2017 #5- New possibilities ahead

My favourite thing to collect - art postcards!

A few days ago, something scary happened: my flatmate informed me that she would be moving out very soon. Add to that job insecurities, financial health scares, and my general fear of not being able to pay for things, I spent a lot of time crying.

My mum had to listen to all that, and then help me to calm down and formulate plans, because plans are very very comforting to me. And one common theme quickly emerged to all those plans - I would keep the flat on my own. This is very expensive, so I became panicky again, but I also soon realised the potential.

You see, right now I have the smaller one of two quite small rooms; and a window looking East. This means that there is very little daylight I can use on working days, because I get up early and try to art in the early evenings, so unless it is summer, I won't have much natural light.

(I worked around this problem by installing a daylight lamp, and I would advise anyone to get one because they're awesome. But obviously, needing no lamp at all is better than any alternative.)

Every collection starts small...

When I started to take art a bit more seriously than doing an occasional doodle, I started to acquire quite a few books and stacks of paper and collections of pencils and other unwieldy things. I found them a place to live and all was well. I could even fit some other things in there.

The problem with putting more focus on a thing, and letting more people know that you're interested in it, however, is that your accumulation of stuff related to that thing begins to grow.

There are instruction books handed down from other art enthusiasts, collections of half-filled sketchbooks (and the obligatory pile of unopened sketchbooks of shame), new pencil sets to be explored, random additional supplies you hadn't known you needed before you learned more about it, and eventually, even some finished artwork you'd like to hang up. 

This is where an extra room comes in handy.  I didn't have one before for financial reasons, but also because my lack of TV, disregard for stuffy tea-time meetings, and dislike of glass shelves to exhibit fancy dishes meant that I had no need for a living room.
This has now changed - I need space for my table, maybe an easel, to store art books and supplies, to hang my own work and paintings I've bought.
Oh, and I need a place to work with oils, which is not my bedroom!

A drawing table and a painting.