Today, I hurt. Profoundly. It's probably my gallbladder they say. I should "eat light" they say. What they don't say is how long I will be like this. So, I am home from work. As it turns out, your gallbladder is the very center of your being. When it hurts, you cannot move any other part of your body save your toes and fingers without causing an eruption of pain. It makes it hard to work on airplanes. It makes it hard to think. It just makes things hard. Except drawing. I have finally made some time to sit down a little and draw.

I was reading an artist's friend's blog recently. On their blog, they had a few time-lapsed videos of their creation of paintings and other works. In watching her work, I suddenly became very aware of a mistake I had been making for awhile now. I was making art more complicated than it needed to be. I had gotten self-conscious, well, about everything since getting fired. In my terrible self-consciousness, I had been trying way too hard to be "creative". Art was no longer a refuge for my brain to wander in. It was now disciplinary ground for me to practice, practice, practice until I could make all of the pictures in my head come out exactly as I saw them. But first, I must find the best images in my head and set the bar high! I was creating with something to prove; and that is a terrible way to create.

While in this awful mindset, I made the following painting. Now, I am not proud of this painting. No amount of encouragement is going to convince that it isn't terrible. The first reason being that I had forgotten entirely how difficult the paints that I chose had been to use. I did not enjoy painting most of this. It was a struggle. When I look at this painting, I feel that struggle all over again. And I feel self-conscious and melodramatically creative.

The next photo is a dandelion I drew today in order to distract myself from the gallbladder pain. When I look at it, I don't remember the gallbladder pain, I just remember thinking intensely about the shapes, the lines, and dandelions. It was magic to watch pen become plant. And I love it. It is simple and ordinary, but I find it lovely.