Picasso, eat your heart out

This week it was time to visit my artistic side. I have never thought of myself as much of an artist – in fact, I have always claimed that I can’t draw to save myself. But this ‘try new things’ kick has given me the impetus and the confidence to step outside of my comfort zone, so I asked a good friend of mine to give me a drawing lesson. I decided I’d like to be able to draw a passable picture of one of my daughters, and seeing as this friend has drawn beautiful pictures of my daughter and my nephew I thought he’d be the perfect person to ask.

Before he came over I decided to have a little go and see what I could come up with pre-tutorial. I tried copying this picture.

I’ve decided to share the results with you purely to give you a good old laugh. Feel free to come back to this picture if you’re ever in need of a pick-me-up giggle session. Oh, and if you need something to frighten burglars away or scare your children into submission, feel free to print this out.

OK, so therein lies proof that I was in dire need of some guidance and that I had nothing to lose from receiving a lesson. My friend started by explaining that drawing people – or anything, in fact – is made much easier if you are taught how. There are, apparently, tricks and techniques that enable you to much more accurately represent your subject. So we started by doing a very quick outline of a face, and then plotting out the features by way of a cross. Precis everything out very quickly and roughly, with an eraser close to hand. Draw the eyes on the horizontal line halfway up the face, not towards the top. Figure out the other features from there. Most of all – don’t get too precious about any aspect of the drawing; be prepared to rub it out and start all over again. Once you’re happy with your rough drawing, start refining and defining the lines and adding in shading.

So here’s my effort so far with the right tools and a bit of guidance.

A wee bit better, no?

I tried another new thing this week – abolishing guilt. I was beginning to feel a bit down early this week as my husband has just returned to work after six weeks’ paternity leave. Living the life of a sole-charge parent of two very young kids is bloody hard at the best of times, but we had also just moved into our freshly renovated house (read: extremely messy with stuff everywhere) after two weeks of living with my parents. The girls were very unsettled – being out of routine – and I was sleep-deprived and very anxious to clean up and get the house feeling more like a home. Not a good mix.

By day three I knew I had to change my attitude and get out of the dumps. One thing I pinpointed was that I was constantly feeling guilty – guilty that I wasn’t spending enough time with one or other daughter, guilty that I wasn’t cleaning up the house enough, guilty for wanting some time to myself. Guilt was making me doing crazy things like giving into the incessant demands of a toddler – who, we must remember, is a complete lunatic just by virtue of being a two-year-old. I decided to abolish the guilt and see what happened.

Amazing what something so simple can do. Once I started putting a big STOP sign up at the first sign of the insidious guilt monkey, I began making rational, confident decisions and regaining control. For example, I have managed to get my baby into a proper sleep routine. Believe it or not, she’s sleeping 8pm – 6am or even 7am, and having good naps during the day, thanks to the old ‘controlled crying’ technique coupled with making sure she’s having proper three- or four-hourly full feeds. She’s a much happier baby and I’m a much happier mummy for it. I recommend this to everyone – banish the guilt! It’s a wasted, harmful emotion.