I came across one of my sketchbooks from 2020 this week and had a good old flick through, remembering the weirdness / misery / special-times-but-never-again-please of that first spring-summer of covid.
Like many, I found the first lockdown pretty horrific: trying to keep things keeping on for the kids, whilst attempting the hilarious combination of work and home-schooling.
My youngest was in reception and on the *cusp* of getting the hang of reading. Suffice to say I wasn’t much help - they don't teach reading these days like wot they did in the '80s. My confidence in my ability to help my kids took quite a battering. The days felt very long.
And so, to try and counter the rubbishness of the days, I made myself sketch happy slogans in the evening – a kind of CBT crossed with art therapy to force myself to be positive (with mixed results).
There was something about creating something happy that took me away from the fact that the world had been turned upside down.
After a while I started turning the sketches into paintings to add some colour, which helped with the catharsis even more...
...And suddenly I realised I'd ended up with a whole set of paintings that I named 'Notes to Self', which eventually became postcards and prints for my shop.
I enjoyed the fact that I'd made something cool out of a really difficult time of my life. And it really did help as a form of art therapy - the change in my mental health by the end of the summer was real (but also possibly something to do with the kids going back to school 😂)
If you're going through a rough period, I'd really recommend picking up a pencil, pen or brush and sketching, doodling or scribbling whatever comes to your head. It doesn't have to be good. There's just something in the fact that you've made something out of nothing that helps 😀
