Planning the practical side of the #CreativeLife

 If you are expecting a post about my bullet journal and how I spend hours every month drawing and colouring many lovely pages, I am going to disappoint you. Bullet journaling in that style is not my style.

I use a plain diary/planner with a week to a view. They change every year since I don't prefer a specific brand or style. This year I am using one from my local Typo store. I divided every weekday with a pencil line into three columns.

The left-hand column is for tasks like writing this blog post, and my inktober prompt for the week. The right-hand column is for the work I do at the lab. The middle column is for chores, the odometer readings for the days that I go to the lab (I keep a logbook for tax purposes), and other tasks required for my own business.

Linzé's planner for 2021

I keep it simple; the decoration you see are just stickers from my huge collection suitable for planners.

Here you see my next week's planner. I cannot show a week with actual detail because I use the names of the companies I work with.

Of course, there is a list of things that have to be done this year, like renewing my car's licence, but those I only schedule in the month when it has to be done.

But if you like a bullet journal and enjoy setting it up with more details and designs, then you may want to check out these YouTubers - TorrynMarie and JashiiCorrin. Both ladies design a bullet setup for every month, although with very different styles.

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Monday!

●︙● Linzé

The #CreativeLife 2021: review of week 1

Setting intentions means that you have to regularly check up on yourself. 

What I planned for last week:

Work: Finish the tests and the report of a job from 2020.

Art and craft: 6 hours

What I did last week:

Work: I finished the tests as planned but struggled with writing the report. Friday was such a frustrating day, but I eventually made some progress by late afternoon.   It was not the report's fault, I assure you. It happens sometimes, but I will get it done.

Art / craft: I ended up spending about 11 hours working on a drawing, and coffee dyeing a piece of fabric and a few pages of white printer paper.

I worked on the #inktober52 prompt due this week, although I will only post it later today or tomorrow.

I also worked in one of my art journals. As a practicing Stoic, I have an art journal specific to exploring some aspects of stoicism to help with both my study and my understanding. I only work in the stoicism art journal occasionally.

A few thoughts about the first week

As far as first weeks go, this one was not too bad. It never fails to surprise me that the first day back at work always feels like the break never happened. Of course it is just a story I tell myself, but by the end of the first week, things are usually back to the hectic schedule before the Christmas break.

Self-care is part of my #CreativeLife, but more about that in a future post.

Stay safe and healthy, and live creatively until Thursday!

●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜

Planning the week ahead for a #CreativeLife

Like everything I have to do whether it be work, shopping, washing the dishes, or drawing the next inktober52 prompt, I have to allocate time for it in my weekly schedule.

The problem we all have is that we have only 24 hours in a day. You may assume that since I am self-employed, I can allocate my hours in any way I want, and in some ways it is true. But it is not that simple.

My job is to work with other companies and their products, which means that I cannot call a client with a question at 3am because I prefer to work night owl hours. I love my job, and scheduling meetings and other client interactions require planning especially if I have to contact them during business hours.

But being self-employed is not only about the work, but there are also several other activities required. Think of all the kinds of company taxes, invoicing, following up on a non-payment, and so on that most of us dislike. Running a successful business, however, means that these tasks also have to be scheduled and done.

Planning is essential for other aspects of my life too. In my last post, I mentioned that I do not plan to do any specific art project, but after thinking a bit about this, I realised that it is not 100% true.

I do schedule time to work on prompts like the weekly inktober52 challenge. I plan for playtime in my workshop to try out new materials or new techniques without a specific project in mind.

Details will follow in my week-in-review post coming next week.

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Monday!

●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜

  

Planning the #CreativeLife today

 The new year is already taking up its fair share of time. I am due to start working again tomorrow, which means that planning becomes more important to make time for drawing and art projects.

Working from home as well as at the lab makes it essential for me to plan for creative time since it is my time to relax and reboot.

Some things are simple to plan like the art sessions I have with a few friends on a Thursday evening. The other regular task to plan is the inktober52 prompt. Since it is a weekly challenge, I have found that I much prefer it to the traditional daily prompts of Inktober during October. But it is still early days, and I might change my mind when October arrives.

Back to planning: I don't plan to create something specific. Instead, I plan to spend at least 6 hours every week doing something creative. The time includes the inktober52 drawing, but it can also be working on a painting, or making and binding a book, or building the model I am busy with.

Since it is Monday, my 6 hours are still ahead, and I can already feel the urge to pick up a pencil to draw.

More about my planning next time. 😃

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Thursday!

●︙● Linzé

Setting an intention - blogging the #CreativeLife

Happy New Year! We have not yet shaken off the vestiges of 2020 just because the calendar ticked over. The pandemic will probably continue to have an influence on our lives for many weeks to come. That does not mean that I cannot make a decision (set an intention) to do a few things differently this year.

My intention for 2021 is to blog twice a week about my #CreativeLife. My twice-weekly tweet at #TheTinyBroom will also continue, as will my monthly newsletter, a Grain of Sand.

Tweets are short, so the blog posts will be a bit more detailed and longer, but I promise it will not take more than 3 minutes to read. Mostly because I know you don't have a lot of time to read stuff, so I am not going to waste your most precious resource with a lot of fluff. This post is probably going to be the longest post of the whole year, except for April, where I plan to take part in the annual Blog Challenge. April's blog posts might be a bit longer, maybe.

So what does it mean to live a creative life?

I am sure that if you have at any point in time read my bio (in my books or my social media profiles), you will know that I am an engineer, an author, and an artist. I am often asked on how I can be self-employed (I have two businesses), write books and also be serious about being an artist. This year of blogging, I am inviting you along on my journey of being me, on living a creative life, while still continuing to learn to improve the person I am.

One exception I have to state upfront: because of the nature of my work, some aspects have to remain confidential but what I can share, I will.

So, here is to 2021 and living the creative life!

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Monday!

💜Linzé

Art skills in lockdown: a personal story of 2020 #CreativeLife

Many people have mentioned that lockdown changed some if not all aspects of their creative lives this past year. It has been the same for me but in quite a surprising and unplanned way. I spent most of my available time writing and publishing books for the past ten years or so, but at the end of 2019, I decided to use 2020 to focus almost exclusively on improving my artistic skills.

I have been drawing and painting since 2015, but my primary focus had been to write and publish my books. With 25 books now published, I felt the need to change focus. Udemy courses, and TheVirtualInstructor.com, have been my primary sources of training and practice, but it was inktober52 that provided the challenge to take my ink drawing to another level with a weekly prompt for the entire year.

Then Covid-19 struck, and another dimension of art made its way into my life: teaching art to others. The teaching part did not scare me, as I have been training engineers over the years, but art? How does someone who is still learning herself going to teach others, and within the constraints of hard lockdown too? Although I was still learning, I have also learned that I preferred dry art mediums, except ink and wash, where I like the use of watercolour for urban sketching and landscapes. Now I was asked to teach others who might prefer painting. You might say that I could have declined, but it was lockdown and they are my friends, so I decided to do it to see how it would go.

3D dragonfly in my art journal

The first obstacle was the lack of face-to-face opportunities as I would have preferred to teach. It makes the feedback and personal attention so much easier to manage because they were all at different skill levels. One friend is more skilled than I am, but the others were real beginners, so you can understand my predicament. The experienced friend helped out where I needed help when it came to the painting mediums.

Of course, the most basic skill is to learn to draw and while I focused on that, everyone was itching to use the mediums they had, received from family, or could purchase online. A day or so of contemplation on how to do this, I came to the idea of using art journaling to get the ball rolling.

Quote from Marcus Aurelius
printed on acetate

Lockdown was extremely stressful especially at the beginning when the feelings of being locked in, and restricted movement had all of us experiencing a new level of anxiety. Journaling seemed to be the perfect solution to the situation. Everyone could learn to draw and paint and benefit from the process of journaling at the same time.

And it worked. The first six weeks were the hardest and yet we all came through it with our sanity intact, and a few more skills.

Teaching art skills during the lockdown

At first, I used WhatsApp and email. Since we are friends, it was a simple process of coming up with an idea, provide everyone with an example that I drew, or a link to a video from a website like YouTube or a free Udemy course. Videos made up for the lack of live demonstrations.

As lockdown progressed and people became more comfortable with online meetings, we moved our daily challenges to a weekly online meeting where I could demonstrate a new technique they were not yet familiar with, or we could chat and come up with new projects or mediums to tackle.

Before the online sessions, I found several photographs online (not always royalty-free, but I warned everyone about sharing their projects on social media) with increasing levels of difficulty to draw.

With the online sessions via Google Meet (thank you Google for keeping it free!) we made our challenging project to date: a lapbook where we can add a journal and another book such as a sketchbook, to continue our creative practice.

In South Africa, we are now on day 277 since lockdown started, and as I look back over this time of stress and anxiety, I think that our time was well spent in dealing with the effects of the pandemic by doing something of value to ourselves.

The road ahead: 2021

From a personal perspective, I am busy learning oil painting (and not yet sure that I like the medium, although it might too early to tell), finished the last of the weekly inktober52 drawings, after completing the inktober 31 daily drawing challenge in October.

My almost daily creative practice will continue with more art journaling, drawing and painting. I may even write another book!

You can also follow my #CreativeLife with regular updates on Twitter (#TheTinyBroom).

Stay safe and healthy, until next time!

●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜

Book feature: ALONG CAME A SPYDER by Apeksha Rao

About the Book:

Are your Spidey senses tingling?

At 17, Samira Joshi has only one dream in life. She wants to be a spy. And why not?
Spying runs in the Joshi genes.
Her great-grandmother was famous for sticking her nose in everyone’s business. Her grandmother had a flourishing side-business of tracking down errant husbands and missing servants. Her parents are elite intelligence agents for RAW.
Yet, they want their only daughter to become a doctor.
When she sees a college friend being trapped by a pimp, Samira does some spying of her own, and discovers the existence of a secret sisterhood of teen spies — The Spyders. And, she wants in!
The question is, do they want her?

To find out, read this fast-paced, gripping YA novel by brand new author, Apeksha Rao.

Book links:

Goodreads * Amazon 

Advance praise for Along Came A Spyder:

"A thrilling read with several nail biting moments. Will keep you hooked till the end."

 ~ Andaleeb Wajid, author of The Legend Of The Wolf

"A fantastic spy story, keeps you on the edge and you can't stop till you finish the book. A fantastic debut book. Look forward to reading more from the author."

~ Kanchana Banerjee, author of Nobody's Child and A Forgotten Affair.

"Witty, snarky and a thorough entertainer, Along Came a Spyder is a welcome addition to India's YA genre."

~ Shilpa Suraj, author of Love, Marriage and Other Disasters, Saved by Love, and, Driven by Desire

"Apeksha Rao writes a taut espionage thriller with a twist-a-minute narrative that is sure to get all readers hooked. The language is flawless, the characterization spot-on, and the plot is filled with rich details. It is the kind of story that you'd leave all your other work aside to read. Be warned!"

~ Neil D'Silva, author of Haunted, Yakshini and Maya's New Husband

About the Author:

Apeksha Rao fell in love with words very early in life. 

While other kids of her age were still learning to spell, she was already reading her older brother’s books and comics. 

She wrote her first story at the age of seven and submitted it to Tinkle, a very popular children’s magazine. 

Writing took a backseat, as she established a thriving medical practice.

But Apeksha rekindled her love affair with words, while on maternity leave. 

She would tap away at her keyboard while rocking her twin babies to sleep, as sleep deprivation stimulated her dormant creativity.

She wrote numerous short stories, that she published on her blog. 

Apeksha has been lauded for her taut and gripping stories, that always come with a twist at the end.

In addition to Along Came A Spyder, she has written The Itsy Bitsy Spyder, a prequel novella to the Spyders series.

A Mumbaikar, born and bred, Apeksha comes from a family of doctors. 

At the ripe age of thirty-four, she wound up her practice and moved with her family, to Bengaluru. 

She is now a full-time writer. 

She is also a die-hard foodie, who’s still trying to find the best vada-pav in Bengaluru.

She has twin boys, who keep her on her toes.

Apeksha’s husband is her inspiration to write, as well as her biggest critic.

Apeksha on the Web:

Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram