sketchmonth," I started combining it really early on with other personal projects of mine so I was determined to make everything perfect and flawless. I think I'll be starting another blog soon (I have the url, but it's not up yet) for my regular work so that this project can be what it was intended to be: sketches.
Along those same lines, I'm probably going to change the structure of this project a little. I'm going to give myself weekends. I have a tendency to overbook myself and to expect myself to work seven days a week. I've done this ever since high school and I haven't taken consistent weekends since I was a teenager. Though I still have enough projects that I'll still be working on the weekends, thank you two jobs and school, I'll be letting myself take weekends on this project. I don't want to burn out on it.
And finally, I'm not ever sure how much personal information to put into blogs (I generally err on the side of next to none), but this is a bit relevant, I guess, because it affects my productivity. I was late in posting my last couple of drawings due to some medical problems that like to reassert their ugly little heads every now and then. Since 2005-ish I've had varying levels of thyroid problems (originally I was hyperthyroid, now it appears to be going the other way) and chronic hives (daily for the last four months). The list of symptoms of this is long and whiny (including such lovely tidbits as chronic fatigue and hair loss), but suffice it to say it's debilitating. I get to go back to the doctor again Monday and have my levels re-checked and hopefully I can finally convince them to send me on to an endocrinologist. The internet seems to imply that synthetic thyroid hormones can also alleviate chronic urticaria, so that'd be great. Just don't let it be lupus. :P
Anyway, all whiny shit aside, I'm enjoying my little project here and I intend to keep it up, no matter what my stupid body tries to do to me. I'll be posting again on Monday (taking that much needed weekend) with my new theme: cars. :)
(By the way, I mentioned a picture of Josephine and Arlen a few posts back that I never uploaded. That is because, like a total dumbass, I spilled ink on it! Yay! And because the damned thing is 13x19ish, it was too big to redo quickly. I'll post it when I get a chance to completely retrace and reink it, because as you may have noted, I am a perfectionist and it's pissing me off.)
I have it on good authority that it's never lupus.
ReplyDelete*hugs*
Haha, that's what I hear. My unprofessional opinion is that it's most likely hashimoto's disease. But we'll see. And thanks. :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome. I just wrote this 2 paragraph response and google couldn't complete my request and I lost it.
ReplyDeleteSo, in summary.
Give yourself weekends. It's important. I still consider artists to be one of the hardest working group of people out there, because it just never ends. I was doing what you were doing before I moved to LA, but once I was in a place where I was contributing to animation during the week, I gave myself the weekends off. When I'm not contributing (whether still in a job, or out of one) I dedicate that time to my personal projects. This blog, school and your personal art are all part of that weekly assignment. You can take the weekend off for sure. :)
And about personal information. You've probably noticed I've had many issues with that. In googling myself there are pages and pages of links all pointing back to me and since I don't have a common name...it's meee! So what I've been doing is going link by link and seeing what I can get rid of. My webpage has gotten simpler and only contains my email, my facebook I don't even use anymore but is unsearchable, and now my blog is anonymous. Mostly because I wanted to write about where I was and what I was doing, but don't need complete strangers associating that with my name.
Oh and on a side note....I feel you about the sickness. I got hit with a dousey on Monday. Whole body aches, massive headache, cloudy head, insane soar throat. It got better (or so I thought) so I went back to work but on Thursday it seemed to be coming back for round two. So I went to the doctor. On the way home from the doctor I was rear ended by two cars. My car had to be towed and so now I'm grounded and yesterday I had to go to the ER for whiplash, then later my ear clogged up as if I was underwater. I've got every drug imaginable for just about everything and unfortunately with all this I'm unable to get you your birthday present until I get my car back. I was going to go today (because I can only get it on Saturday) and well, I'm grounded. :( This week very much felt like the 12 days of Christmas, only terribly wrong. Ending with a partridge in a pair tree...
Hope you're getting all your health stuff sorted out!
Oh no! That sounds so crazy - are you okay? I was rear-ended by two cars in Chicago a few months back, but we were going slow because of traffic so other than mild whiplash, there wasn't much wrong with my car or me, but it gives me enough of a hint of what you're going through that I can't believe how awful that must be! Yuck! I hope you feel better soon!
ReplyDeleteAnd about artists working hard, I agree. All the creative people I know in general are constantly at it, morning and night, seven days a week. It makes you burn out sometimes. It's the one thing I don't like about art, but what's weird is, I really do enjoy working on stuff, especially art, all the time, but the work itself is just a lot more stressful than similar amounts of work on other topics. I think because all art involves that design part of our brains, and it's really hard problem solving, it wears us out mentally. I can read linguistics for days and do linguistics homework for days without tiring, but art takes it out of me way faster! So not fair...
Oh, and by the way, I've been meaning to call you back since you called on my birthday! I'm so sorry to be such a slack-ass! It's just been a crazy, crazy time for us both...but I'll call you this week, I promise!
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