by on

Ok, so it’s not a mystery but it was that or ‘Stairway to Heaven’, which was not appropriate for this story.

Why haven’t I blogged for a while? Well, my dodgy back occasionally affects my balance and a few weeks ago it caused me to miss my footing at the top of our (steep old Victorian) stairs. I tried to correct myself with my dodgy leg, which promptly gave way under me and… crash, bang ‘weasel. I was stone cold sober at the time, honest. Maybe that’s where I went wrong?

It was one of those accidents that went in slow motion. My first thought was ‘where’s the dog?’ but she’d scarpered as soon as she heard my first swear. Then I thought Very Bad Things about the horribly underfunded state of the NHS and those responsible for underfunding it, because I’m still waiting for two rescheduled hospital appointments at the spine clinic and the foot/leg clinic. Then I thought of certain sympathetic (…*ahem*…) friends and decided that if this was how I was going to go I wanted to be laid to rest in the exact upside-down-and-backwards pose in which I’d landed, because they would find that hilarious. Then I just thought ‘Ouch’. Thankfully, I avoided serious injury; my legs took the worst of it and I already had a pair of crutches in the house, but it’s slowed me down and bits of me are still various shades of bruised.

In more cheerful news, I’ve been having great fun with the 100 Day Project. I’ve added my drawings so far to a gallery page here and there’s now a ‘comments’ section on all my galleries for anyone who fancies a chat. I’m using the hashtags #The 100DayProject and #ImaginaryMenagerie if you’d like to follow along on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. I’m ‘@poochweasel’ everywhere.

Also, my short stair-related break means I have FINALLY got around to building a new website shop so you can now buy prints, mugs, or t shirts of anything you like! Adding all the products is quite painstaking so it’s still a work in progress but I’m so pleased it’s up and running. I really want to get it right first time, because my old website was a headache to maintain and I was forever tweaking and mending things. Technology has moved on a lot since then but my 56 year old brain has not. I’m having to learn new technical skills, which is not really my brain’s thing. A typical afternoon at Poochweasel Towers goes something like this:

Me: Right then, brain, we need to create some new product templates.

My brain: Ok.

Me: Then we need to… *something about pricing, mock ups and uploads*…

Brain …

Me: Are you still listening?

Brain: What? Oh yeah… of course. Templates.

Me: Yes. Templates.

Brain: Have you ever noticed that when wombats yawn, they look like they’re doing karaoke?

Me…

Me: Stop it.

Brain…

Me…

20 minutes later:

And in case you were in any doubt, here’s a little story I should probably call ‘Reasons I Am An Idiot Episode 437’.

I have a good friend called Ritu, who is amazing DJ and broadcaster. You should take a minute to check out her website and follow all her socials. We met in the late 1980s, when I was working for Our Price Records and struggling to find the time to be creative, and she was DJ-ing evenings and weekends around her ‘day job’. We bonded over (among many other things) music and art and she was pretty much the only person I knew who was supportive of my ambition to be a full time artist one day. She gave me a beautiful Rotring pen set for my birthday. Artists just did an intake of breath… those things are not cheap. Shortly after that I changed job and moved house. Awful grown up stuff happened and I downed my art tools for many years until I met Luce, who encouraged me to pick them up again and start arting full time.

Fast forward to 2019 when I set myself the challenge of getting back into ink drawing. I quickly graduated from biros, my old standby, to fineliners. As I remembered how to draw(!) I also remembered the struggle to find the perfect pen. I bought better pens, with finer nibs that didn’t blot. Then more pens, because I was getting through them so quickly. I fretted about the environmental impact of disposables and researched pens that would last longer, might be refillable, might have impossibly delicate nibs that wouldn’t break. I talked for hours to other people who obsessed about pens and were constantly disappointed.

Fast forward again to last month when, after three years of pen-related frustration, my brain (see above) finally stopped thinking about wombats and 1980s song lyrics for five minutes and went “hang on”… Sure enough, about 20cm away from my battered little knees, carefully placed in a drawer of the desk I sit at Every. Single. Day. was the Rotring drawing set, in prisine condition after 30 years. I just needed new ink, which cost me £5.99 with free delivery. Take a bow, ‘Weasel, you absolute lemon.

On the plus side, it was a lovely surprise, I’m now using this glorious thing every day and I’ve probably just given Ritu a laugh.

There’s almost certainly a lesson to be learned from all of the above. Don’t ask me what it is though, if my life wasn’t a constant parade of nonsense and bobbins I’d have nothing to write about.

Bonus Music Video

I will always love Siouxsie. Can you tell it was 1979? The clues are there… Kids, ask your mum.

by on

Hello again! This week I am an overexcited ‘weasel, because The 100 Day Project 2022 starts on 13th February and my theme is… *does a quick drum roll with a couple of paint brushes*… Imaginary Menagerie! Yes, I am going to draw (or paint, or sculpt) All. The. Animals.

For anyone who is not familiar, the idea is to choose something broadly creative, commit to doing it for at least 10 minutes a day for 100 days and share it on social media as you go along (if you want to) using the hashtag #The100DayProject and a hashtag for your own project, so mine will be #ImaginaryMenagerie. There are no hard and fast rules, but you can find more information on the website: www.the100dayproject.org

I have several reasons for choosing an animal theme for my project this year. Last year was about getting back to basics and sketching every day. I never like to make things too easy, so I chose to get out of my comfort zone and set myself the technical challenge of drawing people, which I hadn’t really done since college, using the unforgiving medium of black ink. Despite being frustatingly rusty when I started it went well enough that you can see the results here. I love ink or graphite drawing and I can get very carried away with it. I well remember Jenny, my sixth form art teacher (the best teacher I ever had) forbidding me to use black for a while and actually confiscating my pens… The horror.

This year is about getting out of my comfort zone in a different way and loosening up. I’ve been doing some practice sketchs with ink and watercolour pencil to start to wean myself off the black stuff. Here’s one to celebrate the year of the tiger, one to celebrate National Hedgehog Day and an otter, just because.

The idea is to experiment and have fun as I go along, to use more colour and different media, I might even get my clay out again!

Which brings me to the other reasons I’ve chosen this project. I absolutely loved last year’s ‘100 Days of Women in Music’ and I’m still keeping it going. It got some lovely feedback, but it was mainly about me taking time for myself and doing what I needed to get back to being creative after various ‘life stuff’ kicked me to the curb for a while. It also took longer than I’d hoped to recover from my latest spinal surgery in June 2021, but I’m mostly upright again now and this year I want to get back to connecting with the big wide world.

It’s easy to become isolated when you’re self employed and working alone, and the pandemic (not to mention the absolute STATE of things generally) hasn’t helped. I haven’t had much new work to show over the last few years so I haven’t spent as much time interacting with people on social media and it’s made me properly sad and grumpy. I’ve made a conscious effort to ‘reconnect’ a bit recently and realised just how much I’ve missed the random chats and daft jokes I share with my little community of like minded folk.

With that in mind, I want to make this project a collaboration with anyone who enjoys my nonsense and bobbins, and a way of saying thank you to those who have stuck with me over the last few years. I want to throw this open to everbody, so I’m asking which animals you would like to see in the Imaginary Menagerie. What would they be doing? Or wearing? Because the menagerie is imaginary, you can be as imaginative, ambitious, or just plain daft as you like.

This whole thing started years ago as a private joke with my best mate, who I shall call Sandra (because that is her name). After far too much red wine, she decided she wanted a great white shark as a pet. I pointed out that her bathroom was far too small, and offered to build a suitable water feature in the garden. We started texting whenever other animals wanted to join in, with their particular/peculiar living arragements and requirements. Most of our exchanges are not suitable for publication (because wine) but over time it evolved into something that also amused our friends and led to escaping hamsters, glaring shrews, photoshopped cats and all kinds of other nonsense.

Your suggestions could be animals you find inherently funny, or animals doing funny things. They might be animals that don’t get their fair share of attention that you would like to see someone draw. Or just your favourite animal, for any reason at all. Feel free to get your kids involved, this project will be kid-friendly and I would love to hear their ideas/requests and see their drawings. Share your own artwork, share photos of your pets, share your favourite animal charities so we can raise awareness… there is no limit to what we can do with this if it really gets going. There could be prints, prizes, merchandise, maybe even a book! There could be animations on my (woefully under-utilised) YouTube channel. My plan is to run with whatever people want, as long as it’s creative and/or hilarious, and I’m hoping the 100 days will kickstart something much bigger.

I will figure things out as we go along, but for a start I am going to try and apply my not-especially-technical little ‘weasel brain to making a space here on my website where we can chat. I will be sharing the project on Instagram and Twitter as usual and this year I will also be using my Facebook business page as it should be interesting to my ‘doggy’ audience. You can’t have a decent menagerie without dogs after all. I will also be using my arty farty Facebook chat group to share extras like rough sketches, ‘work in progress’ photos and no doubt some mistakes as I struggle to remember how to use anything other than ink. It’s a ‘closed group’ so only members can see what’s posted there, but that’s just so I don’t spam people who follow my main page for the doggo content with more general art/music/culture stuff. Anyone is welcome to join and it’s a quieter space for anyone who wants to share their own work with a smaller audience.

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS! Look at me shouting in all caps! That’s how excited I am. Right… now I’m going to brew an enormous pot of coffee and learn things about website chat forums. Wish me luck.

Bonus Music Video

But Why ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven’ when I haven’t drawn a monkey yet? Because Kim Deal, that’s why.

by on

Look at me keeping up with #the100DayProject like a champ! And not keeping up with social media at all… Oh well, if something’s got to give it’s better that way round. Here’s another update on my 100 Days of Women in Music, which I’m also using as a hashtag for the project on Twitter and Instagram. I’m so pleased that I’m still enthusiastic about the whole thing and I’ll definitely be carrying on and seeing where it ends up after the 100 days.

I’ve now finished eleven drawings, an average of one every three days, which is pretty good going. Here’s the one I was just starting when I last blogged:

I loved doing this. ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, best known for being in The Mamas & the Papas in the mid 1960s. She has been one of my favourite singers since I was a little girl. Even before I developed a love of California folk-rock, I saw her playing a character called Witch Hazel in the 1970 film version of an unhinged US children’s show called HR Pufnstuf. Don’t do drugs kids, there’s no need! You can safely experience all the thrills of not knowing what the flipping heck is going on or why by watching the video clip below…

I actually did a really quick sketch of her character for Inktober a few years ago.

After that I struggled a bit. I did two sketches I wasn’t entirely happy with, but I’m taking a deep breath and sharing them anyway because as well as commitment, this project is also about about sharing your ‘process’. I’m not unhappy with them exactly, but I think the shading on both is a little overdone, probably because I found myself thinking about how many drawings I might manage in the hundred days and subconsciously rushing to finish.

  • Kathleen Hanna
  • Ani DiFranco

That’s part of the reason I committed to black and white ink drawings though, at least or this first bit of the project. There’s nowhere to hide. I’d already planned to do more than one picture of both, and I’m still improving my rusty people-drawing skills, so I’m happy as long as I’m generally going in the right direction. This week I had a stern talk with myself, slowed down, gave myself lots of detail to faff with and waddya know… I’m much happier with this!

Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Note to self: no more 1980s fishnet gloves. I was seeing those in my sleep. I’ve drawn a lot of dark hair recently too, maybe I’ll go for someone bald next? I have a couple of candidates for that.

Bonus Music Video

Seeing as I shared the Witch Hazel clip, I think it’s only fair that this week’s video is Cass singing live. Not the best quality visuals but that voice still give me goosebumps.

by on

It has just come to my attention that I have missed the start of ‘March Meet the Maker’ again. For those of you who don’t know, this is an annual challenge set by Joanne Hawker which encourages arty/crafty small business folk to come out from under our rocks and share stuff about what we do.

Most years I mean to and then forget, but this year I thought “what better way to ease myself into daily art journaling? I will put this in my diary!” So I put it in my diary. And then I forgot.

But… in the spirit of self-improvement, commitment to creative discipline and reckless enthusiasm following several mugs of (very, very) strong coffee, I decided to use this week’s blog to catch up! If you would like to join in, here’s a link to the website with prompts and explanations.

At first glance I can’t honestly say I was excited by all the prompts, but I guess that’s kind of the idea. It’s a challenge. So here we go.

1) STORY

The story of Poochweasel started quite unexpectedly. Some years ago, I was driving along, minding my own business, when a random numpty pulled straight out in front of me. The resulting crash did my already dodgy spine no favours at all. I needed surgery, spent the next couple of years recovering and had to give up my job as I couldn’t drive. It wasn’t the ideal way to change career but my wife, Luce, encouraged me to start sketching and sculpting again while I was stuck at home. For fun, I made a ‘Basset Fairy Princess’ Christmas ornament for a friend and shared photos on Facebook.

Suddenly everybody wanted their own ‘tiny dog’ and things took off from there. In fact, things went a bit berserk, but Luce was really supportive and encouraged me to go with it and see where I ended up. I spent the first year or so setting up a business in a hurry and Poochweasel is now my full-time job. Hurrah!

2) HANDS AT WORK

Umm… ok, this is tricky, because there’s no one else here and dogs are notoriously rubbish at taking photos. Here is an old one of my fingers, holding a poodle. As you do(odle). And another couple of shots so you can see what I was making. Her name is Gemma, and yes, I painstakingly attached every one of those curls!

 

3) TIME

Time is my enemy, work-wise right now. Tiny dogs take a long time to make and I can’t sit at my desk for long because my back is crocked. Also, I have always been a night owl which has never really fit in with the rest of the world. And the NHS ‘clock’ is not my friend while I wait for more surgery. Let’s just forget the whole ‘time’ thing.

4) BRANDING

Oh, now this is a much more cheerful subject. My brand colours are light and dark purple, just because I like them, and I think they catch the eye.  My logo is the best photo I ever took of our much-missed old girl Sandie, who joined us for her retirement in 2008 after she lost her owner.

roundlogo2

We went the local Dogs Trust looking for a young male doggo friend for our terrier girl, Etty, and came home with a 14-year-old lady Labrador in the car. We got a ‘buy one get one free’ deal with Boswell, the puppy. These things happen to us a lot.

My business name is harder to explain. The ‘pooch’ bit is obvious, but I have no idea where the ‘weasel’ came from. There was wine and it all made sense at the time. People often stop and ask about the name and the logo at events though, so I guess I chose well!

5) CLOSE UP

Tiny dogs are ALL about the detail. This is Dexter the steampunk Dobermann. My models are usually between 8cm and 15cm tall, so you can imagine how tiny some of the details are. Those are actual watch parts on his hat, and on the box.

Dexter-small

I also made a steampunk cow, which is possibly my favourite thing ever.

6) REDUCING WASTE

My work doesn’t create much waste. I use environmentally friendly products to keep things clean when I’m working with clay, which likes to pick up every teeny tiny speck of dust. Polymer clay is a non-toxic plastic, so not easily recycled, but I keep every scrap of clay to use for armatures, etc. which means virtually nothing gets thrown out.

I think about sustainability whenever I choose art supplies. For example, I recently started using alcohol ink markers and chose a brand that offers refills and replacement nibs. Unless I’ve been specifically asked to gift-wrap something, I also use recycled packaging materials, so your order might arrive in a slightly odd box, but it’s helped the environment and you haven’t had to pay for it!

7) YOU

I live in Shropshire with Luce, and our two rescue staffies, Lola and Ruby. You may ask yourself “How did I get here”? But probably only if you were a teenager in the 1980s, like me (Kids, ask your granny about Talking Heads).

I grew up in London and studied at the Central School of Art and Design (which has since become Central St Martins). After that I spent a fun few years managing record shops. I always wanted to get back to being artistic but awful grown up stuff happened, and I found myself with a mortgage and a career in sales and marketing (yawn). I ran my own wine importing business for a while, which was also fun, even if certain parts of the 1990s are a bit of a blur. Now I make quirky art stuff for a living. Hurrah!

Things I like include animals, especially dogs (obviously), art (obviously), music, books, gaming, horror films, tattoos, trees, plants, coffee and wine. I have a ridiculous amount of t shirts, but I always need more. I also have a lot of board games, but I rarely have time to play them, never mind paint all the miniatures. I am nerd girl, hear me roar.

8) LOVE TO MAKE

I think we’ve already established that I love to make tiny dogs, but my favourites are the themed models that come from my own slightly odd imagination. Like these:

 

9) ROUGH/MOCK UP

Weirdly, I rarely sketch for models. I find I can just see them in my mind’s eye, then it’s all about coaxing what I see out of the clay, if that makes sense? If I’m doing a commission, I quite often send a progress shot or two to a customer, and I always send photos before the model is dried.

Another thing I always check if I’m making or drawing more than one dog, is that I have the comparative sizes right, and I’m more likely to do a quick sketch for a portrait or illustration to make sure that the customer is happy with the composition.

 

Phew! That took longer than I thought. And now I’m all caught up, I’ll try to keep up. Please feel free to use the comments section below, or any of my social media channels, to laugh at me, or ask questions, or show me your answers to the prompts, so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself…

 

by on

As you may know if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, last week was somewhat disrupted by waking up bright and early (well… early) one morning at a very odd angle due to our elderly bed frame breaking. My back did not enjoy this one little bit and I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped. Still enough for a quick journal update though. We are now completely penniless, but we have a superking sized bed with room for Staffingtons who like to snuggle and a fabulous, supportive mattress. It is glorious. If it wasn’t for my determination to be more creative, I might just hibernate until spring.

I mentioned in my last journal entry that I had been doing a fair bit of sketching from nature and missed going on long walks.  Sometimes though, nature comes to you.

I often spend a while reading before I go to sleep at night. A couple of weeks ago, I was engrossed in my book in the early hours. The only light in the room was the small bedside lamp, right next to my face. Suddenly, a large flappy thing appeared between me and the page. Obviously I didn’t do a big girly shriek, drop my book, and go six feet in the air… (*ahem*)… but I was a little surprised, as random flying beasties do not usually appear indoors in early February.

Once I had ruled out vampires, actual bats or very small UFOs, I saw that it was not that big after all. As it flitted about the lamp shade, I realised it was a butterfly. Wait… what?

This is how I came to find out that certain butterflies ‘over-winter’ indoors, but can become confused by central heating or unseasonably warm weather. My 3am Googling revealed that this was a Small Tortoiseshell, one of the most common to be found in houses. This helpful site told me what to do:

“ Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock… [butterflies] regularly overwinter inside houses. They come in during late summer/early autumn when it is still warm outside and our houses appear to provide suitably cool, sheltered dry conditions.

However… such butterflies may be awoken prematurely by high indoor temperatures. This presents a major problem for the butterfly as the outside weather conditions may be very hostile and there is little nectar available in gardens.

The best solution is to rehouse the butterfly into a suitable location. Catch the butterfly carefully and place it into a cardboard box or similar, in a cool place for half an hour or so to see if it will calm down.

Once calmed down you might be able to gently encourage the sleepy butterfly out onto the wall or ceiling of an unheated room or building such as a shed, porch, garage or outhouse. Just remember that the butterfly will need to be able to escape when it awakens in early spring”.

So that’s what we did. Two more have appeared since then, which was less of a surprise. I have always planted wildlife-friendly things in our garden. We have an abundance of butterflies and moths over the summer. It wouldn’t be hard for a few of them to find a way into the crumbling Victorian pile that is Poochweasel Towers and find a quiet spot. They are very welcome to doze here.

I took a couple of photos, which provided a great opportunity to practice blending my new ink markers.

image

They are somewhat counter-intuitive for someone like me, who has spent most of their life drawing with graphite and water based things, as the trick is to start with darker colours then use the lighter shades to blend but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.

When life gives you lemons, it’s time for a gin and tonic. When life gives you butterflies, draw them! After you’ve done the cardboard box/cool place thing, obviously.

 

by on

The first couple of weeks of my year of living… artfully(?) have been fantastic!

So far, I’m still doing more reading than writing. I’ve been following some of the advice in a very useful book about overcoming creative block and allowing myself to follow random ideas and interesting articles I come across ‘in the moment’, rather than filing them away for later and never going back to them. I’ve broken ground on my art journal and I have so many plans for new projects.

I now have three (three!!) sketchbooks on the go. I know! Look at me. One is for the journal, which I am going to start using every day, even if it’s just to note what I’ve been reading or thinking about. One is for work, which I will probably use more later in the year as I plan for the future.

The last one is shared with Luce. At the moment it’s mostly random silly sketches of things we come up with that make us laugh, like Lola in space (still getting her tennis ball pinched by Ruby. Oh noes!) or ‘Farty and the Tank’…

… but Luce is a very talented writer and we have often discussed collaborating on something creative. The first year of her PhD is pretty intense, with regular lectures involving a three-hour round trip to Warwick. Next year, fingers crossed, she will be more able to manage her own schedule, so we might just find time to start.

In my last blog entry, I spoke about challenging myself to learn new skills. Every artist or crafter I know has a long list of things they’re going to try “one day” and, more often than not, a cupboard full of unused supplies. One of the things in my Cupboard of Shame was a set of pro marker pens that I’d never tried so I used them to colour a couple of sketches.

Oh. My. Goodness. They’re fun. Now I have another few sets on the way! It doesn’t count as a shopping spree, because I used a voucher I got for Christmas. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it… *ahem*…

Since I’ve been sketching again, I find I am more likely to notice and appreciate the small stuff. I’m trying to make positive changes when I can even if it’s something that seems unimportant. Clearing out a drawer recently, I found a beautiful old biscuit tin that my Gran gave me when I was little. I used to keep my pencils in it, and now I do again!

IMG_20200217_154320698

It took all of five minutes to clean it up and sort what I was going to put in it, but it makes me smile every day. Funnily enough, I have been drawing a lot from nature (or photos of nature, taken when I was able to go for long walks!) so it also suits that theme. And I have a butterfly story, but that can wait until next update.

If anyone would like to join me and have a go at art journaling, or writing a journal, or daily sketching, or anything creative at all, I would be absolutely delighted! It’s so easy to ‘burn out’ when you spend a lot of time on your own and art, writing etc. tend to be fairly solitary pursuits. I would love to build a little creative community so that we can offer each other support and encouragement.

For now, I have a Facebook group linked to my Poochweasel page, which anyone is very welcome to join. I’m not a massive fan of Faceache though, so I’m very much open to suggestions. Come and talk to me! 

 

by on

Hello and a belated happy new year! Please stick with me, this post is quite long but also really positive, I promise. And there might be a picture of a daft dog at the end. Oh go on then, let’s start with one too. That’s me photo-bombing on the left:

selfie

So here we are in 2020. Even if the world is in turmoil and things seem bleak, the beginning of a new decade seems like a time to take stock and look to the future.

The truth is that the last five years have been a struggle for us here at Poochweasel Towers. That’s not to say there haven’t been good times and we have plenty of reasons to be grateful. We are very happy together, we have wonderful friends and family, excellent doggos, and Luce is finally studying for the PhD she has wanted to do for years. But a ridiculous number of ‘challenging’ things have happened one after another and recovering from them has been difficult.

Also, as you probably know if you follow this blog, I am not doing well health-wise. It seems that every time I sit down to write a post, I start by telling you that I’m struggling and apologising for my lack of new work or availability for commissions. Unfortunately, my situation doesn’t look like it’s about to change any time soon.

I have suffered from chronic arthritis since I was about 12. I have had fusions in my neck and lower back. Last year, after nearly a year of waiting for various scans etc, I had the first of two procedures to fuse my sacroiliac joints. I was told the second surgery should be 8-12 weeks later. Turns out that even if you need two procedures for the same reason, they are treated separately and the NHS clock resets after each one, so it will be another 6 months before I become ‘urgent’ again. And it can take a year or so to fully recover from fusion surgery… None of this is the fault of the hospital or the NHS of course but being ‘lop-sided’ is not doing me any favours. I find it difficult to sleep, I can’t stand for long or walk very far, and I can’t sit at my desk for any length of time.

Unsurprisingly, all this has taken a toll on my mental health too. I have found it increasingly difficult to be creative and being creative is what makes me happy. Mid December, when I found out that my next surgery probably wouldn’t happen before July 2020, was a particularly low point, so I had a little talk with myself. “Ok me”, I said, “You can’t change your circumstances, but you can choose how you react to them, so what are you going to do about it?” My first thought was “that’s it, I’m going to have to retire”. But I don’t want to do that yet and thinking about it made me miserable. I pondered the probable timing of the surgery/recovery and decided I would have to take a year off. Obviously, my first reaction was to panic. Then I thought “would that really be so bad?” Luce and I have always been determined to take the positive from any situation, even if it’s just a lesson we’ve had to learn the hard way. The more I thought about it, the more positives and possibilities I saw. So that’s what I’m going to do, but I’m not going anywhere and there will be no moping or moaning or feeling sorry for myself. I plan to use the time to ‘get my mojo back’ and start art-ing and writing and generally ‘weaselling about the place again.

I find January is a rubbish time to start anything. Like going on a diet when the house is still full of Christmas chocolates and there’s a litre of Baileys in your fridge (*ahem*). So, the next couple of weeks will be mostly spent reading, listing and organising. And maybe finishing some of the chocolates, if I can prise them away from Luce….

IMG_20200108_131206566      IMG_20191225_102553738 (2)

Here are some of my plans so far.

Firstly, tiny dogs. I love making tiny dogs. There will always be tiny dogs. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take on commissions until I’m fully recovered because I can’t guarantee if/when I will be able to make them. Even if people are very patient and prepared to wait (which they nearly always are) my work list quickly stacks up and causes me a lot of stress. I don’t mind being under pressure when I’m able to work full-time but when I’m not I imagine people being fed up if I’m doing anything other than making their order and that stops me doing anything creative at all. So, no commissions for a while, but more tiny dogs in general. Also, I have some long-term tiny dog projects that have been on a back burner for years and I would love to start bringing some of those to life. Think really imaginative, detailed models. Maybe some animations. Maybe starting to head towards a small exhibition, or even a book?

Before any of that fun, I must get back into good creative habits and for me, that starts with sketching. I’ve been reading about art journaling and I’m planning to give that a go. I’m also going to be doing #inktober52 which has prompts for an ink sketch every week. I got way behind with last year’s #Inktober, which is a sketch every day, but I’m hoping I can manage this!

Self-care is important but mindfulness and meditation aren’t really my thing. Being creative is what gives me ‘head space’ and provides an antidote to stress and anxiety. Stupidly, like many creative folks, I also put myself under unnecessary pressure to produce something fabulous every time I pick up my clay or put pen to paper. I’m pretty sure that doing more spontaneous quick sketches etc. will help me get over that, as will getting out of my comfort zone and trying some new things. I might even ask for suggestions or challenges!

Which brings me to social media and the amazing people who follow and support what I do. I was surprised and delighted when Poochweasel took off as quickly as it did back at the beginning of the last decade, and I am enormously grateful that so many of you have stayed with me. Every comment or share or RT or post ‘like’ really is appreciated. Keeping things going on social media without a steady stream of new work (or ‘content’. Ugh.) is difficult and time-consuming, so it will be a massive weight off my shoulders to have new things to show you.

I love being self-employed but it can mean being rather isolated. I would very much like to share what I get up to while I’m finding my way back to a regular creative routine. The odd posts I’ve made about personal projects have been popular, so I’m thinking some of you might find it interesting. I also know that a lot of other people are going through similar problems and I would love to build a community where we can chat and support each other.

Having said that, I realise that plenty of people are only here for doggos and that’s fine! I’m going to use my blog for this project, probably as an extension of my art journal. I’m thinking I’ll label these journal entries simply by date and other updates will have the usual fancy music-related titles(!) I’ll post/tweet links and include a brief description of each entry, so you can easily pick and choose.

I’m planning to keep the Poochweasel Facebook page as it is and share any dog-related art as usual. I will use the ‘closed’ (members only) Poochweasel Facebook group for everything else. The only reason the group is closed is so that I don’t spam your feed with other arty/silly stuff that may not interest you, and to encourage people to chat and post their own work without making it public on Facebook. Anyone is welcome to join. Here’s a link: www.facebook.com/groups/poochweasel You can also find also a link on the Poochweasel page, or just do a Facebook search for ‘Poochweasel’.

Twitter and Instagram work differently, and I might be able to separate things enough just by using different hashtags. I’ll play that by ear.

Having ended 2019 feeling properly down in the dumps, I’m excited to see where the next year or so takes me artistically, and that has made me feel a whole lot better already. I really hope I can pass on a bit of fun and positivity along the way.

Thank you so much if you’ve read this far. I’d love to hear what you think!

As promised, here’s a daft dog. If you cheated and skipped straight here, I understand.

IMG_20200115_110112887

 

Bonus Music Video:

The title of this post is a lyric from Golden Years by David Bowie, form the album ‘Station to Station’.

“Bowie made an appearance on Soul Train singing (actually, lip synching) ‘Golden Years’ and ‘Fame’ on November 4, 1975. Few white performers had appeared on the show, but host Don Cornelius gave him a warm welcome, introducing him as “one of the world’s most popular and important music personalities.”

 

 

 

by on

New idea… a short blog every week, rather than attempting to rewrite War and Peace every time and not blogging for ages. What do you reckon?

Thing is, especially with all the recent GDPR bobbins, it’s getting more difficult to reach people and (as I am my own PR department and there’s only one of me) I’m going to have to try and direct my efforts more efficiently.

monkey.gif

Allow me a quick moan about Facebook to demonstrate? I promise it has a point which isn’t just ‘woe is me’ but also ‘woe is you, because Facebook says you can’t see what you’ve chosen to see’. And a couple of useful suggestions to put that right. Ta. If you don’t fancy that, just skip to the end to listen to a pretty tune. Oh yes. ALL the new things.

Facebook is still the biggest social media platform there is and it’s free, so hurrah. I don’t just use it for work, I use it to keep in touch with friends and family and follow stuff I’m interested in too. But… I can’t help but notice that every time a useful feature allows me to choose my audience or organise my feed, they remove it.

For example, ‘interest lists’ used to allow me to arrange all the pages I ‘liked’ into different categories, like ‘bands’ or ‘dog charities’ or ‘greetings card makers’ so I could keep up to date with them or shop from them easily. It also allowed me to keep a ‘Poochweasel recommends’ list via my page and share other small businesses I thought my customers would like. This feature was quietly removed and now I have no easy way to organise the 3000-odd pages I follow.

Most recently they also removed the ‘targeted audience’ feature from business pages. This used to allow me to tag my posts with relevant interests, so if I made a little Roman Emperor dog, like this (which I did)…

IMG_20180612_151114574 (2)

… I might use ‘dogs’ ‘history’ and ‘Ancient Rome’ and Facebook would prioritise showing that post to people who liked pages related to these topics. Now it’s just pot luck. Yah boo.

There are ways around these things but they’re clunky. You could choose to ‘see first’ and get notifications every time I post to my page but that’s annoying and intrusive and you’d soon get fed up. I could choose to pay for ads but I resent being bullied into it and, let’s be honest, how much do you enjoy seeing sponsored and ‘suggested’ content on Facebook? Exactly. Me neither.

So how *can* you choose what you see? Well, a lot of pages now have groups you can join (shameless plug: mine is here: Poochweasel Facebook Group). Group posts will show up in your feed and you can turn off notifications to avoid irritation. You can chat with makers, get to know other people who might like the same things as you and often grab special offers. I try not to just duplicate what’s on my business page (because having everything appear twice would not endear me to anyone), so you won’t necessarily see everything I make in my group but it will remind you that I exist and I always try to post interesting or entertaining stuff.

When it comes down to it, Facebook is all about interaction and the single best way to see pages in your feed and keep them in business is to visit them and interact with them. Facebook doesn’t show you everything, it ‘filters’ your newsfeed. If you don’t visit pages you ‘like’, it assumes you’re no longer interested and excludes them from your feed, which means you don’t see them. And if you don’t see them, you don’t visit them and… do you see how this works?! If you ever think “I wonder what happened to that page I liked?”, maybe take a second to look them up? If they pop up in your feed, spare a second to hit ‘like’ or post a quick comment. The same goes for your friends or family’s posts – it’s the only sure way to influence what you see.

Ok, so that turned out to be a bit longer than planned! I was going to talk about some of the other platforms I use, like Twitter and Instagram, but that will have to wait for another blog I think. Otherwise we’ll be back to ‘War and Peace’ and I’ll be posting this in October.

I’ll sign off with another bright idea; sharing a ‘thing’ on my blog that I’m particularly enjoying this week, just like I used to on my Facebook page. Take that, Zuckerberg! 😉 This week, I’m loving the new album by Courtney Barnett, an Australian singer/songwriter who you might not have heard. As it’s a beautiful day here in darkest Shropshire, I’ve chosen a song from an album she made with Kurt Vile which has jangly, ‘summery’ guitars and a sweet, silly video which swaps their vocals and makes me laugh. Enjoy!

You can read more about Courtney Barnett on her website   or  Wikipedia and follow her on  Twitter or Facebook

As ever, if the title of this blog post means anything to you, or you enjoyed the video I posted, come and chat music with me! 🙂