Happy New Year 2020!

Hello my Freaky Darlings!

I hope you had a most excellent New Year's! I know I did! 😄

Wow!

What a rollercoaster of a ride the last year has been! A new beginning, a dramatic ending, and a slow re-emergence...

2019 started with me on a mission to make it happen. It would be the year I turn everything upside down and make my dreams come true! I had decided to stop with all the planning and paralysis by analysis rubbish, and crack the egg that I had been incubating for the past decade. I was finally feeling courageous!

I had goals for a proper website, personal branding, making a few arty YouTube videos, and get the content going. As such, in the first few months I achieved most of these goals. I have a brand design I’m happy with. I launched this website. I managed one speed-art video (video editing takes a looong time! 😫). I was producing a reasonable(ish) amount of content. I even got my first ever commission!

Then, at the middle of the year, I was met with utter heartbreak. The plot of my life suddenly got twisted around and I had to disappear for a while, figuring out what to do next. It smacked me off course, hard. A month or so later I found my own little place and have been living there since, quietly healing and working on my art.

Slowly but surely I’ve been getting better over the last half of 2019. I rekindled some old friendships, made some new ones, and learned valuable personal lessons along the way, especially about self worth.

Inktober 2019 Day 3

Along comes October, bringing with it the *ultimate* artists’ challenge; Inktober! I knew I wanted to have another go, to see if i could improve on my 2018 attempt (check out my gallery for the drawings - scroll to the end 😉). I think I got off to a great start and I am really pleased with the drawings. I slipped up a little after the first 11 days, I needed a couple of days off, and unfortunately didn’t really get back into the swing of it.

I managed two more drawings, making it 13 in total, and in typical raven fashion, I flapped off to find something more shiny.

Honestly, I'm not sure I will be doing the Inktober challenge again. 😕

After a brief period of rest, doodling, and hunting for things that glint, I got an urge to do something bigger than usual; to produce a mixed media piece on canvas. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Just make it up as I go along and see where it ends up! It got dubbed Experiment #1. It is still a work in progress that I intend to pick up again soon, and do a post about it on here. There is a Story Highlight on my Instagram profile of the progress so far, plus a few posts in my feed.

At the start of December, however, something shifted for me and I downed brushes as it suddenly became a rather busy month for me socially speaking… Not to mention my birthday, Yule, and New Year’s! 😏

Here’s how my December became a little bit wild:

The very end of November saw an old friend of mine from far away come to visit. This is the first time I have been out and socialised properly in months. We went out for the afternoon on a Saturday, had a lovely time seeing some old friends, coffee and cake, and mooching around the town.

At the end of my friend’s visit we went to the *only* rock pub in town, Redrum, for a drink before they had to go. I hadn't set foot in this place for years. It's previous incarnation had closed its doors a very long time ago - almost another lifetime for me. The place had reopened, under new a new name and ownership, about three years ago, and for some unknown-to-me reason I hadn't yet been back to check it out. Even knowing I have mates that frequent this establishment!

I was planning to go home too, but instead talked myself into staying out. I had been waiting ‘til I was “ready” to go out and for it to be to the one place I had been dying to go for ages. I figured I was probably never going to be “ready”, and there I was, already in there, so don’t bail out now! It was a bold move for me, but was helped by the good fortune that I have another long time friend who works in this pub and was there that day! 😅

I am so grateful I made the decision to stay out. Life lesson: Do things before you're "ready" to, or you never will!

And then December went a bit crazy! More new friends, a new favourite band (behold their awesomeness!), going to their live gigs and on an unexpected adventure to a New Year’s Eve party… 🤘😆🎉

Needless to say, my 2019 ended and 2020 started on a high! 😄

My Intentions for the New Year:

There are a number of projects I started last year that didn’t get finished properly. What I mean is the projects got finished in real life, but I didn’t share them properly with you guys like I said I would. For example, I alluded to a string-art project I was working on as a gift for my Dad, showing weird progress shots on my Instagram story, but I never shared the finished piece. Or “How I Made It” articles that never appeared for other projects. I want to start this year off by tying up all the loose ends of last year.

This is my list of loose ends:

• Inktober 2019 roundup and thoughts - DONE

• Why I made a bunch of 2D liquorice allsorts

• Mysterious string-art project

• Speed-art video of my Groot commission

• Chat/whinge about the pros and cons of having a day job

Not too much to get through... 😅

After this I will be picking up from where I left off with Experiment #1.

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2020 will be a year of massive change methinks, let's make it good.

Change starts with you, but it doesn’t start until you do.

~ Tom Ziglar

Don't hope for better, be better.

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

~ Howard Zinn

We can do this. Make it an awesome year!

Happy New Year!

Much love and Blessed Be

Emily xxx

*Index Of Odd

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