After a few days at home nursing a fierce head cold, unable to go to work and not feeling up to exercising, reading or even watching a movie, I distractedly reached for a pencil. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was actually drawing again. It’s been a while. Funny what it takes to drag myself to the table and start to be a bit creative, I almost have to exhaust all other options first. But it did feel really good to immerse myself in a botanical composition again. With a good podcast on in the background, greendreamer.com,  I barely noticed the hours drift by. Once I was better and back at work, I’d come home at the end of the day and dive back into drawing to add in a line here, a line there. We hear often enough about the benefits of boredom, creatively and cognitively, if tapped into constructively. I guess in the end it’s just unscheduled time we need, to mull over what we’d like to do or feel pulled to do rather than what we ought to do.

Wild Cyclamen seemed a good place to start again for some botanical drawing. There were a couple of false starts as the pink of the flowers is so delicate and I initially felt like I was layering on the colours with a trowel. Gradually I lightened up my touch. I seem to have forgotten more than I remembered of drawing, but am fairly pleased with the result, albeit with room for improvement, as ever.

Faber Castell, Prismacolor Verithin, Trojiten coloured pencils.