Author: hareinthemoon

I love drawing things. These days I am rarely found without a pen, pencil or stylus in my hands. In my working life I spend a lot of time in meetings and classrooms, reading papers and strategies, so my home life provides a creative antidote to all that! I also have chronic pain, lots of it. I have scoliosis, fibromyalgia and CRPS, so my life is a balancing act, trying to balance work, which make me feel part of the real world, with pain, which is ever present, and art, which soothes my pain.

Avril Needs a Hug

This portrait of Sktchy member Avril captures very well how I’ve been feeling these past few days.

I drew it in a Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Sydney

This is Sktchy muse Sydney drawn in a Hannehmühle Nostalgie sketchbook. I sketched her with a blue Pilot ENO mechanical pencil and then hatched over that sketch with a purple Pilot ENO mechanical pencil.

I’m not feeling well today. I’ve got a killer migraine and a horrible flare up of both CRPS and fibromyalgia symptoms,so this was really all I could manage to draw. Hoping I’ll have more energy tomorrow.

More Zoom virtual backgrounds

I’ve been making more Zoom virtual backgrounds. You can download these from my shared Dropbox folder here for free but please don’t sell or use commercially.

Tara and Living with Zoom

Today’s Sktchy portrait is of Tara. I chose this inspiration photo because it reflects how I look on Zoom midway through most afternoons these days – though considerably older and less attractive, it’s the expression and posture I’m referring to really. I’ve always done some of my work remotely via Zoom but I’m finding spending the day going from one Zoom meeting to another with little time to breathe in between exhausting.

Spending so much time in front of a screen is also making my chronic migraines even more frequent than usual. So, despite all the advice not to touch our faces, I’m afraid I’m head-in-hand or head-clutching even more often than usual.

Having said all that, I know I’m lucky to still have work. In fact, I’ve got more work now than I had before the lockdown and I don’t want to complain about that, not least because I don’t know how long it will last. As anyone reading this who’s also self-employed will know, the curse of self-employment is that you have to take the work when it’s there because you never know what the future might hold, and that’s especially true in these Coronavirus days. I’m just hoping that my eyes, body and brain will adjust and the migraines will ease over the next few weeks.

I drew this portrait in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook, painted it with Zecchi watercolours and finished it with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Alicja In a Mask

This is Sktchy muse Alicja wearing a very intimidating mask. I’ve had masks very much on my mind the past few days. I read a newspaper article a few days ago which said that wearing masks seems to be far more effective than societal distancing at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Those countries where mask wearing in public has been made mandatory have apparently seen a hugely reduced rate of infection.

It’s not that it protects you from being infected, it’s more that it helps to stop you from infecting others by reducing the spread of the virus in your saliva and sneezes. So this is why you should cover your face and mouth if you’re going outside, with a bandanna or scarf if you don’t have a mask. In the UK it’s nigh on impossible to get hold of a mask anyway…

I drew this portrait in a Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Flying sheep and licking cows – Virtual Backgrounds

I’m remote working during the COVID-19 lockdown which means that I’m spending a great deal of time in Zoom meetings. Last week I discovered that I could use my own virtual backgrounds in Zoom and so I immediately set to work creating some. I created one specifically for a prefect I’m working on but I also made a couple of others. Here are my first two farm-themed backgrounds.

I designed these to fit my large iPad Pro screen so the resolution should be OK for most laptops and tablets but probably not great on a large computer. If you’d like to use them you can download them from my shared Dropbox folder here. I’ll be adding more as I make them – you’re welcome to use them as virtual backgrounds for Zoom meetings but please don’t sell them or use them commercially in any way.

Jordan

Yesterday Sktchy held a Sktchy Live drawing session on YouTube with Sktchy teacher and crosshatching wizard France van Stone. I didn’t get to catch it live but I watched it today and drew along. France drew Jordan Melnick, the founder of Sktchy – so now you know what he looks like!

I drew Jordan in a Moleskine sketchbook with a Rotring mechanical pencil with an HB lead and Mitsubishi 2 colour pencil using the Prussian Blue end.

Olivia

I love the inspiration photo for this portrait of Olivia. There are lots of photos of people hugging on Sktchy (I know, I searched for them and found loads) but this is my favourite. It just feels so authentic. I can’t say the green lighting was easy to capture but I don’t have the confidence to change it to something different so I stuck with the colour in the original.

Anyway, the reason for choosing this is that today I want to send a virtual hug to everyone reading this who is, like me, living under a lockdown due to COVID-19. I hope you’re safe, have access to enough food and some outdoor space and someone to support you (online or over the phone if not in person) when you’re scared or anxious.

I drew this portrait on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.

Adamo: Roar-Out for the Mental Health Community in the Lockdown

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you probably didn’t know a month ago that I have a history of mental health problems. It’s not that I hide it, I don’t. I may we’ll have mentioned here before, I’m not sure. It’s just that it’s generally not that relevant to my drawing. But that all changed with the C-19 lockdown.

Drawing, painting, any kind of art, has been an essential therapeutic activity for me since I started to draw 5 or 6 years ago. But it’s only in the last week or so that I’ve actually used my choice of portrait to process my emotions. I tried to write about how I was feeling last week but it was too difficult.

I think many people don’t understand how triggering this situation is for people with a history of mental health problems. I had severe depression and anxiety which left me agoraphobic for a long time. Learning to leave the house again regularly and relatively easily was a long slow difficult process. Not being able to triggers very difficult memories and the fear of a relapse. It’s hard to write about all the feelings I have without provoking intense anxiety, it’s much easier to draw a portrait that reflects my feelings, and doing that reduces my anxiety.

Today this is the image that best fits my mood because I want to roar. Not in anger, this is more of a shout-out, a roar-out, for all those amazing people in my online mental health community who are managing those difficulties in this lockdown with minimal help, if any, from mental health services AND supporting each other. Yes, healthcare workers and delivery drivers are amazing but so is someone who has ever had OCD who is coping with all the public health messages about a virus and handwashing. I’m so grateful to my mental health community both on and offline for being there for me and for everyone else who needs them right now.

Thanks to Sktchy muse Adamo for being inspiration for today’s portrait, which I painted with watercolours in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.

Cecile – Memories of Agoraphobia in a Lockdown

I had a mental breakdown many years ago and for a long time afterwards I had a mild form of agoraphobia and found it hard to leave the house. This period of quarantine reminds me very much of that time. I think that perhaps that is partly why I’m feeling so much anxiety – I’m reminded of a time in my life that I’d rather forget.

The inspiration photo for this portrait from Sktchy artist and muse Cecile captures that feeling of wanting to go out but not being able to very well indeed. The world outside looked so bright and colourful while my indoor world felt so washed out and sad in comparison. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not the same for me – I’m not experiencing agoraphobia, its not my mind that’s keeping me inside, it’s a pandemic. And this time I’m not alone in this situation like I was last time, it is the same for everyone who is not a key worker. Everything is different this time, but it still feels frighteningly familiar.

I drew this portrait in my Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and coloured pencils.