If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed that it has been quiet for a while. You may also have noted that – other than finishing off my extended Inktober challenge – I have not produced any art in weeks. The reason for both is that I was laid low by some mysterious nasty viral thing. It probably all started on Thanksgiving Day when I spent a large chunk of the day at Urgent Care. That illness then segued into what I thought was a sinus infection. I get sinus infections a couple of times every winter so I am used to just treating the symptoms and pushing through. But then I started to feel really cruddy. Seriously awful. What I assumed was a series of separate cruddy illnesses was, it appeared, probably all part of a bigger illness. A nurse friend diagnosed me with ‘flu from a distance but who really knows. I just know it was completely debilitating and was the most ill I have felt since I had ‘flu when my 8 year old was a newborn. During my entire working life, I have had seven sick days off work; three of them were this month. I had fevers, chills, aches, zero appetite, and a pounding headache that stretched from the backs of my eyes all the way down my neck. Thankfully my kids are all now old enough to largely fend for themselves and get themselves to and from school because I really was not functioning as a human being let alone as a parent. Since recovering, I have been very tired – perhaps with some sort of post-viral fatigue – so I have had almost zero free time because staying on top of regular work, chores, family life, and festive planning is taking me longer than usual. Still, worse things happen at sea and I am thankful to have my health generally. That, however, is why I have been absent from blogging and why I have not spent any time at my art table.
Still, I was desperate to do something arty because I don’t feel fully like myself unless I am doing something creative. I, therefore, picked up my Art Journal because it does not matter a jot if I complete the page or not or make a mess in my art journal. I looked at last week’s Art Journal Adventure prompt which was to use a quotation. I am not one of those people who has inspirational quotations to hand so I was pondering what to write while overhearing my kids, who were decorating a gingerbread house in an adjacent room. They were listening to Christmas music so that gave me my inspiration. I have been thinking about practicing some brush lettering for a while so I thought that writing down some festive words using a brush dipped in watercolour paint would be an easy, fuss-free way to fill a journal page. My brush lettering still needs a great deal of work, especially since I have a tendency to be inconsistent and to lapse into just using my own handwriting, but it was fun to practice and it was therapeutic to sit down at my art table again and splash around in some paint.
A Pict in PA 