February’s nearly over, and slowly we’re closing in on Spring (even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment).
These dark grey months at the beginning of the year have never been great for me making artwork, and this year is no exception.
This year it’s been exacerbated by rising energy costs — understand that to do any life-drawing I need to heat my studio/living-room to a temperature warm enough for a life model to comfortably hold a pose while nude for thirty minutes, and just the thought of the resulting heating bill gives me the fear — and a more general malaise probably resulting from lack of sunlight and misbehaving brain chemicals, the political and economic climate here in the UK, and just … gestures vaguely at everything.
In the meantime I have been giving some thought to my artistic practice and, more pertinently, making some money from it.
I’m toying with the idea of starting a £5-per-month Patreon thing with monthly rewards including exclusive discount codes for my online shop, high-quality wallpapers of my artwork for your computer and phone, sneak previews of works-in-progress, and suchlike - more on this when I get closer to launch.
I’m also still planning to publish my Acid Renaissance artwork in a new book by the end of this year, but that seems a long way away at the moment.
I’m hoping March will be a little more creative, with the weather becoming less gloomy and the ambient temperature rising into the balmy realms of double digits Centigrade, both of which I am hoping will spark some sort of rebirth of life in me.