 Last week I was completely drained of creative energy. I finally finished an epic comparison of three alcohol marker brands. Not like some people do with just swatch, swatch, swatch, and we're done. But when I take on something like this, I spend months on it. And in this case, a year on a lot of the work to get this done. I finally had to give myself a deadline so I could stop spending what little free time I have with those markers and sketchbooks because all of that is unpaid time and I needed that time for planning other things that'll actually keep a roof over my head. But I hadn't experienced deadlines in that way in a really long time, so it kind of caught me off guard. I used to hit the melting point around the end of a Christmas prep season, other times of year too, but Christmas was especially hard because it had a hamster wheel of new releases coming at me like a fire hose to mix metaphors. It's been a blessing that I could change things up so I only have my own unrealistic deadlines to try to meet. But that doesn't make the creative collapse at the end any easier. Maybe it makes it even more guilt inducing because I know I did it to myself. Well, all artists hit that point where there's no creative energy in the tank. Sometimes it's the I've got no ideas kind or things coming up from your childhood and bogging down your mind kind. But none of that is what I had going on. I just couldn't face the studio. I had plenty of ideas that I wanted to flesh out with just no ability to sit in that chair in my workspace and do anything, especially anything that was going to take me any length of time. If it was more than an hour, my brain just thought, no, I can't, I just can't. Well, the first day after the release of all that alcohol marker stuff, I just sat in the studio. I made myself sit in a comfortable chair there and sat down with my journal and I mostly stared at the ceiling, literally. I had made myself sick with all the pressure, so my body was in recovery mode. Once the videos and everything were released, I started feeling better. So I think it was all stress. It wasn't an actual illness. But I didn't even have any music on that day. I just had silence and me and the ceiling and a journal. So I spent some time writing down what I was feeling and asking myself some important questions about how I got to this point, decisions I made along the way, what I might have missed, celebrating what had finally gotten completed, because, you know, I have to look at the good side too, but it was a mix of emotions. However, I didn't even doodle in the margins in my journal. I couldn't. So how do you get back on the creative wagon again when this kind of thing happens? Well, some people will just tell you to go sit on a beach for a week, go out for a nice dinner, check into a spa for a few days. But if anybody's seen my bank balance, that's not happening. If you want to know how tight things are, I have been without a washer and dryer since last September when they both died. Since I don't use credit cards anymore, I've been trying to save up so I can stop hand washing all of my laundry and hanging it up in my living room to dry. But something always comes to dip into the laundry fund. So there is no vacation to bail me out. There's no spa week for me. So there are free things you can do and take breaks on. You can work in the garden if it's not raining like it is here. You can go for walks and I had already been taking walkies every day with the dogs. But it's cold and rainy and I always ended up feeling kind of ick afterward as opposed to energized by it. So it didn't really help me feel more creative. I did sit down and catch up on the posts at Art Venture, though. Seeing the work and reading the stories of members who are participating in this month's challenge really got me inspired. The challenge is to recreate a piece from a few years ago but in a different medium and for an extra level of difficulty, a medium not used in a while. Just reading about how they're seeing themselves growing by recreating a piece. The challenges they're facing artistically. The things that went well, the things that didn't. The step-by-step process shared by some. All of that started waking me up inside just a little. If you're feeling stuck, do try this exercise of recreating a past piece because at the very least it's going to show you areas that you've grown. If you try it in a different medium it might show you which one you like better for that particular type of subject matter. So today's sketch is a late night venture into that challenge. Taking a watercolor painting that I created after I'd only been painting for a very short while and redoing its bad perspective that I had in it. But I'm adding a lot of detail because I'm working in an extra fine ballpoint pen. And I'm just falling in love again with simply drawing as I'm doing this tonight. There's no stress to create anything epic or to figure out how to make a video hook that'll go viral because frankly that hasn't happened in years so I'm not sure why I keep trying. I'm going to be writing up more of my thoughts about this drawing in a post over at ArtVenture if you'd like to go there and read it. It's free to join the community and the activity there is really picking up lately among the members. The stories posted in the articles are more like blog posts in many respects with the artists really explaining what they're thinking and feeling as they create. It's not like on social media where you might get a very short caption. You get an actual story and you get to know people. And that's what's really got me feeling ready to start up again. That kind of reflection on art, how it impacts the creator. All of that really inspires me. So thanks for joining me for this short little venture into a sketch. Maybe there'll be another something similar this weekend. I don't know. But I'm definitely feeling better after this and I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep. And who knows what's going to hit the desk in the morning. If you're new to my channel be sure to hit the subscribe button. I put new videos out every Tuesday and Saturday and shorts on Friday. I love to share encouraging things and help people take the next step in their art. And I would love to do that for you too. Hope to see you in another video. Take care and have a really good night.