I was practicisng colour theory. That's what I tell myself now. At the time this was the very best I could do, and for weeks I continued on, trying to make something that looked like, well, something, but all I was really creating was one big giant ugly mess. I don't even know why I persisted. Every day, faced with yet another ugly mess in front of me, I claimed that this was the last time I was going to try.

But every day I tried again, creating up to a dozen pieces a day, and eventually I produced something that looked like, well, at least something. And now, six months later, I've somehow reached a milestone where I can reliably make things that look like the thing they are meant to look like. How did that happen????? (My honest thought is 'magic' but that might be another blog post).

And now comes the actual hard but fun part of the journey, I fear: actually developing as an artist. Now that I CAN make things, what do I want to make? What CAN I make? What will happen next?

The more I learn the more I realise I don't know anything. 

I was sketching this sheet earlier, laughing about how I was getting marker all over my hands on the day I am starting a new job. I'd put a 24 hour ban on using charcoal so that my hands could be clean on my first shift (its reception in a hotel lobby -- our lovely patrons likely wont apprecaite my handing their room keys to them with hands that look like they've just done a shift in the coal mines). Typically for me, I'd avoided one problem only to cause another: my hands were now covered with pink ink.

Then all of a sudden my 'little doodles' all came together and I realised EXACTlY what I had just drawn and suddenly nothing was funny any longer.

I grew up on a dairy farm and always come back to themes of cows. Or soured milk. Or girls trapped in the middle of nowhere.

Or women who don't know how on Earth ended up where they ended up.

I'd even written the tite "When The Cows Come Home" :

The phrase ‘when the cows come home’ means that you’re involved in a task for an indefinite period, and you have no idea when it will finish. The phrase alludes to the time a herd of cows take to make their way home, as cows are very languid animals and take their own sweet time at an unhurried pace to return home 

Oh.

And I'd also drawn a young girl, staring up at a withered older version of herself.........

It's taken me this long to return home.