Illustration, The Universe and Everything

Good Lord, you mean to say that this is March? But where hath the chilly month of February gone? Aahhh, I remember now. I was but moving hundreds of miles away to a place I had but visited for no longer than a week before. I was plagued with no heating for five days in the coldest week of the year, and hath only in the last week recovered my beloved internet connection, alas.

But it is now fine. We are here at last, we're settling in nicely, and we have some heat. I also have a lovely studio - even it is does need a good sweep and tidy up - and I'm beginning to knuckle down to some work.

There were so many things I wanted to do before we left Brighton/Cranleigh that I was so eager to get on with, yet didn't have the space/equipment/knowledge to do them. But now, because it's taken so long to get sorted (we will have been here five weeks on Wednesday) I've either forgotten what those things were or I've lost the inclination. So today has been a Making A List and Researching On The Internet day. Amazing how time flies when you're reading other people's blogs.

This is my list - kind of like New House Resolutions rather than New Year's Resolutions - and I hope that by posting it here it will remind me of my tasks.

THINGS I WANT TO DO:

1. Get more crafty. Make and sell things through Etsy, local shops and this 'ere blog. Knit stuff - random stuff -, make jewelry, get out my badge machine and actually make badges with it from odd bits of fabric or paper or anything flat. Do this under the banner of The Yellow House in honour of the colour of our new place. (Strictly speaking the actual shade is ochre, but try explaining that to anyone other than an artist. Delivery men included.)

2. Create everyday. I want to do something creative everyday and post it up here, even if it's just a scribbly idea that won't come to anything. I grapple the idea that everything I do has to have a purpose. These exercises should hopefully get me over that.

3. Just do stand-alone pieces for my portfolio. I often fall into the trap that everything I do must have a story and be a fully-rounded project. One-off pieces could be great one-day projects and good for filling up the portfolio.

4. Update web portfolios more often. This should definitely be easier when I'm just creating for myself.

5. Keep up with blogs. Not just my own updating-wise, but the wider blogging community. There are a 6 or 7 blogs that I visit on a daily basis - although I'm still catching up with them at the moment after my enforced internet absence - that I love. I should leave more comments to encourage traffic back to my sites and hopefully get more publicity.

6. Take more photographs. Of anything. There are some very cool postboxes round here.

7. Do a new business card/postcard to send out with my new address and phone number - once BT have told me what it is, that is.

8. Get more more paid illustration work. As always. Of course, I need to provide Mark with suitable samples, so hopefully once 2,3 and 4 are in full swing, 8 should follow.

9. Join a club. I fancy taking up pilot gig rowing.


That's enough for the immediate future. All I need now is to get on with it!

Jon and I now have a joint blog at www.porcupineterrace.blogspot.com. There's nothing there at the moment, but we're going to log our progress down here in Cornwall, and show how the house and garden and our hopes for a greener life are progressing. Here are our first livestock acquisitions. Not sure if they'll be much use as agricultural animals, but they sure are cute.

Reeves and Mortimer: