Life Drawing – Why a break now & then does you good

I have had an enormous reminder tonight at life drawing that sometimes you need to step away and do something completely different for a while…

My last blog post was about eight weeks ago, over half way through the World Watercolour Month Challenge in July (#worldwatercolormonth). I really loved the challenge and painted every day (just!), sharing progress on Facebook. But I didn’t find any time to write on my blog and I was panicking about work deadlines and other aspects of life that were falling behind.  I made sure I completed a painting every day, but work was increasing and I wasn’t really coping. I was often painting at midnight because I simply ran out of daytime.

I was frazzled by the end of July, and when I jumped on the plane to see my folks I had no idea what I had packed or whether I’d locked up the house properly! Not surprisingly, I didn’t paint much during August and haven’t picked up a pencil at all until tonight.

I confess, I was very lucky to score a couple of cancellation days of pure watercolour indulgence with Jean Haines on her August workshops. They were amazing, exciting, challenging and inspirational… but otherwise I didn’t do much at all.

I returned to Gypsy Sketch Club tonight with very low expectations. Happy just for a sketch, a piece of pizza and some great live music from Eddie the accordion player. I was nicely stunned when my drawings during the evening turned out better than anything I’ve done so far this year.

So, I heartily recommend the benefits of walking away from something you’re struggling with… just for a short while completely switch off and forget it. When you go back to it you can’t possibly expect very much of yourself… and so the pressure’s off!! You might just be surprised at what you can achieve!