The brain that changes

I started The Brain That Changes Itself, which is basically a love letter to optimism with an ISBN number. It summarises the findings of case studies and research into how our brains get around brain injuries and other damage by rewiring so that a part of the brain set up for one thing can do doubletime taking over for another broken bit. There's more to it, but the whole point is that things aren't set in stone.

Reading this gives me such huge relief. It's hope-giving. I suffer from (don't you hate sentences starting like that?) some nasty anxiety following a couple of car accidents, a head-on collision and a T-bone. In both cases, someone foolishly turned left without noticing that my car was in the way. It left me terribly nervous around cars. Hey, if two people can engage you in completely unavoidable accidents by their own negligence, why can't a third?

My happy little post-trauma involves dreaming up the worst accidents you can imagine and playing them out every time I'm around cars. Including parked ones. It is frightening, tiring, and boring!

But apparently, despite the fact that I've got these mini-horrorshows nicely down pat, and despite the failure of my personal form of aversion therapy of continuing to drive and walk down busy roads, I actually *can* think my way out of this. By doing something that makes me happy, like listening to music, every time I feel the anxiety. They call it "use it or lose it." If you don't feed the anxiety, it dies. You just have to build new pathways in your mind instead. Let's roll!

Sleepdrawing

All pictures drawn between June 12 and July 2, 2012

I've never had such trouble getting to my blog. I have the time, just not the energy. Everyone said most babies would sleep a long stretch at night by the time they were three months old. Mine started to, then switched back to the 3 hour stretch thing when he discovered just! how! exciting! daytime can be. Why eat when you can fidget? Hey, the dairy bar's open all night, right? 

So here are some quick ones grabbed usually when we're out in the yard staring up at the trees or down at the grass, with a bonus Ada. 

 

Tuning myself out

June 12, 2012

Having a mild case of the Baby Blues lately, because life whips by so fast and the things that I wish I understood and the personal and artistic goals I would like to meet, aren't. I always hope to become more secure, both in my opinions and in my identity. But it's like my drawings. I keep drawing the same things over and over, without ever developing - or adopting - my own "brand." I feel that I could get to the next level, but there's something I've never been able to figure out. Am I battering away at the wrong question? Is it a question without an answer? Is asking the question enough? Do we ever know who we are, and can we do something bigger than ourselves if we don't?

With this blog I I'm trying to develop my own drawing style by doing, not by thinking. I want to look back on these pages someday and see the development of a signature. Right now it just looks like a series of faces with someone's else's autograph on them every week. James, by comic book inker. Bus passenger by first year art student. Ada, by illustrator for women's magazine.

I shouldn't let myself think about this. From experience I know it never goes anywhere good, just leads to giving up. And my artwork is becoming more 'mine' over time. It hasn't even been a year and a half of regular drawing practice. Sleep deprivation's wearing me down. I never got anywhere from trying to think my way through artistic challenges, and I'm not about to start now. Commencing neurosis shutdown three - two - one.

Aaaaaand we're back! Cue upbeats:

Here's James. Surprisingly, he's sleeping. Have I mentioned how much I love my kids?

Wanted: less risk management, more scary

June 10, 2012

June 7, 2012

Sort of not really Ada, and another James sleeping.

* * *

Check out the latest monsters by Aida Alves, an artist I first learned about when I ducked out of taking her anatomy course last January because I didn't think I could manage the homework. Little did I know that I was embarking on a project that would more than meet her daily drawing requirement, and blogging it, too. Anyway, I've never met this artist but I think her art demos her anatomy chops, eh? Look at this Dragon! Lizards to swoon over.

I haven't studied anatomy since I was a visual arts student at the Etobicoke School of the Arts in the '90s. Mr. Paulionis, bless him, had his teen students gather around a live model and draw her figure. Next, he replaced her with a skeleton, and we drew the skeleton on tracing paper laid over the original picture. Or maybe we did it the other way around. That's it. I do own Gray's Anatomy, and if you can learn by proximity, then I've absorbed a terrific amount of information the twenty years it's been wearing a groove in the bookshelf!

All this to say, I'm gathering the courage to sign up for her course this fall once I've forced myself to start giving some of James' milk by bottle and to carve out some time to <gulp> take this drawing thing to the next level. I love my drawings these days, but there's no risk. Di Brandt, poet and my Master's advisor, told her budding writers at the University of Windsor's Creative Writing program that we should write the scary thing. It's time to branch out.

Oh mommy pundits

June 1, 2012

Ever notice how the things you aren't supposed to do in life are the things that help you stay sane?

This record's on repeat

June 2, 2012

I never drew the same person twice during my commute, and now I draw the same person every day. Plus, I am making a record of my first days with my son that he and I can keep for the rest of our lives. Should I temporarily rename the blog "My Year of James"? (Hope Bus Blog on parental leave isn't getting toooo boring for you all.)

He's passing out of the newborn stage and, like many mothers, I am sad to see it go. He sleeps a bit longer at night than he used to, and his cries have changed from "la! la!" to proper wails. His little face is fat, fully unsquished and wide-eyed. I don't plan to have more children, but I selfishly wish his infancy had lasted a bit longer.

Awkward squawkery

May 27-31, 2012

This is Angela, my sister, who is traveling two weekends in a row from Toronto to help us out. We are fervently grateful for her good company! James was on her lap when I started drawing this picture, but he began squawking a bit so I never got to put him in. We're so used to rectangular pictures that I find these dimensions awkward. It's annoying how governed by convention I am. Not like this guy, holy mac.