My great yesterday - Friday the 13th of January 2023.
Good morning, lovely people. I hope your weekend is going well. I hope you don’t mind if I were to tell you about my lovely Friday.
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Obligatory selfie. “What does this show?”, you may ask. I’m not really sure, but it’s a selfie I took on Friday - faces immediately breed familiarity with a writer’s sentiment so why not pop one in. I do love a pink and black striped top.  |
Happy New Year everyone, even though we are almost two weeks into the beauty that is 2023. I am happy to say good omens were cast over this day ( merely the fact that I washed my hair this Thursday ) and I for once, feel fulfilled and content with my “performance” for today. Rather robotic isn’t it? To describe yourself interacting with regular activities as your “performance”.
“Hur bur bur bur so techno-orientalist Asian social credit system Black Mirror Cyd!”
“Performance!”
Horribly sorry I wrote that.
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I’m “not old”. There isn’t any need for this photo for the congruity of this blog post. This actually does the opposite and effectively stints the progress of this article and its main concern. To tell you about my day… Anyways let’s move on …  |
Trivial activities which seem small can often have the largest impact on my day, I wonder if you feel the same way. For me I begrudgingly organised this old box of loom bands this Thursday, unbeknownst to me I would be thanking myself on the next day for being so “diligent”. AKA actually cleaning up my junk. On the next day, Friday ( to preface I am writing all of this on a Sunday night ) I felt more at peace when getting ready for school, more at ease even.
I am not someone who is easily spurred on and motivated off of sheer willpower alone, this isn’t something I just accept and I am going to take conscious steps to rectify this characteristic. I think getting into the habit of thoroughly washing my hair through the school week and not relying on the “powder on the bangs” method is a quick fix which will resolve my feelings of grogginess and incompetence. For the short-term I must keep up my workflow of painting, my happiness stems from a realised, artistic product and it wasn’t hard today to create the said product. Yippee to finishing paintings!
Art is not the only thing which makes me happy. I love History and English Literature. However some of the happiness I derive from said subjects touches on more personal topics which I am not too comfortable in sharing just yet, I maintain that my online presence remains grounded in my art, for the sake of my personal interests and boundaries. However, I experience many joys outside the realm of a paintbrush, a phone and a scanner.
I finished two paintings today actually, one with horrible proportions and patchy colours and one with slightly better proportions and less patchy colours. It would be a bit embarrassing if you couldn’t tell the difference, on my part not yours - I think I might have to clarify.
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The painting pictured above is the less refined one, more “rough around the edges”, if you will. We can not all be Emil Nolde, the relationship between the colours and the plains of the face is greatly compromised here. Perhaps it’s because I used 34 colours, perhaps it’s because I was lazy when creating the outline. Nevertheless, it’s a learning curve. In fact, I have grown quite fond of this wonky woman. |
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| Ah, yes. Pictured above is the aforementioned painting “with slightly better proportions and less patchy colours,” this is a step in the right direction. I am particularly happy with the nose of this colourful bald man, what a striking side profile. I like to pretend my paintings are sentient, it’s a rather funny thought. As I am streakily splashing red flumes over my pencil sketch I can imagine the yellow speckled eye of my watercolour painting turning towards me and whispering, “Cyd, please slow down”. I am not a dictator, I simply comply. “Yes, I will switch to green now.” Perplexing, mayhap. But there is a joviality to talking to your paintings. I have established countless friendships in the faces I paint.  |
Unsurprisingly, the turn of the New Year did not instantaneously bring a myriad of artful prosperity and whimsy to my life. As artistic progress is not constricted to the joy of a festivity - more realistically it is tied to your “internal work”, self-reflection, and productivity levels. But most importantly, your own conviction and desire to improve. The latter I often struggle with maintaining.
However despite my rocky start to the year, I believe in the midst of January an upwards trajectory has been lovingly fated in the stars of Northern England. I am hopeful that I can pull my life together, and enjoy the company of those around me as I grow artistically.
Have a good weekend everyone. Lots of love.
Enjoy the sparse and arbitrary selection of pictures for this Friday.
