Base Building

Right, having returned from my holiday, I'm back at work and the first day has gone very well, with managing to do not only some more work on my book but also succeeding in digging up the painting and starting to harden out some of the details of what the central pair are standing on.  Not an easy task as I had heck and all trouble making the perception right when I drew it, so much so that I actually abandoned my original idea for the back ground and drawing something else in its place.

As it is I am now trying something new with the back ground and it appears to be working so far.  Normally I draw in every detail and then paint the colours in.  With this back ground I roughed out a very basic outline of the bottom half and I am now gradually building up layers of details, which is leading my painting back towards what I originally envisioned.  Well, they tell me that as an Autistic I have a duty, for want of a better word, to challenge myself to do new things, to build up a resistance for dealing with things that I cannot fully control, so I'm having a sling at it.  Seems to be working so far.  Now I just need to remember the ratios of pigment that went into the colour that I was using at the end of the day.

Now I just have to hope that I can hold the work-work balance between the two projects of writing and painting as I do not want to lose momentum on either of them, especially as I managed to write another eleven pages when I was away.  I know that doesn't sound like much but seeing that I normally write by hand with pen and paper for the first draft and average a page a day, that is actually pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself.  It certainly made up for a number of days when I didn't do any work on the writing at all because other jobs kept getting in the way.  I know that a writer should work as hard at their craft as a bricklayer works at theirs but I'm also the major care giver for an invalid Mother here.  Until last year my writing was pretty much relegated to being my anti-depression drug, taken as and when I could squeeze it in around keeping the sky together.

Hey, I think I've just come up with a new slogan - 'A page a day keeps depression away'.  Sounds catchy?

So the working holiday was a success and now I just have to try and keep the pace going.  If the work is never done, why do we start?

That being said I'm thinking of doing so overviews of the various planets in my book over the next few weeks as my blog posts.  Do people like that idea?