Messing about with colour

Felt the urge to draw today (yay!) so got out ALL of my oil pastels, even the ones mum sent me a Christmas ago and still had their wrapper on, and just drew. I love oil pastels because they feel so delightfully squidgy as you pull them across the page, and they bring back fond memories of colouring in with wax crayons when I was little. The 'art heals' doodling has been in the back of my mind for a while (told you my brain had been working on the theme) and I needed to get the message out to myself and everyone else on the planet so put it down on paper. I just put the pastels on the paper and drew. Symbols of growth, love and resources needed for growth kept appearing - note my tree, seeds, water and (hopefully) egg shaped dots under the tree. My creativity is so much a part of who I am that not to honour it would be life-threatening I think. It really is enmeshed in my very being, and I kind of lost focus on that for a while as I got wrapped up in the stresses of life and started comparing myself to others - then the whole circle of self-doubt began and I got sucked into the vortex! Took some time to extract myself, with some help from family, friends and people who I don't know but who could relate to what I was saying and here I am again. Thanks in armfuls go out to all of you. xx

Another reason I love oil pastels is because of the intensity of the colours. The second picture is made by a simple technique most of us learn in primary school - simply scribble some lovely thick patches of coloured pastels, then fill in over the top with a layer of thick black pastel. Then scrape and scratch away with something pointy (I used a cable knitting needle). I'd forgotten how sharp and brilliant the colours looked and how effective this method is, so I had to take a photo to show you. I'd only drawn it on a scrap of paper to see if it worked too.

Anyway, I think the Brits are sometimes judged unfairly for being dull (we've even been described as 'grey'! The cheek of it.) and not liking colour. It's simply not true. I've mentioned a blog here before that is abundant with colour, and indirectly referred to it a few blogposts ago (going very red-faced here, but Lucy of Attic 24 is a very gracious and lovely lady) but I have to mention it again because you just have to visit it. It's like potted sunshine on the web, so if you missed my reference to it a couple of month's ago, here it is again. Long live colour, where would the world be without it?