New Year, New Start update and its not good

It's been more or less three weeks since my New year, New Start, New Me plan and this is not going to be the update I was hoping for. 

The three areas I want/need to improve on have gone like this...

• Weight - I've put it on. 
• Physical wellbeing - Ive been feeling under the weather, sluggish and felt pretty run down most of the time. 
• Mental wellbeing - Panicky, depressed and low.

So all in all a bit of a disaster. But I'm not going to give up, I know where I'm going wrong and I have no-one else to blame but myself.

Weight - I'm struggling to give up (or not giving up) the lunch time bag of crisps. I'm sneaking in bites of cheese when I'm making Roy's sandwiches. I've been eating oat and rice cakes with 'real' butter AND added peanut butter. There has also been the nuts, chocolates and sweets left over from Christmas, but these have all gone now thank goodness, unfortunately they've all gone into my tummy. 

Physical wellbeing - I have tried to make time for exercise; I started doing yoga three times a week but that's drifted off. I enjoyed walking but haven't been out for any proper ones lately, partly due to the weather and feeling run down but also out of sheer laziness. Ive decided though rather than stressing about not having exercised and giving myself a hard time about it, I'll concentrate on eating sensibly, doing things that I enjoy and taking one step at a time, literally in this case.

Mental wellbeing - This last year has been particularly testing for everyone, but for people like me who suffer from health anxieties it can be even more terrifying. But, I'm trying to keep busy, trying to make time for art and planning the clearing out of the house that's under offer. Now I just need to pull my socks up and get on with it. 

So that's it, all of this procrastinating has to stop today, or maybe tomorrow. No definitely today!

Printmaking course

For a long time I've wanted to do a printmaking course and finally plucked up the courage to have a go last January. 

Prior to the course start date I signed up for a one night taster session. We were asked to take in some designs and I took a number of inspiration pictures and copies of photographs.

After a health and safety talk and a demonstration, we were let loose with the inks and got to have a go at drypoint, using an acrylic sheet. Within my prep work I'd printed off a picture of a charcoal drawing I had done some time ago and after chatting to the instructor decided to do this printing white on black, rather than the usual black on white.

Reference photo taped under the acrylic 

Plate ready for inking

Printed drypoint

Having already had a go at Drypoint I was hoping to be able to get stuck into more of this, Lino or Collagraph printing but the whole term was to be given over to Mono printing and to say that I am terrible at creating one off art pieces spontaneously would be an understatement. 

I watched as the other students dived in and produced great work from just playing around with ink and experimenting with found materials, whereas to start with all it seemed that all I could manage was to make a lovely square print of orange, literally just a printed, slightly graded orange. 

'Orange' and not even nicely aligned at that

I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights and looked upon with slight pity, but on the plus side my bench was very clear and easy to clean up at the end of the night. 

But I persevered for a couple more weeks...

and eventually did do one mono type that I actually liked. It's the ghost print of a too dark, messy, use what's on the bench print.

Mono print original

Ghost print

What was supposed to be fun became stressful and scary. My hopes at becoming a proficient printmaker were becoming dashed, along with my enthusiasm, my being afraid to let go and and get stuck in was holding me back yet again.

After observing my terror I was taken aside by the instructor and asked that as perhaps mono printing was 'not my thing' maybe I would like to have a go at something else. I told her about my hopes of doing Lino and collagraph printing and she encouraged me to have a go the following week. That meant I could work on a couple of designs in advance and have a go at printing them in class.

I had some soft cut Lino at home which I carved and printed the following week.

'Wedding day'

'I'm watching you'

I then brought some Japanese Lino and had another go.

'See a Bee...'

I really enjoyed the lino printing but still wanted to have a go at collagraph. Luckily I got to carve a self portrait, mount board plate on my last week, as sadly but inevitably the classes were cancelled in March due to the first National Lockdown. One day I may even have a go at printing it.

Self portrait collagraph plate

So all in all I guess I can say that although the course was cut short I was very fortunate to be able to have a go at Mono Print, Lino Print, Drypoint and Collagraph. Not bad in just a few short weeks. 

Paper Cutting

My daughter moved home on Tuesday, during another National Lockdown. 

I wasn't allowed to help, mostly through our own fears, apart from cleaning the old house once the removal men had been and gone and the house was empty. 

So with masks on, windows open and working in different rooms, we got to spend a couple of hours as near to being in each others company as we'd got in weeks.

Not wanting to go to the shops I decided to make a moving home card, to go with the moving in fruitcake I'd made the day before. 

I've only done paper cutting to make cards once before, last year for my husbands birthday. Its a fiddly but pleasant task. 

Roys card was based on one of my photographs taken some time ago, one that I'd like to make into a Lino cut or collagraph one day.

Roy's birthday card

Inspiration for Rhiannon's card was taken from work by a Russian paper artist Tania Lissova. I say inspiration, but what I actually mean is that I tried to blatantly copy a couple of her simpler paper plants. I have no idea how she makes such intricate tiny pieces of art, they are just amazing. Apparently she doesn't use scissors and they are probably a quarter of the size of my effort.

Rhiannon's moving home card

Portraiture

I've always had a go on and off at painting, but it's been during the lockdowns that I've really got to pick up my paintbrushes, to while away some hours, listening to music and quietening my brain down. It's nice to be able to shut off and concentrate on something that is relatively calming. 

In the past I have tried to paint the odd landscape and would dearly love to be able to paint beautiful abstracts, but I really struggle with not only the discipline of these but also any idea of where to start and so I always to revert back to portraiture.

But as with anything, fear of failure holds me back from realising any possible potential I may have at getting better and as a result my paintings are always really tight and I definitely need to learn how to loosen up. 

Some of my portrait paintings are below, from my first attempts at watercolours, to moving on to gouache which I do really enjoy. I'm definitely more happy with than others. 

Watercolour and coloured pencil - November 2018

Watercolour - December 2018

Gouache and coloured pencil - March 2020

Gouache - May 2020

Gouache - May 2020

Gouache - May 2020

Gouache - November 2020

Gouache - November 2020

Gouache - November 2020

Gouache and coloured pencil - December 2020

Gouache - January 2021

New Year, New Start, cont.....

I find it amazing, having done so much research that I haven't actually committed wholeheartedly to a new way of eating/living, even though I know it will benefit me in many different ways. 

I would have thought being locked down for most of 2020 it was the perfect time to get my act together, to cook healthy meals and exercise regularly, but I've actually found it much harder to be healthy at home, than in an office. 

My husband is a sandwich, crisps and chocolate bar or biscuit kind of lunch person, whereas my lunch of choice was usually hummus, sauerkraut and crudités packed for work, but now I'm home it's become a mixture of the two. I'm still having the hummus and sauerkraut, but on top of that I'm also now having the crisps and chocolate. It therefore comes as no surprise that I've put on quite a lot of weight. But its a New Year and no more excuses, time to pull my big girl pants up (and they are quite big) and get on with it.

So back to the research. As well as internet articles, documentary films and blog posts, I have also read, amongst others the following books;

• How not to die - Dr Michael Greger
• The China study - Dr Colin Campbell
• Eat to live - Dr Joel Fuhrman
• The starch solution - Dr John McDougall
• Forks over knives - Founded by Brian Wendel  

All of these books and many others conclude, through years of separate scientific research, that eating a Whole Food Plant Based diet (WFPB), SOS free (no salt, oil or refined sugar) is the healthiest lifestyle to adopt. Not only can it help with losing those excess pounds, but it can also stop or even reverse many deceases, from heart decease to Alzheimers. For me personally if I can avoid or reduce my chances of ever getting Alzheimers, having watched my mum deteriorate daily or heart problems like my dad, then I'm going to have to start now, no more dilly dallying around and I haven't got time to put it off any longer. 

Even though I am plant based 95% of the time, I haven't been truly committed and the odd bites of cheese and what has become the regular milk chocolate bars most certainly do not count as vegan or whole food.

So from tomorrow I will be starting my journey to a WFPB life, dragging my husband along for the ride. 

It is my hope that committing to making regular updates, through this platform, will keep me on the straight and narrow and help me reach my goal of becoming a happier, healthier individual by the end of 2021. 

But it's not all going to be about diet and getting healthy this year, I also want to get art projects up and running, whether in the form of printing, mixed media or painting. I want to do this to build up my confidence and portfolio, with the hope that I will be able to start making sales by the end of the year. 

New Year, New Start

Thank goodness 2020 is out of the way. 

2020, the year I got to leave work to finally do fun things with the grandchildren, spend time with my mum, go on a cruise, enjoy Black Deer festival and get fit and healthy.....well it didn't turn out as planned for any of us, but we've got through a year that will go down in history and be remembered as possibly the worst year in our lifetimes.   

But looking forward; apart from the obvious hopes of life returning to some sort of normality, for me a major start to my new year has got to be about gaining control of my health and fitness and I need to do this both for my physical and mental wellbeing. 

I want to try to avoid, halt or reverse any further chances of developing deceases that I may either inherit or develop with my current lifestyle. It does include losing weight, quite a lot of weight, but it means more than that. It means putting into practice all the knowledge I've gleaned over the last couple of years through much research, reading and learning along the way. It means having more energy and not feeling like I'm dragging myself around all the time, it means not needing afternoon naps because I'm exhausted from doing nothing all day, it means sleeping through the night rather than just a couple of hours at a time and it means just being happier in my own skin. 

Having lost 2.5 stone 4 years ago on a low carb, low calorie diet I find myself not quite back at where I started but definitely on my way, overweight, sluggish and miserable, but not quite miserable enough to go back to the low carb plan, rather this time around it will be a much healthier way of eating (WOE) and I will be adopting a Whole Food Plant Based diet (WFPB).

To be continued......