Balancing work and play (and ink)

Hi everybody, welcome back to another blog post! Yet again, a very busy week for me and a very stormy week for everyone on Anglesey! I'll be honest with you, I'm forcing myself to write this through yawns and bleary eyes, I am so tired! I've had a few late nights, working on various bits and bobs and it turns out that my vampiric (I'm pretty sure that's a word but my laptop doesn't seem to think so - 'vampire-like' if you will) tendencies are starting to take their toll! At the minute though, I'm only getting one day off a week and that isn't enough to get all the things I need to get done, done! So my routine goes a little something like this lately:

8am

Drag myself out of bed, get dressed and then put my fluffy dressing gown on top so I can ease myself from the cosy warmitude of bed and sleep and into the real world. Dressed, but also not dressed.

8.10am

A bowl of Weetos or Weetabix, depending what we've got and what I fancy and a much needed cup of tea, in the biggest mug I can find. If my eyes aren't still drooping shut, whilst the kettle is boiling I'll pry my eyes open and pop my lenses in, mostly to wake myself up a bit.

8.20am

5 mins to eat breakfast, so I'll either answer some emails, watch a little YouTube video or just stare sleepily outside while I eat my cereal.

8.25am

Quick bit of makeup, coat on, shoes on, swig the last mouthful of tea, grab a bottle of water, sketchbook and handbag, car keys and go!

If I'm working at Sea Zoo, then I'll get in my car and drive to Brynsiencyn and then settle in to get some work done in the office. If I'm in the shops, then all those times above are shifted an hour ahead, and I'll walk to work and open up shop. I then spend the day at work, before heading home for anytime between 5.30 and 7, depending on which work, how much I had to do, and so on and so forth.

6pm

Arrive home. Very tired and waning a bit. Kettle on, shoes off, candles on, coat off, handbag on the chair, check Puffin Prints emails. Respond to anything urgent while the tea is brewing. If Farren is home, we'll have a cup of tea together and a little chill time, or if he isn't, then I'll probably watch something on Netflix or read for a little bit with my cuppa and usually something yummy.

7pm

Up to the studio. Decide on which piece I'm going to work on. Cut paper to size if it's a new project, get clean water in my paint cup, get paint supplies ready, as well as pencils, rubbers, pens, etc. Light my studio candle. At the moment, it's a 'cashmere and cocoa' scented one from the shop and it's amazing, but it's nearly burned through so I'll have to get another soon!

7.15pm

Before starting any artwork, I'll check emails and do some admin bits, because in all likelihood, I'll get painty or inky or messy in some way and it's much easier to type without painty fingers. I mean, I often use my laptop with paint hands anyway, but it's easier to get these things done beforehand. Admin stuff includes emails, updating the website, sorting out any orders to get ready for posting the next day, maybe preparing some stock for delivery, creating and sending invoices, or sometimes chasing unpaid invoices up, making orders, paying invoices, organizing events, maybe scheduling some social media posts, planning a blog post, the list goes on and on. Mum deals with a lot of these things too, so thankfully I don't have to do all of those things on my own! At the minute, with three jobs, multiple commissions and the developing Christmas range, I really couldn't do it all by myself!!

8pm-ish

I'll wrap up the admin bits and get to work on some arty things. Could be a commission, could be a new design for Puffin Prints, could even be an inktober post! At the minute, with so much going on, I have had to let inktober slip by the wayside a little bit, and I fell behind by about 4 days this week! I've been trying to create quicker images in my breaks at work so that it doesn't take up as much of my time and this has helped me catch up, and so now I think I'm pretty much back on track, for the time being at least...

9pm

I'll draw or paint or scan and digitally edit for about an hour or so before either I realise that I'm starving and it's time for food, or Farren will have cooked something delicious and it's time to go and eat! He's amazing, he cooks the most incredible food all the time, I am truly a very lucky lady!!

10.30pm

After dinner, we will either chill out, because at this time of the day I am knackered! Or, if I'm feeling very determined, I'll make another whopping great cup of tea and head up to the studio to carry on with the work I'd left before dinner.

12.30am

I am one of those elusive and rare night-showerers. I prefer to shower before bed, half dry my hair and let it dry overnight whilst I sleep, and then when I wake up, it's done!

1am

Time for bed! I finish up and leave whatever it was to dry, and crawl into bed to do it all again tomorrow!

Now, this is what happens on a regular day, however, the thing I am finding difficult at the minute is trying to adjust to being a person who technically has three jobs and also a social life! Having moved back home, a lot of my friends and Farren's friends still live in the area, and so we've been seeing people more and also trying to see Mum and Nana and Pops and everyone, I'm finding it a bit tricky to balance this with my workload. I'm very much a people pleaser and so I really don't like to say no, and I also think that in general, I'm such a home bird that it's probably very good for me to go out and interact with people in the real world sometimes! However, being that I work in the day most days, this means my social arrangements are limited to evenings. Spending time with people in the evening essentially means either inviting people over or going out for a meal/drink, and both of these options generally mean that any work later on is a write-off. I don't know if it's the time of year and there's some sort of intrinsic hibernation desire within me, or what it is, really, but at the moment I am finding myself very tired all the time. I think it's probably that I'm doing too much at once but really, I wouldn't want to have it any other way! Sorry that I'm treating you like a diary now, I'm just trying to convey why sometimes the blog posts and inktober and other things are sometimes getting a bit lost these days. I hope you understand and aren't too cross with me?

Enough whining, anyway, even though I'm tired, I love being busy, and whenever I'm not busy, I don't know what to do with myself! I think I just need to get a bit more organised, which isn't something I'm terribly good at. Or rather, it is, in a work sense I am meticulously organised, but in my own personal life I am not, and being as my personal life at the moment is essentially Puffin Prints working time, I think I've found the problem! So I'm going to try to manage my 'off the clock' time better so that I can schedule in free time to spend with friends and family. Phew. That was a lot to get off my chest that I didn't even realise I was harbouring! Writing these blogs is pretty therapeutic, and in it's own weird way, quite good at helping me get my thoughts in order and organised.

So. Moving on from there with a fresh outlook on life (amazing what two paragraphs of brain-dump writing can do to sort your life out! Who knew?) let us delve into this past week's inktobers. I'm aware that some of you may now be sick to death of inktober and so that's why I've left these until the end of the blog post. If you're bored of inktober, feel free to skip this part!

We left off last week at day fourteen, so day fifteen...'mysterious.' No comment on this one. (Mysterious, eh?)

Day sixteen -'fat.' I did not like this prompt one bit. I struggled for a while because a) I didn't have much time for this prompt and as for b)...Brace yourself. I didn't want to draw a 'fat' person, because 'fat' is a somewhat relative term but more importantly, 'fat' is highly associated with negative connotations of body imagery and 'bad health.' Now obviously, I know that for most people, 'fat' is gross and bad and it means you have no self control and need to exercise more. I've recently been learning from various campaigns online that a number of people can't control the way their body manifests despite exercise and diet and these people are frequently targeted as 'lazy' and 'ugly' and these are not messages I want to get behind. I know this is likely a small number of people in the world but again, it all felt very negative and I couldn't think of an idea to change that. It was an uncomfortable prompt and I didn't know what to draw and so instead, after struggling for a bit, I drew a fat cell! A very quick and rushed one at that, but nevertheless, an adipose cell.

Day seventeen - 'graceful.' I cheated a bit on this one because I did not have time so I used the rotoscoping of a ballerina I did earlier in the year. Oops.

Day eighteen - 'filthy.' Cinderelly cinderelly!

I really enjoyed the prompt for day nineteen, and as such it was one of the ones I had a late night on! 'Cloud.' I embellished this prompt a little to 'head in the clouds.'

Aaaaaand last but not least, day twenty - 'deep.' Again, I got a bit stuck on this so I googled 'deep quotes' to give me some inspiration, and my favourite was 'if the world was blind, how many people would you impress?' Now, as an artist, this gave me a lot to think about!

I also used this one as an opportunity to again utilize the bleed through ink from a previous inktober piece. I think it looks very artsy and I actually really like this drawing, which is a rare thing from me!

Righto, 7pm, time to get some work done! Thanks for reading and I will catch you next week!

Rachel x