IF - Stripes

A quick sketch for Illustration Friday this week. Topic is 'Stripes', so what better than an animal with a naturally striped boa, ready to accent any mood! I love ring-tailed lemurs...who doesn't?

I can't believe I haven't done any artwork since July!

I realized recently how important it is to keep being creative. You see, I realized long ago how important it is for my sanity to exercise my body. I run. On days when I don't run I'm less patient, less productive and more likely to be grumpy.

So why shouldn't exercising my brain be just as important?

I write. It's my profession. So, after several months of doing less creative writing and more paid writing, I realized I was suffering from a lack of exercise of the brain. I was grumpy, doubting my career choice, unproductive...you name it! So, a couple of days of drawing, photography and doing some unpaid but deeply satisfying creative writing, I feel like I've just done a half marathon and I'm ready to get back at it.

Lesson learned - keep running, keep creating.

Asleep

This week's IF word is Asleep. It made me immediately think of the many, many hours I watched our son sleep in an incubator in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We were in the hospital for two months as he was only 970 grams when he was born.

I kept a journal and wrote in it almost daily. I also sketched. This is one of the sketches from that notebook.