Watercolor, War and Wedding

Right! So what happened since the last post, on January 21st?

For the past ten days there's war with Iran, so lots of missile sirens, running to the bomb shelter and waiting for the boom. Not me; I mean, I certainly wait for the boom, but I don't run to the shelter, not on account of unique bravery but on account of having a bum knee, and if I rush down three flights of stairs seven times a day, I'll end up hospitalized. So boyfriend and his kids rush to the shelter, while I remain up here with the cat and hope for the best. 

There's some anxiety there, I won't deny it; but it's quite small on account of my trademark unrealistic optimism (or denial). But there are significant benefits to not having to drop everything and run to spend half an hour in a cold, stuffy small space with eight neighbors some of which you really don't enjoy (the top-volume radio news from their phones, mainly). First, whatever I'm in the middle of doing isn't interrupted. Second, no cold and smelly and half an hour of discomfort. Just a brief wondering of 'is this it for me?' between the siren and the boom, and worrying about the boyfriend, who's spirit is slowly being whittled down by the interruptions and stress.

I hope the war ends soon; the people in Iran are in a far worse situation than us (this isn't a hate war between peoples, it's a hate war between the government's ideologies). For us this is (so far) discomfort; for them it's all the horrors of war, like you see in the movies, with a government that mostly kills its own citizens. Were I a religious person, I'd be praying for the Iranians. 

So that was the most dramatic news. Other than that - I'm still obsessed with watercolor, though I used to paint all day every day and had to stop for five weeks for a throat! Infection! Fudge! That! I had no idea a simple winter strep could knock me out for over a month. Now it's gone I'm back to my happy obsession, and, as a bonus, it turns out that when I play with my watercolor I forget about the war. Turns out all those tutorial people saying 'watercolor is good for your mental health' have a point. 

So here's the spread I'm working on tonight, with the two random-archaeology-items on the right and the beetles on the left. It's not a lot of painting proper, the spread designs - but it scratches the completionist itch, and I have at least one friend who says it's very aesthetic and pleasing, which is enough to motivate me.

It's been forty five years of making art; I started when I could hold a marker, did lots of colored pencils and acrylic during highschool, some oils later, switched to digital with photoshop when I was twenty, stuck to that until 36, then discovered Blender and 3D and dropped all things painting for eight years, because Blender was much more fun. 

Thing is, now that I'm back to painting, I'm not doing it for the sake of creating an image I have in my mind; nowadays that can be done witn AI, and infinitely better than I'll ever be able to. I paint because it's fun, which leads me to my current problem: I don't know what I like to paint. 

It's been around all my life, people using prompts and inktobers and fanart100 and so on, and I never got it; I never lacked for things to draw or paint, because I was roleplaying in various tabletop D&D (or MERP, or Vampire, or Freestyle, or 7th Sea, or Amber Diceless, or Victorian Occult) campaigns, and nothing sets my inspiration on fire like roleplaying. I've not roleplayed for a couple of years now, though - life's too busy, and full of nice things - so no inspiration, and no friends to please with my art...

(Actually, there is a small Cthulhu campaign - but not only am I the GM, and not only do we meet once in a blue moon, also one of the three players is a proper artists, a tattoo artist and person who truly paints for passion and makes my drawings look like a child's doodles.)

Which brings me back to I don't know what I like to paint. All the tutorials have flowers, leaves, cute animals, cute random doodles, eye-pleasing abstract art, scenery or what I call 'kindergarten projects', which is anyone-can-do-this happy splashing of paint in a sketchbook. None of those appeal to me, and I think that only today I got what they all miss: Narrative. I need a story to excite me to paint something. It doesn't need to be much, but it needs to be more than just aesthetic or fun to make. Which is a stupid reason to get stuck and not painting, but there you have it. 

Oh, one more thing happened - boyfriend proposed! 

Behold my magnificent ring of 14 carat plastic, accidentally sent to boyfriend years ago from Aliexpress instead of the Lego Millenium Falcon mount he ordered! We're properly engaged though, which means somewhen in the upcoming months we'll hop over to the lawyer to sign papers and make it official.It turns out one can actually have two loves of one's life (though, in most cases and this one too, not simultaneously). 

And last... I really miss Blender. Watercolor paint is fun and addictive and I love it, but I do wish I had a Warcraft-art Blender commission or two. It's been to long. 

It's already been five hours without a missile alarm; perhaps the bombers in Iran are having a good night's sleep. One can hope.

A Perfect Day of Fish and Abstract

Today was perfect. 

Life for the past year or so has been as close to perfect as reasonably possible, but most days have a niggle or two, even if only in the form of house chores; today did have chores, but they felt good because I was all alone, entirely peaceful and in no hurry. 

What, other than peace of mind and inspiration, makes a day perfect? Soft winter lighting, a cat napping next to me, some relaxing piano in the background, and managing to finish at least one watercolor thing I'm pleased with. 

Here's my safe space:

We'll start with the best:

Charlie confiscated my chair and went to sleep on it, but was receptive to the occasional cuddle and did purr at me galore.

My first attempt at painting abstract, following the current book's instructions, failed; what do you mean 'paint a design of random shapes'? This is what I got the book for, woman! If I knew how to come up with pretty designs made of random shapes I wouldn't need to learn this... 

Right, so, out of 12, more than half looked like a hot mess so I cut them off the page and stuck them in my practice book in the shape of the pile of rubbish they are:

While the ones I liked - and I can't analyze what makes them better - I glued at the top of the page, neatly arranged:

Then I thought maybe it's best to skip the 'invent random shapes' and go with what the book calls 'abstract scenery'. Combined a few tutorials from the book to make this, then used it to progress with the current practice book spread, which is sea-themed. And I rather like it! It's not too sucky, so I consider it my first decent abstract.

So about the practice book spreads. Before this obsession with watercolor I had a brief obsession with scrapbooking; and while all the glittery stickers are currently in the drawer, I sort of made the watercolor practice book into a 'scrapbooky' thing, because I don't just stick the paintings in it, but vaguely arrange the pieces by topics on separate spreads, and then paint things to complete the spread and make it look nice. So if there was a rustic lantern tutorial from Dream and Draw, and a mountain cottage painted for practice, and a loose potted plant to finish the paint on the palette...

...Then I can give it a title and use the rest of the palette's paint on it, then spend two weeks trying to think what fits with that page...

It ended up with that pinecone decoration, the birds and the shelf, and - my favourite - painting worn wood, and I have no idea why I liked it so much. 

Anyway, the current one is sea-themed, because Dream and Draw had a tutorial for a coral, and I painted a crab with the same technique; and Negin Armon had this beautiful abstract sea scene, which used about half my tube of tippex because I messed it up so badly; so clearly some sea-things needed to happen.

Here's what I have so far; the sun piece and the fish are what I did today.

Things that excite me, #01: I'm making pieces specifically for the spread, meaning the composition of those rocks with the starfish on them was tailored to fill the space there in what I hope is an interesting way. I'm also proud of that painting - it's entirely my own, composed from a few underwater photos with some good practicing of shapes in space and what Dream and Draw teaches; I think my art school teachers would approve. 

Things that excite me, #02: I was painting the inevitable fish - from photo reference - and got stuck. I knew what I'd painted didn't look finished, but I had no idea what details I should add or how to make it better. So I took a photo of what I had, fed it to AI and asked Nano Banana to 'add detail and improve it'. This is the third time I do this - there was the white flower and the Fords of Bruinen - but this time I actually used the feedback to successfully finish my painting - look!

And I learnt so much! Like, the glossy strip on the back, or the delicate details of the fins; the fold under the eye or how to paint a fish eye to begin with, with a fineliner circle around the white, to make it pop; that the scales grow smaller the closer they get to the tail, and that they can be shaded with a drop of pure pigment where they emerge under another scale. For some reason, I couldn't deduce any of this when I looked at the reference photos; it's as if I freeze with the abundance of visual detail. I'd like to learn to reduce that detail in my mind, rather than have to ask AI to show me, but it showing me and me taking notes is a good way to learn when there's no teacher around to ask. 

The fish palette was this:

It's been a while since I got that Coral Reef tube from Daniel Smith; I was in love with it in the shop, but then it arrived and looked like weird flesh, and it has white in it - I should have known - so it's not as transparent as I like my paints to be - but, I mean, I was painting a sea-themed spread, it had to be used there. Though right now it's only on the fish.

It's not entirely clear to me how to finish this spread; I know I don't like the swatches above the abstract sun piece and will prolly paint something different instead. It'll also be good to come up with a title which is not the 'Under The Sea' cliche, but not as elusive as 'drowning - the locals approve', which made me laugh and I enjoyed painting, but will likely be misunderstood, or just missed, by anyone seeing it. And I still need to visually connect and frame the page on the left...

This is both frustrating and somehow inspiring. It drives me, I find; the need to complete, to finish. In this time in my life, where I do things almost entirely for leisure, this is not a bad thing. 

If I thought there was a greater, intelligent force out there, I'd be thanking it every day for this; for the love, the cat, the inspiration, the peace, the... the lack of... daily negative influence from a person I can't escape. It's so... alien. And wonderful. Whoever, whatever is not out there: thank you. 

Optimal Paint Arrangement

There's many things that make me happy, and excellent, optimized, practical order is one. You wouldn't believe it from the child I've been - your regular messy room, messy everything child and teen - but at 23 something changed and went so far that I worked for a while at organizing people's houses.

It took a while to gather all the watercolor paints for my ideal palette, and while that was happening I slowly came up with the perfect setup for me, so here it is:

Why is this the perfect optimization?

1. The paint tubs are magnetic, not on a rail, so they're much easier to get out for a limited-palette painting, or to reorder.
2. They're arranged by manufacturer, then by temperature.
3. They're spaced so that the label I printed can be comfortably read, and I marked those optimal spaces with a sharpie, inside the box.
4. There are swatches because one can't always tell from the pan what the color actually looks like. They also show the current (optimized) arrangement of the paints, in case it gets messed up.
5. The swatches are protected with plastic so they don't smudge, and the names on it are written on masking tape so I can replace them if needed, or if I change the order inside the box.
6. The swatche page is glued with white tack; easy to remove or replace.

This makes me disproportionately happy.

~.~.~.~

There's stuff to do today so I didn't get to painting yet; there were groceries, and it's been two weeks since Quazi came over for an Accountability Day so the paranoid cat forgot about him and had a fit when he showed up, and I had to fish him from behind the bed where he was cowering with giant pupils (the cat, not Quazi). And the kid had a major maths exam and came back all hyped; and it's a bit hard to focus. 

But Now everyone's settled - Quazi is working, the cat is napping and the teenager is knitting or Minecrafting in her tower, and I can get to that pretty stylized undersea painting tutorial I found the other day and see how many time I mess it up before I manage. This is fun.

Belvane's Book of Blunders complete! (art mega post)

It's been two months of constant Flow and excitement about watercolor. I'm binging tutorials, when I was in bed for a couple of days I realized that 'watching tutorials when you can't watch vids' is called books and got six and binged three, I spent an unholy amount of my monthly budget on supplies and I'm having as much fun as I had every time there came a period of wild inspiration like this - the last was the scrapbooking, and before that Blender filled that space for almost eight years (though it was less intense after 2018, perhaps for the best). 

Usually I sleep 16 hours a day (some medical thing) but when at the peak of excitement like this, which sometimes lasts months on end, I can get away with five or six. I'm having so much fun. 

However, this run is different to the ones before because it's been a great year, and my situation is the best it's ever been. The boyfriend; the financial safety; the lack of toxic family; those all make me feel as happy-ever-after as realistically possible.

I miss my streaming community, and feel a bit as if I betrayed them by getting burnt out with Blender and focusing on traditional crafts. Sometimes I contemplate streaming this, watercolor and composition and scrapbooking, but then I worry I'll disappoint people.

During the last two months I filled my first sketchbook ever. That is - I had heavens-know how many sketch books before, but they were traditionally flimsy notebooks filled with bad sketches in red pencil, and I was happy with hardly any of them; then I migrated to digital painting and never looked back. Now, however, I enjoy watercolor because I don't need to get good at it, and I don't much care what it is I'm painting, as long as it's aesthetically pleasing. So it's not the kind of sketchbook you try things in before you make the final - that's still in a flimsy school notebook full of messy notes - but it's the 40  pages where I glued anything watercolor that came out pretty. Or amusing; there's a few failures there, and I kept them because either they taught me something, or made me laugh. It also jas quite a few loose splotches and unimpressive things, just because it's fun to play with brushes and paint.

Goodness, I love growing older. Being free of all the self doubt and expectations of earlier years is so liberating I feel I could fly.

It took me two months to finish, and completing it was a drive on its own, though I don't understand why.

Do I upload half that sketchbook now? Is this going to be a mega post?

...It's going to be a mega post.

The whole 'practice book' idea comes from This vid by Andrea Nelson. She has incredible - and I don't use that word lightly - positive, charming energies, she feels genuine and I find she uplifted my spirit every time. This vid got me to start the practice book and make mistakes in it, and the first page is how she made hers. One day I might find the courage to thank her. 

There's no way I'm uploading the whole thing here; I'll select what I like most.

So here's the colourful mushrooms and blobs page, also following Andrea Nelson's guidance. That made me cheerful.

And the other side of this spread, which failed, as it looks nothing like the source and nothing like what I hoped for:

Then I learnt that 'doodles' are very aesthetic things that usually involve delicate, colourful watercolor with whimsical pen on top of it; First I saw it at Nianiani, then researched and found a whole genre which was new to me and enjoyable to explore. It started with the trees and a tube of paint I didn't know but realized I loved, which drove this whole double spread:

The next one is on a day I was dying to paint but couldn't think of anything enjoyable, so I drew what happened that day - another thing I learnt from people on Youtube. 

More whimsical trees,  because the colours are so pretty. The text there says as much, and the note at the bottom says 'today I'm simply happy'. I think it was the first Sunday I spent entirely alone, painting calmly in my sunlit white room with the cat purring next to me. 

The cat is the stupidest thing alive. It's paraplegic, which means it can't jump, but since it's too stupid to know or care, it's just a happy cat. It also climbs anything it can sink its nails into, so all the chairs, sofas and beds in the house. And seeing him walk around derpily, all happy as he drags his lower half behind him and lets it thump down the stairs, is hilarious. His name's Charles (like X-avier) and after over a year of living here he finally started trusting me and now we share a bed and cuddle a lot. He also pees on me on occasion. He doesn't care; neither do I.

Look at the adorable void behind those eyes.

Masking fluid! It's liquid latex you apply to the page with a (cheap, ruinable) brush, let it dry, then paint freely over it, then peel it and find it has protected thw white of the paper underneath, so suddenly keeping highlights is easy!

Tried to paint blueberries. Spent a while studying and analyzing them, planned the composition, and halfway though realized it bores me. I don't think I enjoy realistic painting anymore; there's AI for that. 

There were so many beautiful doodles on instagram, professional looking, inspiring and a bit misleading in the ease with which the artists seem to make them; I'm trying to find what's my own calm-your-mind easy doodle, but all my hand came up with was a bunch of elements I like. I ended up using this page to convey the joy at how great decent watercolors are, compared to the cheap fake I've used before that point. Winsor Newton Cotman feels so silky! The brush glides on the paper, the paint behaves, and getting a smooth wash was suddenly easy. 

Another genre of doodles is cute icons, usually of seasonal things like pumpkins and ghosts in October, mittens and Santa sticks in December, or just thematic things like 'at the beach' with fetching designs of beach toys and swimsuits and such. The genre appealed to me but not the topics, so I tried a few themed 'Medieval Medicine'. Turns out I'm not the best with icon design (I don't care) - but this page is one of my favourites because it expresses one of my core sentiments. 

 

Then I did the mistake of getting out of the house and bumped into an art store and bought an array of dry paint tubs and only when I got home did I realize they were all cute pastels. And to think that when I was 17 I was all faux-goth and though torment appealed to me. 

During the Friend's-Birthday-Weekend-of-Roleplaying I bought a small sketchbook and discoeverd the importance of decent paper, which it wasn't. That was like painting on a t-shirt - as in, it sucked the paint right in, and no blending or lifting could be done. Back at home I compared it to my regular 100% cotton, cold press Baohong (it's the most affordable good paper) and, well, that's this page:

Did I say I didn't want to paint realistically? I might have been wrong. Perhaps one day I'll manage to make beautiful, semi-realistic mushrooms that will also show all the beauty of transparent, airy watercolor; this here is how I don't want to do it...

Loose flowers. Pretty, and fun to paint. Tutorial by Emma Jane Lefebvre, whose Watercolor Month series of tutorials kept me afloat for an entire week. She's also a sweety, and I'd like to be able to thank her one day.

The other side of this spread:

Another bored page, but painting it was very relaxing and a good memory, as my boyfriend came to my room and was sorting his dice collection while I painted, and we listenet to the Buffy musical. What a great way to spend an evening. 

More relaxing, loose flowers:

And a page I made only because I wanted an entire spread with pink and gold. But I got better at finding things that come naturally for me to doodle:

Same painting, on the left with the fake paints, on the right with The Sacred Daniel Smith paints. I used to think they cost an arm and a leg, and then I discovered M Graham and Holbein, which are too expensive for me to want to get, but certainly made me feel grateful for Daniel Smith being more affordable. I don't know that it looks better, but it was much driendlier to work with.  

 

More following this tutoeial by Emma Jane Lefebvre: monochrome, and brush strokes. She specializes on florals. They're very pretty, and I enjoyed binging her channel, although I don't think florals is what excites me. I hope to find what is.

This isn't a particularly beautiful page, but it made a huge difference in my ability to easily sketch flowers - and all it took was drawing a whole page of loose practice, Peter Han style (he taught Dynamic Sketching back in 2013). From that moment on, flowers got easy.

Finishing Emma Jane Lefebvre's 31 days of Watercolor with a floral border tutorial:

And this, in Nianiani's style, which I painted when I wanted to paint but had no better ideas, because it's easy and relaxing. At the bottom are floral compositions by an Emma Lefebvre's tutorial, again. 

Here's another favourite page, because barring the candy (copied from Pinterest) the rest is entirely my own! Drawing stylized children was much harder than I thought, but I want to get better at it because that's something I do find appealing to draw. I want to get to a point it's easy. Still - proud of this one.

There's another thing I really like the aesthetic of - Arabian Nights. This page is mostly not mine - it's either tutorials or studies of other people's work - but it hits the right spot in my heart.

This was when I bumped into Anastasia Kozlova. It's hard to remember how it happened; ended up buying her book and been binging it ever since. She teaches very pretty watercolor decorated with pen; I follow her tutorial, then make an interpretation of my own to make sure I can use what I learnt. In this one, the central monstera leaf is the tutorial and the two on its sides are mine.

I'm usually picky with teachers; this one's a very decent teacher, and does it so methodically my organizing-loving soul sings. Here's the line index, which serves in all the paintings I learnt from her - the donut is the tutorial, the cupcake is my practice.

Another favourite page. The boat's the original, the umbrella my interpretation. For some reason I don't understand, this page makes me happy.

Look at the pretty palette Kozlova designed for this starfish! The conch is mine, and, having practiced identifying simple forms with Kozlova, translating it from photo to drawing was surprisingly easy and very satisfying. 

This is one before last, and the sillyness of so crudely combining the two unrelated tutorial images is what I enjoyed:

And the final page in the book, with no tutorials because I wanted to test the progress I achieved in two months of practice. It also very much expresses how finishing that book made me feel

There's a chance this mega post managed to convey how excited I am about watercolors at the moment. The second practice book is already in use, and since I post here quite rarely, the next time I write I might do another artdump. 

It feels very nice to be in traditional art again. Getting rid of the urge to be exceptionally good at it brought tons of relaxation and fun to my life. 

My Year Of Wonders

There's a bible story about Pharaoh dreaming of Egypt having seven bad years, and then seven good years. Sometimes it felt as if my seven bad years started at 2018: a sudden divorce, sudden plunge into zero financial means, an understandable congruent depression, migration to a far cheaper country for financial reasons, 2021-2022 were great but then that tropical infection happened and two years in and out of hospitals and so leaving the life I built abroad and migrating back, losing my beloved best friend, then failing to say no so ending up moving in with an abusive person and having to run away. As my cynic friend said, the author overdid it with drilling the point on this story; the bad luck of it looked like a parody.

In July 2024 I was living alone in a tiny, sweet apartment in the cheapest big city in this country, holding my own and being, again, depressed - a light version of post traumatic after the months in the hospital and the abusive roommate thing. I was doing what I loved, aka teaching Blender and taking commissions, in a beautiful white place I could call my own, but life didn't feel safe anymore. Nothing did. I think I was alive, but not really living.

Fast forward a year; this is, simply and literally, the best time I had in my life.

The man I met on July 24th is... I couldn't believe I'd love anyone the way I did the guy who was my husband, and I don't; it's different, but no less wonderful. More, in many ways. He's many things that feel too private and sweet to list, and he's also social, and has kids, and lives closer to my friends, so suddenly I'm not alone at all. 

On March dad died. He was 83. It took the past five years, a bit of therapy and then living with him for two months to understand something fundamental about my whole life. 

Dad was loving, caring, warm, hugging, generous, enthusiastic and the type to gobble life up like a hungry wolf, being a father included; he never laid an improper finger on me, though he did hit me 3-4 times a year, as was customary for his and my generation. That wasn't a problem; the frequency was as described, it hurt for no more than a few seconds, and never left marks. That part I have no issue with. 

But he scared the living hell out of me around once a week. I thought it was normal. I believed him when he said I was problematic, that I deserved threats, that I was overly sensitive and possibly not mentally okay. It's only this past year that I realized the impact of growing up like this: of constantly being scared that something horrible was going to happen to you, of home never being a safe place, of never feeling safe unless my parents weren't around.

It started when I stopped being a child; when I was no longer small and something to be protected, I think. The first time I remember starkly was when I was eight. He would yell horrible, scary things; roar. "You're not my daughter anymore", "They'll have to carry you out of this house on a stretcher when I'm done with you," "you're a monster", "you selfish, egocentric pig", "you're spoiled, dramatic, overbearing, pathetic, lazy parasite". He chased me down the corridor and broke down my locked door with a kick, when I was 16. He grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me to the bathroom to roar at me for the way I hang my towel and hit me while screaming. From age ten to seventeen, when I left the family home, I was constantly scared and I didn't even know it. I was prone to crying, self-hating, feeling helpless and with zero agency on my life, and thinking it was normal for parents to be that way, and that I was the problem. 

Simultaneously, he would tell me I was brilliant, talented, practical, full of potential, intelligent. It didn't occur to me that these hot-and-cold, contradictory statements were confusing. He said so, so it was the truth. The inner turmoil that followed was something I only recently learned to notice.

When I was around 25 or so, a proper grown up who was out of his immediate control, the nature of the threats changed. "I won't ever talk to you again", "I'll take away your apartment", "you ungrateful, dramatic, emo-blackmailing swine", "I'll make sure they block your bank account", "you're worthless", "you're a failure", "you have no chance in the world but me", "you have no friends", "nobody loves you", "you're making things up for attention", "you're not allowed to cry, that's selfish and manipulative and you'll smile and do as you're told", and "if you don't do as I say I'll stop taking my medicine". He would cut contact with me as punishment for months on end, for holding a political view that was different than his or for choosing to have my passport done one way and not his way. He would give me the silent treatment for hours on the phone if I contradicted him. It still had a debilitating impact, even though I was over forty. 

Then he died, eight months ago, and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had no reason to be afraid.

Dad was many good things. Generous, kind, protective. He loved me fiercely, and in times of need he'd do everything, limitless, to help - except for showing empathy or tolerating weakness. He was wonderful, admirable, but was  also all of the above; I can't say whether he was a good or a bad person. People are complicated. I just know that most of my life I loved and admired my dad and couldn't imagine a world without him, and now he's dead and can't threaten me anymore, and not being scared all the time feels like a physical weight off. It's as if I can suddenly breathe.

It's been eight months since he died, and I'm flourishing. I've never felt so peaceful in my life. 

--

There's also the inheritance. It's not much for me to be extravagant, but it means my future's (humbly) taken care of, and my present allows for more liberty than I ever had. I first went nuts with scrapbooking materials, and then two months ago got obsessed with watercolor, and then AI came and finalized this as my Year Of Wonders.

Which I understand requires some explanation, because for us artist AI is the devil. But around two months ago I was searching for reference and then the penny dropped: AI can paint better than I ever will. I've been painting since I was six, have studied anatomy, perspective, dynamic sketching, environment sketching, color theory, design, art history, oil painting and portraiture; I've honed my (admittedly not great) talent with the need to be able to paint whatever I wanted or to 'work in the industry', either as a comic or a video game artist - and now AI does it infinitely faster, cheaper and better than me. 

And suddenly I don't have to be good; there's no point. Suddenly making art lost the point I thought it had, and - here comes the magic - became something I can do just for fun, regardless of how much I suck at it. 

And that feels... amazing! I paint the most embarrassing stuff. It's wonky and full of mistakes and I don't paint people because I was never good enough at it and at any case I just want to play with brushes, regardless of what the end result is. So I (badly) paint mushrooms and patterns and bottles and oh, very bad flowers, and leaves, and refuse scenery because it's not fun, and I even went as far as abstract, which I've always hated and thought it was and excuse for talentless people to play with paint, and you know what, here I am, practically talentless and in no mood for effort so I paint abstract and it's ugly and meaningless or pretty and meaningless - I mean, how ugly can you go with rainbow pastels - and I don't care. I don't need anyone to like it. I don't need to get a job, or for my fellow roleplayers to go 'omg, Bell, paint my character' or even 'this is pretty'. I have my little sketchbook 80% of which isn't even my own art because I've followed tutorials, and I'm having the time of my life. 

This is my Year Of Wonders.

There is love. There is social life. There is financial stability, and there is nobody calling me nasty belittling names every day, or threatening me; there is no fear. There is, however, a crippled cat that's the cutest thing ever and my current goal in life is to learn to tend to his bladder (he can't on his own, and my boyfriend has been manually voiding the cat's bladder and bowels for the past four years). I still fail at that, but, unlike painting, that goal does feel meaningful.

This year I also accepted the fact that I'm obese, a lot thanks to the kids - my nephew, and my boyfriend's eleven years old son, both of whom find me very comfortable to cuddle with, or awesome because I can make the car bounce when I dance in my seat. Having spent around a decade avoiding socializing because I was embarrassed due to being fat, this did wonders - so thanks to the kids, I even went to the big geek convention in October (it was wonderful, I got to meet my favourite translator and watch Twisted on stage), and just spent a whole weekend in a mini roleplaying convention in a hotel up north, with forty other people some of which I've not seen since that LARP twenty five years ago. 

I'm fat, I don't Blender (I think I enjoy the physical paint too much right now), I miss my online community and that gone best friend - and yet life right now is the best I could imagine. And even now the cat is next to me, licking his belly and ignoring his hind legs (he has no idea they exist) and giving me drowsy, loving, trusting looks. 

I'm in peace.