Hello, Bonjour, Hola, Ciao, Szia
I’m Shu – full time human being and flibbertigibbet, part time designer, artist, gite owner and full time breast cancer survivor…amongst other things!
“What interests me?”
“What gets my goat?”
“How do I see the world on any given day?”
You’ll find out the answers to those questions, and many more over the coming weeks, although the second of them gets a tiny mention below.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever worked more on my art than I have since covid forced us all inside and to socially isolate.
Me? well I already often worked in isolation as a designer and as someone with a suppressed immune system it wasn’t new to me to “physically or socially isolate”. I rarely get out after 8pm anyway (not because I’m a party pooper but because there aren’t that many wild nightlife places to go in rural Normandie) so my main regular social outing was my yoga class (think 1/2 yoga, 1/2 French lesson)
Now that we’re all out and about again, I’m still bursting at the seams, wanting to share what I know about the joy of drawing and painting to anyone who will listen. And as I’m still living in rural France there isn’t really anyone who will physically listen to me (apart from the long suffering Rob) so you lot out there in the blogesphere are going to get your ears well and truly bent.
So, how this all began…
“Oh…I’ll just create a website for my art”….she says.
“I’ll write a blog about it”….she says.
“It will be easy as pie”….she says.
Oh how wrong I was!
Create a website –
Turns out that the thing that gets my goat is technology!
I spent days (and yet more days) uploading images and descriptions and clicking all sorts of techie buttons with no real clue what I was doing, I lost it all once but there wasn’t too much swearing during the process so I’m taking that as a win… don’t get me wrong, tech still gets my goat – why can’t it be more like a pretty unicorn grazing in a buttercup filled meadow under a beautiful rainbow? Why does it have to be all grey and demanding, popping things up on screen that make no sense – I know all the words they’ve used but have no clue what it means when they put them together in some sort of alleged sentence.
Thankfully all the uploading didn’t disappear the second time and the website is progressing. Phew!
Write a blog –
As I’ve never done one before I’ve done my research on how to write a sparkling blog and apparently it’s easy peasy, all you have to do is –
1 – Choose your blog post topic
2 – Pick something you’re passionate about and something your readers are passionate about.
3 – Get inspired by research.
4 – Keep a log of every topic idea that comes your way. You never know when you’re going to be stumped by the question “What should I write?”
5 – Get organised.
6 – Open strong! otherwise this can happen –
“I just stopped reading your article. You had about two seconds to hook me, but your yawn-inducing opener made me surf on to something else”.
7 – Write naturally and emotionally
8 – Close strong
My thoughts on those points are –
1 – Art
2 – Art
3 – That sounds time consuming
4 – Never going to happen
5 – Also never going to happen, I’m too much of a flibbertigibbet, flitting from one thing to the next
6 – OK, that might be possible
What I dread though is the “I just stopped reading your article. You had about two seconds to hook me, but your yawn-inducing opener made me surf on to something else” so I’m going to have to brush up on sparkling, witty or interesting content
7 – Oh god, you poor readers
8 – I’ll try my best, I’m simply going to end at a natural stopping point. No wrap-ups, no frills – just end when I’m finished (or bored).
Phew, after all those rules I’m exhausted so the blog writing proper is going to have to wait until next week and I’ve just changed my mind about wrapping up with no frills, I’ve decided to hand this over to you instead…
What would you like me to write my first blog about? Art History? My favourite artist? Life in rural France? Or something more interesting? I’m open to suggestions.
Finally, can I ask you to share my website to any of your friends who you think might like it. If I get an order because of your share I’ll send you a free print – we can chat about which one you’d like.
p.s. if you like my flibbertigibbet image then it’a available as one of my art prints – go to the limited edition prints page to find out more and order your print.
