Behind the Scenes - Composure
I was so happy to see that Kyle shared this card yesterday it is one of my favourites in the deck. It’s interesting to me - looking back and finding that the cards that I’m most fond of are the cards that I had the hardest time with. I remember the experience with this one so clearly. It was just after Christmas and we were nearing the finish line with the deck but I’m not ashamed to say I was feeling a little burnt out, run down and really missing the sunshine!
My sister FaceTimed me whilst I was sketching this one and although I had a strong idea of what I wanted to create I suddenly plunged into an “I can’t draw!!” phase - which haunted me from time to time throughout this project. My sister being the awesome lady she is tried to convince me that I can draw and said lots of nice things to me to buoy my spirits and I wasn’t having any of it! I think I literally said something like “Stop trying to make me feel better, it’s not helping! I just need to work through this! I can’t stop I have deadlines!!!”
*sigh*
Anyway - she somehow didn’t hang up on me for being a difficult and emotionally fraught artist and started to tell me about her work and what was going on in the travel industry. I’m not sure how long I listened for whilst pushing through with the sketch of this piece, but by the time we were done chatting I zoomed out and looked at what I had done and was like “Hey! I can draw!”
Once the rough sketch was done the rest of this piece was smooth sailing. As I said there have been a few cards in this deck that I
have felt like I’ve been casting around in the dark, there have been no flashes of inspiration, just me blindly chipping away at a sketch and hoping that at some point it will start to “feel” right and scared that it might never feel right. Interestingly they were often the cards with meanings that closely represented what I was feeling.
Anywho - I hope you’ve enjoyed my little story about ‘composure’ or my complete lack of ;)
