So, on to Plan B then...
Categories: artwork, and-another-thing, general-stuff
Date: 25 July 2011 09:01:47
Loads to update but, typically, no time to do so.
Since I last logged on I've taught 50 adults in a rain soaked gazebo how to draw in 20 minutes, been to a goth/steampunk wedding, finished off a couple of new images, taken a few photographs, attended a future ideas meeting in Reading, attended the Bagel Tech Mac blog recording in London and had my job role clarified.
Yes, job role, that old chestnut. I was working all but full time a week ago, as of September I'll be three days a week and then, after December I'll be 2 days a week. It's a relief to know what's happening and, to be honest, the feeling at work has been so monumentally sad over the past little while I'm not sad to be half going (and leaving one department entirely) but it's still a strange half way house. I was hoping a slightly better solution could be found but it wasn't, so I'll work with what's given me.
The tricksome thing is that I'll now be going into freelance art with more intention than I previously have. Until now some of it has been for money (one job has paid for the family holiday which makes all of the midnight finishes bearable) and another I do as a charity role: they pay but they pay directly to four charities that I nominate. I like it, it feels like a tithe of time, or of talent and to know that my artwork supports the work of the charities I like is, again, a great motivator when I'm trying to get a piece finished or working to a good few changes that have been made late in the day (War Child, Christian Aid, Engage and National Autistic Society incidentally, all very powerful causes and ones I want to see succeed in their various fields of work).
From now on in? Going to have to be a bit more organised on that score. There'll stil have to be a charity element to the work I do but... Ah well, things to think about and a finalised plan doesn't need to come into place until December.
A couple of things I do need to do post haste. If I write them here maybe I'll have to get more organised about the doing of them: a new web page, designed and hopefully created over the holiday weeks, a new look for this blog to fit into the webpage (no idea how to do that one though), a new portfolio with samples of the projects that I want to go and work into... All that sort of stuff. Selling myself, which I do so appallingly that I worry from the get go. I'm a good artist, I think. The trick is turning that into something my wife won't hit me over the head with a frying pan over. I'd like to work more in art if I'm able.
That said a new teaching post may come available in the future, who knows. And I have a lot of work to complete for the college's participation in the World Skills Festival in October (and if anyone knows an Action Script programmer I'd very much appreciate contact info help). More than anything else though the coin is flipped into the air now. Just got to see what side it lands on.
The Goodbye Guys. ((click pic for larger version)).