 Well, hi there, it's Sandy. I've got a crazy moose card for you and lots of yammering For this card, I'm using the Girdis Steiner Moose Love stamp set, Moyan Girl Moose I did not put the colors on the screen because I went back and forth so many times with layers For each of these areas that I just lost track So it's easier just not to put anything there There is a picture of all the markers used on the card over on my blog if you need to know what those colors are I also want to mention that the scene in the background is from the or related to at least The autumn scenes class if you've taken that one, you'll recognize it and I'm just using Spring slash summer colors instead of fall colors But if you haven't taken that class, what the heck are you waiting for? It's a great little class and it's not one of the one of the expensive ones It's a mini class and it's intermediate level and you can learn how to put some great trees in your scenes for your cards and Links in the doobly-doo commercial over but what I want to talk about today is Maybe going to seem not related to this until later on in this video, but I want to talk about Medical issues, don't worry. I'm not about to announce anything horrid like don't panic I recently went to the eye doctor and the eye doctor has been telling me for a couple years There's something coming and that I you know just need to keep an eye on things and At this appointment. She said, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. It's happening which is cataracts Yes, you may think I'm not old enough to have cataracts, but I'm older than you think and That is a thing. It's when your lenses of your eye gets cloudy. So it makes things fuzzy For now, she said she's just gonna prescribe a new Prescription for my glasses and I'll get new ones and everything will be fine for a while But what I've noticed is that it used to be a couple years between new prescriptions And now it's like every eight or nine months. I start thinking, you know I think it's time. I think it's time to go in and get new glasses And some of you here on YouTube have noticed That there are times when I color outside the lines or I, you know, make a mistake of some sort and you're not Hesitating to comment. God bless you for trying to help Please know that I do delete your comments because not because I'm a snowflake But because other people who are fans of mine will come in are you with you I have seen that happen repeatedly and I don't like when people troll through the comments just to find somebody to go pick on So I just delete them and then we don't have any fights. There's enough fights in this world. We don't need those However Probably those who notice the errors or the places where I go outside the lines or I miss a button on something Are watching on full screen on a computer or big screen on your TV And I want to remind you that if you look at anything that big You're going to see mistakes or problems with it Imagine putting the pores of your skin of your face that big on a TV screen and multiplying it that much bigger You're going to see the problem. So be aware of that and Don't use that to either judge someone else's work or to judge your own work that way People look at things in their real physical Context so if you're looking at something this card in real life Right in front of you You're not going to see any of the errors that you might see if you are looking at this Giant full screen. So I would even recommend right now Just go make it smaller on your screen and you will be a happier person for it But the thing I want to talk about in this video is not any whining about any of that I'm not going to whine about having cataracts when my vision getting weird I am going to celebrate what my cataracts are doing for me as an artist And you might think that sounds like a crazy thing Maybe it is But my cataracts are helping me to see the forest ahead of the trees When your vision is really clear You can get lost in seeing all the details all the small things And my goal right now Especially with my watercolor and the way I've been growing as a water colorist is to try to edit more carefully I want to only put in the most important things. I don't want to put in everything And the fact that some of those things are fuzzy is probably helping me to edit more easily And to only include the good parts the important parts the the big shapes the contrast And those are the things that are important anyway In artwork the the kind of artwork I want to do at the very least and I like Having a looser more expressive sketchier style And that is much easier with my eyes the way they are right now. So I'm totally cool with that Now my camera decided it also wanted to participate in this video So it is sometimes focusing on the artwork and then it focuses on my hand and then the artwork and then my hand Because I think the camera wanted those who have perfect vision to see what life might be like For those of us without perfect vision At least that's what I'm going to pretend. It was trying to play along I have had Vision challenges my whole life Because I have like mad floaters I've had eye doctors for years decades Say, how can you see anything with that many floaters in your eyes? And half the time I have to wait for them to pass Like kind of flick my eye around to try to get them to move because I have these floaters in the way And it's just something I've always dealt with But multiply that with the cataracts and you know, I'm starting to be able to edit scenes A little bit better for myself. I'm able to be more expressive I don't mind having sketchy lines on things now In ways that I hadn't before And I think it's creating more of a style for me as opposed to trying to be hyper realistic all the time And for some people hyper realistic is what you want and that's great For me, I'm trying to figure out how to express myself As opposed to just making something Super realistic for other people to see and appreciate Because that's not what I'm trying to do with my artwork And having poor vision is helping with that and I'm going to celebrate it And take advantage of it as best I can Now as far as what this means for me for the future, I don't really know I have no idea how long this will take how long this process is I don't know if we'll wait until both eyes go bad and then do cataract surgery on both Do they do it one at a time? I don't even know any of that I don't want to know. Please don't leave me diagnoses in the comments because I will deal with that when the time comes if I find out now I will just worry about it and I don't want to worry. I just want to make art But I am thinking About what what the possibilities could be it might be that at some point And maybe this is not till after I retire anyway Maybe at some point I will only be doing Fine art watercolor where everything's on a bigger scale It's bigger paper using bigger brushes and a lot less detail anyway And maybe everything will be just working working itself out perfectly that way I don't really know what's going to happen, but I do know It's not going to stop me I have seen far too many people Take any kind of like whatever the diagnosis is for Whether it's a major illness or a small thing or a You know my job my family my whatever those things are that get in our way I've seen far too many people use them as An excuse to just put their art aside and I will never do that I mean, I will have to go completely stark raving mad or Stark raving blind to stop making artwork I may change the type of artwork I do But I'm going to keep doing it and I want to challenge you to do the same Whatever the challenges are that you face because we all face Challenges of one kind or another Whatever it is don't let it stop you from doing what you are called to do If you have creativity within you don't Set that aside for anything don't let it steal your joy. Don't let it make you complain about that thing Find out what you can learn from it And I'm going to learn as much as I can From everything that's coming my way So for me I'm going to celebrate having cataracts. I'm going to have a cataract party. Maybe that might be a good idea Thank you so much for tolerating my crazy little ramblings about my cataracts I'll see you guys again very soon. Have a wonderful day. Bye. Bye