Baby mine

For the entirety of their lives I have used songs to calm down my babies (admittedly not a very long time - but still)

Yesterday while we were playing with playdoh (well the Angel was playing while I tried to keep the Samurai from eating it) my two year old started to sing to the baby a song that I used to sing to him every night (and still sing a few times a week, and whenever he cries)

He mumbled words and sang off tune (I probably do too) but in my grumpy and sick mood it made me surprisingly emotional.

I am exhausted from looking after a tiny restless baby who can't breathe properly through a stuffy nose, but it gives me hope to know that they are sometimes listening. Even if it's only when I communicate via song.
 
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This week has been busy with commissions and sick babies at doctors offices and next week looks like it will be similarly busy.
When I get the chance I sit down and play with photoshop. I love doing my sketches in ps because I can just layer and layer and then delete it all... it's not the same as the sketchbooks that I keep, but it helps me to feel arty without making an epic mess.

Seriously

I often feel like one of those plate spinners from some cheap carnival or cheesy talent show.
I have so many things going on at once that I don't feel like I can do any of them with any real degree of excellence. So I rush about like a lunatic, smiling in a sequin encrusted outfit acting like I know what I'm doing, hoping that if I can fool you, then maybe I can fool myself - spinning these plates until I lose concentration and one falls and breaks... and while I'm crying about broken crockery another one falls, and then I am so overwhelmed that none of them are being maintained and I am surrounded by broken plates.

This week the boys are sick.
The bank account is empty.
Next week is the Samurai's specialist appointment.
My mind is full of dreams for future endeavour - so much so that it is making it difficult to focus on the things that I have in front of me to do.

My brain is such a busy (and unproductive!) place to live in sometimes.

Trying to remain positive and constructive I have been drawing and working on some commissions and I need to say - everyone should draw.
I don't think that it is very important to draw super well - I don't think that I am very skilled at recreating things exactly as I see them - but when you draw things you have to look very closely at them. Even more than you would if you were just taking a photo. You really observe how things are put together, how the pieces interact, textures, and light. Drawing teaches you how to see things.

So in all the chaos of my noisy mind, I am grateful for the time I have been able to enjoy just sitting down to stare at the delightful faces of lovely people, the glass wings of insects, the iridescence of beetle shells, and all the other things that fill up my eyes and try to make their way through my hands onto paper.
Even when my drawings are unsuccessful (which frustratingly, is most of the time) I enjoy just sitting and watching.

This is my note book where I scribble things and keep notes. Where I write down nice things that help me out even on days like today when I look like a reject from Nirvana in a plaid shirt and lank bleachy hair... (seriously grunge - am I showing my age? I'm not even old!!) The letters are from a Frankie magazine... I don't remember the name of the artist who designed the alphabet (boo Eleanor) so if anyone knows it - do share.

Oh how my wondering mind wanders...

Some days stress just smashes me.

Like today.

The Bear Prince.

I am still doing art.
You can follow my instagram updates @eleanormccomb

If you want to get a hold of this fellow you can sign up for a subscription to my art here. He'll be posted out with the June lot. 

Otherwise - if you can name what fairy tale this beary prince comes from I will send you a print of it for free. (obviously this is only for the first person who knows... after that its just silly)


PS. I don't like putting watermarks on my work because I think they look nicer without them and I just kind of trust you. Selling these drawings and paintings is how I make money to support my family and I would really really appreciate your honesty. Don't print out my work. Just buy it. My printers have better quality paper in any case...

On the visibility of pain

On Thursday night the angel (behaving very unangelic) was holding a mug and in his goat like climbing all over the counters in the kitchen, he fell. The mug smashed in his hand and left him with small cut.

He cried and cried when he saw the blood. I washed it off, and put some gauze on it. Taped it up and then I cut the toe out of a baby sock, made a thumb hole and pulled it over his hand so he couldn't see any of it anymore.

The next day it was a clean pink line of sealed over skin. But taking the gauze off prompted another round of wailing. He cried and cried until a plaster was stuck over it and the sock replaced. For the record, he dropped a framed picture and wooden bowl on his head later in the weekend and has some nice big bumps and a scratch on his forehead that looks nastier than the healed cut on his hand, but we didn't even need to do anything about those but give him a kiss. Why? because he can't see them!

I thought I was some kind of parenting genius until I realised that the sock had become a problem in and of itself.

 

He wore that sock all weekend until I made him take it off to have a proper bath. (He cried again)

Our hurts change as we get older, but I think we still do this. Cry over our nothings just because we can see them. Maybe there is some deep meaning there, but mostly this is a lesson to me. About making sure that my first aid kit is always present and prepared, because I am the mother of my own children - and that means that they are going to be naturally accident prone for most of their lives and combined with Kyle's adventurous daring that equals constantly bruised legs, arms and skulls.

I have been interstate visiting family, and now I have a cold, but I do have some art coming so this blog will get back to business soon - with less of my general ramblings and more of my arty ramblings - promise. 

These days

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in."

- American Beauty

There are times when I feel like I have missed my calling. Like I should have been a writer or a photographer, or a film maker - though I am not very good at any of these things.

Sometimes there is just so much beauty in the world. So many small moments that create such a fabudonkyulous world that I feel like there should be some way of recording them. Of possessing that beauty. Memory seems inadequate at those times.

I find my artistic skills just as inadequate at imparting those feelings, and I'm not really a poet (despite my enduring love for the haiku) and as you may have noticed from what I have shared with you on this blog - photography is still outside of my skill set.

I feel like my body fills up with so much feeling, and I am so incapable of expressing it, that I just sit around feeling emotional, and inadequate. Moments like these are given to us to make something out of them, I am convinced, otherwise why would we have them? Inspiration to creation.

 One of my favourite bloggers  writers said this:

"I get so damn tired of feelings sometimes, the way they crash over you, threaten to drown you, and then slowly recede, leaving you wet and stinking and covered in seaweed. I think that in my next life I'm going to come back as a robot that's incapable of feeling obligation or regret. I think that that would be nice."

I guess that is what is means to be human, and even more so what it means to be suffer from mental illness, though I don't feel that us 'touched' folk have the monopoly on intense emotions.
All I know is that I adore this side of the coin. The feelings before the plug gets pulled from the bath and you slowly get heavier and heavier, and colder and colder. The joy of beautifully real things. The pretentious feelings that make people film paper bags dancing in the wind.

My work is small and certainly not profound by any definition of the word, but I want you to know that I have aspirations. That my work, especially the things I do for myself, are my way of trying to tie up and own a tiny part of why I think that the world is lovely, and hopefully share that with you.

Don't get me wrong. Life is dangerous and awful too, and that makes me just as emotional - and I make art then too... even more than when I am absorbed by the beauty ... 

I am glad that Ky is studying film, I hope that he gets to share his vision with everyone of the worlds in his mind. I am glad that there are people out there who can write the way I wish I could and film and photograph moments that reflect the feelings that I have.

Like this guy.



We Were Wanderers On A Prehistoric Earth from James W Griffiths on Vimeo.


I never intended this blog post to be as ... emo (?) as it turned out.
Editing it now seems disingenuous so I won't.

For the Samurai

In 2011 Evangeline Cachinero quit her day job and sold paintings every week to make the money she needed for her rent. 

Love is at your fingertips - Evangeline Cachinero

That is all that any artist is doing when they sell their work I suppose - paying their rent, feeding their faces, clothing their bodies, and paying for the things that they need.

Living on a budget is in many ways restrictive - mostly when it comes to food... I have to keep meal plans and bake way more than I used to (I don't like baking... ) and I don't really have the luxury of just deciding I don't want to make dinner so we'll just get pizza (which happens a lot. Cooking isn't really my thing) but it is also freeing in a way.

Without the option to waste money - we don't. I am more organised out of necessity and marginally less lazy too.

The best part of it all is that Ky is happy. He is doing something that he enjoys, and if that means he isn't working full time for the moment then I am okay with that, because our household is a nicer place to be part of when we are doing things that we find personally rewarding.

One of the downsides though is the lack of flexibility when it comes to emergencies or unplanned for expenses.

The Samurai needs to see a specialist with the possibility of needing surgery for some baby issues. Nothing that's going to kill him, but definitely something that needs to be dealt with now to prevent problems for him down the line.
It's going to cost us quite a bit of money, and if surgery is required, even more... 

 At the same time - I will be reorganising my Etsy store so that everything is up to date.

I am taking a page out of Cachinero's book and selling things with a specific purpose - Ronin. I will be selling things here through my blog until they are gone, and the money will be going towards those unplanned expenses - namely, the paediatric urologist who we will be trusting to heal our little Samurai.

To check out everything that is for sale, click here - or click the URGENT SALE tab along the top.

Thank you!