In my last post I waxed poetic about finishing my sketchbook and how I was looking forward to it.

We are now the 28th of December, and I have yet to complete said sketchbook. I also haven’t posted anything since then.

What happened?

Work claims a lot of my attention and time. Sure, I was taking a drawing class — which was a great experience, I will probably make a blog post of how that went — and I got busy making Christmas Cards. All in all, I was creatively busy but can that account for my lack of sketchbook completion and absence from the blog?

Let’s analyze: When I took the drawing drawing class, I did my exercises and ‘homework’, I followed instructions — I didn’t need to think about what I was drawing. When I made Christmas cards, I came up with simple, repeatable yet customizable designs. I made close to 50 cards.

Basically, my creative brain was in a lazy comfort zone. I was learning new skills, so instead of taking control of my creative will, I just went with the flow. The few times I thought about updating my blog or tackling the few remaining pages of my sketchbook, the endeavour just felt too difficult, too involved, too tiring.

Was it laziness? Maybe. Was it tiredness? Sure. There’s also the worry of not completing the sketchbook the way I intended.

I started a painting of a night scene with gouache. It’s the evening version of a previous painting of a tree in the fall. It was lusciously yellow and orange with a street lamp that gave it a fiery light. I did the first two layers. Then winter came and the frost made all the leaves fall. I couldn’t find it in me to finish it from memory. Maybe I should. I just dug it up and it’s not as bad as I remembered it.

Yes. I guess I’ve been lazy.

Creativity: Where have I been?