Robertson Studios

Long post incoming! Grab a cuppa and settle in. I haven’t written a thing since I returned from my trip to London and now I have a whole lot of words ready to fall out of my head as I look back over the first half of the year. I have interspersed some of my favourite sketches and paintings from the past couple of months throughout the post.

At the beginning of the year I selected the word NOURISH to be the theme that flavours my year. If you missed it you can read my first post about it HERE. I said I wanted to be intentional about how my year progresses, but I hasn’t felt that way. I guess it is good that some of it has been sort of autopilot-ish, I hope that means that certain things have become habits. Overall I have found it difficult to make sure I have the notion of nourishing myself in the forefront of my mind all the time, but on the other hand I have been more confident in myself and more inclined to just be myself without worrying what everyone else wants me to be. That has, in many ways, flowed through into being more aware of my energy flows and managing it on the go rather than waiting until I fall in a heap and get sick before I redress the imbalance.

It has felt a good year thus far. The first couple of points below probably won’t look like it, but taken in perspective, they are minor.

Here, in the same order as I presented them in my first post of the year, are some little updates on what I have been doing and feeling so far this year.

Movement – I have managed to be consistent in my weights routine and I am getting stronger week by week, but I still need to be moving more. My general movement has been hindered by some posture-related back issues. Walking is painful and whilst I am rehabbing it slowly, it does restrict my ability to get out and walk any great distance.

Nutrition – I have had no choice but to focus on my nutrition in the last couple of months. I appear to have developed an intollerance to some or other food chemical, so careful planning and examination is required to figure it all out. Food is boring as hell, but hey…I get to eat, there are many that do not have that luxury.

Brain food – Improving the quality of “stuff” that goes into my head has been easier than I imagined it might be, and I have seen an improvement in my overall anxiety levels as a result. I have weeded out my social media feeds, removed a bunch of pages and people that were no good for me, and muted a bunch of others that I would prefer to see less of. I am still working on checking the feeds less often, it seems a slow and steady approach to reining it all in is better for me than a sudden cold turkey approach – I don’t want to cut contact with other people off completely. My feeds now have significantly more beautiful things to show me, and that’s a happy thing. I also have more time to do the things that I love to do now that I am not grazing mindlessly on junk. I have read 17 books so far this year, so I am making my way through my reading stack reasonably steadily. I find myself torn between wanting to sketch and read when I have spare moments, but oddly I seem to be operating on a swings-and-roundabouts system where I’ll sketch solidly for a couple of weeks and then read for a couple of weeks. Seems to be working and I am feeding my intellect and curiosity regularly.

Sleep – I am sleeping better on the whole…mostly due to the changes in my approach to nutrition.

Self-care – On track! With a little help from a book club started by my friend Nat …looking at THIS book. It looks a little woo woo and  very American from the title and cover, but for the most part it is practical and easy to digest. It’s reinforcing much of what I already do, and it is great to have others to discuss the concepts with.

Play time – My inner child has been a little neglected … though she really did enjoy the trip to London! Being able to explore and experience new things and wonder at the scads of historical buildings and places and variety of humans all around was brilliant. I need to make more opportunities to play and not get bogged down in the day to day grind of life.

Balancing downtime and social – I still have a tendency to be a hermit, especially since work has become increasingly busy and energy-sapping, but I have made a point of getting out of the house and interacting with humans in person.

Relationships – Grabbing all opportunities with both hands! Oh that sounds bad…what I mean is…I spend as much time as I possibly can with those who mean the most to me!

Art and Writing – I have lacked the mental energy to write much of late. I started off blogging well and posting regularly, but kind of fell in a hole after my trip. Partly because I was a jetlagged zombie for a couple of weeks and didn’t get back into my routine. Or it could be that work has been taking all of my energy and all I can manage is some sketching at the end of the day. Not sure really, but I plan to be more consistent int he second half of the year. On the upside I have had a couple of very fun house commissions to paint since I got back, and I am finally getting stuck into working on the ladybird painting that has been gathering dust on my desk since the end of last year!

Soul food – My trip to London lit something inside of me. I felt so vibrant and buzzy. Everything around me was in high definition technicolour. The new experiences filled me with excitement and I felt very much alive. Travelling definitely feeds my soul! I cannot have that kind of stimulation and soul food everyday obviously, but remembering to seek that out regularly is a must. On the flip side of the coin, I have added yoga and meditation to the mix to help me slow down and unwind and allow me to take notice of the things that are happening in life without me paying attention, as tends to happen when things get busy and I am intent on getting from week to week in one piece. I am hoping this allows me to see some wonder in my current city which has become dull and mundane to me after living here for nearly 35 years.

Overall I am content in my life at present, if a little busy at times, and I am coming to realise that all of these aspects of life flow out of what is happening in my head. Even though sometimes I feel like I do too much navel gazing, I know that I must do some if I am to remain on an even keel when life throws it’s curveballs at me

A dear friend who loves Sherlock Holmes and who is a kindred spirit in terms of introspection and self-examination sent me this quote when we were chatting about brain overload (it’s from Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet):

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

Now, that I have cleared out my brain-attic a little, I will do some painting to round out my relaxing Sunday! Thank you so much for reading if you have made it this far!

How is your year progressing? Have you learned what you wanted to learn? Done what you wanted to do? Are you looking after yourself? I hope you are enjoying your life…it is too short not to.

This love bug painting has been sitting on my desk, unfinished, since the beginning of September last year. This week I didn’t pick up a pen all week except for some scratchy meeting doodles. There seems to be some manner of slump happening, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.

I have been going well with drawing regularly this year, up until now. I have been energised and soothed by the drawing process. I have enjoyed learning new things. I felt that I had been nourishing my creative development well. But then it stopped. I didn’t feel like drawing at all. I considered it once or twice, but couldn’t figure out what to draw. My imagination had turned off. It was as though I had exceeded mental bandwidth.

As for the unfinished love bug painting, I think that’s time and energy issue. Bang for buck, if you will. I have been getting far more satisfaction out of my sketchbook efforts than in the protracted effort of a large piece that needs drying time and far more concentration and precision. Sketchbook work gives me short, sharp sessions of 20-30 minutes (oftentimes less) to produce a finished page that is colourful and fun, as opposed to a ‘proper’ art piece that takes days or weeks of incremental efforts here and there. It bothers me that I don’t have the staying power at the moment for this type of work…I love the result of the concerted effort. But I have yet to ‘make’ myself do it.  Welcome to the ramblings of my addled mind 🙂

I don’t suppose it helps that this painting is at its ugly stage. Time to push through perhaps? The thought crossed my mind that I could abandon it, but I think I would learn more if I finished it, even if it doesn’t turnout well.

I’m not sure, I seem to be lacking in patience/bandwidth across the board lately. Time to re-evaluate my routines maybe? I don’t want my creative habits to wane because I let myself become too busy. Or perhaps I just need to relax and allow my creative output to ebb and flow in time with the other things in my life. Manage the overall energy balance and accept that sometimes I will not have the time or focus to do the intricate pieces that I want to. I need to enjoy being able to put pen or brush to paper in whatever form it takes. Next month or next year it may well be different again. Fact remains that I will be drawing and painting, but I don’t want to lump guilt on myself for not meeting an arbitrary, and at this point imagined, standard.

What do you think? Is it the swings and roundabouts of the creative life? Has it happened to you? What did you do?

I realised a long time ago that having a long list of goals and resolutions for a particular year, with arbitrary timelines, was a good way to manufacture angst for no real reason, and make myself stressed.

Do I want to get things done in life? Yes of course. Do I have goals? For sure! What I don’t have are deadlines, because life has a way of having other ideas about what occurs in my day to day happenings. Why create artificial stress for myself? What I’d rather have is action, and for me to do that in a way that is adaptable, flexible, holistic and uplifting, I decided to choose a word or theme for each year. In years gone by I have had STRONG and CONFIDENCE as themes. I lost my way for a bit in the aftermath of my divorce and didn’t have a word or theme as such; I was too busy surviving and licking my wounds. Reacting. Consolidating.

This year I am ready to have an intentional year. My theme for 2017 is Nourish.

What does nourish mean? The dictionary says:

It has the feel of strengthening – both mentally and physically. It also speaks to me of caring, compassion and nurturing. It feels like healing.

I want to build healthy, sustainable, life-long habits to look after myself, and make space to allow others to look after me if I need it or if they want to. It appears to be an awfully long list, but comprises the little parts that make up my life. All of the parts that will be nourished in tiny little incremental ways each day. Nourishment needs to be balanced, and it must be a gentle, loose approach or I will dig my heels in and buck against even my own expectations. Will I get it right all the time? No, but that’s ok too. Being kind to myself is part of nourishment too. If I can build the habits and the correct thinking, these things will roll on over the course of years.

So…what areas can benefit from a little nourishment this year, what will it look like?

• Movement – I need to move more in a general sense. I have a sedentary job and then like to come home and create art, so I’m on my butt a lot. I also want to continue to develop a consistent training regime to get strong.
• Nutrition – choose food that does me good and supports health as I get older without getting all dogmatic and extreme about it, because that will suck my soul dry and ultimately not be sustainable.
• Brain food – get rid of ‘junk food’ such as mindless television and most social media, 99% of news sites and broadcasts, advertising, reality tv, toxic people, avoid click-bait. I want to practice more critical thinking. I have to ask myself…Is this fake news? Is this sensationalism? Is this ideological propaganda? Instead I want to feed my brain with proper nutrition; choose reliable sources of information from a wide variety of viewpoints so that I am not in an echo chamber. I want to keep learning. Replace the ugliness with beauty, practice gratitude to counteract the whingers and passive aggressive rants, and surround myself with the right people.
• Sleep – work at improving the quality of my sleep.
• Self-care  – facials, rest, bubble baths and massages (mind you…all of the things on this list are self-care in one way or another, but these are the indulgences!).
• Play time – encourage my inner child to come out more often. Life is too short not to have fun and to explore and have a sense of wonder about everything.
• Down time versus social time balance – social interaction exhausts me (including work), so I need to make sure I balance that with appropriate periods of down time to recharge my batteries.
• Relationships – pour time into the ones that matter and release, with kindness, the ones that are toxic and emotionally draining. I want to spend time with the ones that want to gaze at the stars and dive deep into conversations about life and the universe – the ones that can build me up to be a better person.
• Art and Writing – eventually I would love to be writing and creating art full-time, in the short term I will continue to give them time and courses to let them grow and develop. I will explore options and perhaps arrive at my own recognisable style.
• Soul food – get out in nature more, travel, go to galleries, surround myself with beauty …and much of this will tie in with the brain food that I choose to indulge in.

If I am nourishing myself in these ways I believe it will flow through into my art and writing. Each of them are intertwined and interdependent and add up to a happy and content Michelle. And that’s who I want to be. Happy, relaxed, content, at peace. The old thing about artists needing to be in perpetual anguish, I think, is rubbish; an outdated stereotype. I can create from a happy place. The unending guilt and fear of a life lived under a controlling paradigm is gone. I am free to fly, and nourishing myself will help me grow in my feathers so that I can soar.

So as I wander barefoot into 2017, these are the things I will be asking myself

• Does this feed my soul?
• Does this feel good?
• Does this feel nourishing?
• What would “nourish” look/feel like in this situation?

What works for you? Do you plan tightly or loosely? Do you have a word?

My art desk is currently piled with the detritus of my day to day life. It is a flat surface and thus collects the bits and pieces that need somewhere to reside for a short time before moving on, like the box filled with goodies for a friend that I really need to finish filling and tape it up to put in the post. It also has the drawing bag I took to the concert I went to last weekend that I haven’t yet unpacked. There are other bits and pieces there….scissors and tape left over from the christmas gift wrapping event….brushes lying around drying before I can put them back in their containers…balls of wool that I wound off the skein over the weekend for a project to keep my hands busy (like I need anything else!)

My sacred creative space is piled with junk. I am prevented from creating at my desk because there is crap all over it. Well…perhaps that’s a bit harsh; it’s not exactly crap. It’s just stuff that shouldn’t be there. But it is there nonetheless, and it is blocking my creativity. It needs to go.

Art is one of the things that makes me happy and feel satisfied with life and helps me process the not so wonderful things in life too … so why is it the one thing that gets covered – literally and figuratively – with other stuff? It consistently gets pushed to the bottom of the list in favour of sometimes legitimate tasks, but many times, mindless procrastination and time-wasting on things like Facebook and inane websites about things that don’t matter? I replace something that makes me feel good with meaningless time-wasting that more often than not leaves me feeling dissatisfied and cranky. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense does it? Something to consider for the new year. I have long since given up making new years resolutions, but I think it’s about time I found a word to guide my year ahead and figure out which direction I want to steer this life of mine (yes, it’s the time of year for the existential crisis to occur). To remove the junk that’s blocking my creativity and to start paddling a bit … the boat has been drifting long enough.

I haven’t posted much here of late, Instagram and the RS Facebook page is where I post more regularly, and I had considered closing the blog down altogether, but I am feeling the need to write again…so perhaps this will remain! Stay tuned. Meantime, while I get my head together….

• Follow me on Instagram to see regular art updates and the things that inspire me (this is where you will be notified of sales in my store.)
• Follow my Facebook page for a more interactive experience as well as giveaways and competitions in the new year
• Take a look at my Flickr account if you would like to take a look through my sketchbooks and art back through the years

Finally before I toddle off and clean my desk…I went to see Keith Urban on Saturday night! There was plenty of waiting around to get in, so I sketched while I waited. Here’s the fruit of my scribbling. I had hoped to sketch during the gig, but there was a problem … you cannot dance and draw at the same time :O I had a blast! Such a great night out. (ok… enough procrastinating.. going now!)

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Artist’s Block….it seems to be the bane of my existence at the moment. I keep showing up at the page. I keep writing and scribbling, hoping to unlock the flood of ideas that are mounting inside my head… but there’s just too much else going on. I have jobs to do, but I can’t seem to get motivated.

Perhaps I just need to sit down and work. Stop waiting to be inspired.

I sit and look at blank pages. I look at half done drawings. I pick up pens and pencils. I play with dip pens and ink and scrawl unintelligible words on scratch pads to distract myself from the real work I need to do.

Sometimes my brain is just too full or too pained to be able to allow the pictures to make it to the page. Sometimes I wonder what it might look like if I just let those thoughts and feelings out onto the page. Perhaps I should try to be less stilted and contrived in my sketchbook…stop trying to make final art and just let it all hang out… just keep showing up to the page and hope that eventually the rubbish gets exhausted and the good stuff starts to flow again. Or perhaps my rubbish is someone else’s inspiration… or perhaps it’s ok to just be rubbish for a while.

I haven’t drawn in my sketchbook in weeks. This fern drawing is from last year’s New Zealand sketchbook. I’m hoping as I keep trying, something will come out eventually. Baby steps.

Perhaps.

Perhaps it will all unfurl and flood the page in its own good time.

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“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
– Maya Angelou

I ran aross this quote this morning. It made me smile! Creativity is such a positive thing in my life at the moment, that the thought of it being available as a never ending stream makes me very very happy.

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I’m back being creative again after a bit of a break from posting. Here are some of the watercolours I’ve been playing with lately in preparation for some new products in my Etsy store. If you want to see what inspires me or follow along with my projects as they progress you can follow the action on my Instagram account or on the Robertson Studios Facebook page, otherwise I’ll be posting here more regularly from here on out as I continue to create pretty things and build my business.

If you have come over from my old blog (michellegeorge.net) … welcome! Take a look around .. you’ll find more pictures and less words over here 🙂

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The secret weapon for anyone wanting to give a power boost to their creativity or to bust through a creative block is exercise. It gets the blood flowing and oxygenates and energizes the body. For me, exercises that involve a hypnotic rhythm, like walking or running or riding work best. Somehow they help me concentrate.

This week I treated my inner artist to a training ride out in the forest. It was a bit wet and muddy, which is always fun because I have to be so neat an tidy and ‘management’ during the week. Getting dirty is a wonderful relief 🙂

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After many months of procrastinating I have finally updated my shop page on the blog so that it’s easier to see what I have available at a glance. To celebrate I’m having a sale on everything in the store. Use coupon code 25OFFSALE when you check out to receive a 25% discount on any purchase!

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How gorgeous is this suede, custom made Moleskine cover?? It smells fabulous and it makes my heart sing. My inner artist is spoiled rotten!!

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